6 minute read
PUBLIC LAND OWNER
SELLING THE FARM
BY STEVEN HAWLEY
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When you dream about the perfect elk habitat, you might as well be dreaming of Skinner Creek, ensconced in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. It’s a relatively small drainage, roughly 25,000 acres, of north-facing open parks interspersed with timbered draws, covering a surprising range of elevation, all of which provides food and cover for a stunning number of ungulates. Like all good elk spots, there’s a fair amount of hunting pressure, but here it’s well-dispersed: access is allowed only on foot. Alas, for the vast majority of hunters, 2021 was the last chance to partake in Skinner Creek’s bounty.
Skinner Creek is part of the 39,000-acre Wilkinson Ranch. In partnership with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the ranch has been open to hunt since 1967. Owners Pam and Mark Wunderlich sold the lion’s share of their ranch, including Skinner Creek, in 2020, and the new owner, Brian Thompson, proprietor of the adjacent Thompson Ranch, decided to convert their new holding into a private, fee-for-hunt operation.
Like many aging ranch families, the Wunderlichs had no children interested in taking over operations. In 2016, Pam was diagnosed with a serious cardiopulmonary condition, and on the advice of doctors, moved for much of the year to the coast of Washington state, where clean, cool, moist summer air would be a balm for her compromised lungs. “It breaks my heart to sell any part of our land,” says Pam Wunderlich, whose father, Dick Wilkinson, spent his whole life on the family ranch and became something of a local legend. “But we’ve reached the stage in life where we had to make some hard choices.”
Difficult choices besetting ranch families also affect hunting opportunities. Twenty-six states have programs like Oregon’s Access and Habitat, often funded through a portion of license sales, which keep gates open on private land. (Oregon’s sister program, Open Fields, is aimed at increasing waterfowl
opportunity on private land.) In the early 2000s, federal help boosted these efforts. The Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP), first passed in 2008 but renewed in subsequent farm bills in 2014 and again in 2018, created competitive grant funding opportunities among state and tribal fish and wildlife management agencies to make deals with willing landowners.
But increased support for private land access programs has been tempered in part by pandemic-driven demand for ranch property. Travis Schultz is ODFW’s Access and Habitat Coordinator. “The market pressure on hunting and ranch properties has created some challenges for programs like ours,” he says. “Like so much of what we do, there’s limited resources. We don’t have the finances to create opportunity for every good piece of habitat on private land. But at the same time, we’re always looking. Establishing a relationship with the landowner is the first step. And in that regard, there’s been nobody better than the Wilkinsons.”
Pam Wunderlich concurs. “It’s been a 54-year-long love affair with ODFW,” she says, “and it’s not completely over.” She points out that about a third of the historic ranch is still theirs. “And as long as I’m around, I intend to keep that open to public hunting.”
The elk Shangri-La portion of the Wilkinson, however, is off limits – unless you want to pony up the thousands of dollars it will now cost you to access the gorgeous country around Skinner Creek. It’s caused a fair bit of grumbling from hunters, many of them locals, who point out that the Wilkinson Ranch received checks from ODFW for most of those 54 years, and if you add them all up, the seven-figure total would go a long way to purchasing the ranch outright. ODFW’s Schultz says the idea of his agency buying the Wilkinson property is more complicated that just looking at the asking price. “You’re taking land out of production, land off the tax rolls, and jobs away that mean a lot in a small town like Heppner (the city of 1200 near the ranch). And, again, we have a limited budget that has to go to providing hunting opportunity all over the state, not just in one part of it,” says Schultz.
Keeping the family ranch open to the hunting public does provide income, but has costs, says Mark. Hunters cheating regulations have been hauled off the property by state police. Some hunters feel free to put cattle on the move. Others absentmindedly leave gates open or their beer cans in the pasture. “I can see why Brian or any other rancher would opt to go to a private fee-to-hunt program,” he says. “You see just a handful of hunters, and the income would be as good or better.” But he sees value in the program, to the extent it can help keep farmers and ranchers on their land. He’s testified on the virtues of the Access and Habitat Program in Salem, the state’s capital. Hunters in participating states would do well to follow Mark’s example.
“The chance to hunt the Wilkinson brought hunters to Heppner, filled up the motels and restaurants and gas stations there,” says ODFW’s Schultz. “The state and the Wilkinsons helped make an economic investment in the area.” A 2011 economic study confirms what Schultz observed. It found that $9.1 million in VPA-HIP investments distributed among 13 states yielded $18.2 million in recreational spending – and created 322 new jobs, many of them in small towns like Heppner.
The Wilkinson Ranch, says Pam, stayed open to the public because her father wanted it that way. “He could be a hard man, but he really lived a life of service. He always wanted to help people, especially those in need,” she recalls. “He knew how hard it can be to keep food on the table, and allowing people to hunt he felt was one way you could keep something in the freezer.” The price of something, the elder Wilkinson seemed to recognize, did not always account for intrinsic values.
The Wunderlich’s real estate agent was somewhat taken aback by the price she agreed to with her neighbor. “He offered to get us access to Hollywood A-listers, ball-players; he thought we could get more money,” Pam says. “But we sold to a good man at a fair price.”
It was more important to her and Mark that the land remain a working ranch, and they happily noted the new owners’ son is dedicated to that cause as well.
Still, parting ways with Skinner Creek was not easy. The last chilly November morning for me there was spent with a friend whose parents both grew up in Heppner. My friend’s father, his uncles and old trusted friends have hunted the Wilkinson property for more than 60 years and hunted with us there this season.
We had an elk hanging that we still had to pack the three miles back to the rig. But we had a tag to fill and heard rumors a superherd of up to 500 had been spotted on the adjacent Thompson place. We were hoping for a glimpse. As the sleet sprinkled us, we spotted at least 300 of them, and spent the rest of the decent weather glassing the spectacle. Some were no more than 200 yards away, but on the wrong side of the fence.
In the soaking downpour on the pack out, it occurred to me that it wasn’t the elk that were on the wrong side of the fence but us. The huge herds will keep passing through here, but we will not.
BHA member Steven Hawley writes, fishes and hunts from his home base in Hood River, Oregon. In 2023, Patagonia Books will release Steve’s book on river conservation.
