Steve Cherry wishes he could give definitive answers to the many thousands of hunters who wonder how Eastern Oregon’s unprecedented wildfire season will affect their pursuit this fall of a fine buck or bull.

Cherry understands that, for many people, autumn hunting trips are a highlight of the year.

And for no small number, it’s a tradition that dates back decades.

Hunters pitch their tents and park their trailers in the same forest glades where their parents and grandparents camped.

They drive the same roads and clamber up the same steep slopes.

But 2024 is different.

So different that Cherry can only offer hunters general statements rather than certainties.

“My crystal ball is pretty hazy right now,” Cherry said with a chuckle on Aug. 6.

Cherry is the district wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Heppner office.

As he contemplates the two major blazes that burned on the district he oversees, which includes the Heppner and Fossil Units, Cherry suggests hunters be prepared to change their plans.

The Lone Rock Fire burned 137,000 acres in the Fossil Unit.

The Battle Mountain Complex covered 178,000 acres in the adjacent Heppner Unit.

These massive blazes — fire officials designate as “megafires” any that exceed 100,000 acres — can affect hunters in two major ways, Cherry said.

The first is access.

The fires prompted Umatilla National Forest Supervisor Eric Watrud, in late July, to close the entire Heppner Ranger District to public entry.

Whether that closure will remain in effect when the archery hunting season starts on Aug. 31 is among the unknowns that confound Cherry when he fields questions from hunters.

As of mid-August, sections of the Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur national forests were also closed to the public due to wildfires.

The second issue is how the fires affected deer and elk.

Although Michelle Dennehy, an ODFW spokesperson, said big game animals usually outrun wildfires, blazes scorch the shrubs and grasses that deer and elk eat.

The loss of forage forces the animals to move, at least temporarily, from their usual summer range, Dennehy said.

The question, then — another that Cherry can’t answer since it depends on factors as unpredictable as weather — is when vegetation will sprout and entice the animals to return.

Given that August is typically hot and dry, Cherry doubts that grass will begin to brighten the blackened landscape before archery season starts.

The odds for this coveted “greenup” rise as the fall progresses and the main rifle hunting seasons arrive in October and November.

“We’re still not sure how that’s all going to play out,” Cherry said. “It’s definitely going to be an issue for hunters in the Fossil and Heppner Units.”

Regionwide effects

But that’s hardly the extent of the situation.

Cherry shares his conundrum with ODFW biologists at offices across the region — potential public access restrictions that could keep hunters from their traditional areas, and big game herds, as well as upland game birds such as chukars, displaced for part, or all, of the fall hunting season.

The Lone Rock and Battle Mountain Complex fires are two of five megafires in Eastern Oregon.

Oregon’s biggest blaze of 2024 is the Durkee Fire, which burned 294,000 acres of rangeland and forest in the southern part of the Sumpter Unit and eastern part of the Beulah Unit.

The Cow Valley Fire scorched 133,000 acres of rangeland in the eastern part of the Beulah Unit (the Durkee Fire, which started on July 17, a week later, burned to the boundaries of the Cow Valley Fire.)

The Falls Fire covered 147,000 acres, mostly in the Silvies Unit but also a section in the south part of the Murderers Creek Unit.

And even the blazes that didn’t reach megafire status were quite large by historical standards.

The Badlands Complex burned 51,000 acres in the Lookout Mountain Unit of eastern Baker County, and the Town Gulch Fire blackened 18,500 acres in the adjacent Keating Unit.

The Telephone Fire covered 53,000 acres in the Malheur River Unit, and the Courtrock Fire burned 20,000 acres in the Northside Unit.

The Crazy Creek Fire scorched 78,000 acres in the Ochoco Unit, and the North Fork Owens Fire burned 4,500 acres in the Columbia Basin Unit.

In Northeastern Oregon, only Wallowa and Union counties avoided fires larger than 1,000 acres.

All told, slightly more than 1 million acres burned.

The bottom line is that hunters, outside of Wallowa and Union counties, should be flexible as they plan their hunts.

Many will likely need to explore new areas, either because a fire has closed access to their familiar hunting grounds, or because the lack of forage has prompted animals to migrate.

“Things have changed a lot,” said Justin Primus, assistant district wildlife biologist at ODFW’s Baker City office. “It’s an adjustment for the hunters and an adjustment for the wildlife.”

