Make Your Own Rain

When you think of the mighty Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, several thoughts might come to mind: giant sturgeon, king salmon, wind turbines, and lots of water. What most outdoorsman don’t think about when it comes to the Columbia region is the availability of numerous species of upland birds.

- Keith Hartman

Starting on the banks of the Columbia, hunters can find California valley quail, Hungarian partridge (Huns), chukars and an occasional pheasant. Although the river’s edge provides habitat for these birds, once you crest the top of the rocky bluffs above the river, many miles of native grassland and sagebrush appear. Mixed in with the grass and sage are large blocks of dry-farmed grain, irrigated pasture and flowing sidehills of volcanic rock.

Upland birds tend to do best in the sage and grass next to the grain fields – areas called the “edge effect” in some wildlife management circles. The edge effect is an area where game has cover for safety and reproduction and nearby feed. Ideally, if the cover is directly adjacent to the feed, this affords game birds a better chance to survive since they don’t have to travel far to feed. The greater the distance game birds travel to locate food, the more exposed they are to predators.

The best situation for a thriving game bird population is an area that enjoys an edge effect that has access to nearby water. This is a problem in the Columbia region. Once you climb up over the banks of the mighty river, there’s little or no access to consistent water for wildlife. Ranches there may cover thousands of acres but have little or no natural surface water like springs, seeps, even seasonal creeks. Some areas directly south of the Columbia receive only about 10 inches of rainfall and several skiffs of snow annually. The soil is sandy, so it doesn’t hold water for any length of time. The further south you go, annual rainfall amounts drop to 4 to 6 inches annually.