BAKER CITY — Bob Reedy has been an archery hunter in Northeastern Oregon for decades, but as the 2024 season nears he feels in some ways like a rookie.

A million acres burned by wildfires can have that effect.

With an unprecedented large swath of the region scorched this summer, Reedy, a Baker County native who lives in Baker City, believes hunters, no matter their wealth of experience, will need to be ready to adjust this year.

“They’ll have to do their homework,” Reedy said.

Fires have burned more than 1 million acres in Oregon’s northeast corner this summer. That includes expanses of public land where hunters congregate for the archery season for deer and elk, which runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 29.

Although wildlife biologists from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the fires probably killed few big game animals, since they’re capable of outrunning the flames in most situations, the blazes will affect hunters in two noteworthy ways.

First, significant sections of public land, including parts of the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur and Umatilla national forests, are closed to public entry now because they’re within or near an active fire perimeter.

Some of those areas could remain off limits when the archery season starts, said Justin Primus, assistant district wildlife biologist at ODFW’s Baker City office.

In addition, private land enrolled in ODFW’s Access & Habitat Program in Northeastern Oregon are closed until further notice, as are lands in the region owned by Manulife.

The situation has improved, however, as crews make significant progress on all the major blazes in the region.

On Aug. 12, the Umatilla National Forest reopened the section of the North Fork John Day Ranger District east of Highway 395, and reopened parts of the North Fork and Heppner districts north of Forest Service Road 53 and west of Highway 395.

ODFW doesn’t close hunting season due to fire danger or public entry closures, said Michelle Dennehy, an agency spokesperson. The agency will, however, review the effects after the season, and if public access “is substantially restricted for the entire hunt period” ODFW will consider reinstating one preference point and refunding tag costs.

Dennehy said the agency in that case would notify hunters by email, so she urged hunters to ensure their email is listed in their online licensing account.

The second factor could pose a challenge for hunters even in places where hunting is allowed — deer and elk likely will avoid areas where the flames charred the shrubs and grass they rely on for food.

“Things have changed a lot,” Primus said. “It’s an adjustment for the hunters and an adjustment for the wildlife.”

Reedy likes to hunt in the Lookout Mountain Unit in the southeast part of Baker County. The Badlands Complex fires burned about 51,000 acres in the unit.

Reedy said he will be focusing on places with shade, water and “some type of good feed.”

“That’s where the animals are going to be going,” he said.

Primus agrees with that assessment.

Places where the fire burned hottest, leaving in effect a moonscape devoid of vegetation, are also likely to be devoid of deer and elk, he said.

However, Primus said animals might gather in islands of unburned ground even if those are surrounded by blackened zones.

Hunters who find such places could benefit, with a higher density of animals per acre than they’re used to seeing, he said.

“Hunters are just going to have to adjust to these animals being in different areas,” said Steve Cherry, district wildlife biologist at the ODFW office in Heppner. “It’s definitely going to be an issue for hunters in the Fossil and Heppner units.”

The biggest fire in that area is the Lone Rock Fire, which burned 137,000 acres.

Although deer and elk typically avoid scorched areas, biologists said deer tend to be less prone than elk to migrating long distances to find better forage.

In fact, preliminary evidence from a mule deer study in Harney County suggests that the animals, in some cases, might be so attached to their traditional summer range that they would risk starvation rather than leave it.

Lee Foster, district wildlife biologist at the ODFW office in Hines, said he tracked the movements of six to eight mule deer fitted with GPS collars as part of the ongoing study. Those deer had summer range in the area burned by the 53,000-acre Telephone Fire, part of the Malheur River Unit.

Rather than flee the fire, as Foster expected, he said the deer returned to where they had been as soon as the fire had passed, and they stayed even though the flames had burned all or most of the vegetation.

Based on the GPS collar data and the fire movement, Foster said it appeared that the deer basically ran through the “flaming front” of the fire to get back to their summer range.

He’s concerned that the deer, by staying in a place with limited forage, could starve, or at least go into winter without packing on the pounds of insulating fat they need to withstand winter weather.

Although the ongoing study will yield more definitive answers, Foster said the behavior of those several mule deer has prompted intriguing questions about the animals’ geographic stubbornness, at least in terms of their summer range.

Going for the green?

How quickly deer and elk return to burned areas depends largely on when grass starts to grow, biologists said.

Grass requires moisture, of course, and August, on average, is among the drier months.

If late summer weather is typical, it’s unlikely that scorched areas will produce much, if any, forage during the archery season, biologists said.

There’s a better chance, they agreed, for a flush of forage before the major rifle hunting seasons, most of which are in October and November.

“My crystal ball is pretty hazy right now,” Cherry, the ODFW biologist in Heppner, said with a laugh.

• Lone Rock Fire: 137,000 acres — Fossil Unit

• Battle Mountain Complex: 183,000 acres — Heppner, Columbia Basin Units

• Courtrock Fire: 20,000 acres — Northside Unit

• Falls Fire: 150,000 acres — Silvies Unit

• Telephone Fire: 54,000 acres — Malheur River Unit

• Cow Valley Fire: 133,000 acres — Beulah Unit

• Durkee Fire: 294,000 acres — South Sumpter, Beulah units

• Badlands Complex: 54,000 acres — Lookout Mountain Unit

• Town Gulch Fire: 18,500 acres — Keating Unit

• Crazy Creek Fire: 82,000 acres — Ochoco Unit