In recent years, one of the most popular elk hunts in Oregon has been the Cascade Bull Elk Hunt. It opens the units flanking the western and eastern slopes of the mountains during a one-week season in late October. It gives hunters a chance to enjoy some of the most beautiful and exhilarating scenery in the region, during the last good weather in the high-country year.

The Santiam, McKenzie and Indigo units are the most productive, giving up, respectively, 191 bulls (6 percent success rate), 201 (10 percent) and 275 (12 percent) in 2005. Access is excellent in these units in national forests and on state land. The highest reaches are usually in wilderness areas, where vehicle and all mechanized transportation are prohibited.

THE DRY SIDE
To hunt elk east of Oregon's Cascade Mountains, you have to plan more carefully. The high desert's Paulina, Fort Rock, Silver Lake, Sprague, Klamath Falls, Interstate and Warner units are the only places where you can pursue adult, branch-antlered bulls with an over-the-counter, modern-firearms general-season tag.

Some local hunters do well in juniper and jackrabbit country, but in these units, harvest numbers are among the lowest in the state. You need to know the unit and its elk to have much of a chance.

If you can be content with a spike, you can also hunt in a handful of the Blue and Wallowa mountains units. The Heppner, Ukiah, Starkey, Desolation, Sumpter, Mount Emily, Walla Walla and Wenaha are largely within the Blue Mountains, and they are all open for spikes during the second general season in November.

Hunters in the Umatilla/Whitman zone units (Ukiah, Desolation, Sumpter, Starky and Heppner) average a 7 percent success rate. The harvest in the Ukiah and Desolation units was more than 300 spikes in 2005. The Desolation Unit has the best access. More than 87 percent of the land is public.

The Starkey Unit is 67 percent public land, and includes the Dry Beaver-Ladd Canyon, the Wallowa/Whitman National Forest, and Starkey Experimental Forest Cooperative Travel Management Area road closures.

No region is more evocative of Oregon elk hunting than the Wallowa Mountains. Its Catherine Creek, Keating, Pine Creek and Imnaha units are open during the second general spike season this fall. All Wallowa elk herds have declined over the last decade, and calf survival has been at record lows in many units. Research suggests that predation by cougars and bears is a major factor in the poor calf survival.

Over the last few years, biologists have seen some turnaround and bull numbers are above management objectives in the Imnaha and Catherine Creek units. Two years ago, hunters took 74 spikes in the Imnaha Unit (for an 11 percent success rate), followed by 40 (15 percent) in Catherine Creek, 20 in Pine Creek (12 percent), and 20 in the Keating (11 percent).

Bowhunters have an open-entry 30-day general season with any elk legal, and will probably kill at least as many elk in these units this fall as rifle hunters.

WASHINGTON: WEST'S BEST?
Washington has 10 recognized elk herds, and they contribute the overwhelming majority of the elk harvest each year. Some, such as the North Cascades and South Rainier herds, don't contribute substantially to the state's harvest numbers, but provide local hunters with excellent opportunity. Others, such as the Blue Mountains, Colockum and Olympic herds, are currently well below their numbers of the 1970s and '80s, but still produce good numbers of elk.

Still others, like the Yakima and Mount St. Helens herds, account for the bulk of the state's elk harvest, and are currently larger than WDFW management objectives.

You could probably win a lot of bar bets by claiming that more elk are killed in western Washington than east of the Cascades. But tables were turned in 2005: Eastside general season and permit hunters combined for 4,450 elk, while westside hunters killed 3,049.

You could also win some bets by arguing that elk harvest has improved since the turn of the 21st century. You'd be correct on that as well.

But the west side of the Cascade Mountains wouldn't even be in the running against the eastern part of the state, if it weren't for the Mount St. Helens and Willapa Hills herds.

Region 4, which includes the North Cascades and parts of the North Rainier herd, gave up only 100 bulls in 2000 and a total of 93 elk in 2005. Despite slight improvements from dismal hunting in the 1990s, the Olympic Peninsula herds are still well below historic population sizes.

If you want a real chance at an elk west of the Cascades this year, the Mount St. Helens herd will be your best bet. According to the WDFW's Region 5 status and trends report, it is above its management objectives.