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CLEAR Temp: 67 °F Wind: NW at 4 mph Monday, August 11, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend July 24, 2003 Sun may be setting on blacktail buck hunts Outdoors commentary By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune When that great white overhead orb casts a vibrant glow over the hills tonight, it marks the beginning of a wonderful process that makes western Oregon’s deer the envy of the dew-clawed world. Tonight’s moon is called the full buck moon, named by ancient star-gazers for the month when black-tailed bucks start growing antlers in all their velvet glory. Prospect hunter Greg Schaffer believes one of those new antler nubs eventually will have his name on it, in the form of his general-season buck tag to validate his kill. But it likely won’t be a buck in his mountain backyard. Or anywhere near the High Cascades. Schaffer migrated to rural Medford, of all places, last year to kill his deer, becoming one of a shrinking pool of blacktail hunters who can say they bagged their buck. This fall, Schaffer expects to perform a similar sacrilege by heading to town to find a blacktail. Advertisement "You have to go where the deer are," says Schaffer, a 41-year-old hot dog salesman. "It doesn’t matter if you live way up in the mountains anymore. If there’s no deer there, there’s no reason to be there." Oregonians are finding more and more reasons not to be in the woods during the fall general rifle season, and poor hunting success ranks right at the top. Fewer riflemen hunted the October season last year, bagging the fewest bucks ever while logging the worst success rate seen in the history of the general-season buck hunt. And last year’s hunt is no aberration. It is the latest in a continuing decline in the numbers of blacktails and the people who stalk them. A combination of degrading deer habitat, predation and diseases continue to hammer at western Oregon’s once vibrant blacktail population, and disappointed hunters are fleeing in droves. While tonight’s huge moon casts an optimistic light on the bucks still here, it also reveals how the sun is setting on what once was the best big- game hunting opportunity open to every Oregonian every year. "Once you graph it, it’s kind of dramatic when you see the drop-off," says Peg Bouley, the ODFW’s acting deer and elk program coordinator. "The trend is definitely down, and it’s hard to say where it will go in the future." Blacktail bucks here continue to be some of the biggest and best of the species, with antlers fueled by a special combination of genetics and minerals rarely seen. Hunting’s record books are pock-marked with blacktails born and bred in Southern Oregon. Stories of those record hunts sound hum-drum compared to the Teddy Roosevelt-like yarns normally associated with achieving world-class hunting status. Just last year, teenager Bill Jarrell earned hunting immortality by bagging a record blacktail while playing hooky from Ashland High School one October afternoon. And every local who plunks down $14.50 for a deer tag knows they’re a shot away from joining Jarrell in the Boone and Crockett Club record book. While the best of the blacktails still may come from here, chances are there will continue to be fewer deer and fewer hunters in the foreseeable future. Fewer clearcuts to open forest canopies and intensive fire suppression create a change in forest habitat that no longer favors the dewclaw-hooved creatures. Predators continue to pick off the young and the old, while a new set of diseases like the adenovirus and Deer Hair-Loss Syndrome wipe out pockets of blacktails in every western county. The results are 47 percent fewer hunters are pounding a more dense forest in search of 40-percent fewer deer than 15 years ago. "We can’t say for sure what the cause and effect is," Bouley says. "But one could make the extrapolation that the deer are fewer, harder to find and harder to hunt because of all the vegetation." Few would believe Bouley’s words two decades ago. Historically, well over 100,000 Oregonians headed to the mountains each fall to intercept the big, old blacktail bucks as they migrate from the High Cascades clearcuts toward low-elevation winter range. Beat the brush, and they’d find a buck. If wasn’t if you spied a buck. It was whether you chose to shoot it, or pass for one with bigger, more impressive antlers. Even as recently as a decade ago, a third of the hunters made their last shot a good one. Last year, just 16 percent of western Oregon’s deer hunters put their name on a buck’s antlers. In Prospect, the famed Trophy Room bar logged just seven bucks in its big-buck contest. Seven . That’s like Tiger Woods shooting 90. It doesn’t happen. It should never happen. "There’s not a lot of deer around my place now," says Schaffer, of Prospect. "You can hunt days and days and days looking for a buck up here." Short of a monumental about-face in forest management, the blacktail hunters’ tale will become the new horror story told around deer-camp fires. "It’s certainly going down, down, down, and I couldn’t tell you when I think it will bottom out," says John Thiebes, a former ODFW wildlife biologist in Central Point who is now field coordinator for the Oregon Hunters Association. "For the most part, there’s nothing a man can do to change that." But men still will gaze at tonight’s moon and dream of this fall, when their set of big antlers — their shot at blacktail immortality — lies just beyond one more thicket, or just across one more ridge. "Tell you the truth, I’m already getting excited," Trophy Room owner Mark Francis says. "I haven’t gotten a buck in three years, and it’s not because I’m not out there trying. Every year I find a few new spots, and I’ve got a few new ones this year that I plan to try right away." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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