Archery season opens with restrictions.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The general archery season for deer and elk opens Saturday in Oregon and, as usual, bowhunters will find themselves trying to cope with the effects of hot weather and dry forest conditions.

While state and federal public lands generally remain open with use restrictions in effect, many private timberlands have been closed to public access since early August.

For example, all Weyerhaeuser Co. timberlands from Springfield south are closed "due to extremely hot weather and dry forest conditions," according to an announcement on the company's "hunter hotline" (888-741-5403). The Roseboro, Seneca and Starker companies are among the other timberland owners that have closed their forests to all public access.

As conditions change, the best source of updated statewide public access information is the Oregon Department of Forestry's fire information page on the Internet (http://egov.oregon.gov/ODF/FIRE/fire.shtml). It includes a link to a list of private landowners with access status.

Even in areas where access is allowed, bowhunters will have to deal with dry forest conditions that make it difficult to avoid spooking game.

As for the prospects of finding deer and elk, buck and bull ratios are "similar to what we've been seeing in the past couple years," said Christopher Yee, assistant district wildlife biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Springfield field office.

That is to say, elk populations are healthy and blacktail deer numbers are well below peak levels of the late 1900s, at least in hunt management units surrounding the southern Willamette Valley.

"Blacktail are still declining a little" due to a reduction of habitat as well as "the disease factor," Yee said.

Meanwhile, winter helicopter surveys of area elk herds found 15 bulls per 100 cows in the Indigo Unit, Yee said. "The McKenzie Unit came out with 16 and South Santiam had 30," he said. "There were a lot of spikes in the South Santiam surveys this winter."

Tags, priced at $19.50 for deer and $34.50 for elk, may be purchased from ODFW online license agents through the close of business Friday.

General season bowhunters will have 30 days to fill their tags anywhere in the state - except in national parks, on Native American reservations or in two small portions of Eastern Oregon that are for "limited entry" bowhunting.

After Sept. 25, unfilled deer tags will also be good for late-season blacktail archery hunting in 12 Western Oregon hunt management units that reopen for a few weeks in November-December.

Last year, 43,609 general season deer and elk tags were issued in Oregon.