Old School Wildlife Biology with Vic Coggins

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Vic Coggins started working as a wildlife biologist in the 60's and during his time gathered as much history as he could. He wrote a hell of a book about the history of wildlife and some of his stories during his five decades as a biologist. Listen in to hear stories of doing game surveys on foot and horseback, the history of mule deer, bighorn sheep introduction, whitetail and more. Great episode with a knowledgeable man.

Vic Coggins' Book

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:07):
These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert
advice from folks with callousedhands.
I'm James Nash and this is theSix Ranch Podcast.
Well, good morning to Mr VicCoggins.

(00:29):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm doing good for an old man.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Vic, I think it was 30 years ago when I first came
into your office and startedbugging you about wildlife stuff
.
I was eight years old, Iremember.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
I remember you coming with your mom out to Zumwalt
quite a bit, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
And I just had all the questions in the world about
wildlife and how stuff workedand I do remember coming into
the back of your office as alittle kid and you taking the
time to talk with me about elkand deer and whatever questions
I had, and I can't tell you howmuch I appreciate you taking

(01:14):
time to do that.
I think a lot of folks wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Well, I tried to.
I always thought about that'sone of the thoughts I still have
about our diminished wildlifepopulations is the effect on
young people?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Sure, Because that's kind of how it works, If we
think about it from a practicalpoint of management.
Wildlife is held by the statein a trust for the public.
Right, Right, yeah.
So how did you get into it andwhen was that?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I started, well, when I was small, from the time I
can remember, my grandparentshad a cabin in the Southern
Cascades and so I just kind ofgrew up with it, southern
Cascades and so I just kind ofgrew up with it, and then we
lived outside of well well, it'snow Medford City but at that

(02:16):
time it was rural and there wereoak hills and not not many
people and you could just roamwherever you wanted.
And once I got a horse well, hewanted.
And once I got a horse, well, Iranged a long way and I trapped
and hunted and, yeah, so in inthat area, and at that time
there was, well, there wasn'tany deer much in the valley
because there were too manypeople shooting them, but but

(02:38):
there were loads of pheasants.
What year were you born?
I was born in 43 and lived inthe Rogue Valley until, well, I
guess I was about 21 when Imoved up here.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, so right in the middle of World War II.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I of course don't remember, but my dad was
in Japan.
He was the Philippines andJapan.
Was he a.
Marine, no, he was a medicactually.
Okay.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
In the Navy.
No in the Army In the Army,yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, he had all kinds of stories.
Then I grew up hunting with,when I got older, hound hunting
with a bunch of old ex-World WarII Marines and mostly Marines.
I think they were a colorfullot to put it mildly as they

(03:39):
tend to be.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
I just heard about a really interesting story from
Alcatraz in 1946.
And there was a bank robber anda couple of his gang that
overtook the prison.
Do you know about this?
No, I don't.
So they wanted to escape andthey couldn't find a key to get

(04:01):
out through the yard, but they'dovertaken the armory.
find a key to get out throughthe yard, but they'd overtaken
the armory and they ended upjust taking over the whole
prison and letting the prisonersout, and they took all the
guards.
The local law enforcementcouldn't do anything about it.
The FBI couldn't figure it out,but there was a little Marine
base that was nearby calledTreasure Island, and this is

(04:24):
1946.
These guys had just got homefrom World War II.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Nobody to mess with Hooking and jabbing across the
Pacific.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
They sent 20 Marines in there and they had them
balled up in about four hours,but they caused so much damage
to the facilities.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
They did because they were used to it.
It took months to get Alcatrazback on its feet.
So much damage to thefacilities.
They did because they were usedto.
Yeah, it took months to getAlcatraz back on its feet, but I

(05:02):
also learned that there was aperiod, I think either during or
right before World War II,where they shut elk hunting down
in Oregon to encourage more mento join the war?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
I don't recall ever hearing about that.
Yeah, it's written about in theOregon Elk Management Plan,
which honestly is a pretty gooddocument, yeah, okay.
So you grew up kind of on thewest side, starting in 1943,
always interested in hunting andtrappingpping wildlife.
At what point did you decidethat that's what you wanted to

(05:29):
study and pursue as aprofessional?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
I started working for a local veterinarian when I was
about 16.
In fact, I rode my horse.
I didn't have a driver'slicense, so I rode my horse to
work all the time, and so I wasmy horse.
I didn't have a driver's license, so I rode my horse to work all
the time, and so I was prettyinterested.
Of course we dealt with allkinds of animals.
He was a large animal vet aswell as small animals too.

(05:58):
But I was real interested inveterinary medicine too.
But one of the bios thedistrict bio there, the same as
I was here invited me to go withhim, and so I just spent a lot
of time with him His name wasBob Maben and doing surveys,
different surveys, from morningdoves to black-tailed deer.

(06:20):
Surveys from morning doves toblack-tailed deer.
There weren't hardly any elkdown there at that time, but
that really started me.
Then, finally, I went to OregonState and got a degree, but
they ended up coming over herein 1965.

(06:41):
Okay.
And I had a summer job andbecause of my horse experience,
I ended up working in the highlakes doing lake surveys, gill
netting fish and sounding lakes,and so I got well acquainted

(07:02):
with the county, working hereand there.
Yeah, so I finished my degreeand was lucky enough to get on
here.
There was an opening.
Everybody started in fisheriesin those days because that's
where the jobs were.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
And at that time fish and wildlife were separate
divisions, weren't they?

Speaker 1 (07:22):
There was a commercial the commercial fish
was Okay, and sport fish andwildlife was Oregon.
Well, Oregon State GameCommission Okay Is who I started
working for first.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, so working in the high lakes at that time,
were you stalking brook trout?
Was there a rainbow initiative?
Was it golden trout?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Well, they did a lot of different things and I mean
they had put golden trout Iwasn't involved in any of the
golden trout, but I was involvedwith netting a bunch of the
lakes and sounding them and wemapped them and we did spawning
areas mapped spawning areas andthat's the biggest problem with

(08:05):
brookies in most of those lakesis there's just so much spawning
area that they outproduce thecapability of the lake, so you
end up with small ones.
But, there's some of the lakesthat they do really well in too.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Sure, sure.
It seems like the lakes thathave a mix of deep and shallow
water tend to produce big fish.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, crescent Lake was a real good one.
It had really nice brookiesprobably still does, yeah and it
had a spawning area, but justnot excessive amounts like some
of them, and I mean the season'sdarn short there for them too.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah it is.
I mean these high lakes.
Here are a lot of them, over 8000 feet.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, and they'll still have ice on them in june
yeah, no, I know, I know somethat ended up having little
surprise plants, aerial plants,because they couldn't uh, you
know, the lake could be froze,the boys would dump them
somewhere else yeah which theyweren't supposed to do, but well

(09:11):
, I mean, what, what else youknow?
I know, yeah, I know I know,yeah, but I've had some several
that I found fish that weren'tsupposed to be in them, and not
that it was that big a dealbecause they were.
It was usually rainbow and theyno darn few of them reproduce
there yeah, so I know one of theconcerns right now, depending

