Best Birds Upland and Shore

By Worth Mathewson and David Hagerbaumer

In this beautifully illustrated book, Worth Mathewson vividly describes his bird-hunting adventures across North America. Over the course of thirty-nine years, Mathewson hunted all of the United States' and Canada's native upland and legal shorebird species, from the band-tailed pigeon and mourning dove to the ruffed grouse and ring-necked pheasant. His memories of these hunts, accomplished in the company of friends, family, and faithful hunting dogs, are recounted here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Release date: Dec 13, 2007
• ISBN: 9781461750697

Book preview

1

Band-Tailed Pigeon

There has never been much written about the band-tailed pigeon. For the most part, anything on the bird is treated as a regional novelty. Understandable. The bandtail is a game bird only found in appreciable numbers in the Pacific Northwest—from British Columbia through Washington, Oregon, and California. There is also a race of this pigeon found in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

By far the most spectacular location at which I have hunted bandtails is Vancouver Island, on a mountain top that rises from the shores of Lake Cowichan. I found the pigeons by chance, having traveled to British Columbia to fish for fall chinook and to hunt grouse. With a canoe, I would cross the lake at first light, pull up on shore by the remains of an ancient, alder-choked logging road, and take two hours to climb to the top.

From around the lake’s shore and roughly halfway up the mountain I could expect ruffed grouse. On top, the huckleberries were ripe and grasshoppers still alive, and my quarry was the blue grouse. You could see over what seemed to be much of the island, and I had eagles fly over my head and watched a cougar walk across a clearing on the slopes below me. The bandtails came over the mountain as travelers, only a few times settling in snags—mostly passing on until lost from sight toward another mountain.

I knocked down my first while resting on a log. A pair flew over, I grabbed my gun and ducked quickly to see if others were coming. A small flock of six appeared over the firs, and I folded one from the center. In three years and 15 hikes to this mountain’s top I killed five band-tails—and saw no more than 40 others, not spectacular hunting by any means. In my home state of Oregon I once was in a canyon that had well over a thousand bandtails feeding on the big purple berry of the cascara tree, and shot the limit of eight pigeons more quickly than I liked.

In the early 1920s William L. Finley, noted Western ornithologist and pioneer director of the Oregon Fish and Game Commission, gathered information on past market hunting of the band-tail. Not much was known, except that the pigeons were shot and trapped for the market along the entire coast. His lone reference was a whistle stop town on the central Oregon coast called Eddyville. He stated that a Mr. O.G. Dalaba trapped band-tails there in the early 1890s and once got 25 dozen pigeons with one spring of the net.

Eddyville made an everlasting impression on me. Photographer Ron Cooper and I were returning from interviewing Jim Parks—a 94-year-old homesteader who lived on the headwaters of the Big Elk River, two ridges away from Eddyville, and who had helped his father market-trap band-tails in the 1890s. When we passed through Eddyville, we saw the largest, meanest billy goat on earth glaring at the passing cars with frozen deep yellow eyes, and a small boy standing beside the road selling the newspaper Grit.

Lean, alert Jim Parks knew nothing of the market-trapping of bandtails at Eddyville, but told us at length about his father’s enterprise beside the creek on the homestead. They trapped the northward migrating pigeons in May, and he thought that his father started in the year 1886. In the late 1890s he could remember helping. They would plow a section of ground, bait it with oats, and use a weighted spring net thrown by maple saplings.

They trapped for three weeks, building cedar boxes to hold the pigeons, and twice a week shipped ten dozen birds down the Big Elk River to the point where it entered the Yaquina River. The pigeons were transferred to a scow at Elk City and sent down river to the port of Newport where they were placed on a steamer and shipped to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Market hunting undoubtedly had an effect on the numbers of bandtails that once flew the Pacific Coast. Their numbers never came close to the passenger pigeon of the East, but their population was once far larger than it is today.

