Yesterday in Oklahoma there was a pretty good wildfire that started 2 miles east, and 4 miles north of my lease. Fire went north with the strong south winds, so my lease was never in danger, and thankfully the news said nobody got hurt, just land was burned.

Have you guys ever been hurt or helped by a nearby fire with wildlife finding a new home?

I hunted a spot about 10 years ago that had a fire come by the previous year and never saw a thing on my camera in the month I left it out there.

I'm unsure if the deer will travel far enough to me as it appears on the map there are plenty of other woods to stop at between my place and the fire if they did decide to find a new home.

Saw some displaced mule deer in Fisher County for a couple months after a big fire several years ago. That was about it.

I was on a deer lease on the outskirts of Wichita Falls 15 years ago & we had a crazy landowner who actually started burning trash the opening weekend of gun season. Started wildfires all over the ranch & almost burned up my buddies truck.

That fire earlier this year along the Canadian River burned down into Wheeler County before it stopped, literally, across the road from one of the family's 1/4 sections.

That is a prime prairie dog hunting property for us. Fortunately, there is a gas well on there and the whole northern piece is a gravel access road that runs along the highway inside our fence.

Not much to burn but the efforts to stop the fire did scuttle a trip up there to lower that p-dog population.

before i got on our lease they accidentally set a 100 acre brush fire. All it takes is a spark, dry conditions and wind. Bad COMBO!!!!!!!!!!!

Our whole place burned in 2009. 300+/- acres poof. The cameras had deer that morning before the fire and deer that night after. The cameras and feeders survived the fire.

spring of 2022, adjoining ranch was pushing brush piles and burning (the day after a burn ban was lifted), pushed it all up at the end of the day, winds picked up that night and restarted the brush pile, lit up over 1000 acres including going thru our camp area taking a number of travel trailers, skinning shed, other outbuildings, electrical, etc. only got a couple of stands & setups. The adjoining rancher tried to cut fire lanes but wasn't fast enough, burned up his dozer too.

I used to casually hunt a place that the owner caught on fire. Burned for awhile and it took something like 200 man hours to put out/get contained. It happened in september and by the next year you could barely tell it had burned.


In 2020 we hunted in Colorado and were between 3 large fires. One morning got up and went out and the sun never really came up. Smoke was so bad it was covering the sun. We didn't have a good read on where the fire was so we pulled camp and got out of there.

Where I hunt in North OK, the locals do controlled burns often. The only effect that I have seen on wildlife is during the actual burn. Shortly after the burn, they just go back to normal.

My place burnt off about 40 years ago. Neighbor was burning a brush pile with a high wind. It got on my place and made a mess about 200 yards wide.

Luckily, it blew through and didn’t do much permanent damage. But, it looked like crap for a couple of years.