(09:33):
on the on the watershed, ishybridization between between
the brook trout and bull troutyeah, I know, I know and that
you know, I, I can rememberHurricane Creek had both and it
probably still does, and mytheory was there was a lot of

(09:54):
that water that was not reallyvery good brook trout habitat,
because they like those mountainmeadows and the streams, the
gentler streams, and of course,bull trout.
As you know, fast water they dowell in too.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
A lot of what I'm curious about, Vic, are the
changes that you've seen overall the decades that you've
worked here in Willow County,and even though you're retired
and have been retired now for agood time you're still very
active in working on wildlife.
Problems Like this is alifelong pursuit for you.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, that's true, and I do have a private business
, and so I work on privateranches Mostly.
Right now I've slowed down toRocky Dixon's place, yeah, and
then our own land.
I work on it a lot, yeah, andmy son-in-law has feed lots

(10:49):
around and we've been doing sometrying to get.
I've been working on him toleave the some of the corn
fields longer and he's gotseveral that have real good
potential for big mule deer andyeah, corn.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Corn is an interesting elixir for wildlife
isn't it?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Oh, it is, it is.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I don't know if there's anything that has
changed wildlife in the US morethan corn.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
No, no, I had to laugh.
And Montana, I'm not sayinganything bad about their
magazine because it's a prettygood little magazine, but
they're trying to encouragepeople not to feed.
Somebody in there said thatcorn was poisonous, and my view
is well, corn might not be goodat certain times, especially if

(11:39):
they're starved down, butthere's an awful lot of Midwest
deer that don't know anythingbut corn, and that's where those
massive deer come from too.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
And it's fascinating to me that we continue to break
records.
Yeah, I know it, I know it Likewe're breaking records on a
regular basis and if you thinkabout a species like, there
should just kind of be an upperlimit to their capabilities.
But through the way deer andelk, for that matter are managed

(12:15):
and their access to thenutrients and whatever else is
in these modern corn and soybeancrops, they're getting bigger
than they've ever gotten andthey continue to do it year
after year.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
You don't know, and that's true, and some too is
harvest management, you know,and especially on private land.
Yeah.
You know you can set your ownquotas and do culling and
everything else.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
So how did wildlife surveys occur when, when you
started with wildlife, thatwould that have been in the 60s.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
It was in the 60s yeah and they were horseback and
a few foot and vehicle routes,but mostly horseback and they
did.
We did some flying and we didit in the super cub.
Almost no helicopter work untillater, but yeah, it got people
out on the ground and I meanthey weren't random, they were

(13:09):
regular routes.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Okay, you, you ran every every year same time, so
you do it on the same same dayevery year.
Well, it wouldn't benecessarily the same day, but
the same within a couple weeksokay, and you just kind of look
for your weather windows whenthere's visibility, yeah, and
then you, of course, kept goodrecords, yeah, and so you had
those.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
I've got all those records too.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
What was the elk population like at that time?

Speaker 1 (13:35):
It was probably about I could look here because it's
in this book but it was probablyabout half what it peaked out
at in 2000.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Why do you reckon the elk numbers were low then
compared to, you know, 2010?

Speaker 1 (13:56):
One thing people don't realize is how intensive
livestock grazing was in thosedays.
So there was that, and thenthere was the seasons that were
very liberal and of course muledeer were in extreme abundance
in the 60s.
I mean, we had some hardwinters and that'd knock them
back, but if you gave them aboutthree years they were right

(14:19):
back.
They had good fawn survival andgood years, but the forage
wasn't like it is now.
That's where I really differwith some mule deer managers,
and at least here is I've justseen such a tremendous increase
in forage quality and quantity.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And what we commonly hear from wildlife biologists
now is that habitat is theprimary issue and limiting
factor for mule deer.
But when I go into the highcountry here, I see vast, vast
amounts of really ideal habitatwith plenty of forage, and
there's just hardly a deer leftin this wilderness area.

(15:02):
I know, I think that there'smore mountain goats up there
than there are mule deer.
Yeah, it's crazy to me, and ifI look at stuff like mountain
goats and bighorns, we issue acouple tags for each of those
species in this wilderness, andthen we'll issue 800 deer tags.
Yeah, yeah, how can that be?

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Well, it's predation isn't habitat.
It's not habitat here.
It may be some places I'm notsaying that you know west wide,
that there isn't areas in oregontoo where you've had
subdivisions take over but whereare our biggest densities of
mule deer here in towns?

Speaker 2 (15:45):
That's right, and you think that they're living in
town to escape predators?

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yes, I do.
I see it on our place.
We've got 200 acres that our Yhad up west of the Lime Quarry
Road, yeah, and we've done a lotof habitat work there in those
old landings.
We've turned them into foodplots basically, and improved

(16:10):
water and seeded all those roads.
I've got clover growing, theclover roads, yeah, and well, we
maybe have, we've got camerasup there all the time and we
maybe have 10 mule deer.
No, white tails, and you'dthink I mean the white tails are
just really close in abundanceand you'd think there'd be one

(16:31):
once in a while that'd go upthere, but we just don't see
them how often are you seeinglions and bears at?
first a lot.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, they seem to have dropped off some now so I I
checked a bear in to the stateoffice in Pendleton this last
fall and I asked him if he'dbeen seeing any lions come in,
and they said that as the wolfpopulation had increased in that
area, that the number ofcougars that were being checked

(17:01):
in had dropped off substantiallynumber of cougars that were
being checked in had had droppedoff substantially.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
I looked a couple years ago and totaled up.
I always kept track of theharvest by unit of both black
bears and and cougars because Iand I was real interested in
what had happened, since we hadmore wolves and I do think
there's some truth to that and jJim Atkinson and Holly saw that
happen over in Big Creek aswolves increased, cougars hardly

(17:32):
had any kitten survival.
Oh really yeah, and a lot of itwas probably because you know
the cougar would make a kill andthe wolves would find it and
eat it, Right?
And so a lot of that wasprobably the amount of food they
had.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
What was the cougar population like in the 60s Low
and how could you even surveysomething like that at that time
?

Speaker 1 (17:59):
The only thing you did is when you saw tracks, we
kept track of them, but youcouldn't, yeah, other than old
bounty records are probably thebest.
When was there a bounty?
There was a bounty on cougars,probably from the early 1900
well, even before the early1900s, until they became a game

(18:21):
animal.
And when was that?
It would have been?
I've got it in here in thatcougar, but it was in the in the
60s.
They were at a real low numbers.
They survived here because ofthe wilderness and the snake
river unit.
But even in the snake riverunit if you talked to the old
stockman down there, you know ifyou got back towards.

