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Mark Freeman Commentary Crunch replaces bang in woods Deer hunters likely heard more bucks in the woods than they saw during the opening weekend of the fall deer season, which was plagued, as usual, by dry weather. "We saw bucks here and there, but overall, hunting was pretty slow," says John Thiebes, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who spent Saturday and Sunday surveying local hunting success. Very dry forest conditions made the woods so crunchy that it was tough for hunters to get close to deer before being heard, Thiebes says. "There was so much noise," Thiebes says, "that hunters could hear the deer running away." Deer season for rifle hunters in Western Oregon opened Saturday and continues through Oct. 15. After a one-week break for the general elk season, hunting of blacktail bucks with rifles resumes Oct. 23 and runs through Nov. 10. Slow hunting may have been the rule, unless your name is June Duke. Duke, 54, of White City, took advantage of the crackly forest conditions when she shot a very large 3-by-4 point buck in the Conde Creek area near Lake Creek just after noon on Opening Day. Duke was walking toward a canyon when another hunter on the canyon's far side spooked the big blacktail. As it lumbered away from the other hunter, it strolled into Duke's sight 350 yards away. She dropped the buck with one shot of her trusty Remington .270 rifle, a vintage 1959 edition she bought from her brother. "Somebody pushed it to me, but I got it because I was in the woods," Duke says. "You have to get out and hunt instead of driving around waiting for people to spook the deer." The antlers on Duke's buck were the biggest set of blacktail antlers she has taken in 40 years of blacktail deer hunting, mostly in the Lake Creek area. The deer sat in first place Wednesday in the "Big Buck" contests at both the Black Bird and Big R shopping centers. In both contests, the preregistered hunter with the biggest buck wins a free mounting of the buck's head. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather win second place," Duke says. "Second place wins a rifle, and I'd rather have a new rifle -- not to hunt with, but just to have." Duke was one of several hundred deer hunters who went afield in the Rogue Unit, which encompasses most of Eastern Jackson County. With its mixture of public and private lands along the Cascades, the unit generally gathers the lion's share of local deer-hunting pressure. Rogue Unit hunters are accustomed to slow starts until colder and wetter weather makes for hunting-friendly forest conditions. Compounding problems is a depressed deer herd. The ODFW estimates that the Rogue Unit's deer populations are down by more than one-third from their levels of the early 1990s, with loss of habitat, poorer forage conditions and higher predation likely the key factors. Many of the deer normally in the southeastern portion of Jackson County already have moved into winter range across the border in Northern California, Thiebes says. Deer herds north of Highway 66 have stayed in high-elevation summer ranges, he says. For those whose deer tags remain in their wallets, Thiebes has a little advice: "Wait until we get some weather," he says. (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA