My futility as an elk hunter has finally attracted the attention of Oregon’s wildlife managers.

And if I may be so bold, belated attention it is.

Although I suppose they have wolves with a taste for mutton and veal to worry about, and those sea lions munching salmon, and the occasional coyote snatching suburban cats.

Still, the scale of my ineptitude in the pursuit of elk had some years back attained the status of legend, at least in my view, and so I can’t help but feel that the biologists have failed to give my constant failure the recognition it deserves.

I’m not talking about buck fever, either. Or bull fever, as the case may be.

Any hunter can miss an elk at 500 yards.

(And many have.)

But the agency should not mandate that they do so, under force of law.

Hunting statistics simply don’t make the case that requiring such attire — better known as “blaze orange” — is necessary to ensure that hunting remains a safer activity than, say, snowboarding and swimming, to name just two examples.

Oregon is among 10 states that don’t require hunters to wear blaze orange.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission will decide whether to change that, at least for certain hunts.

The idea behind blaze orange seems logical. Why would any hunter shoot a person clad in that color, given that elk and deer and other animals are decidedly more drab in appearance?

Catching yellow perch is easy.

Catching enough yellow perch to make a significant difference in the quality of a once-popular Baker County fishing hole requires rather more effort.

Which is why the Oregon Legislature should make a long-term commitment to the fledgling campaign to control the perch population in Phillips Reservoir near Baker City and so restore the reservoir’s reputation for rainbow trout.

The brief background: About 20 years ago someone illegally released yellow perch in the reservoir.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) had been managing Phillips as a rainbow trout fishery, and with noteworthy success.

Anglers regularly hooked their limit of the hatchery-raised trout, and multi-pound rainbow were not uncommon in creels.

Idaho Power isn’t the most popular company in Baker County these days.

In fact it’s not even close.

We understand why some locals don’t think much of the Boise firm.

After more than a year of meetings, the company’s proposed route for a major transmission line looks an awful lot like the original version as it wends its way through the county a few miles east of Baker City.

We’re not especially surprised by this.

After all, if you draw a straight line between the route’s two endpoints — Boardman, Ore., and Hemingway, Idaho — the line goes through Baker County.

I rated myself as a pretty fair singer right up to the indelible instant when I heard my naked voice, the protective filter of accompaniment by actual musicians stripped away.

For some years previous I had often amused myself, as I suspect most people do, by crooning along with the stereo while I was driving alone.

Which is about as realistic as playing Tiger Woods golf on a Wii.

Harmonizing with Lennon and McCartney, suffice it to say, ranks on the difficulty scale right beside bisecting the fairway with a 300-yard drive.

(Although Tiger isn’t staying on the short grass all that often these days, either.)

One day, for some reason I’ve forgotten (although a reason no doubt spawned by the same hormone that leads high school students to use Bunson burners for unorthodox purposes), I decided to try what you might call an experiment in a cappella.

What resulted was a sort of auditory shock treatment that cured my naivete, as regards my lyrical ability, instantly and irrevocably.

While I was belting out the chorus to some ’80s anthem — I think it was Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian,” although possibly it was “The Final Countdown” by Europe — I punched the radio’s “off” button.

What do you call an unofficial get together at Baker City Hall that includes the former city manager and two current city councilors?

We call it not playing nicely with others.

We don’t care whether Councilors Milo Pope and Sam Bass enjoy the company of certain of their five fellow councilors.

But Pope, who convened the meeting in late April, and Bass owe a modicum of respect to the people who elected them, some of whom also voted for those councilors whom Pope and Bass don’t much care for.

Inviting former city manager Steve Brocato to deliver a primer on municipal budgeting hardly qualifies as respectful.

Ted Carlin intends to walk clear across Oregon this month, and I’m jealous.

He also plans to spend a couple nights at the Sky Hook motel in Mitchell.

This guy is really trying to goad me.

Not intentionally, perhaps, seeing as how we’ve not met.

But I don’t care about that.

The Sky Hook is my favorite motel.

At least it’s my favorite motel that I’ve never stayed in.

There is, most obviously, that name.

I’ve driven past the Sky Hook probably half a hundred times, and whenever I see that neon sign I think briefly of Kareem, flicking the ball softly, just high enough to foil Walton or Gilmore or Lanier.