Mid-August brings those magical moments when Greg Rahm goes on his great walks in the woods, checking the pulse of each year's forest and sizing up its crop of critters.
Old skid roads ringing the Applegate Valley teem with grouse. Coveys of quail Rahm has known intimately for a decade poke their collective heads through the berry bushes thriving along cool slopes spared from the mid-day sun.
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Cops yank tons of potRogue River police bust two on drug chargesAnother Applegate area pot garden removedSheriff spent $100,000 to remove pot in 2006Bogarting sanity in the marijuana wars Rahm never misses the chance to walk ridges near Dutchman Peak, glassing the draws for black-tailed bucks he plans to stalk in the upcoming fall.
"It's just amazing up there, what you see when you walk those old skid roads," says Rahm, a 45-year-old produce manager in Medford. "It's like they're my woods."
But Rahm has lost those woods for now in a turf war with a different set of adversaries whose guns are bigger and whose stakes are higher.
Some of Rahm's backwoods stomping grounds have become invaded by what authorities say is a Mexico-based marijuana operation growing millions of dollars worth of pot in heavily guarded plantations, some of which were raided this past week.
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