Gary Lewis Outdoorsman
Brought to you by award-winning writer and TV host Gary Lewis, Gary Lewis Outdoorsman (formerly Ballistic Chronicles) tells the stories of great hunts, provides insights into the firearms industry, discusses custom rifles, wildcat calibers and hunting for mule deer, elk, blacktail deer, whitetails, bear and coyotes. Other topics include hunting trucks, steelhead fishing, upland bird hunting and dog training.
Gary Lewis Outdoorsman
The 30-06 Springfield, Extreme Fire Weather & Gray Wolves with Greg Roberts
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This episode is packed. We start our chainsaws, drop a few trees and then Greg Roberts starts dropping knowledge. We talk weather, wolves, juniper removal, the 30-06, the 22-250, deer, bears and elk and whether or not IP28 has a chance at transforming the West.
Roberts has over 40 years of weather forecasting experience, specializing in severe weather events. A big game hunter and a consummate observer, Greg has spent many hours chasing storms. Greg was a charter member of, and the original chairman of the Jackson County Oregon Wolf Committee. Visit https://www.rogueweather.com/
If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/
This episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/
Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, Spring Pilot, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, TS&S Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.
Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
They're doing a lot of research right now, looking at the dynamic between wolves and cougars. And in portions of Montana and Wyoming, they're already seeing that a cougar to be able to get what it needs to live on may now need to kill three to four deer just to get that because wolves are going to draw um take away uh kills from the cats. They just they drive them off their kills. And now here's Gary Lewis.
SPEAKER_01Next on Fox. But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been intellectually, um, analytically.
SPEAKER_03You have found a podcast where we talk about big game hunting around the West and around the world. Today we're going to Oregon, Southern Oregon. We're going to talk to 30.6 Springfield, extreme fire weather, gray wolves, mountain lions, bear hunting, deer hunting, and cover a lot of topics in the next hour. If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the information superhighway, look for our books and our wildlife forage blends at GaryLewisOutdoors.com. This episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats of Philometh, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for Steelhead and Salmon Fishermen. Our TV sponsors include Nozzler, Warren Scope Mounts, Carson, Procure Bait Sense, Spring Pilot, the Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Dales and Service, Madras Ford, Bailey Steed, and Smarts. You can watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S., or you can go to YouTube and look up Gary Lewis, Outdoors, and Frontier Unlimited.
SPEAKER_02Let's get right into it with Greg Roberts. Alright, we're rolling and we got Greg Roberts with us today. Greg Roberts, welcome to the show, man.
SPEAKER_05Thanks, Gary. Hey, thrilled that you asked, and we had a perfect time frame.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How often does that happen? Okay, so Greg Roberts has over 40 years of weather forecasting experience specializing in severe weather events. What started his childhood wonder has blossomed into a life spent in passionate pursuit of learning about and understanding weather and the natural world around us. Greg has received training from a variety of sources, including the University of Oklahoma and the National Weather Service. Greg continues to volunteer as a skyworn weather observer for the National Weather Service. This has led to many hours out in the fields storm chasing and getting up close with the storms he loves. Greg also served as a wildland, a municipal firefighter and EMT for almost 20 years in Central and Southern Oregon. Greg was a charter member of and the original chairman of the Jackson County Oregon Wolf Committee. He is a former ski racer and raced throughout the Western U.S. and Canada, competing in slalom, giant slalom, a super giant slalom. Greg, thanks for coming on. What we're going to talk about today is fire weather, wolves hunting in the West, hunting deer close to my heart. Today is the day of the Oregon controlled hunt tag draw results, okay? And so Greg, did you, were you in on the drawing?
SPEAKER_05Not this year, and honestly, I haven't since 2000.
SPEAKER_03Because you live in a place where a lot of the hunting is just over the counter, and it's it's um southern Oregon. So why don't you talk about that a little bit? Tell people where you're from, why you like the where you live.
SPEAKER_05Well, uh, grew up down here in Medford. Uh my family moved here in 1964 when I was three months old. Uh, been here, you know, pretty much ever since. I did live in central Oregon for about 10 years, but Medford's been home. Uh, we're still blessed. We've got a tremendous amount of opportunity down here where it comes to hunting. And over-the-counter, I mean, basically it begins with the spring turkey season and it's going to go through the end of the year. There is some level of hunting season that seems to be going on. Um, and so the need to do the draw um isn't as strong. And the one draw I used to do down here was the cow elk hunt. And now, with what they've done with the ag permit, uh, turning it over into basically an over-the-counter hunt, it starts on August 1st and it goes until March 15th, the following year. But the draw the hang-up on that now is you have to have access to private property where elk are. But because of what they've done with it, that kind of removes me from wanting to put in for the limited permits, the draw situation. And then, quite honestly, east of the cascades now with the shape our mule deer herd is not in. Um, I don't have any real interest going east of the cascades and hunting mulies because quite honestly, mulies need all the brakes they can get. And what started when I was living in central Oregon in those devastating winters in the 1990s with the massive herd die-offs, then you lost so much habitat. People moving in Central Oregon, Bend, Redmond, Primeville areas, a lot of area that had been prime wintering ground is now houses, neighborhoods, and even shopping centers. So they've suffered that way. And then without any question, uh taking away essentially cougar hunting when they removed the ability to hunt with hounds. We got more cats on the landscape, more deer being killed. And yes, the wolves are a factor now, too. Um, so I just look at the mule deer situation and it just breaks my heart. I deeply fear for the future of mule deer, but at least I know one thing I can do as a hunter is I'm just not even going to do the limited entry for mule deer in Eastern Oregon. I'm perfectly happy down here where I'm at. And plus, down here, we have bench legs, which are hybrids of Mulee and Blacktail, and we have legit mule deer bucks on the west slope of the Cascades, especially up near the crest. I bump into them all the time. They're mule deer, those aren't hybrids. I know a mule deer when I see one, and we do have mule deer in eastern Jackson County on the west slope of the Cascade.
SPEAKER_03So that reminds me, I was there with my friend. We were hunting Jackson County and Josephine County. He killed a buck in Jackson County that year, and its ears were I mean, they they had to be 21 inches tip to tip, you know, and that was a fork and horn. And um, I just remember being astonished at that deer, and that was high up in the Cascades on the that western slope. Yep. And then then um we relocated, went down to into Josephine County, and then it was like the next day or the day after that I killed a buck. And you if you compared those two forked horn blacktails to each other, uh one was really had long mule deer ears for where it was killed.
SPEAKER_05Well, especially over in Josephine County, um in the Siskius, there's a natural passageway from the Cascades goes across to I-5, and then animals move west in the Siskius all the time. And so you get these deer over there in the Siskius, especially in the Applegate River drainage, and you will see what I call super forks. These things, the spread on them go way out past the years. Big height, good mess. Um, friend of mine shot a super fork uh season before last that I believe was 36 inches beam to beam. Wow. Uh, and then was about 24 tall. Oh, we're talking big, thick, massive, yes, big, yes, and it was a forkhead horn. And I started laughing, and by the way, this was a woman, and she shot it uh next to last day of the season in the Applegate, and she was shooting across the canyon. They estimated uh yardage on that shot was about 800, but she was equipped for it, she knew how to do the shot. And I said, Well, now you get to tell everybody when they ask you, did you get your buck go? Yeah, I got a fork and horn.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_05Got a fork and horn.
