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60 °F Forecast | Road Cams Saturday, March 6, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend February 19, 2004 Oregon’s big-game grand slam has benefits By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Mark Vargas can count on four fingers just what he sees are benefits if the Cascades’ black-tailed deer hunters could share their general season with the Cascade’s bull-elk hunters. A hunter armed with the appropriate general-season tags could head into the woods with the opportunity to shoot all four big-game animals the Rogue Unit has to offer. Blacktail buck, Roosevelt bull elk, cougar and bear. It would become Oregon’s new big-game grand slam, all available in places like the Rogue Unit during one monster hunting week each October. Talk about putting your Sport-Pac tags to ultimate use. "I like the opportunity," says Vargas, a wildlife biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "To be able to sell somebody the opportunity to hunt deer, elk, bear and cougar at the same time in the same place is an awesome opportunity." Advertisement But whether Southern Oregon’s Roosevelt elk and black-tail hunters will buy it is the question that right now seems to have no right answer. Part of the draft strategies for rebuilding western Oregon’s dwindling black-tail herds is a proposal to drop the one-week hiatus Cascade buck-rifle hunters have each October for the general elk season, and let both in the woods simultaneously. At first glance, the move looks messy. Elk hunters will grouse about having even more people in the already crowded woods, and some deer hunters surely will complain that they have to buy a general-season elk tag to take full advantage of their season. But not mixing the seasons could be worse than keeping them separate. Without a deer-elk general season overlap in the Cascades, black-tail hunters could end up with a season as short as 24 days or see places like the Rogue Unit over-run with more black-tail hunters in late season than ever before. It boils down to a busy week in the woods with several tags in your pocket, or another week stuck at home. "The general (elk) season is the only place, really, where we may be able to add some opportunity for black-tail hunters," says Tom Thornton, the ODFW’s game program leader and author the draft black-tail strategies. "Whether people want it? I don’t know. We just want to get folks’ reaction to it now." Western Oregon hunters are now buzzing about the black-tail strategies, which ODFW biologists drafted at the behest of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission amid growing concern that the long-term trend of declining herds warrant cutbacks in hunting. No one’s blaming hunters. Declining winter-range and summer-range habitat, more woodland development, a fist-full of different diseases and some predation are all fingered as causing more harm to overall black-tail health than the 93,444 Cascade rifle hunters who shot 17,485 bucks in 2002. The commission cannot boost logging, curb wildfire suppression, reduce forestland development or vaccinate every deer west of the Pacific Crest Trail. But it can alter hunting seasons, and that’s where the proposals go. Various options now up for public comment involve shaving the general deer season to 31-33 days from this year’s 35-day season, focusing harvest on younger bucks, phasing out most antlerless hunts and adding new 100-series hunts where justifiable, and reducing the numbers of deer tags any hunter can get annually. The options all steer buck hunters out of November, when hunters take advantage of cool weather, better visibility and closeness to the rut to bag as many as 30 percent of the Cascade bucks annually. That doesn’t mean the buck harvest would drop 30 percent, Thornton says, because many hunters procrastinate and will take their buck on the last week regardless of when that occurs. To keep buck hunters out of November, that means a shorter season. On the coast, it’s no problem; they don’t take a one-week break for October elk hunters. But in places like the Rogue Unit, that would mean a season as short as 24 days if the bull-elk hiatus is retained. That’s why Thornton has raised the possibility of buck hunting in deer season for those with a valid and unused Cascade elk tag. It was tried once, in 1986, and dropped because some angry buck hunters mistakenly believed this was a ploy to get them to buy an elk tag, Vargas says. Another option, however, is keeping the same format, with the Cascade season closing in November and a week later than the coast buck seasons. Thornton says that not only would detract from the benefits of no November buck hunting, but it also would send many of the coast hunters to the already crowded Cascades. The Cascades’ elk hunters have said resoundingly over the years that over-crowding is the main problem they face in the woods — even more than a single-digit success rate. So it’s not hard to imagine that they will bristle at the notion of adding more hunters to the fray. But no one knows just how many extra hunters would be put in the woods together by overlapping the seasons. In 2002, the Rogue Unit of eastern Jackson County had 2,644 general-season elk hunters and 7,636 general-season buck hunters, ODFW statistics show. But the ODFW has yet to determine how many elk hunters also buck-hunt. "In many cases, you’ll have folks who just will be putting their other (deer) tag in their pocket," Thornton says. "That’s something we can look at in more detail." And there isn’t a buck hunter out there who believes having two tags in his pocket is worse than sitting on his back pockets for an extra week each fall. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! 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