(18:45):
Well, south of Saddle Creek,there were some cats in there
and of course in Idaho had sometoo.
So there were some.
In fact I've got some oldpictures that show some of the
early settlers there and some ofthem relied heavily on the
bounty payments.
Of course they went to thestate that had the highest

(19:08):
bounty down there yeah pickidaho or oregon, based off right
, but ours was, I think.
The state paid fifty dollars andthen the counties paid some on
top of that, or some of them did.
That's a substantial amount ofmoney.
It was a substantial amount ofmoney.
Yeah.
Especially if you had a littleranch and you know you maybe

(19:31):
sold 20 or 30 head of steersevery year, right, I mean it was
, and they weren't worth much,right, and it was a lot of money
.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
And I know Papa Doug Doug Tippett.
He of course grew up down thereat Doug Bar, spent his whole
life in southeast Washington,northeast Oregon, living and
running cattle in the canyonsand out here in the hills and
all over the place.
He died without ever havingseen a cougar.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Oh, did he Yep.
I would have thought he'd haveseen one out on Zumwalt Yep,
never did.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
I'll be darned His whole life out here, yeah,
cowboying and running around,and he never saw a cougar.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
No, and that was common.
I mean, it was really unusualto see him.
And then we got to where wewere seeing him on our survey
routes.
You know, sometimes I rememberseeing five, several different
times.
You know it'd be a female andkittens, which that's a lot of
kittens, but sometimes there'dbe a tom with them for a short

(20:34):
time, gotcha.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, we had five show up right here on the ranch
one time and a neighbor calledand said I just saw five lions
down here and I was like, oh, Ithink maybe, maybe coyotes.
But he goes, I shot one of themand I was like, okay, I'll come
down there and see what's goingon.
You know, the springtime andthere's just, uh, there's frost

(20:58):
on the grass, there's no snow,but I could see tracks where the
frosty grass had gotten crusheddown.
I was like, well, sure enough,there's lion tracks.
I don't know about fivealtogether.
And then I picked up some bloodand I'm kind of following the
blood along and I was with mystepdad and he says you know,
make sure you look up in thetrees from time to time.

(21:18):
I was like, well, there's notgoing to be a cougar waiting in
a tree for me after they justgot hustled out of here.
Me who were waiting in a treefor me after they just got
hustled out of here?
And uh, then, as I was goingalong there, I felt something
drip on me and looked up in ajuniper and there was a, a young
lion that had died up there inthe limbs.
But we ended up, I think uh,marlon came down, uh, the

(21:39):
government trapper.
Yeah, he got a couple of them,but it ended up being an adult
female who had what we think wasa sub-adult or young adult
female as well, and then thatone had kittens and that was
kind of how they'd swarmed up.
They were all female lions.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, and what they'd do is, you know, they'd starve
out of the high country and thenthey'd just move down where the
game was.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Right, and this here is the closest contiguous timber
between the mountains and thevalley Right, right so it's
either here or up at HurricaneCreek which is another major
line crossing where people seethem all the time.
But we get a lot of them comingdown, especially this time of
year around Christmas to themiddle of January, and you know

(22:29):
they're just coming down here, Ithink, to hunt whitetail.
Yeah, I think they do too.
Yeah, so well, I bet you hadsome interesting experiences
from those early game surveys.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Oh yeah, you saw a lot.
We used to go every year andstay with the Bascos and Cherry
Creek for three days and dothose surveys, and that was
always entertaining, yeah, andeducational too, because I got a
huge amount of information fromGus.

(23:05):
I mean I got to where I couldunderstand him pretty well.
Gus Malaxa, yeah, yeah, that'squite a character he was, and I
mean he went clear back to.
I think it was either it's inthis book, but 1917 or 1919 was
when he came to this country toherd sheep and he worked for Jay

(23:26):
Dobbin and at that time ofcourse the whole Snake River
country was sheep and he was atCash Creek and that bunch of
sheep went up on the big burnsin Montana and Idaho.
He said once you got the sheepup there, there was so much

(23:47):
forage that there just wasn'tmuch to do.
Right.
They'd just fall because they'dfill up so fast.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, and just protect them from the bears and
the lions.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
But I'd always ask them too about mule deer, even
though we were doing the survey,what they were seeing because
they were out all the time andthat's something a lot of modern
bios.
They spend too much time oncomputers and not enough time
out Right, and especially theydon't value a lot of those old

(24:18):
boys, like some of the peoplethat cut logs all their lives or
been on a ranch all their livesand they're very good observers
.
What like Doug?
Yeah.
I mean he, he had that guideoperation, you know and he's
probably told you those stories,and I had his old guide reports
and I, just before I left theoffice, I looked for him because

(24:42):
they had a lot of informationin them, you know, on the
intense harvested, four pointbucks for the most part.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
yeah, they'd, they'd kill like 40 a year down yeah I
know, and within the, they'dusually try to get done opening
weekend so they can have a bigparty yeah, and then go trucker
hunting and fishing after that,right, right and yeah, they'd
rarely have to go above thefirst bench of the river.
Yeah, I know Absolutely.

(25:10):
I mean, I never got to seethose golden days of mule deer.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
No, they were in the 60s for the most part and early
70s.
Yeah.
I mean, there were periods whenwe'd have a winter, bad winter,
and they'd drop.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
But I hear all kinds of things get blamed.
From what I can tell, if youhave domestic sheep grazing,
that tends to help the mule deerpopulation.
I think it's the predatorcontrol, the predator control
that goes with it.
Yeah yeah, I wondered if itmight also be like the shrub
regrowth after sheep go throughan area that was a lot of

(25:48):
cheatgrass in those days.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
People always say, oh , the cheatgrass is increased,
but it I, not to me oh really Ithink the blue bunch wheatgrass
is increased and I don't thinkthat's the best for mule deer,
but it it's a little different.
You know, and what happens withthe cheat and I've seen this
many times is if you get theright conditions early moisture

(26:13):
and warmth you know it growslike mad and it needs to be
grazed or manipulated too.
So from that standpoint, whatyou say is about sheep or cattle
can do it too, or burns, butfor them to get good value out
of it.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
But it's pretty good food for them during that green
stage, the cheat grasses yeahonce it dries out, it's not so
right, not so good, but yeah,but so what would need to change
to bring mule deer back to ahealthy level Because they're
under management objectivesstatewide?

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, oh, I know they are.
I know they are.
I did part of the review forOHA on that mule deer plan and
they just missed the boat and wejust insisted that they look at
predation too.
And they finally did mention itbut before it was going to go
unmentioned.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
They weren't going to mention predation.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
And that's to me is most important.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
You know, Vic, I was looking at the mining unit and
the reporting for the surveysfor the last few years and there
was two years in there wherethey said they had 100% fawn
survival over the winter.
Isn't that outrageous?

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, that's what happens sometimes.
It's where they classify thedeer.
You know if you get around inthe valley, or you know you
shouldn't have 100%, but youknow it's much higher, or
especially if somebody's feednumbers something like that.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
But uh, but how could you even publish a number like
that?
I know, I know it.
And to say that in the mostpredator, saturated portion of
the state that you didn't have asingle fawn get killed
throughout the winter, that'scrazy, no no, and it's just if
that I'm not questioning thatthey saw that somewhere.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
They probably had a small sample to have them as
random as you could I mean we'dgo to the best deer areas?

(28:30):
Obviously you wanted to do that, but to winter ranger yeah, the
winter range areas and butthere was a lot of difference
between drainages.
Yeah, I mean huge amounts somemight have, and I see that today
and I mean I do surveys onrockies and if you get over in

(28:51):
joseph creek and you can justexpect low fawn survival yeah
there'll be a few big bucks, butnot a lot of deer.
Yeah, you know, and it'spredation.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
I mean that's excellent habitat so what's to
be done about predation?