Bob Reedy, a Baker County native and longtime archery hunter, agrees with that assessment.

Hunters will “have to do their homework,” said Reedy, who lives in Baker City.

Hunting seasons won’t close

ODFW doesn’t close hunting seasons due to wildfires, including fire-prompted public access restrictions, Dennehy said.

However, in certain situations the agency will reinstate preference points for affected hunters and refund tag costs, she said.

“Only seasons where reasonable public access to the hunt area is substantially restricted for the entire hunt period will be considered a complete loss of a hunter’s opportunity, except as determined by the director,” according to ODFW’s website.

(More information about wildfires and hunting is available at myodfw.com/articles/hunting-and-fire-danger-oregon.)

If a fire burns most of a hunt area, and there’s no greenup before the season, ODFW would consider reinstating preference points and refunding hunters, Dennehy said.

That’s less likely to happen for rifle hunts in October and November, she said, since “we are likely to see some rain, dew and greenup so we see wildlife quickly return to the area” for those later hunts.

Dennehy said that if ODFW officials determine that hunters were deprived of a reasonable chance to hunt due to fire effects, that would happen after the season ended, and the agency would notify hunters by email. She urges hunters to ensure their current email is listed in their online licensing account in case they need to be notified.

“We know that there’s concerns and frustration with hunters” about the potential effects of wildfires, Dennehy said. “We’re monitoring the situation closely. We urge hunters to be patient and to consider being flexible with their plans.”

Dennehy said ODFW has reinstated preference points and refunded tag fees due to wildfires in the past.

She acknowledged, though, that the scale of this summer’s blazes in Eastern Oregon is unusual.

“This is nothing new, but the severity is something we haven’t seen in several years,” Dennehy said.

Big fires, big effects

ODFW biologists said the unprecedented scale of this summer’s wildfires makes it difficult to predict effects on animals and the hunters who pursue them.

“Past fires weren’t this big,” said Tucker Freeman, district wildlife biologist at the agency’s Ontario office. “Nothing like this in one year.”

Freeman’s focus is on the Cow Valley and Durkee Fires, which scorched more than 200,000 acres in the east part of the Beulah Unit.

The situation is complicated in part because over the past few decades, elk have gradually supplanted the mule deer population in that part of the unit, Freeman said.

Past fires, though much smaller than either the Cow Valley or Durkee blazes, burned significant amounts of bitterbrush, a favorite forage for mule deer, and invasive grasses, such as cheatgrass, have colonized much of the fire-scarred areas, he said. Elk, which tend to prefer grass rather than shrubs, have proliferated.

Freeman said the fire has forced both elk and deer to move out of severely burned areas, where there’s little if anything for those animals to eat.

How quickly they return to their usual range depends on when sufficient rain falls to nourish a new crop of grass, Freeman said.

Like Cherry, he doubts that greenup will happen until the rifle seasons start in October.

And that’s no guarantee, either.

Late summer and early fall tend to be pretty parched across Eastern Oregon.

In Vale, for instance, September is the third-driest month on average, and October the fourth-driest.

At the Baker City Airport, September is the second-driest month, and October ranks fourth.

Although there are no public access restrictions for the Cow Valley and Durkee fires, Freeman said it’s likely that at least for part of the fall, elk and deer will congregate on private land off limits to hunters.

Private land in Northeastern Oregon enrolled in ODFW’s Access & Habitat Program, which is usually open to hunters, is closed indefinitely.

Freeman also worries that elk, in particular, will find alfalfa fields and other irrigated land with lush vegetation, resulting in more complaints from farmers and ranchers about wildlife damage.

He said deer generally don’t move as far from fires as elk do, particularly if deer can find unburned areas, such as along streams, where forage is available.

If fall rains arrive early, though, Freeman said deer and elk probably will return to burned areas before the rifle seasons start.

“You’d be surprised by how quickly they come back if there’s some greenup,” he said.

Deer could return to scorched ground sooner than elk

Although deer and elk typically avoid scorched areas, biologists said deer tend to be less prone than elk to migrating long distances to find better forage.

In fact, preliminary evidence from a mule deer study in Harney County suggests that the animals, in some cases, might be so attached to their traditional summer range that they would risk starvation rather than leave it.

