Column by Joe Hansen, Outdoors Editor

By 5 p.m. the woods of the Windsor Park disc golf course were filled with the “thwack” of Frisbees hitting trees and cries of frustration.

The forest of the North Bend park crawled with all manner of men and a few dazed-looking women. Most were drinking beer, looking for lost discs, or both. Some guys stood in a field, squinting at a disc 40 feet up in a tree, hurling sticks and rocks to try and dislodge it.

My first disc golf throw in eight years looked good at first. Then it veered right — I believe it’s called a “slice” — soared through some trees and landed near my truck in the parking lot at Windsor Park in North Bend.

At least it was easy to find.

I remember disc golf — popularly called “Frisbee golf” from my long-haired Colorado days when, sadly, I was known to use the word “bro.” And as with most things, I remember being good at the sport. Apparently, memory fails me.

So as I worked my way through the 18-hole course near U.S. Highway 101 with my friend and co-worker Rob, I decided not to keep score.

I decided to focus on my game. My strength is a decent forehand toss, but the downside is the wicked slice. So, after retrieving my disc from trees and shrubs on the first few holes, I realized the best option was not to fight the slice; instead, I embraced it, aiming 30 feet to the left of the target.

I started to believe the old disc golf skills were coming back. There may have even been a par in there somewhere.

Then the insect repellent wore off. Or, more accurately, I sweated it off, leaving a trail of DEET in my wake.

Now, I’m a native Oregonian — I’d like to think I know something about mosquitoes. So I say from a position of credibility that the bloodsucker situation in Windsor Park at 6 p.m. two Thursdays ago was brutal.

And when mosquitoes are biting, I tend to fare the worst. They seem to like the way I taste. Maybe it’s because I’m so sweet.

So I did a little swat dance prior to teeing off on every hole, but it didn’t help. They ate me through my shirt, got behind my ears and brazenly sucked on my forehead.

We persevered, though, eventually playing 27 holes.

Last Tuesday, Rob and I tried the Mingus Park course.

That one is a nice concept, with some challenging topography to deal with, but it’s also a vandalized mess.

We set off on the course, going up and downhill, having fun just being in the woods.

“It gets you out walking, and it’s free,” Rob said of disc golf. “Unless you lose a disc. That happens.”

When we came to the sixth hole, Rob said “this one’s famous for eating discs.”

He then launched his disc downhill and it cut way left and out of sight. One more disc devoured.

I helped him hunt for the disc, finding two empty liquor bottles and a pair of rotting underwear.

Eventually we gave up looking and played the rest of the course. But on the way back, we spotted the disc sitting in plain sight, 30 yards past the hole and not too far from an empty bottle of rum.

Mingus was a nice course to play, with some fun rising and falling holes, but the litter is annoying. If people want to hide in Mingus Park and drink themselves silly, that’s their business. But I will never understand what kind of person looks at a pretty setting like Mingus and decides it’s OK to dump their garbage there.

Some of the target baskets hung askew; others were missing altogether.

A couple days later, I called Jim Hossley, Coos Bay’s public works and development director, and asked why the course is in such bad shape.

He said private interested parties do some maintenance on the course, but rely on the City to do major work, like replacing the lost chain-link holes. And he said there’s no money in the budget to do that this year.

Hossley also noted that trying to keep Mingus clean is a constant struggle.

“That’s always been a problem in Mingus,” he said. “We have two or three workers and they can’t be everywhere.”

For my part, I think I’ll stick with Windsor for disc golf, with its gangs of beer-happy disc golfers, playable holes and fiendish mosquitoes.

Who knows? Before too long I may start calling people “bro” again.