Large elk herd smoked by fire in Tucannon

If your only outdoor passion is hunting or fishing or skiing, planning this weekend’s outing should be a pleasure of justifiably optimistic expectations.

On the other hand, you’re probably getting ripped apart if all three of those pursuits have strings attached to your heart.

I feel your pain.

But before we touch on those topics, here’s some ego consolation for elk hunters who didn’t fill their tags this season in the Tucannon Unit of the Blue Mountains:

Around half the big-game animals in that area were cooked long before the season opened.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists learned this week that forest fires sweeping over 52,000 acres of the Pomeroy Ranger District in August dealt a far more serious blow to wildlife populations than originally estimated.

In September the agency suggested that most animals had time to escape the fire storms.

Personnel had limited access to the burned areas because of the danger from falling snags, but department officials were confident that wildlife losses were low based on several factors.

Firefighters returning from the perimeter of the fire said they were seeing little sign of dead wildlife. Fish and Wildlife Department researchers flew over the area and verified the survival of the half-dozen elk wearing radio transmitters for a study.

“Three of those collared elk were in a group of about 70 elk that was heading back into the burned area soon after the fires,” said Pat Fowler, department area biologist.

But now that timber cruisers are surveying the area more thoroughly in preparation for salvage timber sales, the grim truth is being discovered.

The skeletons of about 200 elk have been counted. The entire Tucannon herd totaled 400-500 animals before the fire, Fowler said.

The remains of eight bighorn sheep have been reported. That’s a hefty chunk of the 17 bighorns known to be in the Tucannon unit going into the summer.

At least 150 deer carcasses representing about 30 percent of the area’s deer population have been found, along with the charred leftovers from bears and other critters.

“Apparently a bunch of the elk ran into the north slope timber and the fire caught them so fast they couldn’t get out,” Fowler said, noting that the fire generated the lethal combination of intense heat and hurricane-force winds in some areas.

“When you pick up some of these elk bones, they crumble into ash,” he said.

The fires are a big setback to big-game populations that were already lower than optimum levels, he said.

“We’d planned to transplant some bighorns into the east Tucannon area, but we’ll have to put that off until we see how the habitat recovers,” he said. “In some places, that’s going to take years.”

On the other hand: Green grass is sprouting from areas that didn’t burn too hot and the remaining elk are attracted to the feed, Fowler said. Spokane hunter George Orr put his special permit on a cow he found in one of the burned areas.

“Later I shot a grouse and its craw was full of pine seeds that came out of the burned cones,” he said.

Making ski tracks: The lifts start operating Friday at 49 Degrees North and Lookout Pass for the earliest area ski season opener in years. Some excellent snow also awaits skiers willing to put on skins and use muscle power to climb up for virgin runs on Mount Spokane’s still ungroomed slopes.

The Mount Spokane nordic trails are covered by a foot of snow and are skiable, said Steve Christensen, park manager. “But we won’t be able to start grooming until the night before Thanksgiving,” he said.

The telephone was being connected Wednesday to start leaving the recorded updates for the nordic ski trail system. The number is 238-4025.

A good foot of snow also is covering ski trails at Deer Creek Summit east of Curlew as well as the Sherman Pass area.

Dreaming of tracks: If you can’t be on skis this week, watch others do it.

•Nils Larsen will present a multimedia program on his trek to the source of skiing in a remote corner of China, Saturday, 6:30 p.m. at the Catholic Hall in Republic.

•Warren Miller’s “Higher Ground” will play Saturday, 12:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. at Colville High School in a benefit for the 49 Degrees North youth racing team. The action ski flick will show at North Idaho College’s Boswell Hall on Nov. 27 and in the Spokane Opera House on Dec. 17.

•”The Tangerine Dream,” by Teton Gravity Research, will be shown at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Sunday at The Met as part of the Snow Show that will be held next door at The Big Easy.

To hunt or fish? That is the question for many sportsmen this weekend.

The late buck hunt is underway in northeastern Washington, and another deer season opens today in North Idaho and the upland bird hatch appears to be the best since the early ‘80s.

Meanwhile, the steelheading has been excellent on the Snake and Grande Ronde rivers. Trollers and bait plunkers are having no trouble catching chunky rainbows at Lake Roosevelt.

Fly fishers say the heydays of fishing for Lahontan cutthroats are back at Lake Lenore south of Coulee City.

If that sounds like more than a weekend full of options, you’re right.

I’m heading out today.