SPEAKER_06Yep, yep. But but but but okay.
SPEAKER_03Now, um fire weather. Let's um let's talk about that real quick. What's what does fire weather mean to you? And then we're gonna get back to some questions I have that kind of relate around that.
SPEAKER_05Okay, simply put, fire weather is the process of analyzing weather for how it's going to impact fire uh behavior or increase potential to create uh more rapid spread of fire. So I think everybody's familiar with what fire weather watches, red flag warnings. The watches mean conditions are possible that could contribute to rapid spread of fires. Warnings means it's gonna happen. And then when you're talking about thunderstorm with abundant lightning, then we're also talking about what kind of possibilities there are for fires to get going. And will we reach a situation where with dry lightning burst, will it overwhelm initial response capability, meaning far more likely to get big, large fires because you just can't jump on them all fast enough. So that's what fire weather comes down to by definition. And going back to the days when I was up in Deschutes County and part of Redmond Fire Department, it was part of the whole interagency coordinated response system that we all work together as a team. So you'd have Redmond Bend, Forest Service, State Forestry, BLM, everybody worked together. Everybody shared their resources to try and jump on uh fires as hard and as fast as we could. And that was also that was the Aubrey Hall fire experience up there uh definitely led to that because uh coming out of Aubrey Hall, there were a lot of lessons learned. And one of the first things that came up was it was really hard to integrate and coordinate with all the different agency groups because everybody's operating on different radio frequencies. Um, that we all hadn't really worked together as a team to try and build our teams, build our integration. All of that changed after Aubrey Hall and Central Oregon actually, uh, the way we built that and coordinated that, that became a model for the entire United States. And I was talking to one of the um type one incident commanders for Calfire when we had an incident up here, the Clamathon fire. When he found out what my background was, he goes, Hey, were you part of that video they did with Central Oregon about wildland interface coordinated response? I go, Yeah, I was involved with that. He goes, We're still using that video today as a model down here for Cal Fire. So, you know, Central Oregon, it um it's always been um kind of high risk and it's gotten higher risk now with all the people living out all over. And then you have uh what I call the um Woodsmen, Woods women, um sometimes by choice, sometimes by force. They're living out in the forest. And unfortunately, they now, especially in the Le Pine area, it seems, are a constant worry because they'll start fires, they'll create incidents and um those things get jumped on really fast.
SPEAKER_03Um and what happens is somebody'll be cooking meth in their trailer, and that trailer will just explode. Yep. And it all the trees around it will will torch off like lanterns, and then um you'll see when you drive through that area of the forest, you'll see how that fire was put out so quickly. Sometimes you you know it's I don't know if it's the fire retardant I'm seeing, but it's like all orange on that site.
SPEAKER_05And yeah, it the retardant has the die in it, so you can see where it went. And then the guys from the air, they can watch, okay, that drop went here. We need to extend on that drop, or we're gonna come across and tie across. So you get kind of this this look from the air, and you stitch the drops in together to pin the fire in.
SPEAKER_03The problem one of the things that's happened um here is that they they cut all the underbrush, yep, and they burn all that underbrush in their warming fires and their cooking fires. Yep. And then that underbrush is what the deer used to eat. And so the the mule deer used to eat the bitterbrush that was there, and the bitterbrush would restore itself every season, yep, and have these big long runners, and then the the deer come in, and because they're browsers, they they would just nibble a little here, a little there, and then never wear out that bitterbrush. It's a thing that those those individual stands of bitterbrush could be 40 years old and they're still producing a lot of food every spring. But when somebody goes in and cuts all that bitterbrush out and burns it in their cooking fire, and then they kill the deer and cook that deer on top of their cooking fire illegally, that's called poaching. Yep. Um, then that bitterbrush is gone. It takes a long time for bitterbrush stands to come back. Absolutely. It doesn't, it doesn't start up again overnight. It needs is a there's a process in how that stuff gets seeded, and it's um a lot of that underbrush that is so easily ignited is gone actually because they burned it up. And yep. Um anyway, that's part of the tragedy of of what's happened out here.
SPEAKER_05And then you got the other side of it, which is the lack of management of the land and the over uh reactive response to fire. And I've watched that landscape over there change dramatically from the Ponderosa pine pretty wide open, spacey, not a lot of overgrowth to now ridiculously overgrown. The Ponderosas are fighting to survive with all the jackpine, all the other types of smaller vegetation that move in, and there's no thinning. Now they're trying to bring controlled burning back in because when you look at history and you figure out this landscape's designed for burning. And in central Oregon, historically, 10-year intervals, low to moderate intensity fire would sweep through, wipe out everything except the bigger, more mature Ponderosa pines. So when you look at the historic pictures of what the Deschutes National Forest used to look like, Ochico National Forest used to look like, it looked like these wide open park areas with these big Ponderosas and very little scrub, uh, very little other things like that. And now we stopped managing the lands. We took fire out of it, and there are some of these areas, southern Deschutes County, uh, northern Klamath County. I get out there and I start wandering around in those areas, and it is just shocking to me how overgrown they are compared to what they should be like as healthy forests. And the other side of that is you get a year like this, and probably what we're looking for for the next three years with the El Nino conditions, with the drier conditions, with all that overgrowth, there's not going to be enough moisture to sustain it, so it'll start dying off. Then you get lightning into the picture. Lightning's gonna ignite it, the winds are gonna push it, and we've got high potential to see big, running, massive wildfires spread across Central Oregon and also all over Oregon coming over the next three years because it looks like this next El Nino is going to be very strong, and strong El Nino can last for three years. Well, my background as a fire manager, you always prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. So we got to prepare for the worst. Three years of serious El Nino conditions with not nearly enough water to sustain all the vegetation vegetation on the landscape, it's not gonna be pretty, you know, one way or the other. Man.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Well, that's why we're talking. Um, what I you know, I live on two and a half acres. It's a big black square piece of property, and the first thing that we did when I bought the property is we came in with a backhoe, cut in a driveway, and then my cousin and I took out 46 trees, and he cut that. My cousin cut that driveway, and him and I removed 46 trees in two and a half hours. That's that's what kind of a wizard he is with a backhoe. I mean, it was beautiful to watch. And then since after that, I continued to cut trees until we had cut 216 junipers off of my two and a half acres. 216 junipers. And I still have a hundred junipers on my property, but they're all away from the house now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you got defensible space on your house.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's called defensible space. And then as I look around at my neighbors, um, a couple of my neighbors have done the same thing. And then then I've got other neighbors who haven't done that. And when I did it, it took two years, and then the bitter brush that I had on the property already just started really responding because it had so much more sunlight, and then I I guess that it got to use more that got to use more water too. Right. Big runners, yeah. And then so that brought the deer in to eat, and then I have some sheep now, some hare sheep, and and so they come and they feed out across the property. But man, all you gotta do is is go out with a chainsaw, and chainsaws are real easy to come by, especially these electric chainsaws. Just put, you know, make sure you have enough bar oil in there and you don't run out of the bar oil, and you have a good battery, and then limb these things up. Go limb up your juniper trees, and then get those branches off the property, and then that goes a long way to protecting your own place. And if everybody protects their own place, then that keeps wildfires from going as fast.