Speaker 1 (29:08):
well, you know the.
Then it gets over into thepolitical side of things and
animal rights people, and so youhave to be pretty careful that
you don't stir up a.
You know a lot of opposition toit, but you know like right now
here there's a good deal ofaerial coyote gunning going on

(29:28):
and you don't want tonecessarily broadcast that, but
yeah, but uh well, I mean that'ssomething that happens
throughout the west right andthat's it's from the state it's
from private individuals it'sfrom the, the usda.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, like, like.
That's something that occursthroughout the West.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, and we used to, you know, pay for some of it
and encourage.
You know you didn't have toencourage Marlin, yeah.
And then Wildlife Services hadtheir own airplane and they did
pretty good with it, right, Imean you couldn't do anything in
Snake River country, yeah, Imean you couldn't kill enough of
them because of the kind ofcountry it is.
But you sure can out here RightIn the zone between the timber

(30:12):
and kind of the timber andprairie, yeah, but that doesn't
get to cougars, right, doesn'tget to wolves and bears and
bears.
And we do have a pretty goodtool in our spring bear hunts.
They're highly sought after andwe kill.
We got good records too, whichsaved our neck this year when we

(30:35):
had to move on trying to outlawbear hunting, right.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
So why is it that some of these preservation
groups tend to fight harder forpredators than for prey animals?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
I don't know.
It's just that they just valuethem higher and they don't
realize.
You know, those predators haveto eat.
Yeah.
And you know they're bound bythe same rules.
I mean no food, you're going tohave a low density.
Yeah, they're bound by the samerules.
I mean no food, you're going tohave a low density, so they're
much better off to have managedpopulations in this day and age.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Right and talk to me a little bit about what the
North American model of wildlifemanagement is.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Well, it's basically our system.
I can't quote all of it withoutreading it, but it's basically
set up our system of states, youknow, managing wildlife based
on populations and huntingseasons, established hunting

(31:41):
seasons and and pretty rigorouslaw enforcement to protect
animals.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
And it uses legal hunting.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
It uses legal hunting as the primary mechanism and,
of course, that also pays for it, right?
So, and that's what a lot ofthese people don't realize Like.
So, and that's what a lot ofthese people don't realize Like,
right now, with the newadministration, I hope we can
get like grizzlies downlistedand back under state control,

(32:11):
because they just need to behunted.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, that was a shame, the decision that was
just made about that, to justexpand the grizzly area rather
than to acknowledge that theyhad recovered.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Well, I know it, I know and see.
That's my real criticism of theEndangered Species Act.
Tell me more about that.
Well, you, just you knownothing.
Well, I shouldn't say nothing.
If it's not a predator, well itcan.
It comes off sometimes, but youshould be able to get them off

(32:48):
you know when they're recoveredand go on to another species.
That's how it was designed.
And then the animal rightspeople, of course.
They think you ought to havethem in every state, like
grizzlies.
Well, there's no way.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
You don't have habitat I don't know if folks
understand how much ground apredator needs to be successful
no, no, they don't.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
They don't.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
The average person doesn't yeah, when was the first
time you remember wildlifeissues hitting the ballot box?

Speaker 1 (33:25):
The one that affected us the most was cougars dogs
being outlawed In 1993?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
That was the one I remember.
When I heard that passed I justthought, oh no, we're in real
trouble.
Yeah, because we'd alreadyprotected cougars and you know
we had not enough harvest at thetime because we were very
protective of them at first,because they were in such low
levels and not, you know, mostof the state didn't have them.

(33:55):
Southeast Oregon didn't evenhave cougars in those days,
didn't have any numbers, andlook what they have now.
Didn't have any numbers andlook what they have now.
Yeah and uh, we had a quickerrecovery because we had these
refuges, you know, naturalrefuges that, like the minum
always had at cougars.
Well, the wallowas do sure,even though you know they tended

(34:19):
to be more abundant down on theminum, because there's more,
more game there.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Right, yeah, so at about the same time, that was
sort of the beginnings of thetalks about wolves as well right
, wolves were getting broughtback into the Frank Church and
into Yellowstone.
This was during the Clintonadministration.
Logging was getting shut down,so folks in this area just felt

(34:44):
so, so beat up on, like, well,you just took our main industry
away, which was timber.
Uh, the forest service isrestricting grazing for cattle
more than ever, yeah, and now wecan't hunt cougars with dogs
anymore, we can't hunt bearswith dogs anymore.
And now you're talking aboutreintroducing wolves.

(35:05):
And people were just like what,what's going on?
Like why is your herds weregoing down.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, and well, the other thing, I mean, if you go
back to like 2000 or so, our elkherds, bull wise, were pretty
good because we were managingthem pretty intensely.
But you know, before that wehad thousands of cow tags that
you literally had 100% chance ofdrawing Right and there was a

(35:34):
huge number of people they'd putin for their favorite bull hunt
.
They didn't get it.
They'd go to Snake River CowHunt, lake River cow on and we
sustained that high harvest fora long time over there until the
predation rate got high enoughthat you know you had really
poor calf survival, which thenthat meant less bulls coming

(35:57):
into the population but lesscows coming into the population
and finally we just had to shutthe season off and people didn't
seem to even pick up on thatloss of 5,000,.
You know, tags huntingopportunity 5,000 tags had to
get cut yeah, wow yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Wow, the years that I was off in the Marines were
some of the best elk huntingyears I know it was.
It was such a big deal to killa big bull when I was in high
school that I remember a kid inmy class shot a six-point bull.
He was just a bull, you knowyeah but that wasn't at that

(36:41):
time.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
But he was a six-point bull.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
It was on the front page of the newspaper.
Yeah, it was a big deal,everybody was talking about it,
and you know, then I go off tocollege, I go off to the Marines
and I start seeing thesepictures and people are all of a
sudden shooting absolutemonsters.
And it is no big deal at all tofind a six-point.
Now people are trying to findyou know these absolute giant,

(37:04):
giant bulls and you know peoplewere regularly pulling out 360,
380 inch bulls out of this area,and then the wolves showed up
in force.
Yeah, yeah, and it all changed.
So now we have in the SnakeRiver for several years now
we've had single-digitpercentages of calf survival.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Oh, and that's gone on for a long time.
That's when we had to cut.
There were 1,200 cow tags inthe Snake River unit in two
hunts Wow, and they would neverfill.
I mean, anybody that put in gotone, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
That's a big deal for people to be able to get meat.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
It was a real big deal, especially for well, not
just local people, but Oregonpeople, Because they relied on
that.
For, you know, if the bull huntfailed, well, they didn't get
the tag.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Well, they relied on that and they've always had a
hunt, something I talked withLisa Collier about on the show
earlier, our new countycommissioner.
Congratulations to Lisa.
Yeah, food insecurity inWallowa County here is somewhere
between 15 and 25%.
Yeah, so maybe you know one infive, one in four people who are

(38:18):
residents of this county arenot confident in their next meal
or in their next five meals.
Hunting used to be a really bigpart of that and you could be
certain that you could get anelk tag every year.
Yeah, those days are over.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
They are, because now you're talking bulls, and bulls
only in most places and theyjust are.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
And you might only get a tag every five or six
years sometimes.
If you take our county by areaof substantial portion of the
county, it's going to take youover 20 years to draw a bull tag
.
Yeah, yeah, if you put in forthe monohaw yeah you might get
one in your lifetime, maybe,maybe yeah, yeah and, and more

(39:03):
than likely, you're going to bean old man by the time I know
that's the other thing, yeahyeah, well, talk to me about
bighorn sheep.
I know that's a big passion ofyours.
Uh, how, how did bighorns sortof come to be here?
I I've.
I have a copy of the huntingregulations from 1903 that was
pasted into one of my familyjournals.

