It felt vaguely like hunting or fishing or birding, one of those pursuits where the outcome is far from guaranteed, where doing the thing is just about as satisfying as ultimate success.

It reminded me of a drawing, hanging in my home office, of a bent fly rod and the caption, ”Fishing is a continual series of occasions for hope.”

So is hunting up sugar pine cones.

My quest took me up the side of Pringle Butte (west of La Pine off Burgess Road), a place where sugar pines were said to grow among the ponderosa and lodgepole.

Armed with only a sketchy description of the sugar pine tree, a grocery sack and visions of cones the size of bowling balls, I headed up the butte on one of the many forest roads in the vicinity. I ended up driving to the top of the butte, snapping off some photos and admiring the view. It wasn’t until I was on my way back down the hill that I spied some outsized pine cones back in off the road among the ubiquitous smaller ponderosa cones. Sure enough, there really were a few sugar pines there among the dominant species.

The cones were large, but there wasn’t a bowling ball in the bunch. Still, I collected a dozen or so for a Christmas craft project my wife has in mind. They make nice wreaths, I’m told, and look good in a hearth-side basket.

According to Paul Brna, a tree expert for the Bend-Fort Rock District of the Deschutes National Forest, Central Oregon is close to the northernmost border of the sugar pine’s range.

”They’re a little more common as you go south,” he said.

Even so, there are some likely spots where you can see the big trees and gather some cones off the ground. Brna suggested Sugar Pine Ridge near Mount Jefferson and east of La Pine off Forest Road 22 on Indian Butte.

Lloyd Werner, a silviculturist (forest cultivation specialist) with the Crescent District of the Deschutes National Forest, weighed in with a couple of likely sugar pine spots of his own. There are some ”big old trees” on the lower slopes of Hamner Butte, on the north slope of Muttonchop Butte and on nearby Chinquapin Butte.

He said the cones don’t normally fall to the ground until spring; the specimens I collected were likely last season’s batch.

The sugar pine’s needles come in clusters of five, in contrast to the ponderosa pine, which is a ”three needle pine,” Werner explained.

Brna said the trees grow best in partially sunny sites near the tops of ridges.

A member of the white pine group, the sugar pine or Pinus lambertiana, are best known for being the tallest of the American pines, according to Jim Conrad’s Naturalist Newsletter found at www.backyardnature.net.

They can grow up to 22 feet in height and produce cones as long as 26 inches. They differ from the oh-so-common ponderosa pines in that the large trees have branches that tend to grow straight out from the trunk and sport distinctive crowns.

Sugar pines are so named because of the pitch that oozes out of the bark in the heat or under the ax and solidifies into white nodules.

”If you’re hard up for chewing gum, this can be chewed, and it is actually slightly sweet,” Conrad wrote.

Don’t try this at home.

The cut wood exudes a mildly sweet fragrance and it’s a ”really good, soft wood for wood carving,” Brna noted.

People are welcome to sugar pine cones for noncommercial use, as long as they pick up a free permit at any National Forest ranger station, Brna added.

Identifying sugar pines and hunting for their cones can make for a fun family afternoon. But if you’re bent on finding a bowling ball, I’d recommend Lava Lanes.

If You Go

Getting there: From Bend, drive south on Highway 97 to La Pine. Turn right (west) on Burgess Road (Forest Road 43). Pringle Butte is on the left, just past the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest.

Contact: Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District, Deschutes National Forest, 383-4000.