A couple buddies had their hunt cancelled/postponed this fall in the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho due to wildfires over the summer. The outfitter hunts the Gospel Hump Wilderness area and was not confident they could find game. They were told it would be re-scheduled next fall. If anyone’s familiar with this area or the expectations a year after a wildfire please respond.

I didn't hunt it but, after some of the big fires in Colorado, the following year there were elk back in the area. Lots of new growth that they were looking for. I have no idea how the hunting in those areas was though.

Since logging in Oregon has been essentially shut down by environmentalists, I've been looking to burns for young food supplies for deer hunting. Food quality in burns varies quite a bit here by rainfall amounts. I would classify southern Oregon as very wet winters and extremely hot and dry summers. We can go months w/o rainfall to supplement feed in summer, essentially eliminating great conditions that would otherwise be in burns. Instead of desirable food we end up with drought resistant brush of one type or another. Ceanothus, manzanita, etc. I envy the places I see in photos with lush grass in wide open areas. Must get more summer rains to support it than we do.

The first growing season after a fire produces absolutely super forage quality. There's no old growth to sort through. Typically there are unburned islands of vegetation to provide cover. We do well on deer in those areas and they often become the rut pasture for elk. Also elk will frequent them season long as opposed moving up in elevation as the growing season progresses.

A few years back a lot of our forest burned and roads were temporarily closed within the burn. Initially hunters went ballistic, but the tone changed when most had their best season ever.

I'd get on it.

I'm guessing this year's burns will be ghost towns, and not worth pursuing, but next year, they will be "the place" to hunt.

The next year can be great elk hunting.

It is very dependent though on the time of season when the fire occurred, the vegetation type, and the weather for the year(s) following the fire.

Remember, elk are grazers, and the first thing to come back is usually grass.

Since the colorado wildlife and the colorado parks became one the hunting has gone down.

If ones region gets enough precip to stimulate a fall green-up, I'd still be inclined to work the current summer's burn. If there are no islands of cover within, then work the edges of the burn for foraging critters in the early AM and late PM, and unburned edges for resting/bedded animals mid day.

After the Mustang complex fire in Idaho several years ago we did not see any elk back in the area for 2-3 years.

All depends on the frequency of rainfall imo.

For what it is worth, I hunted in Zambia one year in October. The fires were burning and we could see lines of flames across the grass.

Most animals cleared out since they were used to them. The natives set the fires every year to clear the underbrush, and I assume to cut back the insect population, which had a great deal to do with why no one lived in the hunting regions.

Of course that preserved those areas for wildlife and hunting, so I can't complain, but those tsetse flies were horrible.

My point is that setting fires did no seem to harm the wildlife and likely benefitted it. The trees weren't hurt and was told that some seeds do not even germinate in the absence of the wildfires.

I would not be surprised if that were the case here as well.

Norm

Unfortunately our family cabin burned down as well as my hunting areas in more than one fire - no elk here but 2-3 years post fire the bucks were plentiful and had well developed antlers. We had a very hot fire in several areas that seemed to cook the fertility out of the dirt. Several years later they are still not back to young normal growth. Depending on how fast the fire moved through and how much gentle steady rain the area gets it may recover quickly. If it were up to me on schedule I'd hunt 2seasons later.

A few years ago there was a real cooker in the Sawtooth Nat. Recreation Area in Idaho. About 2 years later, I looked at it on Google Earth. They'd rephotographed it in the meantime. The photos clearly showed the burned area. It was surprising how much unburned area was in there.

Grass comes back first after fires. The fire puts nutrients back into the ground = good forage. Elk eat grass. Might take a year or two, or three... Islands of unburned with burned is the best of all worlds. Cover and feed. If there is water.... I. E. Food, shelter, water, space...... the 4 essentials

For the life of me, I can't think of the term....

Mosaic!!!!

Las is right. I would add that if there is alot of standing dead timber the deer and elk love it.

We had a big fire in the Umatila National Forest several years ago. Because of the fire we moved down the road several miles to the unburned area that fall. We later learned that there was lots of elk in the burned area that fall. I think it really depends on the precipitation the area receives that fall. I would have no reservations hunting the area the next season.

Can depend on how cooked the ground gets also. After the '69 burn in my Kenai Peninsula moose hunting area some spots remained barren for several years. It's all at least 40 feet tall now tho.

But we had some dynamite moose hunting throughout the 80's and 90's!

I made some phone calls over the last couple of weeks and it turns out that a large percentage of the burned areas in Units 14 & 19 where the outfitter hunts were burned in a backfire set to control the advance of the main burn so the areas were burned but not scorched. Quite a bit of cover remains and new growth was already coming up in November. The Idaho Fish & Game Dept was very good about providing info and I spoke to a few guys who hunted there in late November Muzzleloader season. It sounds like the elk herd wasn't affected by the fire and is stable in that area so I'm booking with the outfitter for this fall. This will be my first trip out west to hunt since 2006 so I'm pretty pumped. 9 months to go!

When the USFS gives the total acreage burned they are reporting everything within the perimeter of the fire. A rule of thumb in conifer forests is 40-60% of the acreage is actually burned, leaving that mosaic of burned and unburned patches.

The Yellowstone fires are a very good example. Lodgepole pines stands are generally ripe for fire when they reach 250-300 years old. In Yellowstone the 250-300 year old stands burned, the 150-200 year old stands didn't burn.

Mustang was a rager, I worked that fire, Im an engine captain in Salmon, ID. That fire was unrepresentative of normal post fire conditions and the area has since returned to good hunting. When a total stand replacement fire occurs (such as it did in Indian creek, etc) it will take awhile for it to come back due to soil sterilization. Most fires do not burn anywhere near that intense and typically are hot spots for game the following season or even that fall if an early season fire occurs, much the same in prescribed fire units. I frequently return to places I have fought fires to hunt if they are in the unit Im hunting in. The typical mosaic patterns of naturally occurring fires also lend themselves to better visibility for glassing.

And the soil type. If the soils are typical of those that form over granite, they have low capacities for storing nutrients and moisture and new growth is much slower and less nutritious. If they are typical of soils that form over shale or limestone, new growth will be much faster.

FB, I can't imagine yall not getting summer rains in Oregon. powdr

A year after the high park fire in Colorado it was pretty grim.. following right after the fire record heavy rains so a lot of soil was washed away. The forest service airlifted a lot of mulch and seed but a lot of it was washed down into gullys or was completely washed away. However quite a bit of grass popped up in areas that were burnt but not so steep.
I hunted deer and there were pockets of them but few and far between. I did not see any elk sign at all in the areas I was in, but it was a huge burned area so I can't really say about the entire burn.

Now some 4 years later lots of new growth. More deer than I have ever seen and elk have moved into areas where there were none before. Lots of mountain lions too!
So long term the burn prolly improved habitat.

I even have good views from my house now that the trees are gone.

First year after the fire grim and then improving each year there after.

LC

Both of those are genus names that are commonly used as catch-all names. Ceanothus has more than 50 species and manzanita a lot more than that. It takes a botonist to sort them out. We have a lot of ceanothus in southern Idaho but it's usually just called chaparral, which it isn't really.

The thing that's really screwed up the ecology in much of the west is cheat grass. It spreads and grows thick between the sagebrush. It matures and drops its seed early in the summer then the stems dry out. If a fire gets going, the cheat burns extra hot which kills the sage and other native plants. All that's left if the cheat grass seeds which come back with a vengeance the next spring. With the sage gone, the cheat is all that survives. Without cheat, the sage will survive many of the fires but with the cheat, the fire clears the land completely except for the cheat seeds lying in the soil.