Opening day of bull elk rifle season in the Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area got off to a rainy start. But that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the several hundred hunters who were scouring the timber and meadows in search of the big bulls that roam there.

Jerry Day, of Jacksonville, dropped a six-pointer. "I've been coming here for five years," he said. "We get to come here every other year when we draw tags. It's worth it. You see a lot more elk." And Day isn't the only one who feels that way.

The Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area is a popular destination for elk hunters, some of whom have been coming here for the past 30 years. ODFW manages a herd of 2,100 elk and issues more than 1,300 rifle or bow hunting tags for bull and antlerless elk each year. Another 1,800 buck deer tags are issued to hunters. But the real reason the management demonstration area provides such a high-quality hunting experience is the way it is managed — not for elk, but for people.

Located just northwest of the town of Wallowa, the Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area covers about three townships. Its gently rolling topography is blanketed with fir, pine and larch. Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer share the area with black bear and mountain lion.

Much of the land here is owned by Boise Cascade. In 1974, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Boise Cascade teamed up to establish a cooperative travel management area. They created a system of road closures during hunting seasons, which better allowed the company to control public use of its land during those periods.

In 1990, the area was chartered under the Blue Mountains Elk Initiative as the Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area and sanctioned by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to develop methods for improving hunter-landowner relations, increase hunter satisfaction with various land and wildlife management programs and test new elk management methods.

Today, more than 200 square miles of Boise Cascade timberlands are included in the 538-square-mile Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area. Only 17 percent of the management demonstration area is in public ownership.

"I thought people would object to limited entry road closures," said Vic Coggins, ODFW's district wildlife biologist for the Wallowa Wildlife District, "but there is support because it results in better hunting."

"Behind those gates the hunting is like a backcountry experience," said Boise Cascade wildlife biologist and range scientist Bob Riggs. "There are roads out there, but nobody's on them. The road closures are a big factor in the quality of the hunting experience." In fact, on opening day over half of the Demonstration Area's elk tag holders chose to hunt on one-third of the area with road closures, as opposed to adjacent lands where roads are open to vehicles.

Hunters take two approaches to hunting the area. One is to camp along the main roads, then walk out behind the gates to hunt each day. The other involves packing gear out past the gates and setting up camp in the backcountry.

The second piece of the quality-hunting puzzle is managing the numbers of hunters. In the 1970s as many as 17,000 deer and elk hunters converged on the Sled Springs area each fall, causing a nightmare for wildlife managers and Oregon State Police wildlife officers. "There used to be so many hunters out here that they would chase the herds from camp to camp," said Coggins. "They really cleaned the bulls out."

Even now, with controlled hunting, it's a real battle to keep the bull ratio up, but at 10 bulls per 100 cows on the management demonstration area, it currently meets ODFW's management objectives.

Curtis Mattson works as an ODFW seasonal technician on the management demonstration area, patrolling and collecting harvest data from hunters. "When I first started," said Mattson, "there was a big garbage and littering problem. But I'm out here three days a week, and just being here cuts down on violations. A lot of people don't realize that these are private lands and it's not guaranteed that you can come back." The Oregon State Police also patrols the area.

Hiring a technician has been an important part of making the management demonstration area concept work, from the perspective of keeping an eye out for violations as well as answering hunters' questions.

For the past six years, money for the position has come from the Access and Habitat Program. In 2000, the demonstration area received a $19,675 grant. The Access and Habitat Program was created by the Oregon Legislature in 1993 and is funded by a $2 surcharge on hunting licenses. Funds raised by the program are distributed through grants to individual and corporate landowners, conservation organizations, and others for cooperative wildlife habitat improvement and hunter access projects throughout the state.

For additional information on the Sled Springs Management Demonstration Area, contact Vic Coggins at (541) 426-3279 or Bob Riggs at (541) 962-2046. For more information on the Access and Habitat Program, contact program coordinator Matt Buhler at (503) 872-5260, extension 5349.