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Welcome To Bachman Bay Outfitters

         Hello! Thank you for checking out the guiding part of our website. My name is Dominic Bachman, Jill and I are the owners of Bachman Bay Outfitters. We love bird dogs, bird biology and bird hunting and always have a bearded dog or three nearby. 

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Dominic is a lifelong bird hunter. â€‹Dominic has been unofficially guiding friends and family on bird hunting trips since he was 18 years old. He has worked at several high end guiding outfits including Orvis endorsed lodges. He prefers to have a more intimate experience with clients one on one and â€‹Dominic hires several guides every year to help him with clients. 

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Dominic is a professional wildlife biologist with a masters in natural resources who has worked in remote parts of Alaska, Washington, Utah, California, Idaho and Oregon.  Dominic first worked in eastern Oregon in the year 2000 and has traveled extensively and hunted in every county in eastern Oregon.  

 

Dominic ensures the team of guides are very informed on natural history, land use, wildlife biology, habitat, natural resource law, hunting rules. We do a lot more than hunting we teach about the natural history of birds, the area and its history.

 

Dominic Bachman has been a guide working for other outfitters and himself for over 15 years. Dominic is a professional wildlife biologist, gundog trainer, gundog breeder and senior judge for the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. Dominic has hunted every species of north American game bird. Dominic has extensive experience driving offroad and four-wheel drive trails. Dominic has taken wilderness first responder courses many times.  Jill Bachman is a registered nurse with extensive medical training and she attends the majority of our guided hunts and training trips. Each of our guides has at least one year of guiding experience and at least one decade of wild bird hunting experience.

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​​Please read on if you would like to know a little bit more about us. ​​​​​​​​​​

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Dominic was lucky enough to grow up hunting the diverse marshes and uplands of the great salt lake ecosystem. I was raised on a state wildlife management area called Ogden Bay where my dad was the manager for nearly 40 years. At Ogden Bay we used wirehairs for hunting ducks, geese, swans, pheasants, snipe and quail. We frequently went into the west desert to chase huns and chukars and ventured up to southern Idaho for day trips. For about 20 years at different points in our lives both Dad and I were absolutely obsessed with waterfowl hunting. We collectively owned thousands and thousands of decoys as well as every style of duck boat, coffin, layout boat, layout blind, scull boat imaginable. Later in our lives both of us became deeply involved in chasing upland game birds.

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Growing up we had basecamps in eastern Montana and southern Idaho and Northern Arizona. We lived the glorious life of a western bird hunter migrating with the seasons north to south. Starting in northern Montana on September 1st and ending in February in Arizona. 

                I will never forget what growing up with the short two week pheasant hunting season in Utah was like on Ogden bay in the 80's and 90's.  Most years my father and I hunted every single day of the season. Dad often considered how good of a season it was by how many days he didn’t get his limit and that was very few days! We frequently were hunting a field that had been hunted three times already that day. We needed  to use a lot of strategies and smart dogs to come up with heavily pressured Ogden bay roosters.  Dad always said you needed a wirehair that could track a ghost to kill a rooster near the headquarters of Ogden bay…and we killed quite a few. The great thing about Ogden bay in those days was the diversity in hunting opportunities from pass shooting Goldeneyes and Scaup on unit three to layout boat hunting for wigeon and swans on Unit 1 from an ice hole. The Phragmites was just starting to expand and the roosters loved being way out in the thickest part of the Higley’s Jungle unit. We frequently hunted snipe on the open salt grass flats. Snipe hunting over a good wirehair that can pin them is an incredibly fun and sporting thing to do. A good snipe hunt over a pointing dog has always put a smile on my face. For many years we had good populations of California quail on the wildlife area that we enjoyed hunting. Times have changed at Ogden bay and the city has moved right up to the border of the wildlife area and wild upland bird populations aren’t a fraction of what they used to be. I always have longed for new places and new adventures and I moved over the west doing seasonal wildlife jobs and hunting new states. I eventually ended up in California and for many years I was working as a biologist in Humboldt country California  while finishing my graduate research on the Aleutian Cackling goose.  I hunted a lot of waterfowl including brant, seaducks, mountain quail and snipe in those years. My next move took me to the North eastern California as a federal biologist, where I cut my teeth hunting waterfowl, forest grouse, sage grouse, chukars and quail. During the sixteen years I was in California I used wirehairs for chasing wild pigs, tracking deer and hunting just about every bird species imaginable. There are a lot of people who like to hate on California, however one thing they do have going for them is as a hunter you can harvest several pigs and two deer before the bird season even started. I loved focusing on bird hunting but getting to eat some tasty big game. In 2016 I moved to Washington to work as the statewide wildlife biologist.  We loved Washington’s diversity hunting all types of birds in the Columbia basin, channeled scablands and Palouse prairie birds. My work and hunting trips took us all across the state hunting upland birds as well as studying sage grouse and sharptailed grouse. 

 

Bachman Bay Outfitters now has its headquarters in Southeastern Oregon near the town of Burns. We love being so close to so many of our favorite remote hunting spots and it is a great fit for our dogs and lifestyle. I will be spending the next many years working as a federal biologist on restoration of the Malheur lake and the Harney basin wetlands. We love all the chukar, quail and pheasant hunting near our home as well as some fantastic duck and goose hunting during wet years. We still travel all across the west to hunt birds but we have some great hunting so close to home! Jill and I bought a small farm in Princeton, Oregon and  we are currently enhancing bird habitat on our property and leasing other properties. We are working on our guest cabin and RV hookups will be ready for 25-26 season. 

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Dominic guiding a youth waterfowl hunt o
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