# How are you guys with Panguitch tags feeling right about now?



## colorcountrygunner (Oct 6, 2009)

This Brian Head fire has got me wondering how the hunting will be for Panguitch Lake tag holders this year. 33,000 acres and growing? Yowza, that's gotta have a significant effect on something. Anybody know anyone with LE elk tags that are thinking about turning them back in? I'm sure more than a few people's yearly stomping grounds have been reduced to scorched earth by now. I was discussing this with a friend who hunts on the Panguitch unit and he says his honey holes haven't been burned over, but he is concerned about all the displaced hunters who will probably be mobbing his area now. I wonder how much wildlife we have lost in this absolute monster. Thoughts/opinions?


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## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

There is no way I would turn in a tag because of the fire. It will effect the big game very little and there will be very little loss of big game because of it.
I would be hunting right in the middle of the burn this year and for the next two or three years out. 8)


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## MuscleWhitefish (Jan 13, 2015)

colorcountrygunner said:


> This Brian Head fire has got me wondering how the hunting will be for Panguitch Lake tag holders this year. 33,000 acres and growing? Yowza, that's gotta have a significant effect on something. Anybody know anyone with LE elk tags that are thinking about turning them back in? I'm sure more than a few people's yearly stomping grounds have been reduced to scorched earth by now. I was discussing this with a friend who hunts on the Panguitch unit and he says his honey holes haven't been burned over, but he is concerned about all the displaced hunters who will probably be mobbing his area now. I wonder how much wildlife we have lost in this absolute monster. Thoughts/opinions?


I don't think I'll be that high in October for the general deer.

Although, the burn is intriguing and If it was an earlier hunt I would be in there looking for deer.

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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

I applied for the early season cow elk tag down there and have been wondering about the impact of the fire on the cow elk. 

Ridge - I know you know a lot about big game animals and their habits, so your post brought some encouraging words. Now, I just need to draw that tag!


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## MuscleWhitefish (Jan 13, 2015)

CPAjeff said:


> I applied for the early season cow elk tag down there and have been wondering about the impact of the fire on the cow elk.
> 
> Ridge - I know you know a lot about big game animals and their habits, so your post brought some encouraging words. Now, I just need to draw that tag!


If there is green sprouting plants in the burn area, I think that is where I would be until the heat of day.

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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

I remember back when the road less burned in the Book Cliffs in 2002 and I was wishing that I had a tag for it that year. We sat up on top of the road and watched real nice bulls walking around in the burn area. 

I know of a couple of hunters that turned their tags back in even after I told them not to.


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## elkfromabove (Apr 20, 2008)

How do I feel?

-1) I have a Panguitch Lake archery buck permit and I've already ruled out my Yankee Meadows setups. One is gone for sure per the latest fire map and the other one is really close. My Henrie Knolls and Asay Knoll setups are still ok, but the roads to them are currently closed. And, as CCG pointed out, the fire is still growing and I have fewer and fewer places to camp and hunt deer. Welcome to good ol' Option #2!

-2) Ironically, a couple of Southern RAC's ago, we had a well known RAC member bring up the overcrowding issue AGAIN! "All they needed was the cotton candy", he said. (to make it a circus last year). This fire will drastically reduce camping and hunting sites in that unit for years to come. Welcome to Option #2! 

-3) I'm no wildlife biologist and I could be way off base, but I can't imagine how the 1, 2 & 3 day-old deer fawns are going to escape when the fire moves 10 miles each night. And the does would be reluctant to leave them so I'm sure we'll lose some of those as well. The elk and mountain pronghorn may be in the same boat. And to complicate matters, the wind changes so often, they have no idea which direction to go to avoid the fire. All the big game permits on that unit will surely have to be reduced, pushing people into other units. For you deer hunters, welcome to Option #2!

Add to all of that, the mud and rock slides off the denuded slopes, the closed roads, the water rutted roads and trails, the dirty water, the likely increase in cheat grass, the private property owners who have lost cabins, homes, out buildings and pastures, the private property owners who are now more protective of their land, the folks who have grazing rights, the increased human activity for cleanup, restoring and rebuilding. I'm sure I've missed a lot of stuff, but it ain't just the current fire situation we need to be aware of. Parts of this unit won't recover for 30 years. For you deer hunters, I'll say it again. Welcome to Option #2!

Anyway, those are my thoughts. And in case you missed it, I hate Option #2!


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## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

elkfromabove said:


> How do I feel?
> 
> -1) I have a Panguitch Lake archery buck permit and I've already ruled out my Yankee Meadows setups. One is gone for sure per the latest fire map and the other one is really close. My Henrie Knolls and Asay Knoll setups are still ok, but the roads to them are currently closed. And, as CCG pointed out, the fire is still growing and I have fewer and fewer places to camp and hunt deer. Welcome to good ol' Option #2!
> 
> ...