SPEAKER_05What's interesting is I'm listening to what you're saying, your count of current trees are, and then knowing, okay, two and a half acres, you're still slightly overgrown for junipers for that acreage. You probably for two and a half acres, um, I would estimate you probably want to be closer to that uh 20 to 30 juniper total.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah, I would rather, and I just look around and I'm asking myself, which ones do I want to take out? Right. You know, and when and we we burn firewood in the winter and junipers, you go through junipers so quickly. Oh, yeah. It took me two years and I had burned all 216 of those trees in my fireplace.
SPEAKER_05But you know, that's a smell I miss because living in central Oregon, you smell the burning juniper. It has its own odor that I can be walking or driving, you know, bend Redmond, Brineville, and smell everybody burning their juniper. Yeah. But the other thing, of course, we had an abundance over there, still have the jack pines. And one of the funniest things I ever saw in my life, uh, my dad and I went out, we were in the Fall River area, and we had permit from Deschutes to, you know, cut up, I forget how many cords of firewood. So we're out there one day, we're cutting. Dad looks at this jackpine and he's got the tailgate of the truck down, and he goes, Watch how close I dropped this tree to the tailgate. Well, he missed, he hit the tailgate, kway, knocked that thing right off the back of the truck. I wanted to die laughing because I mean I'm like, you know, 14 years old. That's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I look at my dad and he just has that look on his face, and he's like, Don't you say a word? And we finally got the tailgate back on the truck. We get home. Dad's just as mad as he could be. I couldn't say a word. I couldn't laugh. I couldn't snicker. As soon as we got home, I told dad, I said, Hey, I gotta go to the bathroom. He's like, All right, go to the bathroom, then get back out here, help me unload. Instead, what I did was I ran right to my bedroom, slammed my face in my pillow, and just started screaming with laughter because that was the fun thing. When dad, the last two years of his life, when he's dying because of cancer, you know, we sat down, we had a lot of talks of what I called this was Joe's life. He finally brought that up and he said, I was so embarrassed. I go, Dad, I know you were. And my dad's part Indian, native. And native Indians, yeah, they just that maintained that pride at all times. But he finally crumbles. He goes, I was so embarrassed. I go, I know you were. And he said, I didn't want you laughing at me, even though you should. And I said, Well, Dad, remember when we got home and I said I had to go to the bathroom? Yeah. I went straight to my bedroom, slammed my face in the pillow, and just started laughing till I was crying. And he looked at me and he goes, probably would have done the same exact thing if that had been my dad. Um, but yeah, that, you know, you bring up, we're talking now about, you know, uh fires, uh, fireplaces, wood stoves heating in Central Oregon. I am never gonna forget that story about the day dad took the tailgate off the truck. Yeah. But it was in that time I learned how to be a Sawyer when I moved into and firefighting cruise. But we would have competitions all the time. Plant a Sawyer stake, drop the tree, drive the stake. My uncle was the champion, but I was the second one in the family at being able to pull that stunt off and drive that stake into the ground.
SPEAKER_03Wow. The last big tree that I cut was um, I was by myself and it it starts going down, and I was I'd getting pretty good at being able to place them where they're supposed to go. Um this one didn't go. Ooh, whoops. I threw the saw, I leaped, and I thought, wow, I'm so glad.
SPEAKER_05You can watch all kinds of YouTube videos of that kind of moment happening, and then you watch the tree go into the garage or into the house. Yeah, or on a vehicle. Yeah, I haven't seen those. You know, accidents, accidents happen, and it was kind of funny when I bumped up to Sawyer on the hand crew, everybody's like, Well, how did you learn to handle saws that well? And I go, When you grow up in a family, you depend on wood heat, you learn how to get good with a chainsaw. And then my uncle Dean was the best guy in the Rogue River National Forest with a saw, and he was an absolute magician. He could do things, make trees fall in such a way he'd nail it every single time. I never saw him make a mistake, yeah, but he just hammered in me all the time. Assess, assess, assess on your cut. Look at what's going on. Always watch the top of the tree, always look at its fall path, see what it could get hung up on, right? And then you just keep adjusting as you go. And I never forgot that. And um, of course, when you're out on fire crew, you're using that all the time. Because when you're taking the tree down, you got to keep watching for hazards, but you also got to be spatially aware of where your crew is and make sure you're not putting your crew at risk by dropping the tree or if it might hang up and something else, snap a top off, the infamous widow maker, you know, those type of things. Um, you're you're constantly watching for that right up until the point that gravity wins and the tree's coming down, and then you can't stop what it's going to do, regardless.
SPEAKER_03The one of the first funerals that I can remember going to was an uncle who died that way. So and um you know, everybody in our family worked in the timber industry to, you know, to one degree um up until my generation. Yeah. And so I I started running a pioneer chainsaw when I was 14. And I cut a lot of stuff with that thing by myself without any supervision. That was a heavy, heavy saw. Yeah. Okay, let's uh now we're gonna switch and talk about um your favorite calibers. When when you're hunting black tails or you're hunting elk, what's your rifle? What's your bullet?
SPEAKER_05Um, you know, I kind of got to the point where I really just have one big game rifle. And to me, especially in Oregon, with all the hunting opportunities, if you're gonna have just one rifle and you've got one caliber, um, my choice is still 30 out six. Um my favorite is my Remington 760 Game Master Pump. Um, depending on what I'm shooting at, if it's black tails, uh, pretty typically going to use about a 150 grain bullet. If it's bears or elk, though, uh, I'd shoot 220 grain soft points because I want all the knockdown power I can get. I don't want to have to go tracking after a bull, or certainly a bear, in heavy brush. When I hit them, I want them going down. And then our family, our philosophy was throw lead till dead. And um, there's been multiple bulls that I've killed. There's been multiple bears that I've killed. They were actually dead on the first shot, but adrenaline or whatever else wanted to get them moving again. And then you just keep pumping. But I'll tell you what, I shot a 380-pound bear in the Applegate one day. He was 40 yards broadside, that perfect bear death shot, boom, hit him. It literally knocked him 20 feet sideways. And at first I didn't see anything. So jacked the fresh shell up, grab my spent brass, drop it in the pocket, and I'm starting to walk down there. And all of a sudden, he comes busting out of the brush and running up the mountain, not at me, but running up the mountain, and I get a look at him, and then I crack off two more shots. The second one I thought hit home. I didn't hit him. I think I hit a street that it had that big heavy impact sound. He went up that mountain 350 yards before then the damage that I did on the first shot took full effect.
