Project Tag: Conservation

Palouse Outdoors – The Autumn Stream Palette

Palouse Outdoors – The Autumn Stream Palette

Published October 3rd, 2019, The Waitsburg Times

Fall is undoubtedly the most anticipated and contested season of the year, and rightfully so in both regards. The fat days of summer are quickly drawing to a close at our latitude, even more dramatically in climates further north. Darkness cloaks our early waking hours and morning routines, not to mention the crispness on the air, leaving little motivation to escape the comfort of our beds, save for the increasingly satisfying steam and piquant aroma of coffee or tea tantalizing our nostrils and taste buds on such mornings.

The transition from a season of glut to a season of thrift. Hunting, gathering, fattening, reproduction, all to the tune of Mother Nature’s rhythm. The birds are heading south; their innate sense of the season to come urging them to seek warmer climates and more abundant food sources. The last of the humming birds are scarcely seen as they migrate from northerly portions of their summer range. Flocks of drab, olive-toned gold finches visit bird baths en route as curious nuthatches and black and tan towhees begin to appear. The vibrant, red berry clusters of the mountain ash begin brightening to brilliant orange in time for the arrival of masked cedar waxwings from higher elevations.

The long-awaited early upland and big game seasons are upon us as deer fawns lose their spots and wild turkeys build their winter flocks. Elk bugles pierce the wilderness canyons, echoing through the timber like an autumn canticle. And the bedraggled, teenage pheasant roosters are finally coming into their handsome adult ensemble. But what lurks below emboldens many, not to be second best among the terrestrial grandeur. There are coho, Chinook and steelhead to be caught, but the high mountain cutthroat, rainbows, and even the eastern transplant brook trout are calling those patiently waiting for the summer heat to ease and the October rains to replenish the headwaters.

Cutthroat trout

The paling of the upland aspen and streamside cottonwood and alder, the blushing of snowberry and the blackening of elderberry fruit paints a soft contrast against the russet, heat-baked hills and basalt. Water temperature is optimal and the trout feisty. Ominous skies draw out the long-awaited October caddis hatch, triggering trout to rise aggressively, snatching the burley, moth-sized flies as they dip to the water surface to deposit their eggs. Among the largest of the caddis species, the October caddis serves to quickly fatten trout for their upcoming months of sluggishness, feeding largely on nymphs.

The final hurrah of the big fly season, hulking stimulator patterns tied tawny with deer hair and eye-catching orange or red bodies fight the slightest of breeze as a floating fly line shoots for the edge of a backwater or pool tail-out. A cutthroat, now coming into its prime, rolls on the stimulator from the shelter of lazy waters. Boasting rich, buttery flanks, an olive-tinged dorsal region and faint flush of pink adorning the belly, the cutthroat is the natural 24-karat gold of many western streams.

Not to be outdone, the rainbow, so aptly named for its prismatic sheen, rockets airborne from the tumult between pools. Preferring faster water, rainbows are the pure muscle of montane waters. Their dazzling shades of blue, violet, olive and rose, decorated with an incredible varying of pepper flecks serves to entrance and addict anyone to ever marvel over such a finned spectacle. Splashing down into the froth, a sizeable rainbow hits top speed in an instant, leaving an unprepared angler fishing for a fresh stimulator in the fly box.

rainbow trout 1

And then there is the master of shadows. The one who seeks brush and boulder seclusion. Their fall routine being quite different from the other trout, possibly because they are not trout at all. Brook trout are actually a char, their scientific name, genus Salvelinus, sets them and their western bull trout cousin apart from the other trout of genus Oncorhynchus. A native of the eastern U.S., their widespread range hard won over ages of fighting steep, flashy torrents and heavy woody debris loads. Their aggressive attitude and insatiable appetite make them vulnerable to angling, particularly during fall as their tenacity and brilliance peaks for spawning.

Soft pink bellies blaze into fiery orange-red. Their dull, gray dorsal darkens to a deep ocean olive-blue streaked by worm-like striations. Their peculiar pink spotting with the sky-blue halo darkens to a stunning hue like decorative buttons on a jacket lapel. But their most unique identifying trait is the mark of the char; the stark-white leading fin spine on the pectoral, pelvic and anal fins, trimmed in pitch black, sets a marvelous contrast to the dominantly red fin. They may pose an invasive species threat to native trout in the west, but their splendor is inarguable.

