By Malachi Nolletti

On the second day of the hunt, this young five-point bull was feet from offering a point blank opportunity. He followed a cow calf, glunking and tasting the air, stopping just short of exiting the clearcut on the trail the author was set up to shoot.

The sun had been aloft in a cloudless sky for some time now, but from head to toe, I was drenched. Reaching for my mesh-backed ball cap, I swept it off and in the same motion brushed a sleeved forearm across my brow. The thin layer of soaked polyester did little to dry the forehead, but did remove the horde of wet fir needles that had accumulated. Sipping from my hydration bladder between gulps of air, I surveyed the density of my current predicament.

“Here,” I could recall a wise friend saying, “you’re better off traveling 10 miles by logging road than one-tenth of a mile off of one.”

A bull bugled from above. The short, high “Eee-ooww” gave me the sense he wasn’t the largest on the mountain, but its clarity and volume indicated his nearness. I quietly scolded myself for disregarding sage advice, and plunged headlong into the best tunnel I could locate.

Hours earlier, this densely timbered draw was shrouded in the mystery of a murky marine layer. A stiff breeze off the Pacific, whose tremendous sea stacks rose out of the dark water scarcely more than a few clout-style bowshots away, pinned the cold, salty air against these steep canyon walls. Had a soul been around to hear it, they might have missed the sound of knobby mountain bike tires on gravel as gray light bled westward. Any disturbance simply melted into the coastal mist amid rhythmic swaying of spruce and fir, disappearing against the background rumble of foamy waves rushing ashore.

A coastal river renowned for its winter steelhead run winds through classic Roosevelt elk habitat.

Now, I was barely better than halfway through the patch of “re-prod” (the regionally preferred term for impenetrable stands of fledgling Douglas fir planted following commercial timber harvest) and knew that to wade no further and turn back would assuredly be as tedious as pressing on. That sort of delay in progress and loss of elevation would all but eliminate my chances of emerging ahead of the bull with a favorable wind. I forged on, clearing an array of angry flora with my bow limb before easing myself through. On occasion, dropping to hands and knees, I pushed steadily upward trusting wholly in the existence of a respite logging road just yards ahead.