SPEAKER_03Um so he went uphill, hit, and running dead. He went uphill running dead. And so when we read the books, you know, like me, when I write the books, um, we we say that the the a hit animal will mostly just go downhill. And um that doesn't always work out.
SPEAKER_05I mean, why bearer? Uh he definitely was running uphill, and that's one of the few that I've seen. I've seen others do it, uh, but you're right. Generally they want to start running downhill. 100% of the time when you've missed, they go downhill because they want to use gravity and everything else they can to get away as fast as they can. But yeah, that boar, I don't know what made him turn and go uphill, but he was following this big old heavy brushy draw as he was running. And I think, you know, maybe he was thinking get up into that steeper slope, thicker stuff, tougher for me. You know, that might have been going through his brain. Bull that I have hit, they were dead. They just didn't know it yet. When they got up, they universally will want to turn and they all go downhill, and they're trying to get into the thickest, nastiest brush they can get into, without any doubt.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I I totally agree on the 30-0-6. I avoided it for years and years, and then one season I needed a dedicated bear gun, and it was easy to come by a 30-0-6. It was a new one, a Ruger. And that gun served me so well. I ended up killing more game than it with any other rifle that I'd had with that 30-0-6. And it turned out that the um 165-grain nozzler accubond or the 165-grain partition was the thing for me in that gun. And that gun is still operating today. My cousin has it, and he and he's killed almost all of his trophy animals with that gun, too.
SPEAKER_05My second favorite caliber, um, really not a big game caliber at all, but I love it. Um, for varmint hunting over in Central Oregon, everything from rock chucks to coyote to going out and hunting speed goats, 22250. I had a 22250 that I got to where I could hammer a nail at 800 yards with that thing. Um, and we go out, we go hunting coyotes on the grassland, we go hunting coyotes east to bend in the desert, and that thing. Um, the ability for that to reach out at range, know exactly what it was gonna do, shooting a 55 grain bullet. Oh my gosh. I was out there with my buddy one day, and we had this coyote hung up at 650 yards. And I know he'd been called before because he just sat down, he was looking right at us in the set, and he's barking and yapping, and he's just sitting there. And I remember telling my buddy Ken, I go, watch this. He thinks he's out of range. He thinks he's telling the whole world that we're here, and he's like, Neener, nearer, neener. I know you're here. You can't hit me. And he just kept sitting there and finally he gave me enough time to make the adjustments. I'm dialing in and I double check on the wind. And then I said, Ken, put that spotting scope on his neck and watch what happens. Ken goes, ready shot. He did a complete backflip, and Ken was watching it through the spotting scope, and he went, Holy beep! He goes, There was a red mist cloud. And I said, Yeah, I drilled him right in the neck. So then we stepped it off. That's how we figured 650 yards, and I center punched him right in the throat, right dead on where I was aiming. And I'm like, ha. But the thing about coyotes, when you hunt them, if you call them in and you miss, that's a dog that you very rarely will ever get another chance at. Because if you fool them once and let them live, they very typically will not respond to a call. And I suspect that one probably had fallen for a call at one point in its life. But he hung up. He clearly thought he was out of range, and nope, not on that 2250 zapped.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so one of the things that happens here in Oregon is we we get wildlife management by the ballot box. Oh, yeah. Okay, and so we our friends and neighbors rang the death knell for mini, mini mule deer and an elk because the the cougar, the mountain lion, was allowed to proliferate virtually unhunted, unchecked for a long time. It was it was a it was like 10 years before Oregon hunters kind of figured out what they needed to do to kill cougars, and the numbers really exploded during that time. And so our own friends and neighbors voted for that measure in 1994 and ruined it for um ruin, you know, ruined the chances of these poor little deer fawns making it to adulthood because they would get killed so easily by cougars, um, you know, not to mention the coyotes. And so now um we have suffered all Oregonians have lost the um the um wildlife that we could have enjoyed by watching them um because they're gone. They were killed and eaten by mountain lions, killed and eaten by coyotes because we're we're not doing a good job of controlling coyotes either right now. And the the um if if you look at a cougar and what it has to do to stay alive, it's gotta kill and eat probably a deer a week. And if it's bumping into wolves, it's probably gotta kill more than that because it'll kill a deer. Because and then the wolves will have to, well, the wolves will take the deer from the cougar, and the cougar's gotta go kill another one. And and probably the way it works is the cougar's gonna go kill several deer, and and then the when the wolves come in, then the cougar will retreat to one of the animals that it killed.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and that's one of the things we talked about um, you know, at Northwest Outdoor Riders that you you were part of, they're doing a lot of research right now, looking at the dynamic between wolves and cougars, and in portions of Montana and Wyoming, they're already seeing that a cougar to be able to get what it needs to live on, may now need to kill three to four deer just to get that because wolves are going to draw um take away uh kills from the cats. They just they drive them off their kills. Um, we also had documentation of a kill um down here that a bear made on one of our big ranches in Jackson County. The wolf showed up, drove the bear off of its kill. And this was a huge bear. I actually got to see game camera footage of this bear. This is probably a 400 to 500 pound bear, but it's no match for a pack of wolves that could be up to 22 of them. No bear can withstand the pressure from that wolf pack. So when you have that situation going on, that you've got big wolf packs in terms of numbers, and cats made a kill, they can drive the cat right off that kill very easily. Then if you've got a big wolf pack, uh deer, elk, that may not last very long, depending on the size of what it is. They'll immediately get on the trail of the cat, go find the next thing it's killed, and take it. So that kind of keeps that chain keeps going until eventually the wolves have had their fill, but then the cougar still has to keep killing and killing so it can finally sustain itself. So the end result is you wind up with cougars killing more deer and elk because the wolves are forcing them to kill more deer and elk. Everybody thinks the wolves are bloodthirsty killers. They're not. They're far more A-plus scavengers. They act in many ways just like the hyenas in Africa act. They're perfectly capable of making a kill themselves, but they'd rather eat something already dead or they'd rather drive the cat, our case mountain lion, Africa lions, off their kill. So, yeah, it's it's kind of odd to say that wolves, in terms of their behavior and what they're doing out there, are actually closer to hyenas in Africa, but they are. It's a lot of the exact same behavior, including how they're interacting with and driving other predators off their kills and then claiming them for themselves.
SPEAKER_03Including how they act around humans, where they have tests. Um hyenas will do the same thing. Come around humans, especially young hyenas will and not with the wild.
SPEAKER_08I don't play with those. I promise you. I don't even do roller coasters. I'm good.
SPEAKER_03And then see how the humans react to them. Yeah. And then test again, test again. And that's what the wolves are doing all the time, because they they um are trying to figure out okay, how where do we fit in this hierarchy? And and is this is this thing on two legs a threat to me, or or is it something that's gonna be help me get what I want?
