BAKER CITY — The elk aren’t hungry enough yet to need or to be interested in Eddie Miguez’s handouts. But he’ll be ready when they are.

Miguez manages the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Elkhorn Wildlife Area.

The area consists of 10 sites where Miguez and his crew set out alfalfa hay and food pellets for thousands of elk and deer each winter. The sites are all along the eastern base of the Elkhorns.

ODFW created the Elkhorn Wildlife Area in 1971 but not for the reason that might seem obvious.

The purpose isn’t to make sure elk and deer have enough to eat during the long and frequently severe Eastern Oregon winter. It has to do, rather, with what they eat. And what they used to eat, in many cases, was hay that local farmers put out to nourish their cattle through the winter.

The concept of the wildlife area is simple: If you put alfalfa in the animals’ paths from the mountains to the haystacks and then make sure the supply is replenished, then they won’t bother munching food meant for cattle. By and large the strategy has worked.

Elk and deer still get into haystacks, as well as alfalfa fields. But the proof of the plan’s efficacy is obvious at each of the 10 sites, where animals gather, rather like pets, every day when the wildlife area crew shows up with alfalfa.

The key, though, is to make sure the hay gets there before the elk do, Miguez said.

“Once they get down into the valley, it’s kind of hard to get (them) back up,” he said.

Miguez said his crew spread hay at all the feed sites on Monday, even though elk and deer haven’t arrived yet.

But Miguez has more than a passing interest in weather forecasts, and when he saw that snow was predicted, followed by several days of sub-freezing temperatures, he knew the animals would likely start descending toward the valleys.

“Their energy requirements will be going way up just to maintain body heat,” he said.

Some years, the elk would have arrived already, but this has been an atypical autumn, Miguez said.

Most notably, a soggy stretch in September followed by mild temperatures in October reinvigorated grasses and shrubs desiccated by drought.

With so much nutritious food available in the mountains, Miguez said, the elk and deer have no reason to look elsewhere for meals.