Seaview's Rusty Lindberg: World record hunter and official measurer

"I've scored several world records and have almost half of all the record Roosevelt's elk in the book," Rusty says with pride. "I have scored between 90 and 100 animals that have made the record books."

Boone and Crockett puts out its book for horned animals such as deer, elk, antelope, caribou, and moose and for mountain lions and bear every three years and updates its all-time record book every seven.

"Teddy Roosevelt and a group of his friends began Boone and Crocket in 1887 and the records and scoring have become much more sophisticated and precise over the years."

For example a set of black tail horns with five points Rusty has from one of his hunts requires 21 official measurements and three pre-scoring look-sees. He uses a quarter-inch pocket tape measure, a piece of steel wire, and a white pencil as his main tools of the trade while calipers are used for bear and mountain lion heads. It can easily take him 90 minutes to score an elk and over two hours to measure a caribou and Lindberg works quickly and efficiently.

Rusty was born and raised in Clatskanie and after working on the Astoria Bridge for a few years took a job with the St. Helens police department. "I went to apply to be a fireman, but got an offer to be a policeman first," Lindberg explains. "I worked there from 1970 until I retired in 1994."

In 1984 Rusty's love of hunting and scoring animals led him to take the two-week certification course at the University of Montana to become an official measurer (OM). "The last two days you had to be within 1 percent accuracy in measuring several types of animals in order to be certified." Over the years Lindberg has taught others to become an OM and was chairman of the records committee in Oregon and helped that state and Washington have their own set of hunting records. "Not every state has their own set of records," he says.

"One of the most memorable animals I have scored was for a lady from Burns, Ore. She shot an antelope and brought it all the way to my home in Seaview to have it scored all on her own. It scored 88 which is the second highest points for an antelope in Oregon's history."

The most memorable animal Lindberg has ever killed came in 1959 when he was hunting near Camp 18 east of Seaside with his uncle. "I spotted an elk herd on the hillside above us and behind the herd was a large bull. My uncle shot it first but only wounded it and I quickly made the killing shot," Rusty relates.

That bull Roosevelt elk is the third-largest ever scored and will rest in the Midwest Elk Museum. It was at Boone and Crockett's National Collection of Heads and Horns for nine years prior to being moved to the museum. It has a nine by seven rack and wasn't measured until after 1980 when Glenn St. Charles convinced Boone and Crockett to separate the two species of elk into Rocky Mountain and Roosevelt.

Rusty scored the elk he and his uncle had bagged 29 years earlier and then had an OM in Tillamook that he had trained do the official scoring as one cannot score his own trophy. "My score was 378 4/8 inches and the man I had trained gave it an official score of 378 5/8. I wouldn't tell him what I scored it even though he begged me to," Rusty explains with a wry grin.

One of Lindberg's favorite hunts is one in which he never pulled the trigger. He learned of a caribou hunt in Quebec while attending the Portland Sportsman's Show. "I had to hike 11 miles one way to where the caribou were migrating between two lakes. I saw over 2,500 caribou that day, but none of them would have measured 400 which is what I was after."

Rusty saw several in the 380 range, but chose to not take any of the animals despite spending over $5,000 for the guided trip. "I have a strict code of ethics in that I only shoot animals that I will eat. I was after a world's record and didn't see any caribou that would have made it." Lindberg did say of the trip, "The guide service treated us right. We had chocolate fudge and cheese before breakfast every morning and being in Quebec we had great French toast every third day and steaks for dinner."

Lindberg, who moved to the Peninsula after retirement worked as a charter boat deckhand and is currently a maintenance worker at Golden Sands Assisted Living, says doing your homework before hiring a guide can be well worth the effort.

"I like my work as an official measurer because we honor the animal and not the hunter. It's a special thrill to score a large, symmetrical set of horns - almost as great as if you shoot the animal yourself."

"The main thing I want to achieve as an official measurer is to give the public a consistent score. I want the hunter to feel that if someone in another area gets a score on an animal that is an inch bigger then that's because the other animal has earned that," Rusty relates.

"The nicest compliment I have gotten was when an all-time top-10 Roosevelt elk I scored was at Boone and Crockett's for certification by the panel of 12 OM's. The chairman saw who had scored the animal and told the others that if that's what Rusty said it measured, then that's what it measures," Lindberg says.

His home and shop are chock full of trophy mounts. "They also make good back scratchers," he jokes as he carefully uses his trophy set of horns to take care of an itchy back. To be sure even shooting another world-class deer or elk won't cure his itch to continue to hunt, however.