Oregon Anyone's Hunt - The Hunt

And welcome back to anyone's hunt the goal  of this video series is to get more people hunting by sharing hunting opportunities  that are available to anyone and in this installment in the series I'm going to Oregon for  a high Cascade rifle deer hunt let's get into it today is a Wednesday and season opens on  Saturday we've got about a 12 hour drive to get to Portland Oregon and when I say  we talking about my wife Keren and I just wrapped up 12 hour drive made  it to Portland Oregon and when y

ou're in Portland you gotta stop at Leupold HQ take a factory tour and shoot the rifle in  their basement shooting range so let's go do it everything we do is to create epic moments  on the hunt, in the field, battlefield, whatever again create epic moments you  guys smell that? what is it? Freedom! every rifle scope we make is made right down in  this factory so this is one of our raw aluminum blanks you'll get fed into this machine Here  and out the other side Mark 5 main tube we have a 100 ya

rd range climate  controlled environmentally controlled all that this is where we do a lot of  product development product testing all right we're down in the Leupold shooting  range making sure the gun is dialed Really glad I checked the rifle. Things were a little bit high and you know anytime  you're traveling whether it's air travel or even driving out like we did things can get off a  little bit so glad we checked time to go hunting all right this is Scott hi guys Scott's from  Oregon and

uh he was actually going to join us on this hunt but as you can see Scott Scott  did a thing to his to his leg what what did you what do you do unfortunately had a little bit of  a ruptured Achilles I'm not made it to the trailer I'm here at space camp uh or not base camp the  trailhead where you guys will be packing in send you on your merry way but Scott's kind of like  called the local expert he's the one that keyed us into this hunt and so so Scott like what's what's  so cool about this hun

ting opportunity I think one of the cool things about this High Cascade Hunt  is pretty much all the way from the California border all the way up to Mount Hood um all along  the Cascade Range is all a part of the hunt unit it's not technically a unit it's more geographical  area there are very specific borders that you have to abide by so everyone who's familiar with the  Pacific Crest Trail that kind of serves as your eastern border and then the Western border varies  depending on where you're

at really provides a ton of opportunity to local Hunters as well as  anyone interested for coming out of state like you to hunt numerous different areas across the  state another thing that makes us sound really cool is right now we're mid early September it's  a rifle tag so most guys are out here chasing elk with bows while we will be lugging around rifles  hunting early season deer normally it's like that first second week of September and it runs for  seven to ten days and it's any legal lu

ck any legal Buck are these black tails are they mule  deer depending on where you're at in the state it'll vary you're kind of in the Cascade Range  all the mountains are kind of that transition zone so if you're a little bit further east you  might run into some muellies there might be kind of some mix we like to call them bench legs in the  denser Timber a little bit more to the West you'll be running into black tails what are the draw odds  or is this like a can you just go buy the tag over

the counter or what does that look like so it is  not an over-the-counter tag it is something you have to apply for however if you don't have any  preference points in Oregon it pretty much is an automatic draw as your first choice first you're  applying as a now to say resident if it's the only thing you put in for you're pretty much guaranteed  as an in-state resident once again if you put it in for it as your first choice pretty much  guaranteed part of that just because there is a ton of tag

s offered because it is such a big  geographic area a lot of in-state Hunters also put in for it as a second choice like myself there's a  roughly 50 50 chance of drawing it as your second choice which here in Oregon if you don't draw your  first choice you still get a preference point so like I was able to gain a preference point this  year and then still draw this tag and come on this early season hunt I think one of the most  unique things about this tag it is a very low probability hunt I me

an you're looking at five  to ten percent success rate just because the the area you're hunting is pretty rugged it's easy  to weed out a lot of hunters who aren't willing to put in a couple miles or hunt um you know some  rougher terrain and so that kind of limits the the chances of success a little bit the other unique  thing about this tag it is one of the only if not the only tags in the state that you essentially  get two hunting opportunities for one tag so you get this week early in Septe

mber coming with rifle  early season no other rifle deer hunting is going on right now if you're not successful you don't  kill anything it turns into just a general season Western muck tag so you can hunt all of October  what are the costs associated with this hike for the tag so in the state you know you're buying  your application fees hunting license and then tag all in probably around 80 bucks and then for  non-residents you're looking I think it's low 600 so 620 or so I mean that's all in

with application  fee obviously draw the tag pay for your license all that for me I love being able to find spots  that I can see there's a lot of areas that are pretty dense or you can find areas that have  burned up provide a lot more opportunity to to see so that's kind of our game plan here is to hit  some of those spots that have been affected by the wildfires and see if there's anything coming back  into them we've got really hot temps clear weather we've also got a full moon on opening da

y any uh  any recommendations for binding blocks I think the big thing since it's hot is find the shade find  the bedding areas you know they're not going to be out and about in the Blazing heat clearly it's  not the rut so if we find does it's not it's not like there's going to be a box trailing to go  so I think the Bucks are probably going to be off by themselves right now so yep we've got one  more day until opener tomorrow we're gonna hike in do some glassing hopefully turn up the buck for

  opener wish you guys the best yeah thanks dude good luck all right opener is tomorrow morning in  Oregon most trailheads you need a parking pass so this is a Northwest forest pass annual pass 30  bucks get it throw it in your car good to go oh right about 60 pounds it's been heavier all right let's do it well before every big  adventure always mark where the truck is on onx camp in here somewhere pretty nice home sweet home we just dump most of our camp gear and we're  gonna go hike up onto a

