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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…
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Black Bear on the Pacific Coast – Oregon
Oregon’s bear population numbers between 25,000 and 35,000 animals, spread over approximately 40,000 square miles of habitat. In 1994, voters banned the use of hounds or hunting with bait. Hunter success plummeted in the years after the ban, but as bear numbers increased and more hunters adapted to spot-and-stalk and calling tactics, hunter success has…
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Feral Round-Up in Central Oregon
Thirty-two feral sheep worked away into the junipers. A black ram with a full curl of horn stepped out from behind a tree. Instead of coming up our canyon, the sheep fed through the sage and bitterbrush and over the next ridge. “That black one is a good one,” Todd whispered. “There’s a buckskin-colored one…
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Oregon Fall Turkey Hunt
Southwest Oregon has more turkeys than any other corner of the state. So many, that Oregon has instituted a fall season to keep populations in check. Lots of edge habitat with mixed oaks, madrones and bottom lands along creeks and rivers keep these turkeys (Rio Grande transplants) happy.
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Hunt Trophy-Class Columbia Blacktails
If there’s one animal on the West Coast that frustrates hunters more than any other, it is the Columbian blacktail deer. A big blacktail buck may be one of North America’s toughest antlered trophies. Here’s a late-season rut hunt in one of Oregon’s top blacktail units that offers an opportunity to look at a lot…
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Southwest Oregon’s Quail of the Mountain
Mountain quail sightings are short affairs punctuated by whirrs of wings and palpitations of the heart, but a hunter is more likely to hear mountain quail before he sees them. An alarm call cle-cle-cle is the sound a hunter is most likely to hear. After the covey is disturbed, mountain quail regroup with a series…
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Though no Substitute For Hunting Skills, the Right Gear can Help you Bag your 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.…
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Second Half can Provide Action for Turkey Hunter
A few of the state’s gobblers have been gobbled. A few more have been to school and educated to the ways of the hunter. In the spring, a hunter can mimic the calls of a hen turkey to draw a lovesick tom within shotgun or bow range. If a gobbler is surrounded by hens, he…
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Elk Hunts in Lewis and Clark Country
They consumed meat, cornmeal, berries, nuts, roots and whatever else they could find. Along the Missouri, they hunted game. On the Columbia, they swapped for salmon. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, in his book Undaunted Courage, each soldier in the Lewis and Clark expedition ate up to nine pounds of meat per day. 33 people…
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Green Grass and Gobblers mean Springtime Sport for Turkey Hunters
Pointing the truck west we raced dawn’s blush toward the Umpqua River valley. It would be the first turkey hunt for my friend Dana and myself. With no experience hunting these birds we needed all the help we could get. I bought a call that I could operate without enrolling in a turkey as a…
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.