TUESDAY
POTENTIAL FATAL VIRUS SPREADING IN BAKER VALLEY DEER, A3
In SPORTS, A6
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
August 24, 2021
Local • Home & Living • Sports
IN THIS EDITION:
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QUICK HITS
Fair sale
shatters
record
Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to
Herald subscribers Tom and
Kathy Fisk of Baker City.
BRIEFING
Steer sales
alone break
former record
Baker County
Cultural Coalition
off ering grants
In 2022, the Baker
County Cultural Coalition
will return to its traditional
grantmaking schedule.
The fi rst deadline for ap-
plications is Dec. 15, 2021,
for projects in the fi rst
half of 2022. The second
deadline is May 15, 2022,
for projects slated in the
second half of 2022. Proj-
ect reports are due Oct. 31,
2022. The BCCC typically
awards up to $500 per
project. Grant applications
are available online at
https://www.bakercounty.
org/cultural_plan/grants.
html.
Two free movies
to be shown in
Baker City
Two free outdoor
movies are happening
this week in Baker City.
“Goonies” will be shown
Thursday, Aug. 26, at 8
p.m. in Central Park. Con-
cessions will be available.
The second event is a
Back-To-School drive-in
movie featuring “Toy Story
4” at Churchill School on
Saturday, Aug. 28. Gates
open at 7:30 p.m., and the
movie starts at 8 p.m. Con-
cessions will be available.
These events are
sponsored by the Baker
County Safe Communities
Coalition, Baker School
District, and New Direc-
tions Northwest.
WEATHER
Today
78 / 41
Sunny
Wednesday
78 / 46
Partly sunny
The space below is for
a postage label for issues
that are mailed.
Beavers,
Ducks
prepare
By SAMANTHA O’CONNER
soconner@bakercityherald.com
watch other competitors at later
rodeos, Brown ended up fi nishing in
15th place, by a margin of $1,560.
Due to the pandemic, the 2020
National Finals, which take place on
10 straight nights, were moved from
Las Vegas to Arlington, Texas.
Brown, a 2011 Baker High School
graduate who played football at
Washington State University before
transferring to Montana State
University and taking up rodeo full
time, tied for fi rst in the fi rst round
at Arlington, bringing down his steer
in 3.9 seconds and earning a $20,872
check.
Brown tied for second in the fourth
round to win $18,192.
He ended up ranked 13th for
the season, with total winnings of
$88,558.
This year, Brown’s situation is
quite different.
Baker County’s annual
4-H livestock auction didn’t
just break the sales record
this year.
Shattered is the more ap-
propriate verb.
The culminating event of
the Baker County Fair set
multiple records on Aug. 6,
most notably in total sales.
The fi gure of $517,026
trounced the previous record,
which held the title for only
one year.
The 2020 sale brought
in $327,069.
“It was, fi nancially, our
best auction to date,” Jake
Collier, a member of the sales
committee, said of this year’s
auction. “It was a heck of a
sale.”
For steers, specifi cally.
This year’s auction
featured a record number of
steers, with 62.
And those animals fetched
$362,350, which would alone
have broken the 2020 record
for the entire auction, includ-
ing lambs, goats, swine and
rabbits.
Collier said fair offi cials
worried that with the pan-
demic continuing, the record
slate of steers might not all
fi nd buyers.
They needn’t have been
concerned.
“But everybody showed
up and really stepped up and
participated with that,” Col-
lier said.
See, Rodeo/Page A3
See, Auction/Page A2
Jackie Jensen
Baker City steer wrestler Jesse Brown competes at the National Finals Rodeo in Arlington, Texas, in
December 2020.
Ready For Rodeo
Jesse Brown of Baker
City is ranked second in
professional steer wrestling
By JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
While almost everyone is sleep-
ing, Jesse Brown is apt to be in the
driver’s seat of a pickup truck, chasing
his headlights through the night on
one of the great byways of the West, to
a city where steers wait to be wrestled
to the ground.
When the sun emerges, Brown
might be in Kalispell, Montana.
Or Tremonton, Utah.
Or Prineville, Oregon.
Or any of a dozen other places
where people gather in bleachers
to watch men in jeans grapple with
steers and try to stay aboard bulls or
broncs for eight seconds.
Brown, who grew up in Baker City
and still lives here — at least when
there’s not a rodeo going on, which
isn’t all that often — is one of the top
steer wrestlers in the world.
Brown, 29, is ranked second this
season, with earnings of $75,184.
