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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (April 4, 2020)
B Saturday, April 4, 2020 The Observer & Baker City Herald RECREATION REPORT Spring bear hunters have more time to decide whether to hunt this year SALEM — Hunters who drew a spring bear tag have extra time to decide if they will hunt this year. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) is extending the tag sale deadline until May 1 so hunters have more time to consider their options, especially hunters who would have to travel to hunt as travel is limited to essential needs at this time. The season opened on April 1 and as always, hunt- ers must purchase their tag before they go hunting. The tag sale deadline is usu- ally the day before the season begins but ODFW is making an exception due to the coronavirus. Spring bear hunt- ers who choose not to go hunting have some options for their controlled hunt tag including reinstatement of preference points and a refund of the cost of their tag. For more information, call 503-947-6101 or email odfw.web- sales@state.or.us FISHING FORECAST Phillips Reservoir Current reservoir storage is at 35 per- cent of capacity. The reservoir is ice-free. While camp- grounds and restrooms are closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, the boat launch is available for use. The access road to Social Secu- rity Point is passable. Fishing for trout at the Powder River in- let can be very good this time of year. Pilcher Creek Reservoir Ice is going off the reservoir. There is a band of open water around the perim- eter. While the camp- ground is closed, the boat launches are open, and will be usable once the ice is completely off, likely in a week or so. Unity Reservoir Reservoir stor- age is at 85 percent and increasing. The reservoir is ice-free and fi shing for 12- to 15-inch rainbow trout has been good. The Unity State Park campground and re- strooms are closed, but the boat launch is open. Wallowa Lake Good-sized ko- kanee are available for the determined angler. Fishing for holdover trout can be good during early spring. Photo by Ethan Shaw Gunsight Mountain, which looms above Anthony Lake, is an example of a horn — a peak sculpted by gla- ciers. The most famous “horn” is the Matterhorn in the Alps. A landscape to celebrate I n this strange time of ours, all of us stay- ing closer to home and staring down no small amount of uncertainty, it’s a comfort to watch the “normal” signs of the season unfold: the big white cloudbanks spitting rain and graupel and fl urries (and, increasingly, echoing with thunder), the up-and- down-and-up-again routine of the snow line along the foot tops of our highest peaks to the whitewater in the heart of Hells Canyon. We’re lucky to live in a ETHAN SHAW place of such topographic variety. Thanks to our odd mountain fronts, the sandhill and scrambled geology and cranes and turkey vultures our great climatic and ecologi- back and the golden eagles on cal spectrum, terrain here can the nest. call to mind all sorts of dif- It also seems a good mo- ferent geographies: We have ment to remind ourselves of vistas here in Northeast Or- this incredible countryside egon that evoke the Scottish of ours: to imagine sweeping Highlands and the Dartmoor down from the nearly 10,000- wastes of Southwest England, THE LAY OF THE LAND the Altai Mountains of Cen- tral Asia, the Drakensberg heights of South Africa. Consider the geomorphic spectrum in our great big backyard: this Inland North- west province of mountain ranges, level basins, table- lands, canyonlands, rim- lands, benchlands. Here we fi nd landscapes shaped by cataclysm — basalt fl oods, hydraulic outbursts — and sculpted by the slow, steady scrape and shove of glaciers, sitting side by side and meld- ing into one another. Here you can stand on a bench of rotted granitic grit (“grus”) or a bone-white blockfi eld while looking at a skyline of dark basalt fangs. Our mountain peaks may be pyramidal or downright toothy glacial horns, broad domes and whalebacks—or they may be craggy buttes or thick-forested knobs. See Landforms/Page 3B Gunsmithing: A growth industry At the 2020 SHOT Show Ron Spomer introduced me to Robert Thacker and Jamey Wojtaszek. Robert owns the Pennsyl- vania Gunsmithing School and Jamey works there. PGS is doing fi ne but they’re concerned about the dropping numbers of students across the country in the majority of the gunsmithing schools. Due to this concern they’re encouraging young people to choose gunsmithing as a career. I hear similar concerns among the gun experts that the numbers of hunters and shooters are dropping and the current ones are an aging group. So as not to