It’s hard not to get nervous at the appearance of a big smoke plume, but it heralds good hunting opportunities in the future. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Alston)
August 30, 2024
By Jesse Alston
“Record dry conditions, lightning sparks dozens of wildfires across Pacific Northwest.”
“California battles onslaught of wildfires with massive resources and mutual aid.”
“Wildfire resources ‘running ragged’ as Utah burns.”
These are just a few headlines I’ve seen recently in stories covering this wildfire season in the western US. Fire season is in full swing, and more and more these days it leaves horrific destruction in its wake. Every summer, media headlines report thousands of people losing their homes, cities choked with smoke, and conflagrations measured in units of northeastern states. Anyone that has lived out west for any length of time has personally experienced some repercussion of fire: days spent on evacuation alert or stuck indoors with an air purifier running full blast, a favorite hiking spot closed for weeks or charred beyond recognition. Wildfire is hard on people.
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Difference For Animals? This burn overlooking Lake Wenatchee in Washington contained far more forage than the understory of the neighboring forest. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Alston) Be careful, however, in extending this sentiment to wildlife, particularly big game animals. It’s easy to look at a landscape that has been recently burned and think all the forage, cover, and water on a landscape went up in smoke and was gradually deposited two or three counties eastward. That may be true in the short term, but burned areas produce good habitat for deer, elk, moose, and sheep surprisingly quickly.
To be clear, an elk walking through ash and still-smoking tree trunks is probably not having a good time. But within days after a low-severity fire, plants will start resprouting. These plants are generally more nutritious than the plants that were lost in the fire, because they are new growth with access to more light and more nutrients than were previously available. This process will take longer in areas that burn hotter, but it will still happen more quickly than you might think, after all but the most severe fires, where the soil gets burned down to inorganic hardpan.
There is a tradeoff between forage quantity and quality—typically, the more forage is available in an area, the lower its quality. As the gardeners and foragers reading this article will know, full-grown plants are much bigger than young ones, but they are also tougher and less palatable. There is a reason we eat small spring greens in our salads, but big old spinach leaves get boiled and packed into tin cans. Because of this tradeoff, the forage benefits of wildfire peak in the medium term, after only a few years in wetter forests (think western-slope spruce/fir) but as many as 10-15 years in drier forests (ponderosa pines and pinyon-juniper). As time passes after a fire, understory vegetation gradually increases in quantity while still retaining higher levels of quality because the extra light and nutrients made more available by the fire stick around for a while.
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Severity Levels I saw one moose in months of work for the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest in 2014 and 2016—it was crossing the road dividing the old burn on the left from the forest on the right. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Alston) Somewhat unintuitively, higher fire severity increases the forage benefits of fire: the more severe the fire (up to a point), the more light and nutrients become available to understory plants. The eventual pulse of good forage may take longer to arrive, but it is magnified when it does. Crown fires that open up canopy make for un-scenic vistas but good big game habitat. Beyond a certain point, though, the very most intense fires that burn all the organic matter in the soil (a former boss of mine at the Forest Service used to call these “moonscape fires”) aren’t good for much of anything except establishing invasive plants and causing landslides. Consistently high-severity fire over large areas also reduces its value for big game—heterogeneity in burns is beneficial because it puts good forage in close proximity to good cover.
Over the long term, the benefits of fire for forage slowly fade away. This happens faster for low-severity fires (because less light and nutrients are made available) and in wetter areas (because forest regeneration happens faster and shades out undergrowth more quickly). Years after a fire, areas that remain treeless are choked with very low-quality forage, and closed canopy forest has very little forage at all.
Although there isn’t much data on the topic, the few scientific papers that have tracked the movement of individual animals before and after fire suggest that most animals don’t relocate after fires. Once a deer, elk, moose, or sheep establish a home range as an adult, they seem to stick to it. After years of mentally mapping every patch of food, cover, and escape routes in an area, animals will redistribute their activity within a home range to take advantage of new foraging opportunities, but they generally won’t move to an entirely new area to do it.
What Can Hunters Learn? This canyon won’t win any beauty contests, but the biggest herd of elk I’ve ever seen inhabits this burn. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Alston) So what does this mean for hunters? First, don’t immediately panic if a fire breaks out in your hunting spot between your draw and your hunt. The animals in that unit probably aren’t dead, they probably haven’t moved elsewhere, and they might even be easier to glass if the fire has cleared out a bunch of cover. The fire might put a crimp in your scouting plans, and you might not be able to hunt if firefighting is still ongoing during your season, but I would get in there to scout as soon as possible after the area is opened to recreation again.
On the other hand, don’t assume that a burned area is going to offer a bonanza of trophy opportunities only a year or two after a fire. Trophy animals are unlikely to immigrate from elsewhere, so while the bucks and bulls in and around a recent burn should be in good nutritional condition and should become more abundant a few years after a fire (assuming your state wildlife agency doesn’t increase the number of tags available in that unit), it will take a few years for fawns and calves to grow into trophy animals. Relatedly, hunting post-fire is going to bring the best results a few years after a fire, all else equal. For low-severity fires or in wet forests, the best hunting will come just a few years afterward. But for high-severity fires in drier areas, your hunts might get better and better for a decade or more. If you can find a burned area small enough that it doesn’t result in unit-wide population increases (which would likely raise tag allocations) but with some high-severity patches, you might have a honey hole that can last for a substantial chunk of your hunting life.
Fourth, add fire-monitoring to your electronic and boots-on-the-ground scouting routines. This is very easy to do—federal fire personnel place a high priority on collecting accurate information and sharing it publicly. Anyone can go to the National Interagency Fire Center’s data portal and view maps of every major wildland fire that has occurred in the US over the past couple of decades. Once you’ve located recent fires of interest, go see what they look like with your own eyes—scout access, forage, cover, and animals. I doubt there are many people who do this systematically, so this could give you a substantial edge over other hunters.
Fifth, use fire to take advantage one of my favorite hunting strategies: hunting ugly. Across my western hunts, I have always noticed that scenic areas draw bigger crowds than their deer and elk herds warrant. You’ll rarely find me hunting picturesque peaks, sparkling streams, or groves of golden aspen—I would rather hunt hidden draws and inconspicuous scrubby areas that others are overlooking. Hunting burns is a natural extension of this philosophy—many folks will avoid recent fires for no other reason than aesthetics. Your landscape photography may not win any fans on social media, but your post-hunt photos could make up the difference.
Show Support This southern Arizona canyon hasn’t burned in decades, but the one just north of it burned this summer. I plan to scout the burn as soon as I get a free weekend. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Alston) Finally, support local wildland fire professionals in their efforts to get more fire out on the landscape. Well-managed fire has clear and consistent benefits for wildlife, but land managers get immense pressure from above and below whenever fires are active. When locals aren’t calling in to complain about smoke from prescribed burns, the governor is declaring a state of emergency and calling in the National Guard to fortify a full-suppression policy. No one ever stops by a Forest Service district office to give the fire team kudos for letting a low-severity fire keep burning in the backcountry, or writes a letter to the local newspaper or state legislator to champion upcoming prescribed burns. A little support could go a long way toward improving wildlife habitat and making your future hunts more fruitful endeavors.