Far more important to bandtail history is the winter of 1911-12. Almost all Northwest bandtails winter in California. In most years, the population is widely scattered, but occasionally an abnormally heavy bumper crop of acorns will cause practically the entire population to centralize in a small area. When this happens, the pigeons pay dearly. It happened in 1911-12, 1946, and 1972.In 1911-12, the shoot, known as the Paso Robles-Nordfhoff slaughter, lasted two months, and on weekends the morning train from San Obispo to Los Olivos carried up to 100 pigeon shooters. The resulting outcry by bandtail supporters Lee Chambers and Joseph Grinnell in part caused the Migratory Bird Law of 1913, followed by the enlarged Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The season on pigeons was closed for 19 years and their numbers made a fair recovery.

In Washington and Oregon there are countless locations named for bandtails: Pigeon Creeks, Pigeon Buttes, Pigeon Roads, Pigeon Rivers, most remote, most overlooked or unthought of by sportsmen or others. Many such places are near mineral springs—water-seeps high in traces of calcium and sodium—that bandtails use in July, August, and early September. There are a few recognized springs in British Columbia, 18 in Washington, over 50 in Oregon, and a few in northern California. A few, like the Crawsfordville spring in Oregon, were market-trapped in the 1800s and have been hunted continually since.

There’s simply nothing worthwhile to say about hunting bandtails at mineral springs. In Oregon and Washington it’s practically the only way the pigeons are hunted, but usually only during the first week of the season, which begins on September 1st. The birds using the spring are quickly shot out. The pigeons coming to the springs are mated pairs, and if you visit a spring before opening day, you can watch the first flocks arrive, all males. These drink, leave, and a second flight comes, the females. When the guns are at the springs, the picture is especially ugly.

But in the mountains—either the Cascades, that form the spine to split Washington and Oregon into wet West and dry East, or the Coast Range, which comes right down to the Pacific’s beaches—the bandtail can be king. He should be hunted during migration. The birds come through quickly—a flock of pigeons leaving Vancouver Island in the first days of September can be expected to enter northern California three weeks later.

During the early Sixties, I spent a lot of time in the mountains hunting bandtails. When my timing was right and the pigeon numbers good, the hunting was as spectacular as any I’ve done. During the second week of September in 1965 Dave Wray and I got into a huge bunch in the Cascades. We were hunting on the Upper Clackamas River and had left the truck to walk the old logging roads that rise up the canyons above the river. There were small stands of old timber, left on the ridge tops to reseed the slopes, and second-growth fir, ten to 15 feet high, over much of what had been logged. We had seen a big flock of 20 or 30 birds earlier, flying strongly to the south when the sun began to burn off the ground fog. So we knew that there were pigeons around, but we weren’t ready for the number we saw.

The old logging road that we chose was steep, snaking up the mountain away from the river that after a half-hour walk seemed very far below us. A few cascara trees grew on the side of the road and the slopes were dotted with heavy clumps of blue elderberries. We rounded a corner where the road started a switchback, and Dave gasped. The hillside seemingly rose and flew away!

Bandtails have a habit of making a very sharp, sudden clap with their wings in two situations: either to serve as a danger signal to other pigeons, or when coming down out of firs to feed. For years I’ve tried unsuccessfully to pick out some difference, as one clearly causes them to flee, while the other brings them in from some distance. In this case the birds rose in clouds from small firs and feed trees and flew en masse across the canyon. Perhaps two hundred came up together on the first flush. The noise from their wings was amazing.

We knocked down a couple of stragglers as they flushed—fast snap shots, for an antsy bandtail leaving a tree is a very quick bird. Then the overhead shooting started. We parted, Dave walked a few hundred yards up the road to take a stand and wait. The limit that year was eight pigeons, and we shot 16 in a little less than two hours. The birds were wild that day, settling in the tops of high firs along the slopes for only a few minutes, then off again to trade across the canyon and power-sweep over the logging road where we stood.

At one time we had flocks below us—off the side of the steep canyon, so steep as it fell off down to the river that we were actually looking down at the pigeons, their gray forms back-dropped by the green firs; and above us flocks flying across the mountain’s upper face, and pigeons coming over our heads.

