High above the North Fork of the Umpqua, there’s a quiet place on a mountaintop where a few rocks have been piled atop one another. It was a place where, a long time ago, young Umpqua Indians went in search of their vision. I’ve been there. And as we passed the trailhead two weeks ago, I remembered.

That night, the fog settled along the North Umpqua like a blanket. By morning, dew sparkled like diamonds on the long grass. Fourteen-year-old Nolan thumbed four orange-tipped cartridges into the magazine of the borrowed .22-250 and flipped open the scope caps. Lee Sandberg led the way into the mist along the river.

Last year, Lee, a guide for his family’s outfitting business, Black Oak Outfitters, called and asked if I knew any kids who might want to hunt on his property outside of Roseburg. “We have a lot of deer,” Lee said.

I thought of Nolan King and his brother Sam, but when I asked the boys, I found out Sam wasn’t old enough yet. According to Oregon law, a youngster has to be 12 years of age to hunt big game. And Sam wouldn’t turn 12 until January.

Last May, the Central Oregon Shooting Sports Association, in conjunction with the local chapters of the Safari Club International (SCI) and Oregon Hunters Association (OHA), put on a Youth Hunter Challenge event. Nolan, Sam and 63 other kids tried their hands with .22s, archery tackle, shotguns and big game rifles, most for their first time.

The handpicked volunteers did a fine job. The day before the hunt, Nolan practiced dry-firing the rifle and he didn’t flinch when he squeezed the trigger.

An antlerless blacktail hunt in the Melrose Unit is an exercise in patience and field identification. The casual observer might miss the difference between a Columbia whitetail and a blacktail, but the hunter is required to make the distinction.

A whitetail deer has a longer tail, brown on top with white hair beneath, while a blacktail has a shorter, black brush of a tail. Round, white circles around eyes and nose also set the whitetail apart from the blacktail. And if the deer has antlers, the blacktail’s antlers branch, while the whitetail generally has longer eyeguards and tines that do not branch.

We scheduled the hunt for the last two days of the season, but Nolan only needed 10 minutes. Near the river, visibility was good for about 150 yards. Tendrils of cloud drifted in the treetops. Lee stopped to glass a field and Nolan looked upstream along the creek. “There’s one,” he said.

A lone blacktail fed in the blackberries on the other side of the creek. The dance began, as the deer put bushes and willows between itself and the hunters. Patient, Lee and Nolan eased along the fence and waited for the deer to move into the open.

The deer was out of our sight, but then it was visible again. I saw Lee’s shoulders tense and he pointed. Nolan slid the rifle onto the fence and took a rest. A moment passed, the deer took a step and then the gun spoke. Nolan turned with a broad smile.

When the deer was in the cooler, it was Tiffany’s turn. Into the mist, we climbed. Uphill, less than 50 yards above the trail, a whitetail buck was bedded in a patch of thistles. He looked at us then ghosted away, his shadow swallowed by fog.

A hundred yards farther up, we crossed a fence and turned right along the top of the finger ridge. A breath of air drifted out of the north into our faces and the fog stilled all other sound. Lee looked back and touched his nose. “I smell them,” he said.

In a few more steps, we saw a doe, less than 30 yards out, but on the other side of the fence. Tiffany chose not to take the easy shot, because her bullet might hit a wire. The deer drifted back into the fog and we moved on.

We topped out on the spine of the ridge and eased through a squeaky wire gate. We paused to decide whether to go after the deer we’d seen or find some others. I heard a deer bleat to our left. Lee led the way and we saw a blacktail buck go down the hill and vanish into the mist. And then three deer materialized, 60 yards away.

Blacktails or whitetails? One turned and showed a short brush of tail. Blacktails.

Tiffany bent to the shooting sticks. One deer crossed the fence onto the neighboring property. Two stood side by side and then one stepped forward and Tiffany found the biggest in her scope. She squeezed the trigger.

These days, a lot of what happens in a kid’s life happens on the screen of a computer in a climate-controlled room. We can give them the best electronics and the finest education, but we haven’t made their lives richer without giving them mountaintop experiences.