SPEAKER_05And the scary part of that side of it is here in Oregon, the wolves are figuring out Northern California. I've seen it documented on video. They've got nothing to fear from us. We're not gonna do anything to them. So they get more brazen and more hostile, basically, in their behavior pattern towards us because they know they're not gonna do anything. That lesson's been made. We're reaching a crisis point here in Jackson County, up near Butte Falls. That Grouse Ridge pack of wolves, they've got it figured out. And they're getting increasingly um more uh I want not gonna say aggressive, but approachable at humans without showing any fear at all. Uh, the dominant male of that pack, uh, there's two people I know very well that are having being forced to exist with this animal. They're telling me, and I believe them, they've never been afraid of another animal in the woods in their life, but that wolf makes them fear for their lives. They said he is so big, and he just stares at you in such a way that you know he's not afraid of you at all. In fact, they feel like he's watching them sizing them up almost like he's looking for an opportunity.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. All right. So the next thing that is coming down the pike at us um in terms of wildlife management is the big one. And it's called IP28, and it's an initiative petition, and that's what we have. We have this way that the citizens can get more involved in um government, and it's this initiative petition process. If you get enough signatures on the ballot, then you can vote on anything. And so what this one is called is called the Peace Act. And um, almost everybody I know, we all want peace. We want to live in peace. We we this is the thing that we we know serves us and our neighbors the best is to live in peace. But this IP28 is misnamed because it's not about peace, it's about taking away all of your choices. You um the the thing that keeps being thrown out is this is an anti-hunting, anti-fishing bill. But it's so much more than that because it's it's anti-farming, it's anti-ranching, it's anti-animal husbandry. If you go to your favorite restaurant, your favorite steakhouse, and they buy beef from Oregon herds, then Oregon ranches, then um that won't be allowed anymore if this thing was allowed to pass. Because You won't be able to raise an animal, any animal, not even a chicken, and then butcher it for your own use. That would be against the new law. Now, the this thing that is called the Peace Act is so ludicrous that people all around us don't know that it's coming. And they don't know that it's on the ballot, that it has, or that it will be on the ballot, that it that it has got enough signatures. Why does something like this get so many signatures? It's because we allow for groups to pay signature gatherers, and all they gotta do is go onto a college campus and um and then have a bunch of girls in mini skirts with clipboards. And what young man's not gonna want to talk to a girl in a miniskirt when she's got a clipboard, and and vice versa. And would you like to sign the Peace Act? Well, yeah, I'm all about peace, honey. And uh, but but that's not what it's about. It's about banning hunting, fishing, ranching, right, farming, animal husbandry. If you have a bunch of chickens, you would need to trade them out for like a mushroom farm. And which brings up the guy who is behind this thing, whose bright idea this was, he was on an ayahuasca trip. You know what ayahuasca is? Okay, it's a hallucinogenic. Yep. And so you you go and you do ayahuasca with a um guided shaman, you know, a shaman who leads the um experience. And then if it's all working correctly, then you have an experience with a spirit guide who comes to you from the spirit world. And in this case, the spirit guide told him, this is how you should live your life. And instead of saying, oh, that applies to my life, I'm gonna live that way, which is perfectly a reasonable thing to do. You know, he's decided, well, if it's good enough for me, then it's good enough for everybody in Oregon. And so then he rolled this out, and he rolled it out with um the support of some um ministers, some um, you know, a group of ministers that that he got for for backing. And this goes back. Um, I I know that we've been personally um working against this kind of thing, this thing uh specifically, though, for five years in the Oregon Hunters Association. Yeah. And so then people will say, Well, I don't know, uh, I've just heard about this, and what are we doing about it? What is, what are these big outdoor companies doing about it? What are hunters doing about it? And my question is, what are you doing about it? If you're not an Oregon Hunters Association member, if you're not an OHA member, you're not helping. Um and it's the Oregon Hunters Association that is making a difference. The um the large and well, medium-sized and small manufacturing firms that that make a living in Oregon and and in the in the West, they are increasingly joining with Oregon Hunters Association. The National Shooting Sports Um Foundation is also um in close step with OHA on on this issue. So that's how a person can help in this regard. And then also when when somebody says, um, have you heard about IP28? You know, that you need to bring up this thing about the Peace Act and how our legislature, our uh Secretary of State allowed this misinformation to be bandied about. You know, they deserve some um, you know, criticism in this for for allowing misinformation to be perpetuated.
SPEAKER_05You you covered a lot about IP28 and what it does. There was one thing you left out, though, that hits home with non-hunters. IP28 would stop people from removing rats and mice from their homes. Right. The hontavirus thing, just remind people, hantavirus is spread by rats and mice and their feces. It stops you from killing rats and mice in your house. So, regardless of who you are in Oregon, even if you're not a hunter, even if you're not a rancher, IP-28 is going to have a devastating consequence in some way, somehow, on every single person in Oregon, from downtown Portland to the most remote outposts out there in Harney County, every single human in Oregon would be impacted negatively by IP-28.
SPEAKER_03You in Portland, you are never more than seven feet away from a rat. Yep.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Whether that is an import like a Norway rat, or whether it's a true native rat like our pack rats or our jumping uh rats. Or a politician. Yeah, well, then there's that rat.
SPEAKER_03Or a clipboard signature gatherer.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Um, so what's happened out there is you you nailed it on the head by how they were gathering the signatures. They were getting people signing this petition initiative who had no clue what it actually was. They kept calling it the Peace Act and saying it will bring peace to all creatures, and everybody gets spun up in, oh, well, that sounds dreamy. They didn't get into the details of what actually happens. Now, when you get into the details with people, likely voters, this thing is going to fail even in Portland when people truly understand what it does. And take heart looking at the results of what they tried to do with the gas tax here in Oregon, and that went down 84% to 16% on the final count, meaning it even failed in Portland. It even failed in Salem and Eugene. IP28 is gonna do the same thing. The same thing will happen if people get out and they make the point I just made. Every single person in Oregon would have negative impact from this and really hammer on the fact that you won't be able to get rid of rats and mice out of your home anymore. And, you know, hontavirus, um plague, bubonic plague. I can't even imagine all the stuff that's here in our rodent population that humans may have to deal with.
SPEAKER_03I can't even imagine uh what somebody in um Arkansas might think listening to this podcast. You know, you Oregonians are so stupid, and you know, and I um can't help but agree.
SPEAKER_05Well, yeah, and you know, I've I've said multiple times, the more I'm taking a look at humanity right now, the more I understand why Bigfoot throws rocks at us. Self-preservation. Oh, by the way, see on the wall above me? Yes. That is a hand painted watercolor from a friend of ours who knows how much I'm into Bigfoot.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's a Bigfoot that she did for me, kind of based on some of my own experience and some other things I showed her other artists had done, but Kay created that for me. So yeah, I got sitting right over my head. What's her name? Kay Meyer. Kay Meyer. She is a wonderful her animal watercolors. Um, my wife and I are her largest single collector of her wildlife watercolor art. Some of it's African wildlife. Of course, I got my Bigfoot one. Um, I got a wolf one that I just got from her. Um, she does incredible wildlife art. So, Kay Meyer, look her up online. There's a number of galleries who carry her work. She has her own website. Uh, she's truly amazing, and we're lucky to be able to call her a personal friend. Um, and so yeah, she did that Bigfoot watercolor just for me as a gift.