Bulls, bucks, pheasant and ducks; the allure is potent and justified. But on those heaven-sent, bluebird October mornings when the mercury falls, the waters are calling. Sun-kissed creek bottoms flowing through a kaleidoscope of changing vegetation sets the backdrop for a well-placed fly and a radiant adipose fin. And for a brief moment, painted among the autumn stream palette, may we achieve true serenity, blessed to witness nature in its most vibrant glory of the wild trout.

Upland Pursuits: No Shortage of Good Days

Upland Pursuits: No Shortage of Good Days

“Any day catching wild trout on the fly is a good day”

I said to my buddy Jim as we traversed a bedrock cascade on one of our favorite mountain trout streams. It had been a couple years since I visited my Virginia home town, so we capitalized on my impromptu June arrival to carry on a tradition of fishing this particular stream.

Adjusting my Tenkara USA Rhodo to 9-feet, 9-inches, I set my sights on a pocket where the stream dropped over solid granite. The water was incredibly low for June, resembling the trickle of early fall. The pools were mirror-flat and crystal clear forcing us to endure a painful crawl across cobble streambed to approach without spooking fish.

Clinging to an algae-stained granite slab angling into the stream and forcing the flow to the far bank, my knees made relieving purchase on a soft jade mat of moss, cool and moist with river water. A gentle cast landed a small, blonde elk hair caddis with an olive body at the head of the cascade feeding the deep, emerald pool.

The caddis bobbed through the narrow cut between granite slabs, dappled by sunlight fighting its way through an eastern hemlock canopy. As the caddis rounded a large hunk of sandstone, an explosion led to my first fish of the morning. With the rod stuck high, I guided the 8-inch fish to shore and photographed its varied hues. The rosy speckles with the sapphire halo, the worm-like striations across its back and the fiery glow of its belly tugged at my soul.

I cut my fly-fishing teeth on Appalachian brook trout over 25 years ago and still find them challenging in tight cover and low flow. And they still hold high rank as one of the most beautiful specimens of the salmonid family, in my humble and biased opinion.

The wild Appalachian brook trout – a true spectacle to behold

In the west, some of the best days fishing wild trout have come from Idaho where big flies entice ravenous cutthroat in steep river canyons. On evening in particular, the sun kissed the mountaintop on its descent, casting a rich glow across the river and illuminating a dense mayfly hatch. Perched atop large riverside boulders, my buddy Chas and I were casting Chubby Chernobyl dry flies (Chubby) the size of a hummingbird to fish that were thrashing the water as though they had never eaten before.

A sweat-soaked straw hat shaded my face as I stripped and launched each cast in the evening heat. Hotter yet were the 16- to 18-inch cutthroat holding in eddies and along flow seams, erupting on the fluffy white flies like a champagne bottle blowing its cork. Evenings like this spent stalking these luxuriant bars of finning Idaho gold remain forever engraved in in our memory of good days.             

Another Idaho trip, I rigged up my tenkara rod with a Chubby and drifted it down a riffle into the head of a massive pool. The riffle filtered into a run before the flow encountered a house-sized boulder and turning 90-degrees. Dead-drifting the fly perfectly along flow seams fooled big fish where they had been educated by a generous number of anglers previously.

You know when you get that “any moment” feeling when the drift is just right? At that moment, the brilliant, buttery glow of a cutthroat would rise from beneath and roll on the fly, hooking perfectly in the corner of the jaw. The throb of a heavy cutthroat against a tenkara rod in fast water feels nothing short of a spiritual experience.

Mountain streams tend to wash away the burdens of the day and fortify the soul. Songbirds, deer, chipmunk and squirrel, the roar of the stream and humidity of the transpiring forest canopy engulf our worries. We find ourselves lost in our natural habitat, having escaped reality, if only for a brief time. Mountain time is timeless, yet tangible. Cleansing. A reset for bruised souls amid hardship like a pandemic and social unrest.

Wild trout and mountain streams are everyone’s resource in which to seek joy and solace, July being a prime month. Be it the Minam, Lostine, Wallowa, or somewhere further flung in Montana, California or Appalachia, John Gierach could not have said it better – there is no shortage of good days on wild trout water. We could all use a few more good days.

Upland Pursuits – Status and Conservation of Oregon’s Mountain Quail

Upland Pursuits – Status and Conservation of Oregon’s Mountain Quail

Collapsing my tenkara rod, I reflected on the brilliant California golden trout I had just released back into the trickle of a mountain stream dropping from a series of high lakes in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. The September sun shone golden and warm against my back as dappled light streamed through the forest canopy. That fish put a bow on one of the most memorable weeks of my fly-fishing career, traipsing through the scenic Sierra Nevada Range in search of a trout I had dreamed about for decades.