A few flocks came around the mountain, some of the pigeons we had flushed returning to feed. Those were easy shots. They came in low, already reducing their speed, and looking to settle. The flocks that I remember best must have started somewhere near the top, then power-dived downward, sweeping over us so fast that they were gone in a breath, some so fast that we didn’t have time to raise our guns, just laugh and call to each other. We hit clean fast shots, and watched them fold dead at the sound of the gun, to be carried by their speed and the slope far down the mountainside. When we had our limit we climbed to the top and saw fully the number of bandtails in the area that day. We could see flocks to the north and south, on both sides of the canyon, and watched them for a hour or so. Dave thought that there must have been 1,500 that we could see. That many pigeons in Oregon in one place is very rare, and I remember thinking at the time that there were perhaps more.

I’d hate to have to put someone into bandtails who was short of time. During migration pigeons move through quickly, and large groups that you see one week are often gone the next week, or day. I have a very few spots in Oregon that I can count on. Of these one is early-morning pass shooting, and success varies with the pigeon population of the year. I have a few others that are feed areas, or in a flight line to feed areas, and at some of these I have used decoys with good results. But to predict good flights, or active feeding, or any number of pigeons is hard.

I feel sure that in one weekend I could go into an area anywhere in the 1000-mile length of the Coast Range from northern California to British Columbia and find ruffed grouse. I’d never make such a prediction regarding pigeons. I had a couple of good hunts in California while attending college, but spent most of the time looking for birds. I don’t think that I would have found them if someone hadn’t offered to take me. I spent a week once in Washington pigeon hunting, got a few birds, but never really found what I was looking for. And on Vancouver Island I tried very hard to locate birds, driving many miles without much luck.

I do, however, have one particular bandtail feeding area in Oregon’s Coast Range that I have hunted for 22 years. The pigeons feed in the bottom of a small canyon, in a thick stand of cascara that grows by a small creek blocked by beaver dams. On the slopes of the canyon is old growth timber with firs reaching seventy feet. A road comes up into the mountains above the canyon to dead end at an old farm, long deserted and recently torn down. If you get there at first light, you can watch the pigeons come in.

Some big flocks come in low, usually from the west, and those are flying easily, making me think that they must roost nearby. Most of the time they fly into the tops of the highest firs, and sit and wait. The blue-black Steller’s jays are moving and yelling, pine squirrels start cutting cones, and on most September mornings a heavy ground fog has filled the canyon. It starts to burn off as the sun rises. All the while more pigeons come in, and it’s these that I like to watch. Some come in high and fast from distant mountains. When they are over the canyon they come down, wings folded, dropping like stones, then pull out of their dives and slow down, maybe to fly over the canyon once and return to settle with the other flocks in the fir tops.

In years past the number of pigeons that collected on some days paralyzed me with excitement. If the morning was calm and sunny, the pigeons came down out of the firs to feed about 7:30. When they started down it was always the same: a single bird would drop down, followed by a few more, and then a rush of falling pigeons—not only birds that had been piling up but others that had been collecting in firs a mile away and had seen or heard the rush. They didn’t stay down long, but the noise from their wings could be heard from some distance, especially when they rose with a roar to return to the fir tops. If left alone, they would come down three or four times during the morning.

I used to make a point of being in a clearing in the timber halfway down the canyon’s side before the first pigeons flew in. And on days that I was late and the flocks were coming in, I was sick with myself for missing the first action, for there is little doubt that it makes for better shooting to shoot into the first flocks. They become disorganized and mill around, some leaving for good, but the bulk trading around trying to make peace with the situation. In the clearing I would have flocks darting over in rapid succession, and often how I was shooting in that first hour played a big part in the day’s outcome.

