Lookout Mountain - seeking revenge

Well, I followed my cousin’s husband around in the mountains this past weekend. Justin McKerrow drew a rifle tag for elk in the same unit I’d archery hunted earlier this year. I thought it’d be a good chance for me to exact some revenge, so I tagged along with the video camera. Jusin grew up in the small town of Freedom, New York, met my cousin in the small town of Parma, Idaho and now resides in the small town of Nyssa, Oregon. He’d never hunted elk before this season and we wanted to show him just why these critters keep us crawling back to the woods year in and year out.

We camped beneath the shadow of Lookout Mountain’s tallest peak. Justin brought along his wife, Jill, and their baby girl, Cora. I countered with my wife, Shanna, and her “baby,” Joey - a dog from the purest breed of mutts. How shameful of me to bring a dog into elk camp. “Camp” was a small turnout by the side of the bumpy gravel road, and we quickly found that Justin likes fires. Big fires. We all had to stand about ten feet from the fire just to keep from becoming part of the fire itself. But, we could not complain about getting cold, that’s for sure. Overcome by laziness, I decided my wife and I could sleep in the front seats of our rig rather than bother with setting up a tent for one night. The McKerrow family sacked out in the back of their suburban.

In the morning, Justin and I headed to a canyon where, on opening day, he’d seen a few elk, including a nice bull. Immediately, when we got to where we needed to park the rig, we saw what was to be an omen of things to come. Three deer sky lined themselves against the false dawn sky. We could tell one of them was a buck, but there were no deer tags among us today. Once it became light enough to see, we skirted those deer so we wouldn’t spook them into the canyon we wanted to hunt, and we hiked to the end of the ridge to where Justin had seen the elk only a few days prior. We sat and glassed - or rather looked through his rifle’s scope. Can you believe we both managed to leave behind our binoculars?! Man, and I thought bringing a dog into camp was shameful! The country is awesome. It dips down into canyons - not too deep - but steep little things. Sagebrush is broken up here and there by pockets of aspen and juniper. A few tamarack pines dot the landscape as well. It was an awesome morning - one that you just expect there to be a big bull feeding on the open hillsides. The sky was clear and the frozen ground under our feet reminded us it was quite cold. We spotted deer. Lots of deer. It seemed every time we looked over new country there would be a few deer feeding. I don’t know how many deer we ended up seeing that day, but I imagine it was probably around thirty five. Which may not sound like many until you realize the biggest bunch of deer we saw was perhaps five. Mostly they were groups of a couple does and a couple fawns, but they seemed to be everywhere. They will be rutting soon, but we only saw that one buck in the early morning, although we did see him twice.

We hiked through a few of those steep canyons, but Justin had a new pair of boots and they seemed to be eating his feet, so we cut the hunt short. We came back to camp without seeing a single elk, but that’s the way it has been going with the camera. I have come to believe that Oregon and Idaho elk are a little camera shy. We still saw some great country, and I got myself some great exercise, so we certainly can’t say we wasted our time. This rifle season is only four days long, so we had to call it a season before it began almost. For me, I’m finding it more and more that I just enjoy being able to get out there and hike through the mountains. Too many people have no interest in trying the experience, and many more are physically unable to enjoy it anymore. So I almost feel obligated to enjoy the experience even more - not only for myself, but for the thousands of others that’d love to be there, but for whatever reason, just can’t make it anymore.

Here are some pictures I took of the country around our camp.