(39:25):
Yeah.
It had no seasons, no limits onbighorns in 1903.
But they did have seasons ongrouse, on pheasants.
It was open season on moose.
It's a really interesting thing.
It's got to be one of the firstyears that we had hunting
regulations I've got some thatcame from my great-grandfather
from 1912.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
And it's his hunting license and the regulations are
on the back.
Yours is probably the same,isn't it?

Speaker 2 (39:53):
You know, this was just a little piece that was
glued into a journal.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, there's a picture of that hunting license
and the regulations in this bookIs there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Wow, Wouldn't it be nice if we could have it so
simple.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I thinkone of the big barriers to entry
in hunting now is theregulations and navigating the
websites and draw applications.
The amount of time you have towait to draw a tag For somebody

(40:24):
brand new to get into it it'spretty prohibitive.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Well, and then you need a place to hunt, which I
mean we're fortunate in thatwe've had public land, but lots
of public land in Oregon but alot of states don't.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Well, the public land isn't in very good shape
anymore.
Yeah.
Well, the public land isn't invery good shape anymore.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Well, tube predation is taking a real toll on a lot
of the public land.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, what about timber management and fire
management, grazing things likethat on public land?

Speaker 1 (40:57):
I think we have done better on fire management on our
forests than than a lot of theothers.
You know they had controlledburns.
I don't you might have been inthe marines when they burnt the
minum over a period of 10 years,burnt the lower minum yeah,
they were all spring, springburns and they were in the

(41:20):
wilderness, yeah.
So they don't ever let themtell you you can't burn in the
wilderness because you can.
Right, they did.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah, I do remember being home on leave and seeing
spring burns come up through theminum.
Yeah and yeah, those wereeffective.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And with all the burns we've had, to me that
answers the habitat thing,because those burns are premier
wildlife habitat, at least forbig game animals.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Some of our recent burns have been really nice
mosaic, patchy, just beautifulburns.
Some of them were a bit hot,like the canal fire stuff like
that.
It burned too hot.
It came back as really thickreprod they're actually.
Finally, they thinned a bunchof that stuff.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I saw that Canal fire .
That looks good.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
I was really pleased to see that yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
But that's the one thing that keeps us from being
like the Cascades or something,it's that.
And then in the mountains,avalanches, right, I mean, those
avalanche paths are just, youknow, food plots really right
that edge habitat is prettyimportant no, it is very
important, especially for muledeer talk to me a little bit

(42:39):
about edge habitat well, well,you just get such diversity and
you get a lot of deciduous stuff, you know, coming in.
It's like after logging or afire.
You know well done logging.
I mean, I don't know if youever go down to the Winona
Wildlife Area.
Yeah Well, you've seen howthat's been burned and logged

(43:02):
Right, and I went in there.
I wanted to see how it wasdoing because I worked on it so
much.
And this last fall, and boy tome, it's really doing well, it's
opened it up and you still havecontrol of the road.
So you don't have, you know,the road system that you end up

(43:22):
with sometimes after logging.
But those can be controlled too.
I mean, you can put gates inand have a time period when
they're open and a time periodwhen they're closed.
So a lot of the one-on-one iskind of a wet forest anyway up
on top and it comes up with alot of beneficial stuff when,

(43:45):
when it's logged let's get backto bighorns.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
When did you start working on bighorn?

Speaker 1 (43:51):
sheep stuff.
I started working on bighornsin 1971.
We got our first transplantsfrom alberta from alberta.
Yeah, okay and it was reallyhard to get sheep in the early
days In Oregon.
We started, let's see, it wasin California.
The first ones were in 1954.
And then they all they camefrom BC and it looks like we're

(44:16):
going to be able to give themsome stock back now, years later
.
We're going to give sheep backto canada, to bc.
Really, they've got some placesthat they've had big die-offs
and and they're getting to thebottom of that and they're
starting to come back and sothey're they're starting to talk

(44:37):
about getting some of theirsheep back, which we would
gladly give them.
I see that we, which we wouldgladly give them, I say that we,
the department, would gladlygive them.
Do we have sheep to spare?
We do California's.
We got both.
The Deschutes and John Day areboth major sheep herds.

(44:58):
You never know with sheepbecause of the disease issue,
right?

Speaker 2 (45:04):
What's the difference between a California bighorn
and a desert bighorn?

Speaker 1 (45:07):
You never know with sheep because of the disease
issue.
Right, what's the differencebetween a California bighorn and
a desert bighorn?
They're definitely differentsubspecies.
The deserts tended to be moreon the south of Oregon, although
there is some dispute aboutwhether ours were deserts or
California's.
Yeah, but we've worked withCalifornia's from the beginning.

(45:28):
But when you get likeCalifornia, arizona, new Mexico,
well, utah's got them.
Now A lot of the historichabitat has been, they've been
restored and there's more deserttags available now than you
know there probably has been inthis century just because of all

(45:50):
the management activity.
But our sheep that was thestart of them and of course we
had no idea the problem withdisease, because you'd go to,
you'd talk to, I'd talk to everyold-timer that I knew of that
had been around them, which atthat time was quite a few.

(46:11):
You know people that worked inthe mountains and of course
they're attracted to domesticsheep and it's just the diseases
that domestics carry and arefairly immune to will start,
just horrid die-offs in bighorns.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, attracted more than just socially too.
Had Leanna Wentz on the podcastand she said that there was
cases down there where bighornswere actually breeding some of
those domestic sheep and havingviable offspring.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
No, they did.
I think they might have.
I think they were, if Iremember right.
I know some people that.
Well, they had some in Wyoming.
And the problem is, if theyinherit the domestic's disease
resistance they're all right,but if they get the bighorn they
die.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
So but the sheep we would have gotten from Alberta,
those must have been Rockies,right they?

Speaker 1 (47:07):
were Rockies, and that's what we had here.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, and how are the Rockies doing up here in the
Eagle Calfs?

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Not very well.
Well, it depends on yourperspective.
Okay, my perspective we hadnone.
Right.
When I started.
So we have a thousand now inHell's Canyon in Oregon and so
from that standpoint.
But right now we're goingthrough a disease episode and so
we're losing sheep out of someof the herds, mostly in Idaho

(47:40):
and Washington, at least so far.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Now the domestic sheep are all but gone.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
They are, but how come the?

