Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, August 20, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
This screenshot of the ODFW online mapping tool provides an example of available
land ownership and access information as deﬁ ned by color coding.
Brad Trumbo
Making use of maps
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
The remains of a gold miner’s cabin in Buck
Gulch.
Map programs make it easier to find land open to public
ON THE TRAIL
W
ith August upon us, the anticipation of chasing upland
BRAD
TRUMBO
birds and big game burns like a white-hot fire in the
UPLAND PURSUITS
hunter’s soul. Bear season is open in Oregon. The Idaho
grouse season begins in late August, and archery deer season is open in
some states farther south. And while solitude is often a significant driver of the hunting populous, we find
ourselves competing for space on public lands, seemingly more each year.
While an escape to the wil-
derness feels a little less wild
with many of our neighbors on
the landscape, there is a silver
lining. The fact that we live
in the western U.S. with more
acreage and varying public
agency ownership than the rest
of the nation provides us ample
opportunity to ﬁ nd room in
the backcountry. Additionally,
mapping tools, private lands
access programs, and access
to information about public
lands continue to increase and
improve each year.
The majority of land in
Northeastern Oregon is either
public land managed by the
U.S. Forest Service or pri-
vate with public access. Addi-
tional acreage managed by
the state and Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) makes
up a smaller proportion, where
BLM managed lands are more
abundant through central and
southeastern Oregon. The
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife’s (ODFW) volun-
tary Public Access and Habitat
Incentive Program uses grant
funding from the Natural
Resources Conservation Ser-
vice and hunting license dol-
lars to work with landowners
willing to allow public access
to their lands.
The combined public own-
ership and private access pro-
vides over 1 million acres for
outdoor recreation in North-
eastern Oregon, but under-
standing how to access private
lands or the bounds of public
lands can be unclear. Fortu-
nately, it’s simpler than ever
to ﬁ nd access and know what
you can do and where you
stand in the outdoors.
An easy mapping tool pro-
vided by ODFW shows land
ownership and public access
to private lands, and is avail-
able at www.oregonhunt-
ingmap.com. This tool pro-
vides only boundaries for all
public lands, but more detailed
information is available for
the “Travel Management
Areas” that allow hunting.
Historically, paper maps with
boundary information were
what folks relied upon as we
ventured aﬁ eld. Paper maps
are still valid today; however,
apps for smartphones now
provide more detailed access
and boundary data that can be
viewed anywhere, anytime.
“On-X” was the ﬁ rst smart-
phone app to provide prop-
erty ownership and boundary
information and it pairs with
the Global Positioning System
(GPS) of the phone. Maps and
data can be viewed anytime
with mobile phone service,
and maps can be downloaded
for “oﬄ ine” use with the GPS
where no phone service is
available.
I ﬁ rst tried On-X in 2016
and found it to be a game
changer. I now have a sub-
scription that provides land
ownership information for
the entire United States. This
technology allows me to ﬁ nd
public lands and access to pri-
vate lands, and avoid tres-
passing on private or tribal
lands closed to the public. I
can scout new areas based on
the property ownership and
access data, satellite imagery,
and topography that the app
provides, coupled with other
speciﬁ c ﬁ sh or wildlife related
details like ﬁ shing reports
on hunting units and sea-
sons. Additionally, the app
allows sportsmen and women
to catalogue dozens of recre-
Studying public access to private lands identiﬁ ed this
parcel where Trumbo’s youngest setter, Zeta, worked
magic on a big rooster pheasant.
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
JAYSON
JACOBY
The Blues
beckon, even
when they’re
not beautiful
Relishing a shady hike
beside the otherwise
unremarkable Buck Gulch
B
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
Trumbo earned his 2020 public land mule deer buck by using mapping
tools to ﬁ nd the right terrain and access.
ation features with waypoints
and share them with friends,
making it easy to scout and
plan adventures, navigate new
areas, ﬁ nd each other to help
pack out, etc.