Holy crap!

Sounds like Unit 28 is ground zero for Armageddon.
My heart does go out to those who have lost homes on the mountain. 
Maybe everyone should turn their tags back in.


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## johnnycake (Jul 19, 2011)

I'm with ridge on this, that burn should be prime come mid August-November. I remember thinking the Candland Mountain burn in 2012 was a disaster but it was without a doubt the greatest thing to happen to the big game hunting in that area in the last five generations of my family hunting it.


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## swbuckmaster (Sep 14, 2007)

I helped pull cameras on the oak Creek unit fire a friend had out a year after the fire. He turned his tag in! The trail cameras showed the fire and deer at the same time at the water hole. Area looked tourched but deer still came in. It was like they were to stupid to leave. Don't know what they ate but they never left. I also don't know how they didn't get torched it was a big fire!

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## swbuckmaster (Sep 14, 2007)

swbuckmaster said:


> I helped pull cameras on the oak Creek unit a friend had out a year after the fire. He turned his tag in! The trail cameras showed the fire and deer still came in to water with fire still burning on the camera. Area looked tourched but deer still came in. It was like they were to stupid to leave. Don't know what they ate but they never left.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

swbuckmaster said:


> I helped pull cameras on the oak Creek unit fire a friend had out a year after the fire. He turned his tag in! The trail cameras showed the fire and deer at the same time at the water hole. Area looked tourched but deer still came in. It was like they were to stupid to leave. Don't know what they ate but they never left. I also don't know how they didn't get torched it was a big fire!
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


I've actually hunted inside a wild land fire area once years ago. I was working in fire management at the time, so I felt safe and comfortable with the situation. I would not recommend doing such things now days. While I was hunting the area, I saw a couple mature bucks come walking out of very thick smoke inside the burn area. They were not concerned about the situation at all.


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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

If you look at the after fire area you will see that there is a patchwork of green in almost every fire. This is what I saw in the Road Less area of the Book Cliffs in 2002, and in those patchwork of green trees the animals thrived. They were even out laying down in the ashes while it was still smoldering some. Then after there are a couple of rain storms and the green grasses and brushes start to come back in the animals just love it.


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## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Critter said:


> If you look at the after fire area you will see that there is a patchwork of green in almost every fire. This is what I saw in the Road Less area of the Book Cliffs in 2002, and in those patchwork of green trees the animals thrived. They were even out laying down in the ashes while it was still smoldering some. Then after there are a couple of rain storms and the green grasses and brushes start to come back in the animals just love it.


True story.
If my user name wasn't "ridgetop", it surely would have been "burnhunter".


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## bowgy (Oct 10, 2007)

colorcountrygunner said:


> This Brian Head fire has got me wondering how the hunting will be for Panguitch Lake tag holders this year. 33,000 acres and growing? Yowza, that's gotta have a significant effect on something. Anybody know anyone with LE elk tags that are thinking about turning them back in? I'm sure more than a few people's yearly stomping grounds have been reduced to scorched earth by now. I was discussing this with a friend who hunts on the Panguitch unit and he says his honey holes haven't been burned over, but he is concerned about all the displaced hunters who will probably be mobbing his area now. I wonder how much wildlife we have lost in this absolute monster. Thoughts/opinions?


After the big Pine Valley unit fire there were some big bucks pushed into the surrounding units such as Zion and even in the Valley north of the fire. That winter I had a 6x8 point buck living in my garden.


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## RandomElk16 (Sep 17, 2013)

bowgy said:


> After the big Pine Valley unit fire there were some big bucks pushed into the surrounding units such as Zion and even in the Valley north of the fire. That winter I had a 6x8 point buck living in my garden.


TOAD!


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## bowgy (Oct 10, 2007)

The wife's family has some property just over the next canyon from the fire, I''m hoping some nice elk and deer were pushed on to the ranch. I will go scouting as soon as the fire is out and they open the roads so I can get up there.


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## mrkrik (Jan 26, 2016)

I'll leave it to those that have had experience with burns on what it will do to the hunting this year, but I feel for the people that have property up there. It's a rotten thing to lose a home or property to a fire, and even if your place does survive, no longer having the beautiful forest would really suck. My family has camped and fished the Panguitch Lake area and we will miss what was there.


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## PBH (Nov 7, 2007)

I'm sure someone on here had a Dutton tag after the FS burned that mountain down. What were their experiences with hunting after the fire?

The Sanford Fire (2002) ended up burning something like 80,000 acres.

One of the biggest impacts the Sanford fire had was to fish.


