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Hunting

photo by Wayne VanZwoll

"It may be the most overlooked place around," said my partner. "And I'd as soon it stayed that way." We were hunkered in a notch in the bluffs high above Chief Joseph dam. Steep tawny sagebrush slopes fell away to green blocks of orchard lining the Columbia River. Slate-colored cliffs met the dawn-pink sky above us. Downriver, to the west, slept the smoky-blue foothills of the Cascades.

"Shut up and call." When you're hunting coyotes, you mustn't lose your focus to scenery.

But we both felt pretty lucky to be on this lofty bench, watching a new day start, alone. Danny and I had hunted deer as well as coyotes here, and seen cougars. Danny had tracked one of the big cats into the basalt above us and caught it circling on his trail. Not many people have shot a cougar that way.

Still, the north end of Douglas County gives you plenty of chances to do the unusual. Like hunt mule deer from a boat. Just launch above the dam and hunt the shoreline of 51-mile Lake Rufus Woods. Be sure to contact Bureau of Land Management, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for ownership information, as about half of the shoreline is private. "You'll find country there that rarely gets human traffic," says Bob Fischer, wildlife biologist for the Army Corps of Engineers. "Black bears take advantage of that."

It doesn't look like bear country: dry, expansive sage meadows with giant warts of basalt. But the steep ravines that drain these seemingly barren hills hold food and cover for bears and other animals that crave solitude. Cougars. Bobcats. Big-racked deer. A three-point antler minimum seems to have boosted local numbers of mule deer bucks.

Along the shore you'll also find "mitigation sites" - stands of vegetation established in the wake of dam construction to make up for the loss of wildlife habitat flooded by backwater. These pockets of cover hold California quail and ring neck pheasants. You'll also find these birds - and waterfowl - on the Wells Habitat Management Area, the state-managed land on Bridgeport Bar. Catch them at the first of the season, before a frost, and you'll have fine shooting at doves. A section of the Wells reaches up along West Foster Creek south of the dam, where you'll find Hungarian partridge and, if you're lucky, chukars.

The chukars aren't as plentiful as they used to be, for reasons not fully understood. But other game can keep hunters busy year round here quail populations are strong, especially around orchards; and you'll find geese as well as puddle ducks and divers on the river all season long. The coyotes keep winters lively for Danny and me.

But he'd just as soon you didn't know that.

-- Wayne van Zwoll

photo by Paul Harris
A young lady's first buck taken off Pearl Hill.