SPEAKER_03Now, um, your website, just before we get back to what we're talking about, rogueweather.com, R-O-G-U-E-weather.com, rogueweather.com. Uh, and then your some of your sponsors are listed on there. And um, I I love what you do because it shows that a person with imagination can live their best life.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you know, without any question. I'm living it. My dream when I was a little kid, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I kind of went back and forth between three things, three things firefighter, weatherman, sports announcer. Certainly got to do the firefighter EMT part of it. Currently doing the weatherman thing, and have been doing it since literally I was 16 years old, and the sports announcer thing uh down here, Medford area. Uh, we got the Medford Rogues Summer Collegiate team. You got Bendelks up there, same thing down here for us, the Rogues. Been doing that for six years now. North Medford High School, boys varsity sports, football, basketball, baseball, do girls' basketball for them. Rogue Valley Adventist uh school, I do their volleyball play-by-play on their webcast, and I do play by play for basketball for boys and girls. So I'm living my best life. You know, I truly feel sorry for people that are doing the J-O-B thing that they dread Mondays and live for Fridays. I used to be that person. Not anymore. I mean, every day I wake up excited because I get to do the things I've always dreamed of doing, and we make enough to keep the roof on over our head and keep ourselves fed. Uh, not getting rich. But yeah, it's it's a really fun way to go through life, living it this way and not being chained to the JLB Monday through Friday cycle building somebody else's dream. This is awesome. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so now we're gonna do something we've never done before on the podcast. Oh. And I am gonna go to my Oregon controlled hunt um results and see if I drew any tags. So I'm gonna click here on the login, and now I pull up uh the page and go down here to controlled hunt wins. Back um not too long ago, they used to mail out little postcards that told you if you drew tags. And let's see.
SPEAKER_05I remember those days though, hovering by the mailbox, see what you got drawn for. Um, because yeah, our family used to uh elk hunt northeastern Oregon in the 70s. I remember that. Hmm.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well, let's see. I'm just let's see, view and print, controlled hunts, controlled hunt wins, chmm. It looks like I didn't draw anything. Whoa. Which is pretty much what I expected. And unless I'm doing something wrong here, you know, and I've been doing this for a long time, you'd think I would know how to do it. So looks like I didn't draw anything. I would say I didn't. Okay. And so now we're gonna go to my friend's results that he sent to me and see what he drew just for interest's sake. Okay, we're gonna click on his name as Larry, and we're clicking on his thing here, and looks like he maybe was successful. Let's hit say here for him. My results today. So bighorn sheep, not selected. Okay, big surprise. Uh, premium prong horn. Larry put in for premium pronghorn, not selected. Premium elk, not selected. So he's spending money, he's keeping the ODFW coffers full. Um, now, oh, he there he is in the Palina unit, Palina East Fort Rock, number one, selected for elk. Okay, so he drew that. Pronghorn antelope. So, okay, now he's accrued 13 antelope points. He's accrued two buck deer points. Let's see what he has to say about this. He says, the unit is near my home, and as a pioneer license holder, it's an area my two hunting buddies are knowledgeable and excited about. There is only one major drawback. The local hunters scout out and harvest their chosen bull elk on opening day at the irrigation sprinkler pivots. Okay, that makes sense. This does not bother us any longer, he says. Sometimes they will push a herd north for us. We are all volunteer. And I'm gonna bleep that out. We are all volunteer. Bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep. Of course, blip bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. I've given a little bit too much information, maybe. Oh, and also watch the trail camera images that last year a Tom Cougar visited every Saturday night for a week. He's just sniffing the air for his next meal. Okay, so he's scouting a little bit, but what I know is that um they will drive around and then stop at uh their favorite restaurant in the area, and it's all just a big, just a big party. So good for him. He he's getting what he wants out of his hunting experience. And that's what I think we should all try to do is get what we want out of the hunt experience. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um what I have seen online today from friends and then just complete strangers in the hunting Oregon groups. It seems like a lot of people did not get their top preference draw. They got like their second or third choice because I'm seeing a ton of people going, hey, I drew this and I really don't know a whole lot about it, which tells me what they did on their application process. So uh it just seems like this year, more than most, or maybe I just it's happening because it's popping on Facebook for me. People drew for hunts and units they didn't really know a whole lot about. But they're trying to get something anything, and they got something anything.
SPEAKER_03But this year, ODFW rolled out the new unit names, the new game management unit names for the the deer. And so people they were mostly flying blind. Yeah, they weren't looking at maps. ODFW had a terrible map online, they did, and so um, I mean, it was like they the map was so bad, and I worked in that field, you know. I mapped all of Mount Bachelor myself, so I know about maps and layers. They could have done a much better job than they did laying that out. But I mean, there when we do when we work on things in life, we don't always get everything right anyway, and I can't expect them to get everything right, but um it people were flying blind, and um so they were just picking a a spot and figuring that they could go learn it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, you know, it's something anything. Yeah, okay, well, this is what I'm hoping to get, and okay, this is like second, third choice. Okay, fine. And then they're getting the something anything, and that's what I like I said, that's what I seem to be seeing this year more than I've seen before. But then you're right, with them redoing the maps and how they've gone about this, that might also be feeding some of that as well. Um that's it, I think that's another reason why, especially now with everything costing the way that it does, I would be extremely reluctant on putting in on controlled hunts because I don't want to be in that situation of drawing something where I'm walking in blind. I don't know anything about it. I don't know the makeup of the unit. I don't know uh where the animal distribution really is. I don't know a thing about it. And honestly, right now, if you found out today you drew a unit that you've never set foot in, and you drive over there this weekend and you start throwing game cams up, you're still going in blind, in my opinion. Yeah, and there's nothing that replaces intimate knowledge of where you're hunting and how you understand how the animals move through it. So, case in point for me, last year in the Western Deer Rifle season, saw 202 deer total, 16 bucks. Every guy who hunted with me filled his tag. We won't talk about me, but I adapt constantly. I know this unit and these areas like the back of my hand, and people don't adapt. And now they're complaining saying, well, the wolves have killed off all the deer and elk. No, they haven't. The deer and elk adjusted. The elk flat left, the deer figure out what the wolves want to do, and then they go to the areas that the wolves don't want to be at, and that's where they're hanging out. That's why I saw 202 deer last year during the course of the Western Deer Rifle season. And oh, by the way, only hunted 15 days of the Western Deer Rifle season and saw 202 deer in 15 days of hunting. That tells you knowledge of the landscape, knowing exactly what the animals are doing, you can't replace that. And if you're gonna do the controlled hunts out east, you got to start doing your homework now for next year. So you do know where you're going. So you do know what's going on before you even put in for these units, because it's kind of suicide if you don't. The old days of just being able to draw a unit, especially Eastern Oregon, then going out and glassing for your bucks across the sage, that's getting to be a tougher and tougher thing to do for a variety of reasons. You've got to put in the homework and you've got to put in the time. And if you live in Portland, Salem, Medford, and you're trying to go hunt in northeastern Oregon, you mean to tell me you're really gonna be able to spend enough time in that unit to truly get to know it and understand it? You won't. And that's another reason why I'm perfectly content to hunt here. Yeah, because I do know every square inch of Jackson County. I know exactly where I've got to be at the time of year, depending on what I'm hunting, I know right where to go to find what I'm looking for. Okay, now be in the area. Elk now here, the wolves have totally changed it. The agriculture tag that allows you to start hunting on August 1st and go to March 15th the following year. If you're a serious elk hunter in Jackson County, that's the tag you want to get. Not high cascade rifle tag, because the elk are all down in here with us and away from the wolves. You just need to figure out the property owners who will give you access to their property that you can then go hunt the elk. But when you get that, egg tag holders, you know what their success rate was down here last year? 14%. You know what the high cascade rifle tag success rate was in Jacksonville? I can shoot, I can take a stab. Well, if you say 2%, you actually shot high. I was gonna I was gonna say 3%.