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## backcountry (May 19, 2016)

Difficult to predict the short term effect of a fire like this, especially given the diverse habitat this is burning. You have an area around (just south of) Yankee Meadows that burned relatively slowly for a couple days which likely led to more burning to the understory. You have the higher intensity area that crowned and ran 8 miles in one day to the East that likely led to more patchwork of unburned areas.

The biggest benefit I see is that this is relatively early in the season so if/when they get containment and mop up the fire folks will hopefully have plenty of time to access the area and scout their options. They are predicting a July 15th containment, at the earliest, assuming the winds and heat this week the red flag warnings are predicting don't cause runs like last week. 

Ultimately lets hope succession does its job and we see a mature forest reclaim the area sooner than I fear as I have seen areas like this take decades instead of years to heal. These hot fires can do unusual damage to the entire ecosystem. Or not.


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## plottrunner (Apr 3, 2008)

PBH said:


> I'm sure someone on here had a Dutton tag after the FS burned that mountain down. What were their experiences with hunting after the fire?
> 
> The Sanford Fire (2002) ended up burning something like 80,000 acres.
> 
> One of the biggest impacts the Sanford fire had was to fish.


I think this ones is going to have some big fish impacts as well. Panguitch, Yankee, Mammoth Creek, The Sevier River and after today possibly Red Creek are all going to be ashed out....


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## Charina (Aug 16, 2011)

ridgetop said:


> It will effect the big game very little and there will be very little loss of big game because of it.





Critter said:


> Then after there are a couple of rain storms and the green grasses and brushes start to come back in the animals just love it.


Not all fires are the same. I'm not formally educated on wildfires, but have spoken with a couple people that are. From what I have gathered from them, I'm not quite as optimistic.

Ultimately time will tell when 'we' can get in there and see the actual extent of damage. Some fires, as this one seems to be, burn so hot and so intensely it sanitizes the soils of all seeds and even the "soil crust" that includes the necessary microbial life to recover in the way many less intense fires do. We may have lost large swaths of productive land for quite a few years to come. Surely there will be some patchwork due to wind shifting the fire, but from the sounds of it, no grass will be sprouting for the next year+ in much of the burned area. It'll depend on how much of the land burned intensely vs just burned over until easily consumed fuels were exhausted.

Speaking of the bookcliffs - I sure which a whole lot more of that monoculture pinion pine would burn. That place isn't living up to it's potential with all that pinion pine suffocating out the grasses and shrubbery. A few good burns in there would be a boon to the game.


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## goofy elk (Dec 16, 2007)

I'm down in Cedar today. 
The wind is NOT helping the firefighters.
This picture is ftom the reat stop north of Parawan.
The fire is still moving fast.


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## backcountry (May 19, 2016)

I was up at Navajo Lake today and was shocked at how little of the smoke we could see. Not only is today windy it also shifting all over the place which I would imagine makes allocating resources difficult.

Good news is the backburn around Dark Hollow was a success. Seems like they are increasingly successful at creating line and containment. I guess having 1400 people on the ground helps. Forcast to be milder temps and wind the next 48 hours so I would be shocked to see containment sky rocket.

Still no rain anywhere in the long term forecast though.

Per fisheries...I am hopeful about Red Creek but some of those tributaries for Panguitch could be shot. If I remember right, they are still closed for the spawn which can't be good for recruitment. Mammoth may experience limited impact if they can hold those dozer lines on the southside. Same goes for Paragonah/Red Creek if they are able to push an aggressive line the next 48 hours.

But if this explodes again then we could see a loss of great runs and wild populations. I just rediscovered the great fishing that is Red Creek Res. and was looking forward to many great trout dinners with its 8 trout limit. Those were some fun fish three weeks ago. 

Fingers crossed.


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## yak4fish (Nov 16, 2007)

PBH said:


> I'm sure someone on here had a Dutton tag after the FS burned that mountain down. What were their experiences with hunting after the fire?
> 
> The Sanford Fire (2002) ended up burning something like 80,000 acres.
> 
> One of the biggest impacts the Sanford fire had was to fish.


I had a later Nov. cow elk tag on Dutton the the year it burned. Hunted right in the burn we killed two cows that year. Normally my brother and I are lucky to get one between us. Worse thing about it was coming off the Mountain looking like a chimney sweep.
I wouldn't worry about the hunti g it will be better and get better over the next few years after a burn. Find the patches that didn't burn and hunt near them in the burn. Take a bar of lava soap to wash the soot off at the end of the day.


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## klbzdad (Apr 3, 2012)

Feeling pretty good about it, actually. Elk and deer love recovering burn sites and so far this has had minimal impact to my regular haunts and with hunters displaced by the fire as well as the animals, I'm looking forward added pressure and number to help in filling a buck, doe, and elk tag this year!

