BAKER CITY, (AP) - To even begin to understand the sort of archery hunter Russell Elms is, you need to know that he keeps his hunting clothes in a plastic bag stuffed with pine boughs.

This, though he owns perfectly serviceable dressers.

Elms, who lives in Baker City, doesn't smile when he tells you the story, which seems like it ought to conclude with a punch line. But he's not kidding.

What he's trying to do is trick a bull elk.

“You can fool an elk's ears and you can fool an elk's eyes, but you can never fool an elk's nose,” Elms said. “Everything centers on scent.”

Elms can't help, of course, that he's a human.

But he tries awfully hard not to smell like one.

In fact, during the monthlong archery hunting season that started in late August, Elms will strive to convince his quarry, which includes buck deer as well as elk, that he's anything but human.

A pine tree, preferably.

That bagful of pungent boughs isn't the only arrow in Elms' quiver of olfactory deceptions, though.

Over the past month he has repeatedly washed his hunting outfit in a soap that's supposed to scrub every trace of human odor from the garments.

He also sprinkled a substance that smells of sagebrush on the clothes.

During the archery season, Elms won't fill the fuel tank in his rig while he's wearing his hunting clothes, for fear gas fumes will infuse the fabric.

Elk might not associate the aroma of petroleum products with people who wield weapons and carry tags that authorize them to kill elk, but you've got to figure the acrid scent is not one that the elk's fellow forest dwellers normally produce. Anyway, you don't see raccoons and squirrels working at service stations.

Elms, who's 36, has hunted since before he was a teenager.

At first he carried a rifle. But then, when he was 13 or 14, he got his first bow from his aunt, who worked for Martin, a bow-making company from Walla Walla, Wash.

Elms had never flung an arrow.

“It was kind of a steep learning curve,” he said.

But over the next several years Elms honed his skills.

He gleaned valuable advice from a pair of local archery hunters and took an archery class while he was attending Oregon State University.

Still, he fired quite a few arrows in those early years that flew astray.

“I missed a lot of critters I'd like to have another chance at,” Elms said.

Archers tend to get a lot of second chances, though, which goes a long way toward explaining why Elms remains a devoted bowhunter.

In Oregon, the annual archery season for deer and elk is a general hunt, which means it's open to most any hunter who didn't buy a tag for a rifle season.

And the archery season extends for a month, making it a veritable luxury vacation compared with rifle seasons, most of which last less than two weeks.

The archery hunt runs from late August until late September, so the sun's up longer each day than it is during most rifle seasons.

By early November, hunters (at least hunters who prefer the shelter of a tent and soft sleeping bag to the drafty hollow beneath a fallen tree) usually trudge back to camp before 5 p.m.

“You just get to hunt more during archery season,” Elms said.

And as far as Elms is concerned, more hunting always is better than less.

And that adage applies whether he returns from a hunt with a couple hundred pounds of meat, or just the accumulated weight of memories.

He hunted Dall sheep in Alaska for 10 days one year and he never shot an arrow.

It was one of his favorite hunts.

“I just love being out,” Elms said. “I like hearing elk bugle. It's an addictive sport.”