Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, July 9, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Bear hunt can
yield a bounty
Successful hunters get meat, a pelt
or rug, and useful grease
GARY
LEWIS
ON THE TRAIL
B
ack behind a screen
of limbs, I saw
the legs of a bear.
Hidden by branches, I could
see parts but not the whole. I
knew it was a boar.
My thumb was on the safety. I
saw nose and head, then foreleg,
then lower half of the body. In an
instant, the rifl e was at my shoulder
and I had the vitals in the crosshair.
The trigger broke, the rifl e
crashed and the 165-grain Nosler
AccuBond took the bear behind the
shoulder.
Spinning,
the bear
smashed
into an
alder that
shivered
all the way
to the top
of the tree.
When the
magazine was
topped up, when
the sounds of the
forest returned, when
the birds lit, cautious, in the
treetops again, I counted steps,
pushing the muzzle in front of me.
Eleven paces. Fifteen paces to the
edge of the clearing. Twenty-three
steps to the bear.
A few of my friends are still
grumbling. They didn’t draw deer
or elk tags this year. I think the best
antidote for the lack of a deer or elk
tag is to go bear hunting. The season
With a bear spotted on a high slope and
heading down to water, Lucas Simpson (left) and
Gary Lewis had to quickly formulate a plan to
close the gap and try to spot the bear again.
Samuel Pyke/Contributed Photo
Bear season hunting season starts Aug. 1.
Jim Ward/Contributed Photo, File
starts Aug. 1 and a hunter who bags
a bear is likely saving a few elk
calves and deer fawns for next year.
In Oregon, a bear hunter can
draw a tag for the two-month spring
hunt and get a second tag over the
counter for the fall bear season. My
favorite time of the season is Aug.
15 through the second week of Sep-
tember, when berries are ripe and
apples, pears and plums hang heavy
in forgotten orchards.
Hunt bear for what it provides.
Not only the meat — the burger,
steaks and ribs — but a hide, a pelt
or a rug and the claws and the skull,
all of which can be preserved in one
way or another to remember the
moment, the animal.
One of the things we should pre-
serve is the grease from the bear.
Put a block of the good, clean
white fat in a pot and cook it on low
till it turns to oil. Skim the crack-
lings off the top and pour the grease
through cheesecloth or clean game
bag fabric. I like to strain it four
times. Now the fat is ready to freeze
for future use for pie crusts, bis-
cuits and doughnuts. Be sure to pick
apples or berries after the bear hunt.
There is nothing better than apple
pie with a bear grease crust.
Bear grease can be used in
healing salves, in hair and to treat
leather. I use it to lube muzzleloader
barrels. And save the cracklings for
the birds.
See, Bear/Page B6
Lucas Simpson (right) and Gary Lewis
head up a creek bottom to the site of an
old homesteader orchard to try to call in a
fruit-eating bear with a predator call. The
animals that came to the call did not show
in the opening, but padded unseen at the
edge of the tree line.
Samuel Pyke/Contributed Photo
Snow continues to clog parts of Eagle Cap Wilderness
Snow also lingers in
parts of the Elkhorn
Mountains
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
H
ikers and equestrians
hoping to visit some of
the spectacular alpine
lakes and high passes in the Eagle
Cap Wilderness over the next few
weeks will have to go back in
time, in a manner of speaking, to
get there.
Wilderness travelers will need
to cross the lingering evidence of
blizzards that plastered the Wal-
lowa Mountains months ago.
Snowdrifts, to put it plainly.
Those slippery frozen obsta-
cles are much more numerous
this summer than in the past sev-
eral, said Sweyn Wall, Forest Ser-
vice recreation program manager
for the Eagle Cap and the Hells
Canyon National Recreation Area.
The persistent snow is due to
a cool, damp spring that not only
preserved the winter snowpack,
but also brought fresh snow to the
mountains as late as the second
week of June.
“The snow is hanging on,”
Wall said on Wednesday, July 6.
“At this point we’re two to three
weeks behind on access based on
the past 10 years or so.”
That’s the situation in some
of the more popular parts of the
Eagle Cap, which at 365,000
acres is Oregon’s biggest federal
wilderness.
Lower elevations are snow-
free, Wall said.
But most of the frequently
visited lakes in the Eagle Cap
— Ice, Aneroid and the Lake
Basin on the north side of the wil-
derness, Eagle, Echo and Traverse
on the south end, to name just
several — are above 7,000 feet.
And above 8,000 feet in a few
cases, such as Glacier Lake at the
head of the Wallowa River’s west
fork.
Wall said it’s likely that many
of the higher lakes in the Eagle
Cap Wilderness are still frozen.
He said trail maintenance
crews and visitors are reporting
either snowdrifts, or “solid snow,”
along the upper parts of many
trails.
Examples are the heavily trav-
eled trails that start at Two Pan
campground — those on the west
and east forks of the Lostine River.
Wall said that late last week,
hikers found snow three to four
feet deep at the top of the switch-
backs on the East Fork trail,
before the trail enters the long
meadow that leads to near Mirror
Lake in the Lake Basin, the
most popular destination in the
wilderness.
See, Eagle Caps/Page B6
From the trail just below
Horton Pass the view includes
two of the major drainages in the Eagle Cap
Wilderness — the East Fork of the Lostine River
at left, and Hurricane Creek at right — as well as the
summit of the Matterhorn, the white peak at far right.
Unlike in this view from a previous summer, snow will likely
linger at Horton and other high passes well into August.
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald, File