Deer

When she sees a deer or a picture of one, our nearly two year-old daughter will exclaim, “Ah, bucka. See bucka!” We’ll tell her, “Right. Deer,” or, “Buck deer.” “Yah. Gear,” she says. I think she has a point. Every huntger needs to consider the gear they will take into the field on opening day.…

A dull glow filled the somber sky and filtered down through the tops of the big pine trees. I began to move. A driving rain had been falling since 4:00 a.m. and the treetops were saturated, leaving precious few places where a hunter could find dry shelter.

Don’t go scouting for mule deer this year if scouting, to you, means walking all the trails, and sky-lining yourself on every hilltop to watch for deer. Better to stay home and mow the lawn, wash the car, or take the kids to the lake. Because when you go scouting, you’re more likely to educate…

On a high plateau bordered by rimrock, Steve Jones checked the cap on his blackpowder rifle. He looked out across the sagebrush below him to where he could see a four-point buck browsing in the open plain. His hunt took place in the new millenium but it could have been a scene from 150 years…

This fall, a few of Oregon’s muzzleloader hunters will grab their long-barreled rifles and sling their ‘possibles’ bags in pursuit of Columbia whitetails in the North Bank Habitat Area.

After dark, I stood outside of camp and gazed across the valley at the lights of Ashland. Opening day in Jackson County had been tough. This was public land and pressure was high. By now, the deer would have moved into heavy cover. The woods were so dry that still-hunting was difficult. If I wanted…

I worked my way out of the valley timber and eased through a stand of trees on a long finger ridge. The rim above, where winter snows melted in late spring, extended long timbered fingers down to the valley. Deep canyons and meadows between the ridges grew knee-high grass in the summer where snow and…

If I could pick one word to describe Western Oregon in November, that word would be ‘wet’. And wet is a good thing. The more rain and snow the better, at least if you’re holding a controlled muzzleloader tag for a November blacktail hunt.

It was 1993. Still three years before someone built a mountain bike trail through the big meadow and forced the deer and elk to find someplace else. I pushed the door shut, wincing at the click of the latch as it locked. We eased down the hill from the road in the dark just before…

In the mid-1800s, there was almost as much travel to the East as there was to the West. In forts, in saloons and around campfires, there was a lot of conjecture about what the pilgrim should carry between here and there. One of the authorities on the subject was Captain Randolph Barnes Marcy. In his…