SPEAKER_03You were high. It was just under 2%. That's so bad. It's so bad.
SPEAKER_06Okay, now now we're gonna go to the phone lines. We were gonna we were sitting down to do a puzzle. And the phone rang and it was Joe Biden.
SPEAKER_04And I promise you, as I told my wife, we live in an area that's wooded and somewhat secluded. So, Jill, if there's ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out, put that double barrel shotgun, and he fired two blasts outside the house. I promise you, who's ever coming in is not gonna buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.
SPEAKER_06And you got that little smirk on your face. He's like you're so clever.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Um, well, I'm used to all of a sudden hearing, okay, now we're gonna go to the phone lights. Oh, okay, sure. Group participation, bring them on. That actually, by the way, is more common when I'm doing Bigfoot podcasts than all of a sudden questions are coming. So it's like, okay.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well, actually, I do have a question, and um this this just came in to me um about two hours ago while I was at lunch. I read this. It says, Life member OHA here, saw your article about juniper removal. I have 1,400 acres close to Service Creek, and I have lots of juniper on the land with lots of younger juniper as well. It's way too big of a job for me to do by myself. So I was wondering if you know anything about any potential government assistance with money for juniper juniper removal or if the government would do it. Okay. He goes on to say, I'm really interested in getting the juniper under control. The actual creek runs through my property and doesn't have much water in it during summer and fall. Supposedly it's a fish stream, but I don't see how, with it being only a trickle for a good part of the year. I'm wondering if removing a bunch of the juniper might help the stream and also help fish. And I say yes, yes to that because I've seen it work, where you take out the juniper trees and then the water begins to fill the ditches and it fills the little, the little um ponds and stuff that that hadn't been filled before. And he says, I'd like to pursue and just don't have any idea where to start. Thought maybe you'd have some idea given your standing in the outdoor community. Okay. Um, what do you think? What do you how would you answer that, Greg?
SPEAKER_05Um the first thing I would do is, well, since it's Service Creek, contact Oregon Department of Uh Forestry or BLM, uh coordinate with them about getting resource work done, fire crew training done, because they do like to get live fire training in for their crews, um, controlled burns, especially east of the cascades, burning out the grasses, the shrubbery, younger junipers definitely is resource enhancement. And then I'd work with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife about improving the stream bed legally with placement of things like boulders, uh, cut down junipers, create those deeper pools that really benefit the fish, provide shade. Um, there's things you can do, and ODFW, the fisheries managers for sure, do work with private property owners to help them on enhancement for streams for better survivability for fish. That's one of the few bright spots, actually, ODFW has is on that fishery side doing that, working with private landowners.
SPEAKER_03Okay. All right. I like it. I like it. Now, um, I just got a text message from a guy that I know here, and he drew the late Deschutes bow tag. That's good. He drew Elk Murderer's Creek Archery, and so that looks good. Mm-hmm. So he uh archery season. Okay, very cool.
SPEAKER_05So all his draws archery. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. Archery, archery tends to be much better than odds of drawing, yeah, without any question in terms of success.
SPEAKER_03Um, it depends on it. That depends on a few things, but yeah.
SPEAKER_05Now, the late Deschutes, what I know because of the wolf activity moving in in Deschutes County and especially in the Cascades and southern Deschutes County into northern Klamath County, um there is a lot of movement now on the elk that we didn't used to see before because of the pressure from the wolf packs that are there now. That's exactly what's happening around here. Yep. Yeah, and the elk, and I've watched this on Facebook post from Sun River Police, elk have flat moved into Sun River like they're now the official pet animal of Sun River because they're escaping the wolves.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So if you can hunt what I would say those fringe areas around Sun River, where you get access to private property in the Fall River area, you probably got a better chance on those later archery tags because the elk are going to gravitate where people are hoping it repels the wolves. And we've seen that happen here in Jackson County as well. But that'd be the first thing I'd be looking for. But if you're not doing that and you're gonna try and hunt the Deschutes National Forest, um, you've got to be scout, scout, scout right up until the night before you're gonna hunt because you got to figure out exactly where the wolf where the elk are trying to escape the wolves. Because where you have a herd of elk today, they may be 40 miles away two days from now. So you can't go out and scout the week before you're gonna hunt and think, okay, I got it dialed in. You don't. You've got to scout right up until the night before. And you're gonna have to probably cover some territory to get it all figured out as to where the elk have gone. Because elk, when they're pressured, moving 40 miles in a 24 to 48 hour time period, no problem. They do that pretty routinely.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's right. Uh, so place I have access to in southern Oregon, not too far from you, is 900 acres. And we can pretty much count on that there will be elk on the property one day out of every eight or nine days. And they they will probably be on the property for five to six hours, and then then they've rotated through. And would I want to hunt elk under those conditions? Not if that's the only piece of property I have access to, because if because the season is probably five days long, yep, and and the chances of there being an elk on the property in that five-day period very slim. Yep.
SPEAKER_05So you know, the FMW was really interested at all in encouraging hunters to stay with it, keep the hunter revenue coming in. The Cascade Rifle Elk season should be two weeks because the elk move more frequently than they ever did because of the presence of the wolves. Um, the one big thing I learned at a fairly early age was to always look at the browse patterns on the brush from the elk. And if it was fresh and they weren't right there, they're not going to be back there for probably another week. Meaning, if you're hunting it and you're in the cascade rifle elk season, they're not going to be there again in the cascade rifle elk season. They move on this pattern and it takes them about five to seven days to work their whole cycle through. And then now, if wolves show up, it could keep it in the even longer stretch before they're going to return. So if you go out on the days ahead of the cascade rifle elk season, and the area you're hunting, and all you're seeing is old grouse marks and old elk tracks and old elk poop, guess what? You are probably not going to see an elk in the cascade rifle elk season because of how they move on their patterns now. And I experienced that this year, four days after the conclusion of the Cascade Rifle Elk season, where we weren't turning up any fresh sign, there's elk standing right there. Two-week uh season, we're probably tagging out. The season as it currently sits, basically five days, you got no prayer. Yeah. That's more of a management issue with ODF and W than it is anything else. That's why I'm saying they need to kick Cascade Rifle Elk to a two-week season, not a one-week sea. Okay, I like it.