Descending from 10,000 feet, the trail meandered through various cover types including old-growth pine and small pockets of yellowing aspen. Approaching a unique knob around 8,500 feet was a minute stand of sagebrush, appearing entirely out of place and displaced from the lowland scrub and chapparal. The faint scuffling and whistling of a quail covey piqued my interest.

Climbing the knob, the covey scurried across the trail ahead and levitated above the sage, sailing elegantly into the safety of a nearby snarl. Mountain quail. That first encounter left me mesmerized and wishing to exchange my fly rod for a setter and double gun, and added another hunt to my bucket list. Researching mountain quail habitat and their distribution across the west, I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Oregon’s populations and conservation efforts.

Mountain quail are a North America native, distributed throughout the Oregon Cascades and California’s Sierra Nevada, with a sprinkling in Nevada, Mexico and Washington. Southeast Washington, eastern Oregon and western Idaho historically were home to mountain quail, but over time, their habitat and populations dwindled. In Oregon, mountain quail were once found in every county. Since about 1950, land use practices and fire suppression have contributed to their decline.

Photo Credit – US Fish and Wildlife Service

Mountain quail are the largest native quail in North America. They are uniquely monomorphic, meaning both sexes are virtually identical in size and appearance, each boasting their most peculiar feature, a black, needle-like “top knot” growing over an inch long from the top of the head.

Preferred habitat consists of dense brush, such as manzanita thickets, chapparal and scrub, in wooded foothills and mountains. Features like burns and clear-cuts are important for providing the appropriate balance of cover and food sources, and water within about one mile. Riparian habitats with an adjacent brushy, upland slope are favorable.

The mountain quail diet consists mainly of vegetation during spring and summer, seeds and berries during fall and winter. Insects are important for spring and summer brood rearing. Mountain quail also exhibit a robust reproductive strategy. Females lay seven to fifteen eggs in two separate nests within about 600 feet of each other. Both adults incubate clutches independently, males typically having greater hatch success.

In 1996, Oregon State University (OSU) began a study to compare life history characteristics between the larger, stable lower Cascades population, and that of a remnant population in Hells Canyon. Additionally, quail were translocated from the Cascades to Hells Canyon to compare life histories of the separate groups in the same habitat.

The OSU study results informed a sixteen-year follow-on translocation study to reintroduce mountain quail to historic eastern Oregon habitats. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) teamed up with OSU and the U.S. Forest Service beginning in 2001, translocating and radio-tracking birds in the Freemont, Deschutes and Malheur National Forests and the Steens Mountain Wilderness.

A total of 2,574 birds were translocated across years. Forty-five percent (1,156) were radio-tracked to obtain habitat selection, survival and nesting success information. Overall, nesting and brooding was successful across sites and years. Survival ranged from approximately sixteen percent to nearly sixty percent, depending upon year and release site. Survival rates and trends observed were similar to those of the Cascades population from which birds were translocated.

Photo Credit- US Fish and Wildlife Service

Concluding the study in 2017, it appears the translocation efforts were at least marginally successful. Mountain quail appear to be maintaining small populations where translocated and are considered an “occasional” species in Wallowa and Union Counties while the lower Cascades population remains strong. Detailed annual reports of the translocation study are available from ODFW online.

Oregon offers hunting opportunity with the eastern Oregon season running October 10th through January 31st this year, including California quail and overlapping the forest grouse season. The lower Cascades season opens September 1st.

Mountain quail are a peculiar and secretive species, and a treasure to the State of Oregon. There is something magical about their presence on the landscape. The memory of flushing a covey over manzanita or juniper scrub will remain etched in your cache of extraordinary upland experiences. Whether pursuing with dog and scatter gun or hiking stick and camera, the marvel of this distinctive native quail and their habitat that we are blessed to have on our public lands is reason enough to seek adventure in the high desert.

Pheasants Forever Journal – Women on the Wing Soars in Washington State

Pheasants Forever Journal – Women on the Wing Soars in Washington State

Published in the Pheasants Forever Journal Winter 2023 edition.

In 2022, Blue Mountain Pheasants Forever, Chapter #258, started a Women on the Wing program to diversify the Chapter’s outreach and opportunities. The initiate was wildly successful and contributed to the Chapter winning the Pheasants Forever National Award for Education and Outreach. I am extremely proud to be an active member and officer of Blue Mountain Pheasants Forever!

