Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Moving into winter here - 1 pic

from your wife? Great pic. Dang neck is still big

Nice mule deer.

Flintlocke:


Just a guess, as the GNIS website is now too complicated to navigate. Used to be a very user friendly site where one could look up names and garner specific location and the history of its nomenclature.

Being about 7,169 ft in elevation, bald on top, visible from near any direction, and one of the last spots in Grant County to thaw out, that's probably the reason. Don't know if that is an official version though. Some great elk country to the north and east, but it spills on to private ground at the bottom and one has to eat the carcass to get it back up the mountain.

That's a spectacular pic, once again 1minute.

RE: the bold statement above.

And it's getting worse with the intrusion of juniper into traditional sage/grassland areas. Each one of the junipers is way thirstier than a sagebrush or some bunchgrass taking up the same footprint, and they're sucking up water all some long. Keeps any "excess" water to a minimum that should be going into groundwater. Fire suppression efforts have done wonders for juniper intrusion.

Ironbender, I'm a few hours drive south of 1minute. Pretty similar habitat. I'm not sure how bad it is up his way, down here it's very noticeable. I hunted about an hour NW of here in '98. I drive by that area every time I have to go to "the big town" for doctors and such. When we first moved here I was amazed at the change.

Picture is from a couple of years back near my place. All those little junipers lower down are less than 20 years old. And that should all be sage and grassland similar to the bottom of the valley.. Imagine what it will look like in another 50 years if nothing is done?



Didn't mean to step on your thread 1minute. It's just a concern of mine as we're on a well and have "issues" during drought years as it is. It's not going to be easier on our well if there's more trees sucking up what little moisture we get.

Ribka:



What makes you suspect that? Once in while I get to carry a camera, and with no safety, if I fall down, it might go off.

OK, that's pretty funny!

Valsdad:

Yes. Juniper seemed to really take off in the late 1800's when we pretty much removed fire from the landscape. A friend of mine made a career for himself with several detailed studies of its ecology. Seems a 15 to 20 footer with about 12 inch bole can suck up about 30 gallons of water on a warm spring day. Not tap rooted either supporting a wide spreading matted root system often in soils less than 2 feet deep. Since conifers don't have to put on a crop of leaves each spring, they get an early jump on depleting soil moisture before the grasses and shrubs can get cranking. As density increases, sagebrush goes out, and eventually even the sub canopy grasses. Once that occurs, one no longer has the ability to use fire as a control agent.

With the depletion of soil moisture, it simply closes its stomates and shuts down. Also, the stomates are on the inside of those clasping scales, so it's near impossible to get herbicides into their system.

Thanks for that info.

Some folks might say there's a need for more grazing, but on that land I took the pic of, my neighbor holds the allotment and grazes it, sometimes twice a year depending on the grass. But, cows don't eat juniper, even the little ones. I do wish BLM would do something more about it. But, they're short on funding for that and no doubt there'd be some "Save the Junipers" group around to sue them.

Since herbicide sprays won't work well, hack and squirt might? But, I know of paired bulldozers with an anchor chain between them that have been used in AZ to improve pronghorn habitat. Those would work on our flat lands.

They make decent firewood at least, once they reach that 12" diameter or so. Smaller ones have too many branches to make it worthwhile.

As always, enjoy the pics you folks take.

That's a heavy one!

The longer the suppression the hotter the fire when it burns. The hotter the fire the deeper the soil damage.

Frequent fires tend to produce shallow burns.

Another acquaintance did some juniper work down near the Steens. (Link to just one of his studies ) Precut there was about 125 lbs of herbage to the acre. Five years post cut it was in the neighborhood of 1,500lbs. If one can cut and or then burn stands in the winter months, there's little to no understory plant or soil damage. When it's bitter cold (like sub zero) there's little to no moisture in live trees and they darned near explode when one lights them off. Unfortunately, ground fires don't carry at all in those conditions.

One strategy is to cut some trees, and drag them over beneath other live ones. Midwinter, light off the dead and the plume will take out the live. Chaining will work on stands of very old trees, but will not take out the youngsters. One still has to go out and burn the dead to clear the landscape too. At landscape scales though, it takes a good fire about every 20 years or so to keep them out and few want to risk the liability of burning several square miles at a time.

As to firewood, it's great stuff, but the required labor sucks. Fall it, 20 minutes to cut the branches off, buck up 5 pieces in a minute, and move to the next tree. Takes half a day to fill a pickup. I'll stick with limb free 100-ft tamaracks thank you.

Have a good one.

Wow! 🤘🏻

Got company! Lol
Nice pic