Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The NW is Burning - Incredible Photo

Don't be spreading that chit!


I think of Thomas and hold hope for his safety every time I hear a wildfire story on the news.

Scott, you are being much too kind.

Just to clarify, the reason cheatgrass has taken over most areas is too frequent of fire. Without fire and given enough are still around, native perennial grasses can compete with it. The problem is that cheatgrass, by it's annual nature, speeds up the fire return interval. Instead of burning every 50 years or so, what was formerly sagebrush steppe is not burning every 5 years. This gives a huge competitive advantage to a prolific annual plant; cheatgrass.

Also more FWIW, when green cheatgrass is very palatable an nutritious for grazing. Nearly as good as alfalfa. The problem is that it only is in this state for about 4-6 weeks per year. Once dried it's all but worthless.

10 years ago we lost over 200,000 acres of prime mountain ground. So far this year what did not burn then is burning now. Last tally is right around 60,000 acres. The interesting thing this time 90% of the burning is all in the wilderness. The forest service had the opportunity to stop this fire when it started because it sat at about 250 acres for about 3 or 4 days, but they did not have any crews to fight it. Earlier in the summer we had a couple lighting fires start in the same area which never got over 50 acres but they brought in the DC-10, a 4 engine prop, 2 helicopters, two small single engine planes and 40 hotshots to fight the fires and had them out in a single day. There are some cabins that sit in the wilderness that were built in the late 60s or early 70s and there is only one road to them. They have set up water bladders and pumps with sprinklers. When the fire gets close enough they are going in and starting the pumps and leaving. Those cabins sit on forest service ground on a special lease and I have been told by FS management years ago that if those cabins ever brunt that the owners would not be allowed to rebuild. They will make the location into a camp site. I know that the forest needs to clean itself but the greenies have shut down timber harvest, grazing, and all other ways we have to manage the forest so we can now watch the trees burn. Bitter, Hell yes I am bitter.

Logger, my friend,

Sorry I didn't get back to you. Life is kinda different here now.

My friend, I can only imagine how helpless you felt ... one change of wind and your home would be burned to the ground; and there would be nothing you could do about it.

A few years ago, I helped a friend try to save his home. He lives on the Clackamas River and during one of those freak spring melts, the water was literally at his doorstep.

We started sandbagging at 4am and the water just kept coming, up and up. About 3pm (I was still filling sandbags), the volunteer fire department came by and said that the engineers were going to have to let a lot of water over the earth-filled North Fork Reservoir.

About an hour later, the water went through and over our pitiful effort ... and we started just getting his families stuff out.

The water reached the second floor sometime that evening.

And what a mess.

Hopefully, the fires treat you kindly.

Blessings,

Steve

IIRC you're a range guy, I was a forester so I will stand corrected. We only had one class on rangeland management.


But hey, if you ever want to know the Latin binomial for Douglas fir, I'm your guy...

Yeah, no worries. I don't get to work in real 'range' anymore so I like to flex that part of my brain when I get a chance.

You got that right! Big brass balls!!

.gov HAS blocked the sun's rays -
the smoke cover, even this far away, has cooled our days - and enhanced our ever-gorgeous sunrises!

Yes, that does sound ignorant.

Earthquakes and hurricanes can't be managed. Forests can, and have, though eco-Nazi political pressure has led to mismanagement in the last few decades. The results are huge fuel loads that are hard to slow down when they're lit and burn much hotter than the spring time controlled burns, and result in dead ground that takes forever to recover. Then theres a staggering bureaucracy that's now in place to make sure a hundred men stand watching a fire burn while waiting for air support. Wilderness areas are "managed" with a hands-off approach and a let it burn attitude, feeling it's worse to leave a set of cat tracks behind then it is to wait 50-100yrs for a area to grow back.

Humans are on a timeline. Nature is not. As human populations grow and create more demand on limited resources, those resources need to be managed more intelligently. That hasn't been happening in the last 40+ years since the USFS was overrun by hippies.

I'm probably coming off a little strong, but I've spent the last two weeks watching my two local counties burn up.

Once dried, it's less than worthless. The only thing cheatgrass is good for is raising chukar partridge.

To expand a little, IF cheatgrass is grazed during the palatable stage, it all but fireproof. Historically, however, BLM is grazed Summer/Fall, but a Spring grazing rotation would prevent a lot of range fires.

The problem with trying to control areas that are monocultures of cheatgrass with grazing is timing and animals numbers. I've worked on 'winter' allotments that are trying it with sporadic success. It takes the right situation to have an operator that has the flexibility to be able to move the cows and deal with possible huge year to year cattle number swings.

One big way to get a leg up on cheatgrass is that after it burns get it seeded and hope for good weather. Native bunchgrasses may not be the best/most effective option either, but the red tape can require it. Crested wheatgrass, while another non-native, can compete pretty good if it gets established and put an area on the road back to being better.

You could call it a MIG and I wouldn't know the difference.

Great shot, though.

Should be lots of good hunting in some of these burn over areas with the new browse that's going to be coming up.

Being as how I'm somewhat 'attached' to a business that sends air tankers out your way each season I guess I'm a little prejudiced in agreeing with your statement letting 3/4 acre fire bloom into 600 acres or more before fighting is asinine! But we must remember that the FS would rather send 2400 ground personnel with shovels than to use air support right away and in this manner the FS can 'justify' their budget!!

Sounds like a stupid plan, so its likely correct.

I don't know about those types of wildfires, but here, we jump as fast as we possibly safely can and pour every resource we can get into any fire, grass or brush, to keep it from getting big. ASAP.

In fact we've mutual aided LOTS of departments and had to send them home when we get there and find a couple departments could stop it.

There is NO feeling like behind the curve.

I hate sitting in a truck waiting for it to come out of the next thicket so we can get to it. We don't have capable and trained ground attack crews here to speak of, but we can almost always access em by vehicle at some point.

Ignoring a fire, well its kin to waiting to call FD when the pan catches fire on the stove, until the fire has vented out the roof... makes no sense.