start off as a Negative Nancy, here’s some encouraging news. I attended a seminar at the SHOT Show put on by Safe Shoot, which is an Israeli company. One of the speakers said that actually, shooting is the No. 2 sport in America, even ahead of golf. That surprised me. If that is the case, then it’s alarming that the number of kids going to gunsmithing schools is dropping because there will obviously be a need for more, not fewer gunsmiths on the not too distant horizon. I’m about to say something that up until the last few years I was on the opposite side of the aisle about. In the past I encouraged kids if at all possible to go to college. If they couldn’t afford that then at least work and attend a junior college and get an asso- ciate’s degree. I no longer hold that stance. Let me explain. Higher learning institu- tions have lost their compass. Their goal is no longer to teach kids to graduate work ready. They now have too BASE CAMP TOM CLAYCOMB many hidden social changing agendas. Kids go off to college conservatives and return as socialists. The colleges spend way too much time teaching/ pushing these agendas. Many kids no longer graduate with useful skills. I used to hire a lot of college kids when I was the direc- tor of quality control for Con Agra. I had fi ve large beef plants and a cooked plant under me so I had a large QC staff and hired a lot of college kids. Even back then the col- leges thought that they knew more what the kids needed to be taught than the industry did. I only had one profes- sor inquire what skills their graduates were lacking in. Is that not bizarre? Would any business survive if it didn’t do customer service audits? Investigate open markets? Due to my ignorance I thought trade schools were for kids like those in my high school who would have dropped out but due to shop classes they hung in and graduated (yes, this was all nearly 50 years ago). Then…. 15 years ago I started learning what some of the skilled workers were making. Such as linemen, electricians, dental assistants etc. It costs an arm and a leg to hire a good maintenance man — if you can even fi nd one. So now, if a kid can’t afford college, I recommend they go to a reputable trade school. They may graduate right off the bat $200,000 ahead of the normal college graduate because of no stu- dent loans and have an extra off of them as well as your own labors. Before you say I’m nuts, think about it for a minute. A high percentage of kids go to a 4-year school and graduate with a degree that is not in demand and come out with huge debts. On the other hand, a kid could go to somewhere like the PGS and graduate in 16 months. With a part-time job, they may be lucky enough to graduate with no/low debt. It takes four semesters (2,496 hours) to graduate. Students of any skill level can expect to complete the program. Every student starts at the same spot and being a course hour program, they typically fi nish at the same time. They have gradu- ates in all 50 states and 18 countries. I’ve never been to the school but here’s what I’d loosely suggest if you attend the PGS school or another trade school. Get a part-time job so you’re not racking up loans. After you graduate, get a job with a reputable gunsmith you can learn from. Work for him a few years and learn the ropes instead of opening your own business Photo by Jamey Wojtaszek right off and making costly An instructor at the Pennsylvania Gunsmithing School mistakes at your expense. demonstrates techniques to a group of students. Then in a few years, when you’re comfortable, open your 2½ years of wages already their head. own shop. in the bank by the time their So what I’m saying is, if a I stand to gain nothing if college buddies graduate. kid is a hustler but for what- you go to the Pennsylvania So, let’s play this out. They ever the reason doesn’t have Gunsmithing School or not. could work for an established the option of going to college, If gunsmithing isn’t for you, gunsmith after school and I don’t see him/her as being fi nd what you like to do and learn the ropes. After 4-5 handicapped. There are a be the best you can at it. The years they could then open million options. Go to beauty moral to the story is — don’t their own shop while their school. Same scenario. Work feel like a second-class citizen college graduate counterpart for someone else, learn the if you can’t afford or have is still in some menial job ropes and then in a few years no desire to go to college. Be barely getting by with no open your own shop. When a hustler and sharpen your hope in sight and a huge you have a few employees skills and you may actually student loan hanging over then you are making money end up better off.