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The Early Bird Gets the Cat
Before there is new life, there must be death. In February, the deer and elk cast off their old crowns. Even as yesterday’s antlers fall away, new growth begins at the pedicle. It was a Sunday afternoon and the weather forecast called for wind on the high desert. Brian Davis of Redmond calculated he had…
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The Good Old Days in Blacktail Country
“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will…
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Desert Country Deer for a Hunter with a Hawken
The 2012 Oregon Big Game Regulations are on the stands at sporting goods stores all over the state. There are some new hunts, but what fires my imagination are the controlled 100 series muzzleloader seasons that recall the days of early Oregon. We read about the western migration and picture the wagon trains headed toward…
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Spring Bear
If you sit in one place long enough, your chances of seeing bear increase. Seldom do you get a look at Ursus Americanus when you are on the move. The predator is so in tune with its surroundings that it is alerted to any sound and scent that seems out of place. No one knew…
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Turkey Hunting East and West – By the Numbers
According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, turkey hunters tagged 4,132 toms in the 2011 spring season. And the top producer was the Melrose Unit with 563 birds and an average 2.7 days of hunter effort, .51 birds per hunter and .19 birds per hunter day. With a harvest of 381, the White River…
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Binos, Birds and Ballet in the Klamath Marsh
“The steady, rapid, springing step, the long hair, the aquiline features and the glowing, angry eyes – the expression of a handsome man conscious of ceasing to be young and an air and manner that told you that whoever you might be he was John Audubon, will never be forgotten by anyone who knew or…
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Into the Wilderness for a Backcountry Bull
Fifty-some years ago the USMC turned Russ Barkman into a lean, mean fighting machine. Now, not as lean, not as mean, but still a Marine, 71-year-old Barkman wanted to hunt elk in the wilderness. His neighbor and friend, Karl Findling, would help. Growing up in Michigan, Barkman didn’t hunt elk until he moved to Oregon…
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Specks and Snows in the Klamath Marsh
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…
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Zorro and Poncho in the High Not-so-Lonesome
It was the only tree on a windswept plain. I ducked my head under a branch. James Flaherty, watching my heels, weighed down with most of a mule deer on his back, didn’t. The 300-year-old tree extended a rapier-pointed limb and carved a zigzag scratch on the lucky hunter’s forehead. Henceforth, we called him Zorro.…
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Dry Side Calling – Not for the Faint of Heart
Tod Lum thumbed cartridges into the magazine and closed the bolt. We left the truck parked on the road and climbed uphill on a bare slope. Twenty minutes later we worked onto the shoulder of a finger ridge and looked down into a canyon choked with hawthorn bushes. We set the caller below us on…
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.