SPEAKER_03I mean, the the elk, the elk are there. Um, a few more people could be successful. Yeah, and then um, yeah. Okay. Well, Greg, Greg, uh, I think we covered a lot of ground today, and I appreciate you coming on the show, man. How can we take?
SPEAKER_05So you would you say you mount try that again. You mapped Mount Bachelor, and I worked at Bachelor for 10 seasons. There isn't any part of that mountain I don't know, which, oh, by the way, with the High Cascade rifled deer season, Bachelor was in it. I exploited that knowledge of that mountain and filled High Cascade rifle buck tags up there. Um, but yeah, I got to know every single square inch of that mountain um and the mapping uh part of it, both the USGS and the Forest Service is just it's amazing. It really is, because that mountain, you can get the maps that show you everything right down to the little steam fumaroles on the west side of the mountain. It shows you everything that's there. Um, now I've married that with the Onex hunt maps, and they've got it accurately mapped as far as where the water sources on Bachelor are, including the ponds in front of Sunrise and over at West Village, and especially the West Village to support the snowmaking equipment because they're deer magnets. That was part of the trick of hunting at Bachelor, um, knowing the deer were going to move out of that heavy timber between uh, well, rainbow back in the day, but you got Cloud Chaser over there now. But there's those heavy, thick timber pockets. The deer would go bed up in that, and then at night they'd come out to feed in the ski runs and get water from the ponds there in front of sunrise. And I just set my ambush point up basically at the bottom of rainbow chair and wait. And it was so funny, there was a drop time four-point buck. He wasn't Buck Norris, but he was a beautiful buck, and I was watching him all through the summer. And so I get to my ambush point, and right at dusk, I look up and I see this big, beautiful four-point walking across, and I'm going, there's my drop time. Dropped. Walk up there and was shocked. It was a big monster four that I hadn't laid eyeballs on at all. I was expecting to see the drop time. He didn't have a drop time. And I called my buddy to come help me pack him out. My buddy thought, oh, you got your drop time. And I go, no, but you got to see this buck. And so that was easily the biggest happy surprise of my hunting life to this point, was whacking that big mossy four-point up there that I had no idea was there until he walked right out and gave me an opportunity to get the shot, and I didn't miss. Thank goodness. But I just seriously thought I knew what bucket was when I pulled the trigger. As far as I know, big drop tying. And his drop, I'm gonna try and get it in the screen. He had a drop on him about like that, off of his right beam. Yeah, and like I said, Buck Norris, no, but still an absolute beautiful buck. And I never heard of anybody getting him. So he probably died of natural causes out there, bachelor clear back in the late 80s, early 90s.
SPEAKER_03Okay, now uh, did you ever see one, a black one? Did you ever see a black deer up there? I never did.
SPEAKER_05I heard stories about it. Um, I've also heard stories. Um, when you go out um lava lakes area, there's a trail system out there just to the west of the lava lakes. People reported seeing a black bull elk out there. And I just saw a video posted on one of the hunter groups of a blonde phase bull from last fall pushing cows around in this canyon in eastern Oregon. The guy's going, you think this is an albino? And I took one look and go, that's a blonde phase. That's not an albino, but it's still rare and it's really cool to see. But it was a blonde phase. But you get melanistic or black deer and elk. So they happen. I just haven't been able to put eyeballs on one. I have seen a black coyote, though. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03One of the bows in the grasslands up by Madras. And then um, I saw a white coyote up there in the same place that you're talking about. Yep. Okay, well, um, we've given a whole lot of unique uh Oregon detail. Um, if a person is coming in from out of state before I p28 passes and they want to get one last hunt in.
SPEAKER_05I, you know what? I'm gonna hold good faith that common sense and people will really spread the word about IP28 does. And all you really have to do, hit the rodent control issue. It removes the ability to kill rats and mice in your house. Yeah. Again, that's gonna impact everybody. Everybody.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you like honta virus?
SPEAKER_05Well, welcome to your dream. Honta bubonic plague. Yeah, just all you got to say is hey, you want Honta? You want bubonic plague? Vote for IP28. Here it goes.
SPEAKER_03All right, Greg Roberts, rogueather.com. Thanks so much. It's good hanging out with you here.
SPEAKER_05Oh, anytime, and loved uh love getting the chance to meet you at the conference over in Coos Bay. And anytime you want to do a chat, hey, I'm game for that. And maybe we even get around one day to talk about those guys. Oh, yeah. Because Central Oregon has a history and a half. I wish I only knew then when I was living there what I know now. I would have been camped out at Todd Lake and up in the Three Sisters wilderness constantly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you'd have got you'd have got abducted, you'd have got sucked into a portal, and we never would have met each other.
SPEAKER_05Well, I'll tell you what, if that part is true, based on two things, two encounters that happened to me down here, um, we wouldn't be talking right now. Uh, I can definitely tell people they're not overtly hostile to humans and they don't go looking to kidnap just anybody. Because, well, I'll get to the point with one of them. I had the dominant male of the Bigfoot family group I've been following around since 2011 stand behind me so close, I could listen to him breathing in and out. So if they're dangerous to us at all times, if they're gonna kidnap everybody at all times, you and I aren't talking right now, and I have regular contact with them. So much so they know me by the sound of my vehicle, they know the sound of my voice, and they react to it. I've proven that with other people being present. Okay, brother. All righty.
SPEAKER_03We'll do that one, we'll do that one sometime.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, um, it's pretty fascinating because everybody, it's kind of funny how much people are attuned to Bigfoot in all kinds of ways, whether they want to have fun with it or whether they're gonna be serious about it. And then you've got the hunters out there. I guarantee you there are more hunters who've had encounters that will ever talk about it. No doubt. No doubt. All right, man.
SPEAKER_03Okay, guys, that's it. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you're looking for something for Father's Day, it's Bob Nozzler, Born Ballistic. You can find this book on Amazon. You can find it at nozzler.com, you can find it at GaryLewisOutdoors.com. We've got a lot of good stuff at the website, GaryLewisOutdoors.com. You can find the fishing books, you can check out the wildlife forage plans and click on merchandise and get yourself a t-shirt. So that's a good way to support the show. Bob Nozzler Born Ballistic. That's my Father's Day pick. It's a hardback book. If you order it from me, I'll sign it for ya. Just send me an email. You can send me an email anytime at Gary LewisOutdoors at gmail.com. We'll see you on the trail. And now a word from our sponsor.
SPEAKER_04Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.
SPEAKER_00You know, Alan Shepard, I told you about this, did the same exact flight. And he became the first American in space. And six women just did the same flight that yeah. I just want to keep hugging you.
SPEAKER_06It's really cool. Yeah, and I uh