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Rockies are still getting sick.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
The bad part is there'll be farm flocks.
Same thing happens to sheep,that happens to deer.
They get tired of being preyedon and so they're pushed towards
town.
Not all the herds.
Some of the herds are, you know, in the wild country, because
they'll move right down along,like the Snake River, and be

(48:09):
there all day where they gotenough activity and people with
rifles, that protects them.
But you get some that just theyjust get pushed towards.
Well, like the lower Mnaha orbelow the town of Mnaha, those
get pushed right back up towardsthe people.

(48:30):
Then I think you know they'reclose enough that they get
exposed.
But we know a lot more aboutJust have a couple sheep in
their yard, or something.
Yeah, or goats or goats.
Yeah, goats seem to be morepopular than sheep.
I think people you know end uptheir cheap livestock and they

(48:51):
have a small place and so theyget them to eat the weeds or
they don't know.
Goats butchering, or really apain in the butt or really a
pain in the butt, but anyway,we've.
Actually the three states andthe wild sheep groups have yeah,

(49:14):
are hired to go around and talkto people because a lot of them
don't have a clue that there'san issue.
But anyway, we ended uplearning as we go and that's
pretty well outlined in thatchapter in here.
On the big big orange stew yeah, tell me about your book.
That was the most challengingthing I ever did.

(49:34):
Yeah.
And it's came right out of ourrecords.
You know department records andI I have kept a journal my
whole adult life, departmentrecords and I have kept a
journal my whole adult life andso I had that to fall back on,
because you think your memory ispretty good, although I don't
now.

(49:56):
But a lot of times there's alittle difference in what you
thought and what you wrote andwhat you think, but I had really
good records.
What you think, so, but I hadreally good records and so all
of the all the transplantrecords that are in this book
came right out of fish and gamerecords and and my journals.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
but well, tell me a favorite story out of that book
there is so many differentstories.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
So probably some of the historical things, because I
used to you know when I'd getaround some of the old timers
well, like your grandfatherBiden did, but I spent more time
around him because he had JimCrick but some of the old
stories they told, they werehighly entertaining.

(50:44):
Sam Loftus was another prettygood old storyteller and I had
the privilege of being aroundsome of the old people that were
raised in Hell's Canyon onthose ranches and at the time I
never thought anything about itand unfortunately I wrote a lot
of that stuff down which is inthis book too, but it just was

(51:09):
very interesting to me.
But just the historical valuewas there too and I mean, when
you think about it, they werethe generation before, they were
the kids of the generation thatsettled out there, right, so it
was right back to the beginning.

(51:30):
So yeah, and there I got some.
I tried to figure out what wehad for deer, which was really
difficult, but there were somepretty good references to people
that went in there and wintered, like at Temperance Creek, and
they had good records of whatthey killed there and, if I

(51:51):
remember right, they killed andthere again, that's in that book
but it's I think they killed itwas the Warnock brothers and I
think they took a herd of horsesin there to winter and they
market hunted while they werethere, killed 105 mule deer,
five cougars, but it was allwritten out there.

(52:14):
And they saved the hidesbecause they had traded them to
the Indians, to Nez Perce forponies and the Nez Perce for
ponies, and then they also savedthe hindquarters cured them and
sold them.
But those kind of records Itried to find as many of as I

(52:34):
could.
And then I had some others ofdeer numbers below Hell's Canyon
Dam and there were literallyhundreds and some of them just
like a couple of drainages thatthose stockmen would see in
there.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, so you know that was a lot of your interest
was just in sort of collectingall of your own data, but also
trying to reach back intohistory and and see what was
actually there.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
And I, you know a lot of the old, the old timers,
like to deer along the highwayhere.
Prior to the 40s, if I'mremembering right, there were
hardly any mule deer that camedown here in winter.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
I'm curious about about whitetail here.
I'm curious about whitetailhere.
I've seen it written from statebiologists that whitetail were
abundant in northeast Oregonprior to 1890.
But I cannot find a record tosupport that.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
I couldn't find.
I could find records ofwhitetails, but not in abundance
.
So there were some whitetailshere in the 1800s.
There were native whitetailshere and it was in Mammals and
Life Zones of Oregon Bailey'sbook.
He had some records and then Ihad records in some of our old
monthly reports that I wentthrough, all of them from the

(53:53):
50s.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
The 50s is when they got reintroduced into the
Washington side of the Wenaharight, I think it was before
then it was before then.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
I'd have to look, but they were.
They were around elgin.
Okay, that part of the winahagotcha and and uh.
Like I say, I think ourearliest records were in in the
40s.
From our bios okay.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
So so you think that they were originally native to
this area but didn't startshowing back up again like there
was a 50-year absence orsomething?

Speaker 1 (54:31):
up, the one on Aja and a few on the East Moraine,
and then they gradually filledin a little.
Not filled in, I shouldn't saythat, because they were never
very abundant, but they werealong this slope a few.

(54:52):
So we killed one, I think, on adoe tag, when we had lots of
doe tags and my family did inthe late 60s or early 70s.
That had to have been one of thefirst ones that was one of the
first ones we killed, and thenwe had a whitetail kind of a

(55:14):
trophy hunt in the Winawha, alimited entry hunt, and that was
when we killed the very firstbuck.
So Well, there's plenty of themnow?
No, there is.
But, it's interesting to me tohave watched their distribution

(55:35):
change and you know I mean likeflora, still a pretty good hot
spot for them.
Yeah.
And they're pretty abundantthere and the Winawhas, you know
they're all over that timber.
But then if you get downtowards the Grand R ron, there's
pretty good numbers of muledeer coming back there, but not

(55:55):
back up the country, right, andI think that's predation.
Okay, I have, as you do aroundyour house.
Do you ever see any negativeinteractions between them and
mule?

Speaker 2 (56:07):
deer?
Yeah, in the springtime I do,because we're not necessarily
winter range right here.
Yeah, you're more spring, it'smore spring right.
So in the springtime there's areal separation of church and
state between the mule deer andthe whitetail and I do see the
mule deer moving away from thewhitetail quite often where the

(56:27):
whitetail will get to selectthat fresh green up and the mule
deer kind of get kicked out bythem.
My big concern right now ishoof rot and chronic wasting
disease, and some of ourwhitetail populations have
really high densities here inthe valley, especially if you
get down between Losteen andWallowa, and that's a situation

(56:50):
where once CWD gets in thereit's going to affect the entire
area.
I think it'll vector throughthose river systems and you know
we're familiar with Umatilla.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
County how their whitetails.
You know it killed like 90% ofthem and I've asked the guys.
I said, well, okay, so nowyou've got a lot less whitetails
or you're seeing more mule deer.
And they say, no, have youtalked to them about that, andy,

(57:23):
I haven't.
Kersh, mark Kersh should be theone to talk to Okay.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
I'd be interested in that, and the shape of a
whitetail's mouth and a muledeer's mouth are quite different
.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
And I think that the whitetail can be a little bit
better selective oar than themule deer can, just because the
whitetail has a little bit moreof a narrow palate.
Yeah they do, and I thinkthey're more grass eaters than
mule deer are.
Yeah, I mean I've got them allaround my house.
In fact mine are kind ofpampered and I've got a few mule
deer.
I had one old mule deer doethat come and have twin fawns in
my hay field.
Every year We'd have to spend alittle time making sure we

(58:04):
didn't cut them up, but she wasa dominant.
I mean, she was really a nastyold doe when it came to
protection.
She killed several dogs whichprobably needed killing, like
people's pets that were outthere pestering.
Well, they're usually some poorold dog, but they'd get near

(58:35):
fawns and fawnin' season was adangerous time for dogs.
But boy, she could just cleananybody's clock, but it could
have been the individual too.
Yeah, because right now I'dmissed her last year and I
didn't have any mule deer inthere then.
But then just soon as you getin the timber but by cra Craig's
and our timberland wasdifferent there's hardly any
whitetails, even right next tothe valley.

