Matt Brinkman knew something was off as soon as he pulled the wing and tail out of the brown paper bag. The bag was dated Sept. 18. A grouse hunter had dropped it into a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wing barrel near Bonaparte Lake. Some time later, it was moved to a freezer. On a recent Wednesday morning, it was brought to a warehouse in north Spokane, where it was to be processed alongside hundreds of other small brown bags containing grouse parts for WDFW’s east side wing bee. A wing bee is about gathering information. Wings and tails contain a lot of it. Brinkman, a WDFW biologist, was one of about a dozen people tasked with searching each feathered appendage for signs that...
