Ground Zero: Washington and Oregon's Record Bucks

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Check out this video to learn how to manage your small track of land to bag your trophy buck.

 

Public Lands DIY: Douglas and Jackson counties, Oregon

 

In the last five years, Oregon hunters have registered 14 bucks in the Boone & Crockett Club records. Five of the top six were tagged in either Jackson or Douglas counties in southwest Oregon, where two game-management units stand out.

The Dixon Unit/GMU 22, carrying 77 percent of its space as public hunting land, offers good access for tagging blacktails. The city of Roseburg marks the north end of its western boundary, while it runs up to the crest of the Cascades on the east. Large chunks of national forest land offer access in the portion carrying the Umpqua river watershed.

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The city of Central Point marks the southeast corner of the Evans Creek Unit/GMU 29, which shares a boundary with the Dixon Unit; 43 percent of its land stands open to public hunting access. Both Douglas and Jackson counties are contained in the Evans Creek Unit, carrying classic oak savannah uplands and high timbered ridges.

Before the Endangered Species Act, the sound of chainsaws in western Oregon was common, and when the trees came down, shrubbery sprouted up. And that’s where the deer could be found. Post-ESA, logging is curtailed, and wild fire represents the best landscape-levelling, habitat improvement process for black-tailed deer and elk in the Cascades.

“Get online and take a look at how many lightning strikes are recorded in the Cascades, and you will see how badly the Cascades want to burn,” observes district wildlife biologist Tod Lum of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office in Roseburg. As a hunter and biologist he recognizes the relationship between open landscapes and stable-to-increasing black-tailed deer populations. “Historically there was fire on the landscape all the time,” Lum adds, which translated to more deer in the days before rapid fire suppression.

Lum’s advice for the savvy hunter today is to scout online before going to the woods.

“Go on Google Earth and look at the burns, not this year’s burns,” he points out, “but the burns that happened three years ago and where the forest is starting to fill in.”

To scout this season’s wildfires, click up the EcoWest interactive map — avis.ecowest.org/interactive/wildfires.php — then zoom in on either Oregon or Washington. This is where you can view the land where fires burned four years ago across the Cascades and the Coast Range. Slide the toolbar back to 2015, then click on a fire in OR or WA in the Fires List and look for wildfire incidents in your hunt area. Now, click on a fire and select the “Zoom in to fire” box. This will provide a burn footprint. An animation shows where the fire started and how it spread. Do this for each of the last five years throughout your hunt area.

Another way to find habitat improvements in deer country is to locate thinnings.

“The BLM has done some pretty amazing thins,” Lum reveals. “The canopy opens up and the sunlight is hitting the ground, which equates to ‘groceries.’”

To find the latest information on thinnings, contact the Forest Service and the nearest BLM office.

All of this is high-tech scouting, and it can put a hunter way ahead in the game of trophy deer hunting by focusing in on the places deer want to be before the first step is taken afield.