Ducks and Geese

Situated close to the Willamette, located just out of Brownsville, Rogers’ refuge feeds a lot of birds.

Guided duck hunt on the Crooked River with Predawn Adventures.

This hunt on the last day of duck season was testament to Mitchell’s first year dream of a sanctuary for wildlife along the Crooked River. Here, where the river carves a twisted course through ranch land, we staged Duck Creek Outfitters’ first annual father/son hunt.

When I opened the door it hit me, not the scent of the dairy, in the marsh east of Klamath Falls, but the decay, the yellowed orchard grass and the mud. Darren Roe opened the trailer and we shrugged into huge packs of decoys and deposited them on the ground fifty yards away. There was…

A whispered prayer to bring geese out of the west? It seemed presumptuous somehow, but not entirely out of place on a hunt two days before Christmas. That day the mercury registered minus-1 degrees Fahrenheit and there was 18 inches of snow on the ground in Sisters, Oregon. First I stuck my Toyota in Sykes’s…

Through a loosely woven burlap blanket I watched the eastern sky pale. I lay in the middle of a group of Canada Goose decoys in a cut-over barley field, the barrel of my double barreled shotgun just protruding from the corner of the straw-covered blanket. My friend, Darren, lay in the middle of another flock…

From the outlet of Little Lava Lake, 4,739 feet above sea level, the Deschutes River gets its start. Over the next 252 miles, the river drops 4,579 feet to meet the mighty Columbia. In its upper reaches, it’s a placid stream that winds its way through the pines, gathering its power from the Little Deschutes,…

When leaves turn to gold and skeins of waterfowl are on the wing, it’s time to take your shotgun and camouflage out of the closet. Waterfowl season is here and there’s no better place to slow down and focus on the hunt than on a river. If you don’t have a dog or the patience…

It’s that time of year again. You can smell a difference in the early morning air. It means school and football are starting soon and coho are moving up the Columbia. It also means September’s early goose season is upon us. The September Canada Goose Hunt is designed to reduce the number of resident western…

All was quiet in the last moments of the night. Soon day would push back the dark. Was it my imagination or were the geese moving out on the lake? We lay in the middle of a group of Canada goose decoys in a cut-over barley field, watching the eastern sky pale through loosely-woven burlap…