‘It’s going to be disastrous’

Troy Lodspeich often uses prescribed burns on his ranch in Harper County for wildlife management.

“But you don’t need every dad-gum thing burned at once,” said Lodspeich, whose 10,000-acre ranch was set ablaze by a wildfire earlier this month.

“It burned everything. As far as you can see with binoculars, there’s nothing. There is just a few sticks like of sage brush or plum thicket.”

Since 1989, Lodspeich has been selling guided hunts on the centuryold ranch and other land in northwest Oklahoma that he leases for hunting. He said this month’s wildfires will be costly for outfitters like himself.

“We do a lot of guided hunts. Quail, deer and a few turkey hunts,” he said. “There will be benefits, but short-term, this year, it’s going to be disastrous. It will be a pretty big hit financially.”

Lodspeich, who keeps a kennel of 25 bird dogs, worries about the future of quail and other ground-nesting birds as a result of the wildfire.

“There is just nothing on the ground for them to nest in,” he said. “There is just no clumps of anything around for them to get up in and make a nest.”

Lodspeich said he’s only had to cancel a few upcoming turkey hunts already booked for next month thanks to the generosity of neighbors whose land was spared.

“We are just finding other places that we can go hunt,” he said. “We got lots of friends and neighbors. We found some guys south of us who didn’t lose stuff. We have a guy down by Fort Supply is going to let us go hunt on his place so we didn’t have to cancel them all.

“They are not even going to make us lease it. They are going to let us take hunters. There are some pretty good folks out here.”