poUNDED A.D. 1873 
Vol. LXXXVII 
JULY, 1917 
No. 7 
A DEERDOM FARTHEST WEST 
CURRY COUNTY, OREGON, AFFORDS A VAST REFUGE FOR 
DEER FLEEING BEFORE THE ADVANCE OF THE PIONEER 
H UNTING grounds are becoming 
scarcer and more remote. Each year 
the homestead cabins move farther 
up the creeks and canyons, hoof-prints like 
two half-moons less thickly dot the trails 
and watering places. Each season opens 
upon a diminishing supply of deer. 
Only one district remains where the pub¬ 
lic herds exist still in almost their original 
multitudes. In Curry county, Oregon— 
probably the least explored county in the 
United States—the Indian is practically ex¬ 
tinct, but his quarry continues to graze 
throughout the smoky range, unthinned 
now by the flint-tipped arrow and un¬ 
thinned still by the white man’s rifle or by 
panthers growling at the feast. 
Curry county, rugged and mountainous, 
is almost a million acres in extent. Some¬ 
thing like half of this great area is un¬ 
surveyed. Along its rim and up and down 
its one big river forest rangers, miners, 
hikers and hunters go. It has two thou¬ 
sand people living upon its seashore edge, 
but its deep interior, shimmering under 
summer heat and white under winter snow, 
is without trails and without visitors. On 
the tops of high buttes from which the 
smoke of campfires has never been glimpsed, 
and in zigzag canyons that have never 
echoed to a rifle shot, live ancient bucks 
that do not know what a man looks like. 
It is a thicketfd and protected breeding 
place, a vast refuge, a broad pastureland. 
There are ten times as many deer in 
Curry county as there are people, four 
times as many deer as there are cattle, more 
deer than there are horses, hogs, sheep 
and goats put together. No domestic ani¬ 
mal multiplying under care has reached 
an equal population. One forth of the deer 
of the Pacific slope are in this county. An 
approximate census places the number at 
20,000—more deer than in any other county 
in the United States. It is the western¬ 
most county on the mainland of the na¬ 
tion—the westernmost and the wildest. 
Fleeing before the march of the pioneer, 
the deer have taken their last stand in 
By ALFRED POWERS 
’Neath midnight moons, o’er moistening 
dews, 
In vestments of the chase arrayed 
The hunter still the deer pursues. 
The hunter—and the deer — a shade. 
these recesses, have found here a last re¬ 
treat, a final habitat. 
R OGUE RIVER splits the county in 
two. It is the king of deer streams. 
From the interior on the south ex¬ 
ploring deer come to its southern bank, 
from the north they come to its northern 
• bank, and lifting dripping muzzles from 
the water they regard each other across 
the rippled current. Thus the river is a 
double borderland of deer. Hunting for 
grass that is a bit sweeter they leave their 
thicketed security. The hunter comes 
along the forest trail that parallels the 
river. And from among deerdom, they 
pass into record and recollection. 
The river is lined and the country is 
Exploring Deer Come to the Banks 
dotted with buttes, from 1,500 to 2,500 feet 
high. On the very tops of these buttes 
are big open spaces of grass, and these 
lofty prairies are favorite grazing places. 
The deer crop the tender herbage and 
grind it up in noisy mastication, looking 
lazily down upon the sparkling river and 
out upon the blue reaches of their vast 
solitude. 
Many hunters visit Curry county annu¬ 
ally, but hunters, panthers and severe win¬ 
ters together have not made appreciable 
inroads upon this wonderful supply of deer. 
Last winter the snows were unusually 
heavy, and as many as 18, mostly old and 
superannuated bucks, were found dead in 
a place. Panthers, giving up their cus¬ 
tomary method of crouching and lying in 
wait, would combine in threes and fours 
to stalk the deer and pounce upon them as 
they floundered helplessly in the snow. 
But in spite of these three agencies of de¬ 
struction, the deer seem to breed and mul¬ 
tiply in increasing numbers. There is 
hardly a hat in Curry county that does 
not hang at night upon a buckhorn. There 
shoes are tied with buckskin and from the 
center of the table rises the savory odor 
of venison. But upon a thousand hills 
and in a thousand canyons nubbly horns 
are lengthening, tender skin is thickening 
and tiny hams are growing to luscious 
fullness. The replenishing birth of spring 
stays greater than the death of fall and 
winter. 
Sociable and gregarious, these deer are 
occasionally seen in herds of forty and 
often in herds of fifteen or twenty. They 
often trespass upon a settler’s crops, and 
he gets even by substituting venison for 
roasting ears and cabbage. One of the 
dozen little streams that flow athwart the 
county is called Hunter’s creek. Hunters 
start out from Gold Beach, the county seat, 
at 7 o’clock in the morning and return with 
a buck at 10 in the morning, three hours 
later. Deer in Curry county do not have 
simply a fabled existence: they are present 
in the flesh and blood and branching horns. 