glassing knob season opens tomorrow morning the wind has been  howling today probably 35 40 mile an hour gusts deer don't mix very well with wind so  fingers crossed the uh one shows itself though it's a night before opener  we're up on a big glassing knob and the wind is just ripping it's dusty but really insanely beautiful country overlooking  this this giant burn and can't complain haven't seen any deer or glass till last light  and then bomb back down and cook up some dinner well it's openin

g morning as you can  see we're still in our sleeping bags wind was just howling all night I probably slept  an hour last night we're kind of in this burn and there's all these big standing dead trees  it's just like every time a wind gusts would go open our eyes look up make sure we're  not gonna get smashed by a tree it's also super Smoky there's a wildfire  over here smoking crazy wind or not good hunting conditions so so yeah so  we slept in a good way to start the hunt it is so Smoky out I

feel like I'm about 10  feet down wind of a big campfire tough uh hunting conditions man the wind did die  off though so we got that going for us the wind has stopped almost entirely we  served to hear a few gunshots see a few Hunters walking around so we're just sitting  up on this glassing knob you can't really glass that far right now with all the smoke but hoping  that uh maybe somebody pushes some bucks to us first hunting day in the books so it's really crunchy out there's a full moon  and

a lot of the bucks if not all of them just shed their velvet we think all the Bucks are  being nocturnal right now so we're going to kind of change up our game plan we're actually  in the morning we're gonna go basically walk this main trail at first light goes right through some  thick timber goes through some bedding areas it's also dead quiet maybe we'll jump a buck out of his  bed how's the game plan for tomorrow change it up nothing but does always wrapped up the day we still  haven't seen

a buck yet I've seen some does now we're about probably  two and a half miles from camp and navigating through the Timber with  Onx trying to find her way back the mornings are just meant for drinking  coffee sitting underneath the tree it's been uh dumping rain most of the morning we're  gonna go move camp into a more timbered zone we haven't seen a single deer out in this  open burn country the only deer we have seen have been in like a really thick  timber so that's where we're gonna go all

right we just dropped camp and now we're  gonna head off and see if we can't find a buck just wrapped up beautiful evening the  smoke all cleared it's nice and cool we did see some goats tonight we got one more full day  tomorrow and then we're about to call it the deer are extremely elusive that's all I have  to say about that so we'll see in the morning now the deer sightings have been a minimal but uh seeing all these mountain goats it's  a nice consolation prize for sure way up on top of the

mountain today and we're  looking down into some basins and some really really great visibility but theme of the trip  is we cannot find the bucks can't even find any deer I think we've maybe seen 10 deer total  in the last basically five days as my friend Isaac would say only the buck knows where the  buck is at and we definitely are not the buck we're gonna last till last light and then we got  one more morning and then we're a wrap learned a really good joke last  night I'm sitting there gla

ssing and glassing for like six straight hours  and Connor goes there's a buck... somewhere in this area and right when he said  there's a buck I was like where?!?! great trick we didn't know he didn't actually  see a buck anyway last morning motivation was low this morning but it's the last morning we  gotta go give her one more shot so here we go awesome I finally spotted a couple deer wants a spike about this big a couple more deer  up here four deer this morning unbelievable nice four point

coming this way  probably like 300 yards away 400 yards away working this way though just lost  size of them but they're working the left and it's just hard to see now I'm shaking like a leaf you  must follow that dead tree up oh I got him I think 330 I think I hit him kind of nuts we haven't seen hardly even a deer in  this whole trip and then last morning after we'd kind of given up we're like to do it I was like  oh there's this year and then oh there's a bug well I'm still shaking like a lea

f if you can't  tell Keren spotted him and he was at 330 so dialed to 4.5 MOA and let them have it and he kind  of staggered off to the left but it's so it's so thick I can't see anything in there so we'll  probably get a few minutes and go sneak up there see if we can find him all right and I just know super duper thick so we can't see where  he went into so Keren's locked off on the spotter right exactly where we shot we're  heading up to go see if we can find him I see him I walked up to him

I thought he was dead got  to about 30 yards and he jumped up and run he ran about a couple hundred yards away and  I think it just seem through the trees and you know I did a one one bipod leg rest  shooting over this log and got it myself hey congrats on your first blacktail thanks buddy there he is They exist. they do exist or they did  exist we maybe shot the last one first things first we gotta tag  this buck and Oregon's got a really cool thing you can choose to do e-tagging so  electronic

tagging and the way that works is I download the Oregon Fish and Wildlife  hunting app I will then press this validate button here it will spit out a confirmation  number when you choose to e-tag you still have to physically put a tag on the animal  and so this one is from huntag.com but you literally could just use a piece of paper  and write on it with a sharpie or right on with a pen you will put that confirmation on  here attach it to the buck you're good to go this hunt in Oregon was hard

it was also  really awesome we're in some pretty amazing country up in the Cascades we hardly saw  any bucks but we stuck it out last morning the weather cooled down the smoke cleared out and  I think it was the perfect recipe and that the deer came out like later in the morning into this  big burn and buck basically walked right to us and a little bit of luck a lot of persistence  things all came together but that is a wrap from anyone's hunt Oregon hope you  enjoyed it and we'll see you in the

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