If the day was hot, the pigeons would group in the tallest of the firs, and I would wait. They can spend hours seemingly doing nothing. With hundreds of bandtails in sight I have sat three hours without firing a shot. During the past few years I have played this waiting game with the pigeons often. I now would rather watch them come in, first waiting until they are down to feed, and then jumping them up—taking what shots come by.

On a windy, rainy day things are different. In western Oregon we usually have a hot September, with the first winter rains starting in late October. But some years we have hard rains in mid-September. When this happens, some of the best pigeon shooting can be had. Bandtails are wilder on rainy days, flying more and not spending long periods in the tops of trees. After three or four days of wind and rain, I have sat in the canyon, knowing that our Northwest winter is coming—and I have often thought that the pigeons did too and were ready to move on.

On such days I get under a small cedar and I have to take two fast steps to come out to shoot. The bandtails are flying low, twisting between the dripping firs, and there are simply no shots given you. I always come out in the late afternoon, on a path through waist-high ferns, soaked from the belt down, most of the time tired from the climb. Then I sit in the car to watch the last few flocks cross over the firs. It is a very special sight.

2

The Birds

The preceding article appeared in 1978, in Gray’s Sporting Journal’s Upland Birds issue. Much of what I wrote of in that article took place years before, in some cases as many as twenty. In the last five years of the 1950s, the entire 1960s, and into the mid 1980s I hunted bandtails in Oregon’s mountains with a passion. The bird was by far my favorite game bird.

Things change. I haven’t killed a bandtail in the last nine or ten years. And at this point I am unsure when, or if, I will hunt them again. It is my strong hope that I do. I have six cork bandtail decoys which I made, and a lofting pole used for wood pigeons in England. When the rig is set up on a steep hillside, shrouded at times by fog banks blowing in off the Pacific, it looks great. Byron Dalrymple called the bandtail the Pacific Mountaineer, and I’ve never heard anything better suited.

Currently there is no season on the band-tailed pigeon in British Columbia or Washington. Oregon’s season is just one week, with a two bird limit. California also has a much needed reduced season and limit. It was gradual, but overshooting, and nothing else, slowly reduced the pigeon’s numbers. By the late 1980s it was clearly apparent something was very wrong. The birds were gone from their mountain canyons. Since we forgot the lesson of overshooting the bandtail at the turn of the century, we must now wait as they once again rebuild their flocks. It will take awhile.

Best Birds could realistically dwell on the reduction of many of the bird species we lump into the classification of upland and shore birds. While reading, it is important to understand that some of the things I write about happened in the past—as long as fifty years ago. Simply put, the situation with some of the species is very different today. Most readers will be aware of this fact. I’m going to leave it at that.

It took me 39 years of hunting to shoot all of the United States’ and Canada’s native upland and legal shorebird species. In total there are 32 species on my list. They are:

Quail: bobwhite, scaled, mountain, valley, Mearns, Gambel’s.

Grouse: ruffed, spruce, blue, sharp-tailed, lesser pinnated, greater pinnated, sage, rock ptarmigan, willow ptarmigan, white-tailed ptarmigan.

Pigeons and doves: band-tailed pigeon, mourning dove, white-winged dove, white-tipped dove.

Shore birds: snipe, woodcock.

Rails: Virginia, sora, clapper, king, common gallinule, purple gallinule, coot.

Turkey: wild turkey.

Crane: lesser sandhill crane.

Chachalaca: common chachalaca.

Having listed them, I need to make a clarification or two. I have some loopholes in my statement of having shot them all. Such loopholes have been used by many other hunters (writers most generally) over the years. For example, a few years ago a fellow wrote extensively about hunting all the North American species of grouse in one year. However, he excluded the willow and rock ptarmigan. His reasoning was that these two birds are found circumpolar, thus aren’t natives to North America. Of course, that isn’t correct, as a bird is native to the location it evolved in. The willow and rock ptarmigan are just as native to Alaska and Canada as they are to Asia and Europe.