(58:57):
I mean you'll have a few,except up on that high ground,
you don't.
Yeah.
And it's good whitetail habitat.
I mean, it's all you knowlogged within the last 20 years
and all those seedings and youwould think that well, they have
to go through there once in awhile, have to know it's there,
because they're just less than amile to the valley edge, right

(59:20):
Loads of them.
Yeah.
That's kind of puzzling whatgoes on there, because you know
you go out well in the Winonacountry.
They're in pretty steep countrythere.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
My understanding about whitetail vision is that
they have a lot better vision atclose range, it's say less than
100 yards, whereas mule deercan see really well for an
awfully long ways.
So they just might not feel asconfident getting into that high
country.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
I don't know what it is.
I've talked to some of the biosI know in other states too
about the competition thing.
Like Alberta has both of them,a lot of both of them, in places
and they could never see anyreal competition.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
It drives me nuts that we don't have whitetail and
mule deer as separate tags.
That was a big mistake we made?

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
Was it yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
It feels like an easy correction.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
See, it occurred, though, when we didn't have many
whitetails Right.
But right now, let's see, Ifound some information and it
wasn't from last couple of years, but it was fairly recent, and
I said whitetails were like inthe mine immunity, 40% of the

(01:00:40):
harvest Right and it's like ifyou had to rely on mule deer in
the mine immunity, well, andsome of the others too you know
it'd be pretty meager, but youcould split it up and then, oh
no, you could.
You could easily have whitetail season and mule deer season
, and I think it, I think it'dbe a real good idea to look into
that again and you could startout.

(01:01:02):
You know you'd have to bepretty sparing on the mule deer
and and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
That's where I think it would help yeah.
Right now, since it's eitherspecies, a lot of these baby
mule deer bucks are gettingkilled just because it's easy
and they're convenient.
And if you only had a limitednumber of mule deer tags, you
could potentially increase thetotal number of tags available.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
By utilizing the whitetail, and there's some talk
of that.
I think that'll happen at somepoint.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Every year they've got an opportunity to just
change a couple lines in theregulations and do that, gosh,
it would help so much.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
I don't know whether that was.
Have you looked at that muledeer?

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
plan.
I haven't dug into it.
I've read it but I haven't duginto it.
I haven't done a show on it yetor anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, I need to look at that part and see if they
mentioned it.
Yeah.
One of the failings in it isthey didn't acknowledge some of
the old studies, like the SteensMountain study.
That was just a classic muledeer study.
Then why didn't?

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
they acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Well, they just had something against using anything
that was older and I mean, I'mvery familiar with it.
I didn't work on it, but I knowa lot of the guys that did and
they didn't.
We had that Minam study that wedid and it was published in the
mule deer proceedings and theydidn't mention it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
It and then they so why are they trying to?

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
disregard history.
I don't know that's that,that's a failing that I think a
lot of modern bios have.
I mean, that's the first thingI'd want to know, sure,
historically, what you havethere yeah but it's just like
those holes.
Another.
Another one they didn't mentionand it's a fairly new study
because it was done by IdahoPower and my God they had.

(01:02:59):
I know the guy that net gunnedall the deer for the study and
it was 160 mule deer and theyhad deer going from Brownleaf
and oxbow clear up into theminum.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Okay, here's another question.
I got to ask you A couple ofthose bucks down at the Mnaha
Tavern.
I heard as a kid from the oldtimers that those are subspecies
that used to exist that don'tanymore, the ones that are super
palmated.
They look totally differentfrom every other mule deer.
You're going to see anyvalidity to that?
Did we used to have a differentsubspecies of mule deer?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
I don't think so okay , I'll tell you who's got a good
collection.
The snake river bucks is davidmorris.
Okay, have you ever doneanything with him?
No, he's got the bit.
That big does the big game tourand he's in the process.
He's from Grant County and hedoes the record book, the Oregon

(01:03:59):
record book which, by the way,there's a brand new edition out.
It'll set you back about $100,$100, but it's got all kinds of
historic pictures.
He's done a real good job onthe history.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
So he's got a bunch of Snake River deer, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Came from the Wilson boys not Lamb's family, but the
ones from Saddle Creek, allright and so he's got some of
them and they're just amazing,well, well, like the ones you
see in the Imnahon Tavern.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Yeah, I really want to take some DNA from those deer
and see if there's somethingdifferent about them, because
their characteristics are sowildly different from these
other bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
It might pay to talk to David and see if he's maybe
done some of that Okay or knowsomebody that might also be
interested.
Gotcha.
Because he's got a collectionof trophy animals that won't
quit and he's got the history ofa lot of them because people
have given him.
He's building a big game museumat Canyon City right now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Yeah, I'll have to get down there and do a show
with him.
Yeah, roosevelt's and Rocky's.
I know that we had our nativeelk here.
We brought elk in from Wyoming.
I know also that at varioustimes we sent elk over to
Astoria.
Is there a difference between aRoosevelt and a Rocky?

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Yeah, what's the difference?
Well, roosevelts are generallya little bigger, generally a lot
darker, like their, their hairis darker.
Their hair is darker.
Which would fit living in thetimber more yeah, because their
antlers are.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
The record book just separates them by the interstate
yeah, I know it I know it, soit it seems weird to me to say
well, and that's not necessarilyscientific.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Now I will tell you the old-timers, and you've
probably heard this they claimedthat the native elk here were
different than Rocky Mountain.
I believe it, and peoplethought it was kind of common
knowledge.
But wrong is that you know, allthe elk were wiped out, which

(01:06:20):
they were not, and then they allcame from Jackson Hole, which
only the Chestnip elk you knowwere, and the ones that were La
La Lake, but there were elk inthe Minam and elk in the Manaha,
and I could find no records ofany other transplants other than
those that people are wellaware of.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Yeah, those that were brought to Billy Meadows.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
However, a buddy of mine, pat Fowler from Washington
, he was a bio there for 30years, him and I worked together
all the time and when they werecollaring elk they took genetic
samples.
And I know he called me onetime and he said do you know of
any Roosevelt's that were evertransplanted into the Winaw
country?

