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Set Your Sights on September’s Early Goose Season
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…
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Gateway to Good Deer Hunting
Road Closures are Key to Success for Oregon Hunters. It was opening morning. The sun was pushing back the shadows. It had been a long climb in the hour before dawn, but I was here now. I told myself to slow down, to be patient, to not settle for anything less than a mature buck:…
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On the Trail of Tag-Team Lions
When two inches of November snow fell on the high desert, Rich Brogdon of Action Outfitters (541-536-5893) in La Pine called his client Mark Broadman from Port Orchard, Washington. Mark made the seven-hour drive to central Oregon that evening. In the morning, the hunters headed into the sagebrush and junipers of the Paulina Unit. They…
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Hunters can try Snipe for a Change of Pace, a Different Taste
I slogged down through the boot-sucking muck in the creek bottom and up into the mud flats on the other side. I’d seen a cock pheasant fly this way and wanted to get another crack at him. I tromped around through the tall grass on the slope and pushed to the end of some low…
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For Spring Bear – Follow the Feed
Sometime in March or April, when the sun pushes back the clouds, when the grasses green and the buttercups bloom, Oregon’s black bears emerge from their long winter sleep. Hungry bruins head straight for the river valleys early in the spring, taking advantage of succulent forage below the snowline. Grasses, grubs, flowers, and the tender…
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Gettin’ Goosy in Oregon’s Late Waterfowl Seasons
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…
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Football Season’s Biggest Game
Every year, thousands of parents and their offspring are forced to make a decision between two great passions of autumn: football and hunting. This year, 12 year-old Jacob Lum, a wide receiver on his middle school football team, had to decide what was most important to him. Fortunately, his football coaches understood.
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Four-for-Four on Blackpowder Birds
The dogs bumped the first pheasant near the fence before we had our guns loaded. Jeremy called the pointers back and we watched the rooster set his wings and scribe a half-circle in the sky to land in the tall grass near the barn.
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Cow Country Coyotes
Cow country coyotes are some of the best-schooled predators on four legs. Every day they observe the two-leggers walk the fields and ride out to the cattle. They learn to lie up in the sage or watch from the rimrocks, waiting until all is quiet before returning to the flats to hunt mice, ground squirrels…
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Black Bear in the Breaks of the Snake
One of the best times of year to hunt bear is in the late summer. And one of the best places to find them is in Northeast Oregon’s Snake River, Imnaha and Chesnimnus Units. When berries ripen in Northeast Oregon, hunters have a chance to see high concentrations of black bear as they move down…
Field Guide
Oregon Hunting
Hunting in Oregon is a more diverse experience than anywhere else in the country. One of the great things about Oregon hunting is the incredible variety of species available for the taking; a hunter can choose to pursue mule deer, blacktail deer, Columbian whitetail, northeast whitetail, Rocky Mountain and Roosevelt elk as well as goats, sheep and predators. The abundance of diverse habitat allows for everything from sage rats to black bear hunting in Oregon!
I’ve been fishing and hunting in Oregon since I was a teenager and I’ve gotten to know the country, habitat and hotspots. The result was an Oregon hunting guide—my book, Hunting Oregon.
The first Hunting Oregon was brought to you by Sun Publishing in 1999. As every Oregon hunter knows, animal habits and habitat change. That’s why we published the second edition—Gary Lewis’s Hunting Oregon. This update, finished in 2010, is completely new, with chapters written by Scott Haugen and Duane Dungannon. In full color, this Oregon hunting guide is what every hunter needs to have before they head out into the field.
There are other ways to prepare for your time in the Oregon outdoors, and I’ve listed a few helpful resources below, to go along with Hunting Oregon.