Closing North Dakota’s Hunting Seasons Because Of Fire Danger?

Over 2,000 acres burned north of Bismarck on Saturday.

The fire danger in the state is extremely high. Thankfully, according to our news partner KX News, the Double Ditch fire is now 100% contained. There were some anxious moments as the Double Ditch fire eventually turned into four separate fires.

Meanwhile, fires in the northwest part of the state continue to burn.

This continues to be a very fluid situation. It's a two-part reason why we are in such a high fire danger. Soaking rains this spring and early summer really brought on the vegetation.

I did some pheasant hunting last evening east of town, and it's been a long time since I've seen such thick cover. Fields and ditches are just covered with dense grass. We have received so little moisture over the last couple of months.

This has led to the perfect firestorm with extremely dry conditions and plenty of fuel for fires to quickly move across the North Dakota landscape.

I was speaking with a landowner friend of mine over the weekend, and he caught some North Dakota hunters (I hate even calling them hunters, more like poachers) trespassing on his land while driving in a wheat field that was electronically posted.

The trespassing was bad enough, but driving on a warm and windy day on Saturday in a dry stubble field is just asking for trouble with our extremely dry conditions.

He told me he wished they would put the North Dakota hunting seasons on pause until we see rain or snow again.

After all, can you blame farmers for feeling this way? They are trying to harvest their crops with this extreme fire danger, and having to worry about trespassers posing even more of a threat to their livelihood.

That got me thinking. Has North Dakota ever closed the hunting seasons because of extreme fire danger?

Could it ever happen? After all, hunting brings in so many economic benefits to our communities, and especially our smaller communities.

After a little research, North Dakota has indeed put its hunting seasons on pause before.

You have to go all the way back to 1976 when incumbent governor Art Link was seeking re-election. According to the Prairie Blog, in mid-October Link closed hunting in southwest North Dakota, and limited to 1/2 days in the rest of the state.

As you can imagine, this outranged tens of thousands of hunters across North Dakota. Many thought Link would lose his governor race to republican Richard Elkin because of his decision.

Then, the miracle rains came at the end of October, and Link declared the state free of fire danger and he re-opened up the hunting seasons just before the election.  Art Link would go on to beat Richard Elkin by a very narrow margin (with 51% of the vote).

So, to say they would close North Dakota's hunting seasons because of the dry conditions isn't that far-fetched.  Especially if the rains continue to pass us by.

Looking at the long-range forecasts, we do have some rain chances in the last couple of weeks of October.

Let's hope for these "miracle rains" to stop the fire danger, and hopefully keep our hunting seasons open.

In the meantime, if you do venture out hunting, bring a shovel along inside your vehicle, stay off prairie trails, do not drive in fields, and stay on main gravel roads to minimize the fire danger.