Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 23

I
T WAS IN A PLACE he would
never go again that Glenn Hoover
II discovered something he had
never seen before.
Hoover and a nephew, Kenneth W.
Yeaney Jr., both of Erie, were bowhunting
whitetails from the family camp near
Allegheny National Forest in McKean
County this past fall. As is their norm,
they took to their stands early, with plans
to hunt from them again before dark.
But in between, they did what they
also usually do, swapping crossbows for
shotguns. They like to spend afternoons
hunting grouse - Hoover was once a
bird dog man, until his beloved German
shorthair developed cancer - while exploring
new areas for deer.
In this case, they found themselves
negotiating a road near Red Bridge. It
was nasty, with two rickety steel pipe
bridges Hoover felt moving under his
truck.
" It's a pretty gnarly road and I'll be
honest with you, I'll probably never go
there again, " he said. " Oh, is that road
bad. "
It took them to a spot he hadn't hunted
in nearly 40 years. There, walking 15
to 20 yards apart in woods thick with
beech trees, they flushed a bird. Yeaney
shot. So, too, did Hoover, their shotgun
blasts booming out close enough together
that neither realized the other had
fired. Both saw the bird fall.
Walking up to it brought a major
surprise. This grouse's back was more
white than brown between its neck and
tailfeathers.
" We were both in complete shock, "
Hoover said. " At first, when I saw all
that white, I thought, is this a grouse?
But the underbelly had the correct colors
and it had the black ruffs and the full
black fantail.
FEBRUARY 2025
" There was no mistaking it was a
grouse. But it was just wild. "
They hunted a bit more, to see if they
might flush other birds, then drove to a
spot with cell reception to do an internet
search into piebald, or leucistic, grouse.
Piebalds have white, unpigmented
spots, often against a normal-colored
background. White-tailed deer in Pennsylvania
and elsewhere, for example,
sometimes exhibit those characteristics.
But neither Hoover nor Yeaney had
ever heard of a piebald grouse. Their
web search didn't reveal any either.
" So then I thought, wow, that must be
a big deal, " Hoover said.
It is. Reina Tyl, the Game Commission's
Grouse and Woodcock Program
Specialist, said piebald grouse are quite
rare.
" I have not seen any specific estimates
of how common leucism or albinism
are in ruffed grouse, " Tyl said.
" However, it is estimated that only one
in 30,000 birds experience leucism or
albinism.
" While albinism is caused by a genetic
mutation, leucism occurs anytime
pigment development is interrupted, so
it can occur after an injury or acute event
not related to genetics. "
Hoover's grouse is the first piebald
she's ever seen or heard of in Pennsylvania,
she added.
Lisa Williams, currently the Game
Commission's Wildlife Recovery Division
Chief but formerly its grouse biologist,
only recalls ever seeing one during
her tenure in that role. It, too, was taken
in Allegheny National Forest by a hunter
at the Ruffed Grouse Society's annual
upland bird hunt near St. Marys.
But that hardly makes them common,
here or anywhere.
The book The Ruffed Grouse: Life
23
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025

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