Regarding the effects of fire......

https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr042_2.pdf

http://science.howstuffworks.com/en...e/how-forest-fire-benefit-living-things-2.htm

https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nrs-p1/boerner_p1_104.pdf

The forest service is already cutting snags and using burn log poles to mitigate erosion and mucky run off from monsoons (when they finally come).


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## WasatchOutdoors (Sep 26, 2007)

That unit is going to be amazing the next couple years. New growth after a fire is some of highest nutritional density, and is capable of supporting far more animals than mature, old-growth forest. Yes, they've lost a lot of cover, but the edges around the entire area as well as any islands of unburned cover will hold and attract larger numbers of animals.


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## backcountry (May 19, 2016)

I am not confident one way or the other. Its so dynamic. I would guess that some of the burn area will be amazing while others will be a loss. 

I just reviewed the Twitchell Fire data which had some good benefits. It only burned 45,000 acres but that was a relatively slow progression of three months. Even then, the top layers of entire hillsides were documented to have washed away. If I remember right, that was even with a fairly aggressive reseeding effort.

This fire is almost 60,000 acres in a few weeks. I am hoping that the places it ran the fastest left behind some patchwork. There were some great small meadows and stands scattered throughout the area. Makes me wonder about the area around Yankee Meadows which has been smoldering the longest. 

Time will tell. Will be interesting to watch the next few years. I am guessing many in the Dixie had their summer schedule turned upside down and are retasked with investigating and implementing recovery and stabilization projects. It will be a miracle if we don't see major flash flood events and mudslides during this and the next monsoon.

(PS..this smoke in Cedar City today is nauseating)


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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

First and foremost, my condolences to those who lost cabins, property, etc in the fire. Secondly, thanks to all those firefighters for their hard work and dedication on this fire. 

I drew the early August cow elk hunt down there this year and over time, my "worried" level about the quality of the hunt has decreased. Now, with that being said, my 1 point that it took to draw the tag is not a drop in the bucket to those individuals who have waited 15+ years for a chance at a bull down there. I still look forward to getting down there and having a great hunt.


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## bowgy (Oct 10, 2007)

CPAjeff said:


> First and foremost, my condolences to those who lost cabins, property, etc in the fire. Secondly, thanks to all those firefighters for their hard work and dedication on this fire.
> 
> I drew the early August cow elk hunt down there this year and over time, my "worried" level about the quality of the hunt has decreased. Now, with that being said, my 1 point that it took to draw the tag is not a drop in the bucket to those individuals who have waited 15+ years for a chance at a bull down there. I still look forward to getting down there and having a great hunt.


I sent you a pm. Keep in touch and I can give you some pointers on where I think the elk will be. If you want to do any scouting I can also show you some areas, I think that they will have it out and the area open by then.

Now that the evacuations are lifted I'm going up to the ranch tomorrow to check things out. I want to go early enough to see if I can see any elk and to see if more have been pushed into the area by the fire.

Things are getting too close, the fire started less than 2.5 miles (as the crow flies) from the ranch. The Swains Creek / Stout canyon fire in July of 2012 started less than 3 miles from my cabin.

I also want to thank the fire fighters for all they do.


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## klbzdad (Apr 3, 2012)

CPAjeff said:


> First and foremost, my condolences to those who lost cabins, property, etc in the fire. Secondly, thanks to all those firefighters for their hard work and dedication on this fire.
> 
> I drew the early August cow elk hunt down there this year and over time, my "worried" level about the quality of the hunt has decreased. Now, with that being said, my 1 point that it took to draw the tag is not a drop in the bucket to those individuals who have waited 15+ years for a chance at a bull down there. I still look forward to getting down there and having a great hunt.


Our property is in Rainbow Meadows by Lowder Creek. When we went in to grab belongings on Monday, there were a healthy population of elk and deer all through the area south of the fire. Also, cabin owner friends in Meadow Lake Estates report a fair number of elk and deer still crossing their property from Han**** to access the succulents in the monument in the evening and then coming back in the morning to bed on the hillside for the day. I think your hunt is going to be just fine. You should be able to fill that tag opening day without breaking a sweat!!!!!


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## bowgy (Oct 10, 2007)

klbzdad said:


> Our property is in Rainbow Meadows by Lowder Creek. When we went in to grab belongings on Monday, there were a healthy population of elk and deer all through the area south of the fire. Also, cabin owner friends in Meadow Lake Estates report a fair number of elk and deer still crossing their property from Han**** to access the succulents in the monument in the evening and then coming back in the morning to bed on the hillside for the day. I think your hunt is going to be just fine. You should be able to fill that tag opening day without breaking a sweat!!!!!


I have friends that have cabins in that area and they have told me of shooting their elk while sitting on their front porch:shock: I know of a coupe of guys that took their LE elk sitting on their front porch.


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