When our daughter invited us for dinner on a Thursday night, we already had the birds in a balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, soy sauce and pepper marinade. At her place, we added pheasant to the fondue feast.

Into a saucepan went the mole (pronounced “mole-ay”) poblano to simmer. A mole sauce is ground from chili pods, tomato, raisins, apricot, cocoa beans, anise, cinnamon and other good things.

When the pheasant came out on the skewer, we spooned the mole on then sprinkled it with toasted sesame seeds. Only the day before, the bird had risen out of the grain in a shower of seedpods.

Larry Lee, of Bar-Lee Setters, had a few dogs that needed field time. He invited me, Chris Yaeger and Steve Ries out to Gateway Canyon Preserve north of Madras for an afternoon.

The hunting areas take in 1,268 acres of croplands and boulders and rimrock where the canyons gather water that feeds Trout Creek and the Deschutes. With crops in production, fencerows, shelter belts, native grasses and plenty of water, the preserve provides year-round feed and cover for wild birds and the pen-raised pheasants and chukar that manage to outwit the pointers and flushers.

Lee and Yaeger let the dogs out of the boxes. Steve Ries thumbed 12-gauge loads into the magazine and racked one into the chamber. I plunked yellow 20-gauge rounds into the twin steel barrels of my side-by-side.

Wind howled over the top of the ridge and brought the rain. We faced into the gale and the dogs, Jake and Ashley, cut back and forth in the uncut grain.

The two-year-old Jake, a black-and-white English setter, locked up on a rooster that skulked in the grass and Ashley pulled up short behind him. With a cackle, the pheasant launched, faltered above the dog then towered in the wind. The rooster folded at the shot and Jake made the retrieve.

We put Ries on the downwind side and the next time Jake locked up on a bird, he dropped it. The squall blew through. Shifting shafts of sunshine lit the cattails before us. Jake and Ashley bashed into the reeds to find and hold the bird they knew was there.

Over my shoulder I caught a glimpse of a pheasant that made good his escape across the railroad track. Shortly after that, two more roosters left another half-acre patch of cattails to follow the first.

We crossed the tracks in a footrace with four roosters. I guessed one would run away from Ries and try to escape downhill. I guessed wrong.

Steve saw one clear the top of the sage and shot it. He heard another blast away unseen and saw two more hotfoot it into a rosebush, where they must have charged out the other side. In any case, the dogs looked at the thorns and said, “no thank you.”

Preserve hunting for pheasants

In Oregon, preserve hunting takes the place of past state-managed bird planting operations. Today, instead of hunting state-funded pheasants on state lands, many pheasant hunts take place on licensed hunting preserves like those offered by Gateway, Ruggs Ranch, TREO outside of Heppner, Olex Preserve south of Arlington, Sage Canyon east of Maupin and Horseshoe Curve near Pendleton. The system allows for expanded opportunity and the ability to pursue gamebirds through the end of March, far beyond the end of the public-land season.

Into the rough

With seven birds in the bag, Larry put Jake and Ashley away and let Stu and Eli out of the box. I took advantage of the moment to put my gun and vest down.

Eli, the white-and-red setter, must have heard about the long shot I missed because he paused over my pretty side-by-side and lifted his leg, irrigating the fine Turkish walnut. I wiped it down, but when the next bird rose, I missed with both barrels and you can bet I used the excuse I was holding my cheek off the wood.

Past a couple of reservoirs, the dogs led us along a narrow trail through the junipers, up into a box canyon with boulders the size of wickiups.

Otherworldly in the diminished light, the grasses glowed golden and sage shimmered silver. Caves, like hooded eyes in the lava, glowered down from the rimrock. Water trickled out of lichen-encrusted stone to gather in a pool bordered by willow and bitterbrush, then burbled down to a cattail marsh.

The dogs found the last one when we thought we were finished. Two hours before, there had been another rooster here, a bird I already carried in my vest. Larry looked over his shoulder and saw Eli locked up, Stu behind him.

Scattering seed with his wings, the rooster blasted straight away.