On-X oﬀ ers three diﬀ erent
focal apps – Hunt, Oﬀ road,
and Backcountry. Each is
developed to cater to the end-
user, such as wildlife man-
agement areas for the hunter,
trails for oﬀ road use, and
routes and planning tools for
backpacking.
On-X is not the only app
that provides this level of map-
ping and land ownership capa-
bility. A summary of what
Outdoor Life calls “the nine
best hunting apps” is avail-
able at https://www.outdoor-
life.com/tested-best-hunting-
apps-for-hunters/. Most apps
oﬀ er free use with a base map
of satellite imagery or terrain,
but only a few provide free
parcel boundary data. Outdoor
Life brieﬂ y explains what each
app does and does not oﬀ er.
If you are an outdoor
junkie looking for anything
from backcountry solitude to
urban ﬁ shing access, mapping
resources can help you locate
opportunities and respect
neighboring closed private
lands by knowing where you
stand. Whether you seek blue
grouse in the Eagle Caps or
peacock bass in the Florida
canal system, online and
mobile phone mapping apps
will enhance your outdoor
experience and capability.
Take advantage of them!
█
Brad Trumbo is a fish and wildlife
biologist and outdoor writer in
Waitsburg, Washington. For tips
and tales of outdoor pursuits and
conservation, visit www.bradtrumbo.
com.
uck Gulch is not beautiful.
Not by the standards of
Northeastern Oregon, anyway.
This is a terribly unfair compar-
ison, to be sure.
Competing against nearby natural
marvels such as Wallowa Lake and
the Elkhorn Mountains and Hells
Canyon, Buck Gulch, a minor stream
near Sumpter in far western Baker
County, is destined to seem drab.
Buck Gulch was neither carved by
a great river nor sculpted by glaciers.
A narrow gulch, it yields no grand
vistas.
And it’s a placid little brook, par-
ticularly in summer.
No waterfalls.
Yet even though Buck Gulch
almost certainly will never grace the
cover of a calendar or the pages of a
coﬀ ee table book, it is a pretty won-
derful place.
Indeed, on one in the long spell of
sullenly hot days that has marked the
latter half of this summer, the gulch,
with its long stretches of shade,
seemed to me the ideal spot for a
moderate hike.
And I was reminded, as so often
happens while I’m rambling our
corner of Oregon, that we’re awfully
fortunate to have so many wonderful
places to explore.
I picked Buck Gulch for a couple
reasons.
It’s convenient, just 32 miles or so
from Baker City.
More importantly, with the tem-
perature forecast to go above 90 on
Sunday, Aug. 7, I knew, although
I had never hiked the gulch, that it
would be at least partially shaded.
The hardest part of the trip was
ﬁ nding the road.
Forest Road 7300-990 follows the
gulch for most of its length, starting
from near where the stream joins
McCully Fork, a couple miles west
of Sumpter.
I drove right past the road junc-
tion along the Sumpter-Granite
highway, even though I had looked
at a map before leaving and knew the
road started just past McCully Fork
campground.
When I knew I had gone too far
up the grade toward Blue Springs
Summit I turned around. My wife,
Lisa, saw the turnoﬀ .
It is, I must say, an inconspicuous
intersection. The highway — it’s
also part of the Elkhorn Drive Scenic
Byway, Forest Road 73 — is about
100 feet higher than the stream,
and Road 990 plunges down a steep
slope. Due to the terrain, the road
sign isn’t visible from the highway.
There’s a pullout on the south side
of the highway a couple hundred feet
east of the junction, and I parked
there.
Other than the ﬁ rst short section,
the road has comparatively gentle
grades as it follows Buck Gulch
upstream. Just a tenth of a mile or so
from the highway, a rivulet of frigid
water ﬂ ows across Road 990. It’s fed
by a spring beside the road.
See, Gulch/Page B2