Lee Foster, district wildlife biologist at the ODFW office in Hines, said he tracked the movements of six to eight mule deer fitted with GPS collars as part of the ongoing study. Those deer had summer range in the area burned by the 53,000-acre Telephone Fire, part of the Malheur River Unit.

Rather than flee the fire, as Foster expected, he said the deer returned to where they had been as soon as the fire had passed, and they stayed even though the flames had burned all or most of the vegetation.

Based on the GPS collar data and the fire movement, Foster said it appeared that the deer basically ran through the “flaming front” of the fire to get back to their summer range.

He’s concerned that the deer, by staying in a place with limited forage, could starve, or at least go into winter without packing on the pounds of insulating fat they need to withstand winter weather.

Although the ongoing study will yield more definitive answers, Foster said the behavior of those several mule deer has prompted intriguing questions about the animals’ geographic stubbornness, at least in terms of their summer range.

Upland game birds

Freeman said the Cow Valley and Durkee fires burned habitat for the sage grouse, the chicken-size bird that has been a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

ODFW issues 150 hunting tags for sage grouse in the Beulah Unit for the Sept. 7-15 season.

Freeman said the fast-moving range fires probably killed some sage grouse.

In the longer term, he’s concerned about the damage the blazes did to the birds’ breeding grounds.

As the species’ name implies, sage grouse depend heavily on sagebrush, both for food and for protection against predators, Freeman said.

The birds have “extremely high fidelity” to the breeding grounds, known as “leks,” where the males gather each spring and inflate air sacs in their breasts and make a distinctive sound, part of a ritual intended to attract hens.

Freeman said the grouse tend to return to leks even after a fire has destroyed the sagebrush. That makes the birds much more vulnerable to predators — particularly the eggs and chicks, he said.

He expects the sage grouse population will decline over the next several years due to the fires.

Foster also anticipates drops in sage grouse populations in his district in Harney County.

As for chukars, a type of partridge, Primus said the Durkee and Badlands Complex fires in Baker County will change the distribution of the birds.

Biologists did their annual ground surveys in late July and early August, and they found good numbers of chukars in unburned areas, but few in scorched places.

Chukar numbers have been increasing the past few years, and Primus said he was expecting 2024 to be the best for chukar hunters in more than two decades.

That could still be the case for hunters who find places where the birds have moved after being displaced by the fires.

Chukars, like deer and elk, are likely to return to burned areas when grass starts growing, Primus said.

The chukar hunting season starts Oct. 12 and continues through Jan. 31.

“We know that there’s concerns and frustration with hunters” about the potential effects of wildfires. “We’re monitoring the situation closely. We urge hunters to be patient and to consider being flexible with their plans.”

— Michelle Dennehy, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has an online map that shows large wildfires overlaid on a map with boundaries of hunting units.

The map is at https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=c36b965bf0834b48a665f099b7a577a1

Here is a list of major wildfires this summer, and the units where they burned (as of Aug. 12)

• Lone Rock Fire: 137,000 acres — Fossil Unit

• Battle Mountain Complex: 183,000 acres — Heppner, Columbia Basin Units

• Courtrock Fire: 20,000 acres — Northside Unit

• Falls Fire: 150,000 acres — Silvies Unit

• Telephone Fire: 54,000 acres — Malheur River Unit

• Cow Valley Fire: 133,000 acres — Beulah Unit

• Durkee Fire: 294,000 acres — South Sumpter, Beulah units

• Badlands Complex: 54,000 acres — Lookout Mountain Unit

• Town Gulch Fire: 18,500 acres — Keating Unit

• Crazy Creek Fire: 82,000 acres — Ochoco Unit

Tag numbers for 2024 in units that have had significant acreage burned this summer:

Elk

• Beulah: 1,980

• Lookout Mt.: 716

• South Sumpter: 469

• Keating: 328

• Ukiah: 1,623

• Heppner: 1,408

• Silvies: 1,404

• Murderers Creek: 1,678

• Ochoco: 328

• Fossil: 1,447

Buck deer

• Beulah: 1,430

• Lookout Mt.: 247

• Keating: 336

• Silvies: 825

• Heppner: 2,623

• Ukiah: 1,320

• Sumpter: 825

• Ochoco: 2,145

• Fossil: 1,770

• Murderers Creek: 880