8 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
along the creek there is evidence of deer in the way of skeletons, 
etc. About one year ago, the snow was so deep that many deer 
perished for want of food and protection, hence the skeletons. 
Eagle Creek is 44.5 miles from Portland on the Columbia River 
Highway, easily reached from the city. At the Highway end of the 
ereek, the United States Forestry Service has made an ideal camping 
grounds for the use of the general public with every convenience, in 
the way of water piped to the grounds, stoves built for fireplaces, 
and they even furnish you sawed firewood to save you from cutting 
wood indiscriminately. There are also waste paper cans distributed 
about so as to help the appearance of this beauty spot. 
From the camp grounds a good trail has been constructed for 
about five miles up the gorge, and this summer it will be completed 
to about eleven miles to Wahtum Lake and there connect with the 
Herman Creek trail. When this is completed, there is no nicer trip 
conceivable than the round trip to Wahtum Lake from the Columbia 
River Highway. 
MY FIRST BEAR HUNT 
By Juvce J. W. Knowzes, La Grande, Oregon 
I think it was in the summer of 1907 that myself and family 
took a hunting and fishing trip up the Grande Ronde River to Starkey 
Prairie. Starkey Prairie is a beautiful valley nestling in the Blue 
Mountains and situated up the Grande Ronde River about thirty miles 
from La Grande. 
While the trout fishing in the Grande Ronde River and its tribu- 
tary, Beaver Creek, is nothing extra in the summer time, yet a person 
can generally catch all that they want to eat. We made the trip 
in my hunting hack which I call my ‘‘Kansas Schooner.’’ As the 
weather was warm and we were simply on an outing anyway, we 
only traveled mornings and evenings and rested during the heat of 
the day. Arriving at Starkey, we went down a steep half-pitch grade 
to the river; so steep, indeed, that the horses had to almost slide on 
their tails. We made camp near an old deserted cabin with a nice 
sparkling spring hard by. We spent two or three days at this camp 
hunting and fishing and, while we got all the trout we wanted to eat, 
I did not succeed in locating any deer. 
I had heard that deer used a sort of soda springs across the river 
and up the mountains from where we were camped, and, while I 
visited these springs both as early in the morning and late in the 
evening as the law would permit, I did not see any deer, although 
I saw quite a good deal of fresh signs. I remember one morning that 
IT got onto one of the high ridges about daylight and I saw, just over 
the backbone of another ridge, what I took to be three elk slowly 
erazing along. I said to myself, ‘‘Here is the opportunity of a life- 
time.’’ (As this magazine is published by the Fish and Game Com- 
mission, and, in order to dispel any suspicions that I was contemplating 
a violation of the game laws, it is necessary for me to explain that 
this was the year that through some bobble in the game laws deer 
and elk were not protected in Eastern Oregon.) 
The headwaters of the Grande Ronde River have always been a 
favorite feeding ground for elk, and there are perhaps today more 
elk in the vicinity of Starkey Prairie than any part of the state. 
Hitching my little horse to a pine tree, I circled around to the wind- 