That puts Brown in a great posi-
tion to achieve one of his top goals
— qualifying for the “Super Bowl of
Rodeo,” the National Finals Rodeo
Dec. 2-11 at the Thomas & Mack
Center in Las Vegas.
In 2020, Brown made it to the
National Finals for the fi rst time.
But it was a near thing.
The top 15 nationally ranked
competitors in each rodeo event can
compete in the National Finals.
In late September 2020, with two
rodeos left in the season, Brown was
in 16th place, just $500 short of 15th-
place.
In a rodeo at Rapid City, South
Dakota, Brown won the second round
and claimed $2,010.
Although he had to wait, and
Firefi ghters, others to protest vaccine mandate
that health care employ-
ees be vaccinated against
COVID-19.
Members of the group
also hope to express their
By SAMANTHA O’CONNER concerns to the Baker City
soconner@bakercityherald.com Council, which meets at
Baker City Fire Depart- 7 p.m. inside City Hall.
Casey Johnson, presi-
ment fi refi ghters and other
dent of the Baker City
health care workers plan
to rally at Baker City Hall Firefi ghters Association
union, has asked to have
Tuesday evening, Aug.
24, to protest Oregon Gov. the issue added to the
Council’s agenda.
Kate Brown’s mandate
They’ll gather
Tuesday evening
at Baker City Hall
The vaccination man-
date, which the governor
announced last week,
includes city fi refi ghters
because they also work as
paramedics, responding to
emergency medical cases
with ambulances.
Firefi ghters actually
handle far more ambu-
lance calls than they do
fi res.
Johnson contends the
governor has bypassed Or-
egon’s law passed in 1989
that says it is unlawful
for employers to mandate
vaccines.
“She changed that
through her executive
power in her emergency
declaration to say that all
health care workers and
associated fi elds will be
mandatorily vaccinated,”
Johnson said.
an investigation on Thurs-
day, Aug. 19.
Lookout Mountain
Wolves from the Lookout
wolves have killed three
Mountain pack in eastern
head of cattle and injured
Baker County killed a
two others over the past
three-month-old calf on a
month northeast of Durkee,
private grazing pasture
last week, and the Oregon according to ODFW reports.
Attacks during the
Department of Fish and
Wildlife (ODFW) responded second half of July, in which
wolves killed two animals
by extending for three
and injured two others,
weeks the permit allow-
ing the killing of two more prompted Mark Bennett,
Baker County commissioner
wolves from the pack.
and chair of the county’s
ODFW confi rmed the
wolf committee, to send a
wolf attack on a calf after
TODAY
Issue 45, 14 pages
Calendar ....................A2
Classified ............. B3-B6
Comics ....................... B7
letter to ODFW Director
Curt Melcher seeking a
permit allowing the rancher
who owns or manages the
cattle herds that have been
attacked to kill some of the
wolves.
Oregon’s wolf manage-
ment plan allows ranchers
to kill wolves that are in the
act of attacking livestock or
working dogs, but a lethal
take permit gives ranch-
ers, or their designated
agents or ODFW employees,
authority to kill wolves that
Community News ....A3
Crossword ........B4 & B6
Dear Abby ................. B8
By JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
are in a certain area, even if
they’re not directly threat-
ening livestock.
Melcher approved the le-
thal take permit on July 29,
the fi rst issued in Oregon
since 2018.
The permit allowed
ranchers Deward and
Kathy Thompson, their
agents or ODFW employees,
to kill up to four subadult
wolves from the Lookout
Mountain pack.
Baker City’s public works
director recommends the
City Council hire a forestry
consultant to design a timber
sale on city-owned property
near Goodrich Creek in the
Elkhorn Mountains about 10
miles northwest of town.
In a report to councilors
for their meeting this eve-
ning, Aug. 24, Michelle Owen
proposes a fi ve-year contract
with Lane Parry Forestry
Consulting of Baker City.
The city would pay the
company based on the scope
of specifi c projects yet to be
determined.
Councilors will meet at
7 p.m. at City Hall, 1655
First St.
In her report, Owen
wrote that the city has
previously contracted
with Lane Parry Forestry
Consulting (LPFC), but that
contract has expired.
See, Wolves/Page A2
See, Council/Page A3
See, Protest/Page A3
Wolves kill calf north of Durkee
By JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
City Council
to consider
hiring forestry
consultant
Home ....................B1-B3
Horoscope ........B4 & B6
Letters ........................A4
Lottery Results ..........A2
News of Record ........A2
Obituaries ..................A2
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Opinion ......................A4
Sports ........................A6
Weather ..................... B8