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Turkey Season – Get Back in the Game
He is big. Sometimes 20 pounds or more. One suspicious move and he’ll duck his head and run. Don’t move a muscle. Not yet. He stops to strut, fanning out his tail feathers and puffing out his chest as if to boast, ‘Look at me girls, ain’t I the pretty one though?’
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Scouting, Wind Sense and Calling Pay off During Archery Elk Season
Walt Ramage and Jon McLagan topped out on the ridge, looking into the valley below. Morning sun pushed back the shadows, poking bright fingers beneath the firs and ponderosa pines that forested the north-facing slope. Across the canyon, on the dry side, sagebrush and junipers cooked in the early morning heat.
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How to Smoke a Wild Turkey
To smoke a wild turkey, start with one muzzleloading shotgun. Add 100 grains of Hodgdon Triple 7, drop in a fiber wad and add 1-1/4 ounces of number 5 lead shot. Then tamp down another fiber wad to keep the load tight and dry. Garnish with a 209 shotgun primer and serve. At the end…
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Archery Elk Tactics from the Experts
It’s game time. You’ve been counting down. The opener is approaching – the day when the months of practice and the scouting pay off. Up in the high country, the grass is curing with the heat and elk antlers are hardening. The bulls have started to rub. In a few days, the biggest elk will…
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Face to Face with Fall Turkeys
Last December, I hunted fall season turkeys with a muzzleloader. After locating several flocks that ranged in size from 4 to 25 birds, we set up an ambush along a fence line. I could take a turkey of either sex, but the first bird to get within 15 yards was a Rio Grande gobbler with…
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Elk and Elbow Room – Oregon’s Best Blackpowder Hunts
Have you ever found yourself complaining about too many hunters in your favorite area? It’s a sentiment that would have resonated with Daniel Boone, who – legend has it – saw the smoke from his neighbor’s fire and decided it was time to head west, in search of more ‘elbow room.’
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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…
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.