My wife had a early cow tag, we went to a spot of ours and we had a cow feed up below us just after daylight on opening morning and she made a great 330 yard shot on it. Never saw another person on that hunt.
I hunt public land in NE Oregon, always lots of people and lots of elk. The people do bug me a little but the elk are still there in high numbers. Filled my tag with a 6 point bull for the 3rd year in a row. This year I had a draw tag so the area I hunted had very little hunting pressure and we got into a lot of elk. My two boys called for me and we chased the bull I killed all day long in the rain and finally killed him 20 minutes before dark, we first got into the before daylight. We covered 7 miles that day on foot most of them chasing screaming elk.
After my hunting i hunted with my buddy and with my son. We had opportunity’s ever day, on the last day of the season my 14yr old got to draw back on a big 6 point bull but couldn’t get a shot off. There were two groups below us walking the road bugling and a guy above us sawing firewood about 600 yards from the elk. We walked right up the bull and his 3 cows bedded on the bank above a closed road, they were just sitting there listening to the commotion.
Deer numbers were better but are still way below objective, my son shot his buck opening morning by 9 am, he missed a nice 150” 4 point buck just after daylight when buck fever got the best of him. The forked horn he shot was feeding up a creek bottom and be shot him from the cliffs above. We didn’t see another hunter on that short hunt.
I drew a deer tag and hunted for 7 days with a MZ and in 7 days we only had two vehicles drive past our camp. We averaged seeing about 100 deer and I ending up killing a 24” wide 150” 3 point and my hunting partner killed a 20” 3 point.
My dad drew a landowner tag which he let my son fill taking advantage of the Oregon mentor hunter program. The weekend before the land owners kids filled their tags on two nice bulls. The second weekend in a blizzard my son shot his bull out of a herd of 100 year feeding 95 yards below us. We were the only ones hunting the property so we didn’t see any other people and there are always lots of elk on private around here. Didn’t see a single deer though.
2020 was pretty good to us, we each harvested at least one animal. We spent thanksgiving in a motel in ID chasing late season mule deer. My son got a lot of stalks in but couldn’t close the deal. We did see a pile of deer and not a lot of hunters which is pretty typical on that hunt.
. They nixed the shooting of cows in one of the units I hunt, which significantly makes harvesting an elk harder (brow tine only now), but some tough hunting and persistence paid off and I harvested a younger bull. I'm an unabashed freezer filler, so cow, spike, big bull bull are all the same to me (unless they are all standing together and then the big bull gets the nod! 
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