A herd of elk in early morning pause on top of a hill, the steam rising from their flanks.(Gary Lewis/For The Bulletin)

It was late gray winter again, and fog hung low over the valley. Dale led the way, quiet, nothing in his hands, binocular against his chest, a slouch hat over his eyes. He held the gate open for Dad, who walked through and held it for me.

Dad carried a Weatherby with a 180-grain Nosler Partition up the pipe. We didn’t need to check the wind — there was a light breeze in our faces. If I hadn’t smelled the elk, I could have asked the ravens. They flew toward the herd, their raucous yawps and squarks greeting the sunrise.

Harder than a hunt for a branch-antlered bull, sometimes, can be the hunt for a specific animal with no headgear.

When we crested a rise, still way back in the moss-encrusted oaks, there were elk ahead of us. About 60 animals, we guessed. And one of them with hoof rot.

That was the one we wanted to take. But which one was it?

In a healthy herd there is a surplus of animals each season — a number to harvest. In this small valley, on the Willamette side of Oregon’s Coast Range, there are several herds of Roosevelt elk. Banded together, they might number 100 head.

In the next valley to the east, planted now to vineyards and orchards, the elk can break down fences and trample crops. In this basin, closer to the cloud-shrouded mountains, the elk are welcome. Because their numbers grow out of balance, a few are taken each season. With the coming of hoof rot to Oregon, the conservation imperative is to take those animals out of the herd first.

Dale Thornton allows a few hunters on the property every year, friends of the family, neighbors and youth hunters.

“This year we have taken two cows that had hoof rot and one that had a bad knee,” Thornton said. “But it’s not easy.”

In a milling mass of elk, shifting this way and that, it is not a simple prospect to find the target animal. Like brown water down a river the elk streamed, over a fence and into a dip between green hills.

About 100 yards out, they stopped and turned. Branch-antlered bulls and spikes drifted in and out among the cows. We looked at hooves, not heads. We looked for one animal that walked with bad feet, throwing its hips at odd angles.

Hoof rot is a bacterial infection that first appeared in western Washington, where we hoped it would stay, where it could be eradicated — and if not eradicated, studied and stymied. But we have had hoof rot in Western Oregon since 2014.

We looked at their feet for abnormalities. They could not see us, but our scent swirled with the wind.

Nervous, the elk moved one way and the other, opening up windows beneath their bodies, shifting legs, stomping feet. Steam rose from wet flanks and out of shiny nostrils. Dale turned to whisper to Dad.

“That one. On this side of that spike. She’s looking away from us.”

Both back feet were grown out like shoes, like elf slippers, turned up at the tips. When the animal moved, it stayed in the herd, never presenting a shot that could be taken without endangering another animal. Then the wind shifted and 50 elk lined out down the valley and faded away into gray mist.

Back at the barn we plotted the next move. The elk would lay up through the middle of the day, then come out in the afternoon when we would try to get a better angle on the bad-footed elk. If we could not find that one again, we would try to take another, because there are more elk than the basin can hold for long.

In the afternoon we stalked in on the herd bedded in tall timber and watched, the wind in our faces, while the elk loafed in the shade.

We were close, within 30 yards of three of them, but we could not see their feet. Late in the day, we stalked in close again, to 40 yards, and the bad-footed elk was nowhere to be seen.

In the morning we spotted two herds, one with about 20 animals, the other numbering close to 50. To stalk them we climbed a narrow trail and circled back down to the edge of the timber. Once again we watched their feet and were not able to find the one we wanted. As our time was growing short, a cow separated from the herd, and Dad found it quickly in the crosshairs and pressed the trigger.

We walked into the field and admired Dad’s first elk, then bent to work to take that good meat out of the field. Later, when we loaded it into the F-150, ready for the butcher, the dressed weight totaled 387 pounds.

Thornton watched the elk through his binocular. The herd flowed away across the green valley and wheeled, the steam rising from the mass of animals. Out at the back of the herd, one cow with bad feet had trouble getting over the fence.

— Gary Lewis is the host of “Frontier Unlimited TV” and author of “Fishing Central Oregon,” “Fishing Mount Hood Country,” “Hunting Oregon” and other titles. Contact Lewis at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.