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Medford teen bags big elk, deer within two-week period Photo by Mark Freeman Mike Marshall holds the blacktail deer antlers, and sits inside the bull elk antlers, from the two animals he shot. By Mark Freeman Mike Marshall dug out a .308-caliber rifle shell from his pocket on Oct. 16, carved an X on the bullet and promptly declared to his father that he was about to celebrate his first day of elk hunting with something spectacular. "He said, `Dad. This is going to kill my first bull,"' dad Dave Marshall says. "I chuckled a bit." Barely two minutes later, 16-year-old Mike Marshall made good on his prediction. And in doing so, the Medford boy completed one of the more improbable big-game quinellas for a hunter in his rookie season in the woods. Marshall's marked bullet found a massive six-point Roosevelt bull elk on opening day of the Cascade rifle season. Two weeks earlier, the teenager bagged a large three-point blacktail buck deer on his first ever shot at a buck during opening day of the general deer season. Two openers, two shots, two trophies. Too weird? Not to Mike, who says he expected success from the get-go. "I was thinking I'd get something big," Mike says. "My dad's always been lucky hunting, and I figured I would be, too." State wildlife biologist John Thiebes figures a feat like that is rare enough for seasoned adult big-game hunters, let alone for a Hedrick Middle School eighth-grader. "Rarely, if ever, will you see something like that from a first-timer," says Thiebes, of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Talk about hooking a kid to hunting for life." Dave Marshall says Mike is a special sort of young outdoors man, yet even the proud father could not envision such early success by his son. "All I can say is, it's incredible," Dave Marshall says. "People just don't do that -- especially a 13-year-old." If any kid could be groomed to make such a splash in the hunting world, it is Mike Marshall. Dave Marshall, 37, is a longtime since he was 2 years old. "Ever since I could walk," Mike says, "I went hunting with my dad." Mike has regularly helped his father scout deer and elk, and the youngster already is accomplished at manipulating his throat to imitate the calls of cow elk. Even before he started carrying a rifle this year, Mike has seen plenty of bucks and bulls in the woods. "He's seen enough animals in the woods that he doesn't get nervous," Dave Marshall says. "He doesn't get Bull or Buck Fever -- yet." Despite his backwoods savvy, Oregon law keeps kids like Mike from big-game hunting until after their 12th birthday. Mike could have hunted last year, but he did not get his required hunter-education certificate until last August. That set the stage for this fall, and Mike went into October expecting success -- even though just one in four Rogue Unit hunters get their buck, and only one in 11 get their bull. On Opening Day of deer season, the Marshalls set out on a piece of Bureau of Land Management land near Lake Creek that the pair had scouted. As a bowhunter, Dave Marshall cannot hunt the riflemen's general blacktail season, but he is required to accompany Mike while hunting until Mike is 14. As Mike walked down one particular trail, he spied a very respectable 3-by-3 point buck standing in the trail some 82 yards away. "He just started walking up the trail, real slowly," Mike says. "I made a couple cow (elk) calls, to get his attention." Mike raised his .308-caliber rifle that has no scope. He peered down the barrel, squeezed the trigger and instantly became one of the Rogue Unit's buck success stories. With half of Mike's hunting quinella in the bag, the Marshalls then set their sights on elk. On Opening Day, Oct. 16, the pair hunted all day with a fellow father-son pair, but spent most of the day fruitless in the public lands of northeast Jackson County. But Mike kept pestering his dad to check a particular tract of BLM land where the pair had seen elk during earlier scouting trips. It was then that Mike carved the X in his fated bullet before the foursome parked along a forest road near Butte Falls. Mike grabbed his rifle and scrambled down the trail as the rest of his party fumbled to get their gear ready. "Not 60 seconds later," Dave Marshall says, "we heard him shoot. And then he started yelling." While zipping down the trail, Mike had spooked a cow elk and a bull elk bedded down in the nearby brush. Mike raised the same rifle, peered down the same barrel and sent the X-ed bullet into the elk. Moments later, Dave Marshall reached his son, who pointed to the downed six-point bull near the trail. "I just couldn't believe it," Dave Marshall says. "For adults, this kind of thing just doesn't happen." The antlers measured 38 inches high and 38 inches wide. Its hefty body later translated into 385 pounds of cut-and-wrapped meat for the Marshall freezer. "It's bigger than anything I've gotten in all my years of hunting," the elder Marshall says. The younger Marshall insists the rest of his hunting career won't all be downhill from here. For his encore, he has set his sights on big-game trophies east of the Cascades. "Next year, I want to go to Eastern Oregon, get a big mule deer and a big Rocky Mountain elk," Mike Marshall says. "And an antelope. Maybe even with a bow." (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