SmallCaliberCentral

My wife just got a job offer in Klamath falls, OR and its good enough that we are thinking of relocating for it. Can any of you guys tell me alittle about the state or even the town. I would like to know about the hunting and fishing of the state. I have been looking on the net but its always better to hear it from a really person the just reading about it. Any help would be great thanks guys

I hunted Oregon for about 20 years. Elk, deer, chukar, pheasants in various areas. Also fished numerous lakes in and around the Bend area, alongwith the Klamath lakes, where you are thinking of going. The only reason i stopped is my regular hunt/fish partner died and now being 73 it is hard to find anyone to go with, that fits in, if you know what I mean..
Rick in Oregon, is a regular and will mostly likely give you some good heads up on his state. I think you would enjoy it, myself. By the way I am located in the N.E. area of Calif. Bill K

If you are a waterfowl hunter, then you will be in Nirvana. Pretty much all kinds of western game is within easy reach from squirrels to elk. You're not far from salmon/steelhead fishing as well. No sales tax. You will probably like it.

thanks guys. i have been looking all over the net seems like a great place just have to see what they offer her.

serpent71 wrote:My wife just got a job offer in Klamath falls, OR and its good enough that we are thinking of relocating for it. Can any of you guys tell me alittle about the state or even the town. I would like to know about the hunting and fishing of the state. I have been looking on the net but its always better to hear it from a really person the just reading about it. Any help would be great thanks guys

Hunting, fishing and the outdooes in general are pretty darn good. The down side to Oregon (like many western states) is it's run from the larger cities & counties. The west side of the Cascade's are heavier populated compared to the east side. The income tax bracket is a tad high depending on your bracket but there is no sales tax.

All-in-all...not a bad place to hang your hat, IMO.

HTH

One thing to think about is that K Falls is ecnomically depressed right now so even though your wife has a job you may find it hard going depending on your trade. Otherwise it's a nice place to live with plenty of opportunities for outdoor fun. Also, Jim is correct about the clowns in Portland running the politics of the whole state. Gary

We just need to divide Oregon and Washington right down the ridgeline of the Cascade Range. But then, it would put you on the "wrong" side of the fence! I would imagine, however, that housing prices are somewhat soft in K.falls at present.

she goes may 1 st to look around and hear what they have to offer so will see what happens

I spent a year in K-Falls in the mid-90s. I hate to break the news to you but the falls are gone. They got submerged by the dam on the Klamath river.

Nonetheless, I loved it there and my leaving was completely unrelated to the town itself. I grew up in a town about the same size (~20,000) so the small-ness of it wasn't a drawback to me. The crime rate then was near zero, in no small part because there aren't any big cities close by, so there's no spill-over or bedroom community crime.

It's just slightly on the eastern slope of the Cascades, about a mile in elevation. The elevation keeps it cool in the summers but winters aren't severe either. Most of the rain falls on the western slope of the Cadscades before it gets over the mountains and to K-Falls so rain is fairly rare there, but it's still VERY green because of runoff from the snowcaps. You can go weeks in summer without seeing a cloud.

I'd just started MTBing when I moved there and the MTBing was so great, it hooked me. I sold my motocrosser before leaving there because I'd come to prefer riding the pedal dirt bike to the motorized one. I also spent a lot of time hunting, fishing, camping and snow skiing. We had a big snow one night so a bunch of us decided to go to Willamette Pass skiing the next morning. But the slopes turned out to be closed because they'd had 14' of fresh snow overnight, and they had to run a a groomer over it before it would be safe to ski.

I noticed a lot of "native" K-Fallers mounting studded tires on all four corners of their cars and trucks on the first of October. Not a cloud in sight but they put studded tires on their cars. That, to me, was a clue. When the snows come, the state police set up roadblocks around the high mountain passes and won't let you past unless you have tire chains, studded tires, or 4WD.

The winter I spent there, we didn't get any significant snow until the week of Christmas. It snowed moderately ...for two weeks. It was three feet deep in my yard when it stopped. And city ordnance requires you shovel your sidewalk every day it snows.

They run snow plows early and often so even with 3' of snow on the ground, they never skipped a day of school. The 'salt' trucks don't use salt, they use some kind of mineral grit, like pumice. It turns the snow a horrible gray color.

Even with all that snow, the ground never froze. I know because I'm a mountain biker and that volcanic soil makes the nastiest, stickiest mud I've ever seen. It'll swallow a bicycle whole, rider and all. Completely unrideable. I kept hoping the ground would freeze so I could go back to MTBing before spring, but there was no such luck.

I was driving past the river one evening and noticed the smoke from dozens of what appeared to be campfires in this one field. Only it wasn't columns of smoke, it was a cloud of midges.

When I was a kid, my father had this one fishing buddy who hand-tied his own fly fishing flies, and most of them were midges. I finally understood why. You can't imagine how dense these swarms were, and spiraling so tightly, they looked like a column of smoke, rising up over a campfire. So you soon learn, if it's warm, DO NOT drive near the river or the lake around sunup or sundown or your car will get coated in this sticky mass of squashed bugs. That time of year, all the gas stations leave buckets of windshield washing fluid with a squeegee in it sitting out away from the fuel pump islands out of consideration for the motorists who don't need gas but can't see where they're going for the bugs smeared on their windshield. But when the midges are out, the fish probably are hitting topwater.

I drove to one of the town's two bicycle shops one day (the one downtown), parked my car at the curb (there was no parking meter), left my car keys in the ignition, and walked past about 20 bicycles on display on the sidewalk in front of the store (and not chained down), thinking to myself, "Why in the heck would anyone want to live in a big city?"

In the summer, the town's two bike shops jointly hosted two weekly MTB-riding parties that started out from the town park, which has several trailheads. One night was for the fast boys and other was family night. The family night ride would have as many as 50 riders, men women and children. In a town of 20,000.

All in all, if you're a sportsman or outdoorsman, I can't see how you wouldn't love it there.

That said, I have heard the state's politics have taken a hard turn to the left since I lived there, so who knows?

The farms encircling the town employ A LOT of Mexican field hands, so the groceries there stock an amazing selection of ...wait for it ...peppers. Great selection of apples, too. I really enjoyed the produce there, too (and I'm an unrepentant carnivore).

thanks for the info