Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, August 21, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Dove decoys enhance the hunt
Mourning doves are the most widespread and abundant game bird in America
BRAD
TRUMBO
UPLAND PURSUITS
y decoy spread, offset
slightly to my left, lit up
like little gray beacons
as the morning sun cast its golden
glow.
A light breeze kicked up,
spurred by the sunrays piercing
the cool air of early fall. Aside
from the emerald foliage of the
occasional tree, the Palouse was
decorated in the usual varied tones
of beige, canary and bronze.
Camo-clad, sitting along a
forgotten fencerow, I waited for
the first flight to descend upon
the grain field and gathering of
imposter fowl. A robust doe white-
tail with her speckled fawn lei-
surely fed from a grassy draw
bottom.
Suddenly, movement to my
right revealed a few gray birds
swooping in, head-on to the
decoys. With a smooth swing
of grandpa’s old pump gun, the
morning hunt was underway.
Pop quiz — what am I hunting?
OK, you read the headline and
know it’s doves, but that scene
could easily play out for waterfowl
with a tweak to the decoy setup
and a little water in the picture. No
waterfowl hunter would dream of
sheltering in a layout blind without
a few decoys out front, but decoys
for doves?
Pass-shooting doves is an
American sporting tradition, and
the mourning dove is the most
widespread and abundant game
bird in North America. Every year
hunters harvest more than 20 mil-
lion birds nationwide. A typical
hunt might be characterized by old
five-gallon buckets for seats placed
in the shade of a tree alongside or
separating grain fields and water
sources.
Tucked in the shadows, friends
and family enjoy quiet small talk
as early autumn heat wavers up
from the parched landscape. No
fancy gear or even camo required.
Action can be fast and furious, but
M
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
A dove decoy spread set on the edge of a cut pea field.
MORE INFORMATION
Mourning dove season opens Sept.
1 statewide in Oregon, and con-
tinues through Oct. 30. The daily
bag limit is 15 doves, and the pos-
session limit is 45.
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
A brace of America’s most popular upland bird, the mourning dove.
also slow when birds are sparse
or keeping their distance. That’s
where decoys enter the scene.
Doves tend to follow trees or
obvious terrain features when
moving among food and water
sources. At these sources, doves
perch on exposed tree branches
or anything else with overhead
visibility to survey for preda-
tors before descending to feed or
drink. Decoys can be set to attract
doves to a location advantageous
to the hunter, influencing their
flight path and encouraging more
birds to fly within shooting dis-
tance. With a few simple consider-
ations, your decoy spread can do
more than keep you company on
the hunt.
Identifying your shooting
position is the foundation of set-
ting decoying. Decoys should
be placed 10 to 20 yards from
your shooting position to ensure
the shooter remains hidden from
approaching birds. Offset the
decoys from your shooting posi-
tion at about 10 o’clock for the
right-handed shooter, and two
o’clock for the left-handed shooter.
The goal is to encourage crossing
shots rather than lure the birds in
head-on to the shooter.
Next to location, setting vis-
ible decoys is crucial. Tree cover
can be sparse in the shrub-steppe
and harvested fields. A wire or
T-shaped bar about 10 feet high to
See, Trumbo/Page B6
Backpacking in the backcountry
TOM
CLAYCOMB
BASE CAMP
I
know that I’m totally
blessed. I get to hunt and
fish all of the time. But
my most fun trip of the year is
when I go backpacking with
my daughter. It’s just her and
me with no distractions. No
Facebook, no Instagram, no
TV, no leaky pipes, no yard to
mow ... you get the drift. No
interruptions.
But I about died on this last
trip. It probably wouldn’t have
been so painful if there weren’t
30,000 forest fires burning,
causing us to suck down half
smoke/half oxygen every breath.
Plus I overloaded my pack with
everything including the pro-
verbial kitchen sink. But we still
had a blast.
Next time I’ll write a Back-
packing 101 article and cover
what gear you need to carry, but
this week we’ll just talk about
the recent trip and the fun we
had. Kolby had an appointment
with her college adviser and
then she was going to run home
and we’d take off. Of course
she rushed home and I was still
working on articles and had
a four-part series I had to get
submitted to a new website so
we got off a minute later than
planned.
We soon arrived at the
trailhead and started strap-
ping everything to our packs.
I’m still old school and use an
old frame Kelty pack I’ve had
Tom Claycomb/Contributed Photo
The author took way too much stuff on this trip.
since 1998 or 1999. I did just
order Kolby a Sierra Designs
Flex Capacitor internal frame
pack, which is lightweight, but
it didn’t arrive until the day we
got home.
We threw on our packs and
hit the trail a little later than I
wanted. We wouldn’t hit our
camping spot until well after
dark but the only other option
was to camp at the trailhead
which meant we’d have had to
unpack our gear, throw up a
camp and then tear it down the
next morning, repack etc. etc.
Plus, we’d done that one year
and got woken up at 1:30 a.m.
by a bear rubbing the tent.
It’s never fun hiking in the
dark. If you stumble off a trail
in the dark with a heavy pack,
you’ll go tumbling off the side
of the mountain down into the
river below. One year on this
trail my buddy rolled two horses
and a mule down into the river
and barely got them out alive.
We finally hit our spot,
unloaded, slapped up our tents
and hit the sack. I was beat.
This trip we’d taken our Alps
Mountaineering Taurus 2 tents.
They’re a hair heavy for back-
packing but they’re nice in that
they’re larger and have awnings
on each side that you can store
your gear under.
The next morning I woke up
and had to go drown some of
my new flies from flydealflies.
com (I had a bunch). I fished
for a while and then ran back to
camp and whipped up a hot cup
of coffee and some oatmeal for
us and woke up the little sleepy
head.
Nothing is better than a cup
of coffee in the morning up in
the mountains, is there? Even if
it’s just a motel pack from the
last business trip. We’d grabbed
a couple of coffee creamers at
the last gas station and dined
like kings and queens. Well, at
least by hobo standards!
Some rotten little field
vermin had climbed the tree and
gotten into our food bag and
nibbled on a few items. But I set
traps and caught two mice per
night the rest of the trip.
We strung up our flyrods and
took off down the river. The
water was lower than it nor-
mally is in August. Which is
good because it congregates the
fish in the holes which helps
fishing.
We were having a great time
fishing and then disaster struck.
We passed through a spot that
was loaded with huckleber-
ries and raspberries. Kolby slid
to a screeching halt and it was
all out war on the berries. No
hurry. We were going to be back
here for four days. Normally
we’ll half fill a water bottle
with huckleberries to make a
fruit-flavored drink but this time
we only had our Aquamira fil-
tered water bottles to store them
in.
I finally got her pried away
from the berry patches and back
on track.
I lose track of what day we
caught what. We didn’t catch
as many fish as normal but still
caught enough. Somewhere in
the mix Kolby hung a really big
cutthroat. I mean he was big! I
saw him slash the water and he
had a big girth. I bet he was 17
to 18 inches. She had on a light
tippet and he soon snapped her
off.
Like I said above, it was
smoky and late afternoons the
smoke would really roll down
the canyon and cloud things
up. You could hardly make out
the far ridge. Kolby would ask
me every night if I thought we
needed to get outta there. We’d
end up staying only to wonder
again the next night. You don’t
want a forest fire racing over
the top of the mountains while
you’re sleeping.
Well, our time finally came
to an end. We loaded our packs
and hit the trail. Great trip.