I am under the impression it would indeed be difficult to get all the upland and legal shore-birds. This I have not done. Nor come close. Thus, I have fallen back on a loophole in stating that I have. You likely noticed that my list is comprised of just native species. I’ve shot the introduced ringnecked pheasant, rock dove, ringed dove, chukar partridge, and grey partridge. And at first glance it might appear easy to bag all the introduced upland birds to be able to expand the list, and state: native & introduced. I need the snow partridge of Nevada, a bird that you have to climb around for like mountain goat hunting at 8-9 thousand feet. I will likely hunt that bird someday. But if you are going to say the United States and Canada, Hawaii comes into the picture. They have released almost everything imaginable there: green pheasant, lace-necked dove, barred dove, Japanese quail, jungle fowl, pea fowl, guinea fowl, Erckel’s francolin, black francolin, gray francolin, and kalij pheasant.

Along those lines, I once stated that I had shot them all in North America. Bob Jarvis, the waterfowl prof down at Oregon State University called my attention to the fact that Mexico is very much a part of North America. And their native species are staggering: red-billed pigeon, longtailed tree quail, bearded tree quail, buffy-crowned tree quail, barred quail, elegant quail, black-throated bobwhite, spotted wood quail, singing quail, white-crowned pigeon, rufous pigeon, scaled pigeon, short-billed pigeon, zenaida dove, Inca dove, ground dove, talpacoti dove, plain-breasted ground dove, blue ground dove, Mondetoura dove, Carribbean dove, gray-headed dove, Cassin dove, quail-dove, ruddy quail-dove, white-faced quaildove, 19 species of parrots and parakeets, a few more types of chachalacas, a turkey, and some more I’ve surely forgotten to list.

So, again, I am careful now to state: All the native upland and legal shore birds in the U.S. and Canada.

While my wife and I did travel in order to specifically hunt some species, many of them came in train as the years passed and I lived in different regions. For the birds we did travel for, we encountered some of our most enjoyable days afield. We were able to learn the habitat, and most importantly, meet hunters and individuals that know and like the various species.

I won’t be able to hunt all the birds on my list a second time. Actually, I wouldn’t want to hunt some of them again. But there are several that we will make an effort to see a few more times. At any rate, I am really pretty happy with how things have worked out. I’ve been lucky.

3

White-tipped, White-winged Dove

It walks and runs with great facility upon the ground, whilst its flight is always low amidst the bushes or underbrush as if to conceal itself, and not long continued, usually alighting upon the ground beneath a massive canopy of underbrush, where it continues to walk or run to elude pursuit. —COLONEL GRAYSON’S NOTES, 1874

The Colonel was correct. On January 3, 1992, I was standing on a wet, brushy trail in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley near McAllen. It had rained during the night, everything was soaked, and the early light of dawn was misty. My wife and I were with Gary Waggerman, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. We were in the middle of a public hunting unit called the Longorria. It was a remarkably thick mesquite thicket. Trails had been hacked through the mesquite. We were there for white-tipped doves, which for many years had been called white-front doves. A few moments before, Gary had rushed around a corner of the trail to motion that he had seen one. I hurried up and he told me quietly that two had been drinking from a rain puddle, but had flown back into the brush. He felt sure there would be more. We just needed to walk very slowly, pop around sharp corners and surprise them out in the open. If that didn’t work, we could try to get into the brush, find a clearing, and still hunt ’em. Neither of us really wanted to do that. The mesquite was very thick, very wet.

But after another half hour of silently skulking along the trails, seeing no doves, realizing that dawn was fleeting—Waggerman told us that whitetips were noticeably active just at dawn—I decided to get into the brush.

I really didn’t have to go that far. About thirty yards in I found a clearing. I stood against a small tree, going into my best turn-to-stone-only-slight-eyeball-movement-turkey-hunting-stance. I was quickly rewarded by the return of activity of the bird life. Among the several species that started flitting around was a white-tipped dove. They are very pretty birds. This one flew to the edge of the clearing, lit on a limb in plain sight, bobbed once or twice, then looked as though it might flutter away. I snapped up the Cogswell &