However, all is not well in the western portion of the Blues. The elk harvest is actually down from more than 8,000 elk in 1997, and harvest-success rates fell from 25 percent to 15 percent.

The problem is low survival -- often record-low survival -- of calves. It began in the Wallowa and Wenaha/Snake zones, but in recent years the trend has moved relentlessly westward.

Research now under way there can explain what is happening in the Umatilla/Whitman Zone.

"Most of our calf mortality is related to cougar predation, and to a lesser extent, black bears," said Pat Matthews, of the ODFW's Enterprise district office. "It's kind of been a progressive thing, working its way (to the west) for a number of years."

The Starkey Unit is the heart of elk hunting in the western Blue Mountains. Besides giving up the most animals, it also has the best access in the region. More than 67 percent of it is public land, most of it in the Wallowa/Whitman National Forest and Bureau of Land Management's Vale District. The Starkey Unit also contains five Cooperative Travel Management Areas, including the 125-square-mile Dry Beaver-Ladd Canyon and 40 square miles within the Starkey Experimental Forest.

Many hunters dislike road closures, of course, but research conducted at the forest has found that elk dislike road and traffic (see sidebar). Since the Starkey Unit receives the heaviest hunter use -- occasionally, as many as 9,000 -- in the Oregon portion of the Blue Mountains, hunters who venture beyond gates greatly increase their odds of getting away from the crowds and of taking an elk.

In the Umatilla/Whitman Zone, the Ukiah and Heppner units are typically the second and third most productive units. In 2004, modern-firearms controlled hunts yielded 389 bulls and 202 cows in the Ukiah Unit (13 percent success rate), and 239 bulls and 327 cows in the Heppner Unit (also 13 percent success rate). However, these units also attract more hunters than any other units except the Starkey Unit, and their percent of public land is only in the 30 percent range, among the region's lowest.

On the southern side of the zone, the Desolation and Sumpter units each gave up more than 500 elk during the controlled-hunt modern-firearms season in 2004. These units also produced some of the best archery elk numbers in the Blues: Their 12 and 16 percent success rates, respectively, are comparable to rifle hunts. More than 87 percent of the Desolation Unit lies within the Umatilla National Forest, Malheur National Forest and BLM land, while the Sumpter Unit is 45 percent public land.

THE WALLOWA AND WENAHA/SNAKE ZONES
The elk herds in extreme northeast Oregon were the first to decline and were the first to hit record lows, but the elk populations have slowly begun to recover, and hunter-success rates have climbed.

During 1997, the total modern-firearms elk harvest for the Wallowa Zone -- which includes the southwestern portions of the Blue Mountains and southern Wallowas -- was 1,046. Those numbers fell to 760 in 2004. However, the overall rifle success rate was 18 percent in 1997 and 21 percent in 2004.