42 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
GAME CONDITIONS IN MORROW COUNTY 
By J. W. Puyegar, Ione, Oregon 
Being a subscriber to the ‘‘Oregon Sportsman,’’ and president of 
the Ione Fish and Game Protective Association, I feel it my duty to 
let our brother sportsmen know the true conditions of the game in this 
locality. 
We organized our little club with 64 members, which is made up 
of the best business men and farmers that one would want to meet with. 
They are all very much enthused over our club and stand pat to enforce 
the game laws of Oregon. 
For the past two years the Chinese pheasants have been on the 
increase, while before that time, if a bird showed his head on the 
public highway or on the right-of-way, it was his last chance. Tourists 
and traveling salesmen, also Greek section hands, were a great destroyer 
of them, far more so than the badger, mink or coyote. I have five 
secretmen as game wardens working for me and can thankfully say 
there has not been one complaint come to me in the last year. 
It seems that this is an ideal place for the pheasants to thrive. 
Last winter the snow was 26 inches deep. I was ont in this snow, 
feeding a few covies that I thought would perish for the want of food, 
but I never found a dead bird during the cold spell, which lasted about 
six weeks; neither did the farmers during their spring work, for I made 
special inquiries from several of them. We have a weed here that is 
called ‘‘flood’’ weed. It grows on an average of three and one-half 
feet high and does not shed its foliage during the winter, but branches 
out and grows very thick. This makes a well covered house for all wild 
fowls. There are thousands of seeds on these weeds, which is no trouble 
for them to get and which keep them in excellent, thriving condition. 
JT think with the present conditions the hills, as well as the Willow 
Creek Valley, will soon be as well stocked as any place in Oregon. 
The Club of Ione would like a start of Eastern quail and silver 
pheasants. 
The trout streams are well stocked, and I know of no place where 
trout fry will grow faster than in Willow and Rhea Creeks, especially 
in Rhea Creek. I have angled in both streams and find Rhea Creek far 
superior to Willow Creek. Within ten miles of Ione on Rhea Creek it 
is nothing unusual for any angler to land a fifteen-inch trout. 
In the spring the small fry, that is trout from six inches to nine 
inches, come down these streams in great schools, and the irrigation 
ditches that are open destroy thousands of them from which no one 
“receives any benefit. So let us hope that every man that has a ditch 
“on his land will see that the great waste of trout is stopped by sereening 
his headgate. That is our only trouble—trying to confine them to the 
ereek bed. It is a law, so why not abide by it? 
The chinook salmon a few years back would frequent these streams 
in large numbers, also the salmon trout, which were gamey and hard to 
take, but they have ceased to come on account of the high irrigation 
dams and no fish ladders. 
We have an abundance of deer in Morrow County. The mule and 
flag tail deer. Grouse and native pheasants are to be found by the 
hundreds in the foothills. Goose shooting will soon be a past art to 
the true sportsman. If a band of geese light in a wheat field to feed, 
they are in poor luck. No sooner do they get settled than some dis- 
gusted would-be-sportsman runs into them with his car and follows them 
