SPORTS
East Oregonian
B2
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Making use of maps in remote country
BRAD
TRUMBO
OUTDOOR PURSUITS
W
ith August upon
us, the anticipation
of chasing upland
birds and big game burns like
a white-hot fi re in the hunt-
er’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 signifi cant driver
of the hunting populous, we
fi nd ourselves competing for
space on public lands, seem-
ingly more each year.
While an escape to the
wilderness feels a little less
wild with many of our neigh-
bors 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
private with public access.
Additional acreage managed
by the state and Bureau of
Land Management makes
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
Studying public access to private lands identifi ed this parcel
where Brad Trumbo’s youngest setter, Zeta, worked magic
on a big rooster pheasant.
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
Brad Trumbo earned his 2020 public land mule deer buck by
using mapping tools to fi nd the right terrain and access.
up a smaller proportion,
where BLM managed lands
are more abundant through
central and southeastern
Oregon. The Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife’s
voluntary Public Access and
Habitat Incentive Program
uses grant funding from the
Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service and hunting
license dollars to work with
landowners willing to allow
public access to their lands.
The combined public
ownership and private access
provides over 1 million acres
for outdoor recreation in
Northeastern Oregon, but
understanding how to access
private lands or the bounds of
public lands can be unclear.
Fortunately, 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
provided by ODFW shows
land ownership and public
access to private lands, and
is available at www.oreg-
onhuntingmap.com. This
tool provides only boundar-
ies 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
afield. 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 first
smartphone app to provide
property ownership and
boundary information and
it pairs with the Global Posi-
tioning System 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 first tried On-X in
2016 and found it to be a
game changer. I now have
a subscription that provides
land ownership information
for the entire United States.
This technology allows me to
fi nd public lands and access to
private 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 imag-
ery and topography that the
app provides, coupled with
other specifi c fi sh or wildlife
related details like fishing
reports on hunting units and
seasons. Additionally, the app
allows sportsmen and women
to catalogue dozens of recre-
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 er-
ent focal apps — Hunt,
Offroad and Backcountry.
Each is developed to cater to
the end-user, such as wild-
life management 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
mapping and land ownership
capability. A summary of what
Outdoor Life calls “the nine
best hunting apps” is avail-
able at www.outdoorlife.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 bound-
ary 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 Flor-
ida 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 Waits-
burg, Washington. For tips
and tales of outdoor pursuits
and conservation, visit www.
bradtrumbo.com.
The Blues beckon, even when they’re not beautiful
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
B
uck Gulch is not beau-
tiful. Not by the stan-
dards of Northeastern
Oregon, anyway.
This is a terribly unfair
comparison, to be sure.
C omp e t i ng a g a i n st
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 wonderful 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.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
A pool along Buck Gulch near Sumpter, on Aug. 7, 2022.
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 temperature 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.
Miller:
Continued from Page B1
At the age of 7, he competed in
his fi rst rodeo outside of Wallowa
County — the Cayuse Junior Rodeo
in Pendleton. He started competing
in junior high rodeo competitions
I drove right past the road
junction along the Sumpt-
er-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 incon-
spicuous 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
as a sixth grader and qualifi ed for
nationals, held in Huron, South
Dakota.
Miller’s seventh grade year was
during the COVID-19 shutdowns,
so he and his family opened up their
arena to kids in Wallowa County to
come rope and ride. Up to 50 would
attend an afternoon of roping,
barrels and pole bending.
couple hundred feet east of the
junction, and I parked there.
Other than the first
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.
We stopped there so my
son, Max, who’s 11, could
soak the towel he recently
acquired. The fabric, or so
the package it came in prom-
ised, would, once saturated,
remain cool for many hours.
Max draped the clammy
brown thing around his
neck, a sort of summer scarf
designed to cool rather than
warm.
There is nothing outstand-
ing about Buck Gulch, as I
mentioned.
It is not notably diff erent
from any of many dozens of
streams that drain the Blue
Mountains, its fringe of
alder and red osier dogwood
instantly familiar.
The road, which is open
to vehicles, although better
suited to four-wheel drives or
ATVs, is typical of its type as
well — narrow, but without
deep ruts or boulders or other
signifi cant impediments.
We hiked about a mile
and a half, gaining around
500 feet of elevation. It was,
as I had hoped, a fi ne place
for a walk on a hot and sunny
day. Buck Gulch is narrow
“There were no fall sports so
we had rodeo practice open to the
community all fall on Tuesdays and
Thursdays,” Dena Miller said.
The following year as an eighth
grader, Miller qualifi ed again for the
junior high rodeo national in Des
Moines, Iowa. With three more years
of high school, the sky’s the limit.
“To see your kid want something
enough, and the forest dense
enough, that sunlight is, if
not blocked altogether, then
at least nicely fi ltered in most
places.
And although it was warm
even in the shade, the road
never strays far from the
stream — the topography
doesn’t allow otherwise —
and we paused a few times to
let Max refresh his nifty new
towel. I wrapped it around
my neck for a while and it
was as advertised, blessedly
chilly.
For almost the entire hike
we saw no one.
Although the road is
never more than half a mile
or so from the comparatively
well-traveled highway, once
we had gone a quarter mile
or so I never heard the hum
of engines on the pavement
above.
We turned around at the
Buck Gulch mine, where a
travel trailer was parked and
a pickup truck, laden with
fi rewood, was just leaving.
(The truck took a diff er-
ent route, a wider road that
connects to the highway near
Blue Springs, on the divide at
the boundary between Baker
and Grant counties.)
As with every gulch
around Sumpter, gold miners,
dating to the 19th century,
gave Buck Gulch a thorough
going over.
We passed the remains
of a log cabin and another
structure, possibly a small
and work for it is really emotional,”
Dena Miller said.
Miller’s skills aren’t confi ned to
the rodeo arena. Along with the rest
of his family, Miller moves cattle for
the Fence Creek Ranch and started
training horses by the age of 11.
“People will call up and say, ‘I
want a roping horse’ and I work with
them,” Miller said.
mill. Although all the land
along the road and in the
gulch is public, part of the
Wallowa-Whitman National
Forest, there are active
mining claims throughout,
so it’s illegal to pan for gold
or do any other sort of pros-
pecting.
I must have driven past
Buck Gulch close to a
hundred times over the past
30 years or so — you can’t
avoid it if you’re driving
from Sumpter to Granite and
points beyond.
Yet it wasn’t until August
2022 that I actually visited
the gulch and hiked its road.
I fi nd this rather amazing,
and deeply gratifying.
Not every hike can be an
epic, multi-day backpack-
ing trip through the Eagle
Cap Wilderness or some
other landscape that, unlike
Buck Gulch, leads photog-
raphers to use their memory
card’s every megabyte and
prompts visitors with no liter-
ary pretensions to discover a
latent affi nity for poetry.
But Buck Gulch, and the
dozens of places like it in the
Blues, enrich our region too.
I hope never to become
so complacent, so accus-
tomed to the grandeur
around us, that I fail to
appreciate the simple plea-
sure of a shady road beside
a cool mountain stream.
———
Jayson Jacoby is editor of
the Baker City Herald.
Keen on perfecting his rodeo
skills, while encouraging others
to do so as well, Miller and his
family are hosting a break away and
tie-down roping clinic with Nathan
Steinberg.
“We are excited to share our
passion and bring someone with
his qualifi cations to come to the
county,” Dena Miller said.
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