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FINE HUNTING IN OREGON Country One of Big Things All Around and Much Moisture Game of All Kinds In Plenty How It Is Sought vrltn Out in Curry County Oregon the county that claims more deer than any other county in the United States near Cape Blanco where the surf piles In after a clean sweep clear from Japan there is an interesting hunting country Near Cape Blanco there ts a little river that runs into the Pacific known as Sixes River so called from the Indians that one time lived there which name meant friends writes W R Macllrath in Out ¬ door Life LifeThe The Curry County coast like all the northwest coast is a land of high humidity fogs and rain are the rule rather than the exception almost all the year around But no one out there minds them neither does a tenderfoot for that matter for they are not hard rains and there is much sunshine between them This moist temperate climate has developed a vegetation to be found only on the northwest coast a wonderful dripping jungle of towering firs and cedars underlaid by great moss covered fallen logs and dense salal and salmon berry brush In places there are great patches of mountain laurel Impenetrable by man almost impenetrable to a dog In places where there are openings large enough for the sun to get in there are often patches of giant ferns higher than the head of a man on horseback horsebackNeedless Needless to say such a country favors the game rather than the hunter The dense salal that covers almost the entire ground has stiff stems and stiff leaves and is noisy to walk through even in wet weather Then in the mountains the terrene is cut up by thousands of little creeks running in every direction the gorges of which are from 100 yards to half a mile deep from the regular slope of the mountains bordering them to the little stream of gurgling flowing water in the bottom bottomIf If a man does not know the trails he has no business in that country and a trail is often the merest indication of a path visible only to the man who knows it is there or that it used to be there before it grow up In many places it is impossible to see more than ten yards around one but the usual range of vision is from 25 to 100 yards in the timber In high ferns or laurel the range of vision is about the length of a AVinchcstcr carbine barrel barrelOREGON OREGON COUNTRY OF DAMP BIGNESS BIGNESSThink Think of this country as cut up by many gorges great and small nearly all under heavy forest the small ones often spanned by great logs nearly as long as a city block moss covered a hundred feet above the rivulet that gurgles among the giant boulders likewise moss covered below and over all the solitude of primeval Nature NatureOne One can seldom see the water of these little streams from the logs that span their gorges so dense is the undergrowth Everything is damp when it is not raining when it is raining as it is most of the time everything is wet The moss under foot on the wet logs has a way of peeling off and precipitating the hunter to the bottom of the gorge gorgeA A broken leg or even a snrain is not a joke in that country It may easily mean death I knew of an old man accustomed to wearing glasses who lost his life because he lost his spectacles lie suffered no accident he merely couldnt find his way out and starved to death I was lost in these woods from noon one day until noon the next before I got back to camp However the weather was lovely and I suffered no inconvenience except thoughts of the mean things I had done in my life It was the most delightful summer weather and was as dry as it ever gets in that country countryThis This country lias developed a type of hunter and a technique of hunting deer that proves what a man can do if he wants to do it bad enough If he wants anything for instance a deer bad enough and is good enough a man physically to stand thu hardship he can get him himAs As it is impossible to keep dry the native does not try to do so He strips down to overalls and undershirt and minus coat or hat but with plenty of spikes in his boots goes out in the rain after deer He may carry a few extra cartridges but he depends in the main on those in the magazine of his gun Then let it rain He should worry He is no fair weather hunter besides he prefers it a little damp for then the salal is not so noisy and deer are not so much on the alert When he comes in he puts on dry clothes he has already had his bath bathNATIVE NATIVE MEAT HUNTERS OF KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGEThese These fellows hunt for meat and know how to get it The tourist hunter had not become numerous enough in that country in 191G to cause to be es ¬ tablished a regular guide business Rail connec ¬ tion with the outside world had just then been es ¬ tablished It perhaps comes nearer being the forest primeval than anything in the United States today todayStripped Stripped for action the native hunts into the wind gliding through the thickets like a bobcat in his thin closefitting costume and warming his own hide after each of the cold showers he con ¬ tinually receives from the bushes and the sky by exercise On the fallen logs across the gorges he is surefootedness itself In fact he prefers walk ¬ ing on a log even if it lies at a sharp angle up hill It provides a clear path which is greatly to be desired when silence is an item and it elevates him above the surrounding vegetation But best of all it is noiseless compared with the ground There are places in old fire districts where one can walk for miles almost exclusively on fallen logs logsFor For lunch if he takes anything at all usually he takes nothing but hunts on an empty stomach it is a piece of jerky With a pound of this in his pocket from which he can cut off a piece from time to time with his jackknife for it cannot be bitten with much success he is well nourished The fire and sun treatment gives the outside a toughness comparable to leather but the inside is tender and with a delicate flavor that once tasted is never forgotten A chunk of this weighing a pound or a pound and a half is the best hunters luuch in the world At least it is for the coast be ¬ cause it cannot become wet and sodden Most any other lunch would wouldPLENTY PLENTY OF GAME OF ALL KINDS KINDSIn In the matter of going light the Sixes River hunters have the world beaten unless it is the can ¬ nibal pygmy of the Congo witli his little bow and arrows and no clothes at all For the big spear of a regular African will weigh as much as the Sixes River mans whole outfit including his car ¬ bine And the Sixes River man would outtravel the African in the Sixes River country even if the barefooted nigger didnt slip off a wet log into a gorge gorgeBesides Besides deer there are plenty of black bear grouse salmon fishing near thu coast and trout fishing in the mountains There are a few marshes near the mouth of Flores Creek where there is excellent duck shooting in season Geese congregate on the beaches of the ocean in their journey south ¬ ward Most of these are brant brantBear Bear sign is plentiful in the woods the excre ¬ tions being found on the logs most anywhere in the mountains in salal berry time But it takes dogs to get them The cover is so thick that a man would be lucky if he got a bear in a lifetime with ¬ out dogs There are a number of locally famous bear hunters in the Rogue River country who keep packs