Upland Pursuits – The Wild Turkey Conservation Success Story

Upland Pursuits – The Wild Turkey Conservation Success Story

Published April 15th, 2023 in the La Grande Observer

One rainy fall morning, I found myself sitting quietly in an old hay shack on the edge of an alfalfa field. My friend Dan sat to my right. A calico barn cat desperate for friendship perched upon a hay bale to my left. As dawn cracked, the sound of raindrops pinging on the rusted tin roof was disrupted by a cacophony of turkey “yelps” from their roost far above us in a pine stand. The cat continued preening, uninterested, but Dan and I glanced at each other in curious anticipation.

Moments later, over one hundred Rio Grande turkeys sailed down from the roost into the alfalfa field before us. Video of the hunt shows turkeys gliding in from the pines for nearly five minutes. The discordant “kee-kee” and “yelp” calls from a flock that large were defeating as the birds gathered before eventually spreading across the emerald alfalfa carpet where they engaged in synchronized feeding.

Having never successfully hunted turkeys, it was hard to maintain my composure with that many birds front and center. A large jake (a juvenile male) finally separated from the flock, allowing a safe shot. Upon squeezing the trigger, it was unclear which, the cat or the shot wad, left the shack in the biggest hurry – the cat having launched from the haystack so quickly that it virtually vanished into thin air. At that moment, the largest flock of turkeys I had ever seen before or since lifted off, leaving the jake behind to bless my dinner table.

That parcel has produced most of my wild turkeys over the years, regularly holding flocks with greater than thirty birds during the fall and winter. This is common across the nation in areas with patchwork landscapes of agriculture, forest, and grasslands or pasture, making it hard to believe that the wild turkey was once pushed to the brink of extinction in North America.  

According to the National Wild Turkey Federation, approximately 10 million wild turkeys roamed North America at the time of European settlement – a fine food source for settlers. Like most “game species” known today, turkeys were hunted year-round without regulation for subsistence and the market.

As the eastern colonies grew and settlers moved across America, timber was cleared for agriculture and community development. The cumulative impact of hunting and habitat loss decimated and isolated wild turkey populations.

“Connecticut had lost its wild turkeys by 1813. Vermont held out until 1842 and other states followed. By 1920, the wild turkey was lost from 18 of the original 39 states and Ontario, Canada, in its supposed ancestral range[1].“

North American wild turkey populations plummeted below an estimated 250,000 by the 1930s, but pending legislation and the Great Depression would serve the wild turkey well.

In 1900, the first iteration of the Lacey Act regulated market hunting by prohibiting trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that were illegally harvested, possessed, transported, or sold. This Act, in concert with early wildlife management regulations, reduced the overall hunting impact on turkey populations.

The Great Depression fell upon America in 1929, and over the following decade, homesteads and small farms were vacated as 14 million people sought work in cities and factories. With fields left fallow, natural succession converted former cropland to grasslands and shrublands. This natural landscape change resulted in the rebirth of wild turkey habitat.

Another keystone piece of legislation – the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 – established a conservation fund via excise tax placed on the sale of sporting goods and ammunition. These funds were used as seed money to establish large-scale conservation efforts. State fish and game agencies began trap-and-transport programs to reestablish turkeys throughout their native range. “By 1952, bird numbers nationwide had grown to 320,000[2].”

By 1973, the national wild turkey population estimate was about 1.3 million birds. At that time, the National Wild Turkey Federation was founded with the mission of “wild turkey conservation and the preservation of North America’s hunting heritage.”

These and other conservation efforts have resulted in the recovery of wild turkeys with over 6 million estimated across 49 US States and five subspecies in 2014 – Eastern (4.5-4.7 million), Osceola or Florida (115,000), Rio Grande (853,000), Merriam’s (260,000), and Gould’s (1,200). This incredible recovery since 1973 is no simple coincidence with the founding of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Sitting quietly, tucked into the brush at the bottom of a canyon, I listened to the excited gobbles of seven Rio Grande toms echo between the canyon walls. A young but robust bird with an exceptional beard was en route, lured by my feeble attempts to mimic a hen turkey yelp. Moments later, I stroked the bird’s iridescent plumage in the evening sunlight while the other toms and a dozen hens made their way back up the canyon. The wild turkey is perhaps one of the greatest conservation successes in North America. Moments like this make me proud of our continental conservation model, and thankful for the opportunity to hunt one of this nation’s greatest game birds.

If you have not hunted wild turkeys, now is the time to join the ranks in one of America’s oldest hunting traditions.

[1] History of the Wild Turkey in North America. James Earl Kennamer, Mary C. Kennamer, and Ron Brenneman. National Wild Turkey Federation Bulletin No. 15.

[2] Wild turkeys: A conservation (and hunting) success story (usatoday.com)