(01:07:03):
And I said no, no recordswhatsoever.
But they had some geneticcharacters of Roosevelt
Interesting.
But they had some geneticcharacters of Roosevelt.
But when you think about it, itwasn't just a line out there
thousands of years that it wasRockies on this side and
Roosevelt's on this side.
You know they had to gradetogether some time periods

(01:07:25):
anyway, oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
And so I think these could have been more towards the
edge, they were a littledifferent, but Well, and if you
look at the antlercharacteristics of elk that come
out of Emily Walla WallaWinawha the Minam, you see
antler characteristics that aredifferent from no you do From
these Wyoming elk.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Especially when you were overseas and they were
killing those hog bulls in theWinaha.
I mean, I've got a whole bunchof pictures of those bulls that
the guides gave me and they justwere just, you know, huge.
They're a different animal.
They just got different antlercharacteristics and some of us

(01:08:11):
probably aged because we weren'tused to seeing any old bulls.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Yeah, I pull teeth out of every single animal that
we kill when I'm guiding.
Yeah, and liver tissue samples.
We take live weights, we takehanging weights, we take meat
yields.
And I found some reallyinteresting stuff and I've tried
to talk with the state about ita little bit, but the average
age of of the cow elk that we'reharvesting is a is a teenager.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Oh yeah, I don't doubt it.
Cause when we used to havethose snake river hunts, we got
those tags all the time cause wecould never hunt during the
bull seasons.
Yeah, we were too busy duringthe bull seasons.
Yeah, we were too busy and wegot Abel's killed, the oldest
one of any of us, I think, andit was 21.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Yeah, we've got a couple 22-year-old elk.
Yeah, we shot an elk this yearthat didn't have any teeth left.
Yeah, there wasn't a tooth forme to pull that 22-year-old elk.
She'd been bred.
I doubt she was going to have acalf, but she had been bred.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
I know we had a bighorn ewe one time that golly,
she was like 18 or so, which isreally old for them and she was
bred.
She was still having lambs.
She was still having lambs.
I wouldn't say they'd survived,but then they had the disease
issues.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
So you don't know, under normal conditions If you
could pick a decade in the last100 years to be a wildlife
biologist, which decade wouldyou pick?
Probably 2000.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
Yeah, why then?
Because we had so muchabundance, yeah.
And we had cut back on the bullseasons enough that we had
magnificent bulls Like SnakeRiver was just incredible bull
hunting.
You know, 50%, 40, 50% success.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
You know those, the reputations that were earned
during those times.
They don't.
They don't die off Like.
People are still dropping hugenumbers of preference points on
the Steens for a buck tag.
I know they are and you knowthey'll be lucky to see a buck.
Or if they do, it's just aforked horn.
Yeah, same thing with withmount emily.

(01:10:19):
Yeah, same thing with snakeriver bulls.
People think that they're gonna, you know, drop all these
points on a snake river bull tagand go have an incredible hunt.
It's just not the case anymoreno, and I I twit.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
A lot of them still call me and they said I got a
whole bunch of preference points.
I said we'll save them unlessyou think you're gonna die.
But save.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
There's no unit I'd recommend right now, especially
for deer.
Yeah, I get messages three orfour times a day like, oh, I got
six deer points, I got 11 deerpoints.
What should I do?
Just get rid of them?
Yeah, there, there's.
There's just not a unit that'sworth anything I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
I don't know of a single unit yeah, so I know
there's some people that hadtrout tags, yeah, and they
didn't end up getting.
Of course they were holding outfor a better bucks, but they
didn't even see anything halfwaydecent.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
You know, I dropped seven points on an Hawaii tag
here a couple of years ago and abuddy of mine went and spent
four hours in a Super Cub flyingthe unit right before the
season.
He said, james, we only saw onegroup of deer and there's a
buck in there.
He said, james, we only saw onegroup of deer and there's a

(01:11:37):
buck in there.
He wasn't much, but in fourhours we only saw one group of
deer.
And these, these are guys whohad hunted coyotes from super
cups professionally yeah, likethey were game spotters, they
knew what they were doing.
Yeah so I just ate the tag yeah,like, rather than go down there
and make a bad situation worseeven though I'd waited for seven
years for that opportunity, Idecided to just eat my tag.
Yeah, and it's heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Oh, I know it is, I know it is.
And some of those guys have 15tag preference points.
Yeah, yeah, for those tags.
Yeah, you know why.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
I've seen.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
That's my advice right now for them.
Unless you had some privateland that you knew there was,
you know some good bucks on.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
All right.
So here's the biggest questionthat I wanted to ask you today,
and this will be the lastquestion that I ask what is the
most important thing that ahunter in Oregon can be doing to
help wildlife?

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
hunter in Oregon can be doing to help wildlife.
Well, number one be involvedwith political scene and really
be on guard on the antis, tryingto keep them from forging ahead
, because they'll just keep itup, they'll hit on trapping.
They already have Hit on bears.
Hit on the predators first, butthat I'd say would be the most
important.
Also, try to get involved insome of the public land

(01:12:57):
management and make sure theycontinue to do control burns
where they can Encourage goodlogging for wildlife, which
that's a pretty broad statement,but probably should say for
deer and elk.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Those are surprising answers I don't disagree with
you in the slightest, but it's alot to ask of somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
No, it is.
And it's like I've beeninvolved with OHA and was on the
board for a couple of terms andto get hunters to step forward
and get involved is really tough.
And to get hunters to stepforward and get involved is
really tough.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Well, I know there's things coming up this year that
I'm going to have to drive 16hours round trip to go to Salem
and I'll have between 90 and 120seconds to speak my piece on it
.
And that might be to a veryunreceptive audience of
politicians, but I'm going to doit.
Yeah, because it's got to bedone, but I'm going to do it

(01:13:54):
yeah.
Because it's got to be done,yeah, and you've got to show up
People have to show up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
I know it, I know it, or they just.
That's how the and I's havebeat us on.
Some of these is justlackadaisical hunters.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Yeah, so, okay.
So that's it.
Folks Got to show up, got tofight for your right to hunt.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
Exactly, yeah, exactly, and be you, know, and,
and and watch.
Make sure the public lands staypublic lands and open.
Yep.
You know, we've had parkproposals for Hell's Canyon
years ago and we were able tofight them back.
If that was a national park,there would be no hunting or no.

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
No, we're basically no wildlife management yeah, and
probably no jet boats either.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Yeah we're not going to let that happen yeah, okay,
where can people find your book?

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
grain growers has it, they can call me directly is
there a place on the internetthat they can get it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
It's on the internet, on Amazon.
Here I got it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
It's on Amazon I got some cards.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
I'll leave with you that it's got all this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
I'll get one from you in just a minute here For folks
who are interested.
This is an incrediblehistorical book.
There's some great stories inthere, and it's not just the
history of Vic's many decades ofservice as a wildlife biologist
, but the history of wildlife inthis area before that, and I
encourage folks to look for it.

(01:15:20):
We're going to have a link tothe Amazon order in the podcast
description so you can justclick on that and go straight to
it, and then you can get thisbook.
It's really cool.
Vic, thank you so much for yourtime, thanks for your stories
and your information and againfor your many years of service
to wildlife in Oregon.
Okay, thank you All.
Right Bye, everybody.
Thank you to everyone who hastaken the time out of their busy

(01:15:43):
lives to write a review for theshow and share it with their
friends.
I'm extremely proud of howintelligent, engaged and
adventurous this audience is.
Original music for the SixRanch Podcast is written and
performed by Justin Hay.
Art for the Six Ranch Podcastwas created by John Chatelain

(01:16:03):
and digitized by Celia Harlander.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again next week.