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Zen Hunting

Second Scouting Trip: June 2015

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Early Scouting Trip 2015

Okay, less words, more photos:

June-6a

Esther and I hit the top of Monte Cristo over the weekend. The snow subsided enough to get above 8000 feet. We spent the first day beating the mountain to death and exploring a promising new area completely devoid of deer. Driving back to camp we spotted these bucks on a hillside.

june-6b

It’s still early, but the monsoons of May have the bucks growing promising antlers. The two bucks on the left are likely two-year-olds, and the buck on the right is a mature buck with a potential outside spread of 22 inches or more.

June-6c

The bucks didn’t stick around long for pictures, but that’s okay. Just seeing bucks in the Cache unit made us hopeful.

Here’s the lessons we learned on this trip:

  1. The Cache-Monte unit still sucks.
  2. The biggest bucks are still on lower elevations. Although we found signs of large migrating bucks, most are still lower on the mountain and following green-up up. They won’t be high until the heat and mosquitoes push them up.
  3. Promising new areas weren’t as promising as we hoped, even far off the dirt road. You have to cover many miles of empty woods just to locate a few small patches that regularly hold deer.

Just one word of caution: The high elevation roads still have patches of snow and deep mud, and we almost got stuck a couple times. Not far from camp we ran into this abandoned Hummer-in-a-bog, sunk up to the axles. The poor fellas were able to winch it out the next day, but it just goes to show you that no vehicle is safe from the muddy clutches of the mountain.

stuck-in-the-mud

More scouting to come!

Zen Hunting

First Scouting Trip: May 2015

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First Deer Scouting Trip 2015

The Big Game Draw results are in:  unsuccessful for Mountain Goat and limited entry Deer, but successful for general Buck Deer…in my 5th choice unit.

After arrowing the infamous Droptine buck in 2010, I vowed never to hunt the Cache unit (Monte Cristo/Unit #2) again. There are simply too few bucks and hardly any trophies. But with so many hunters in Utah now, I can no longer hunt where I want to, even with a bow. For a guaranteed tag, I always put Cache as my last choice. Since no one in their right mind actually wants to hunt the Cache unit, it’s a guaranteed draw.

Well, I’ll make the most of it. And when it’s all over, I know I will be standing over a huge Pope & Young buck, but man, it’s gonna take some work. In order to succeed, I’ve already begun scouting. I’ll continue scouting this bleak unit every chance I get until opening day in mid-August.

The Cache unit is relatively HUGE. What it lacks in quality deer, it makes up for in quantity area–miles and miles of pristine forest and mountains, mostly devoid of wildlife. It takes a lot of time and effort to thoroughly scout an area this big.

A couple weeks ago, when the higher elevations were still snowed in, Esther and I scouted some obscure lower elevations. I quickly learned that you had to get at least a mile away from the dirt road to find any deer. We finally found a pod of eight deer in a steep feeding swathe between aspens.  It was too early to see antlers, but it looked like a promising new area.

Pre-season scouting doesn’t require actually seeing deer. It’s more important to look for sign:  large tracks, tree rubbings, and especially good feeding areas. Remember the old adage:  Where you find the best feed, you’ll find the best bucks. Grab a topo map and locate potential feeding areas on the east and south-east facing slopes near steep, timbered bedding areas. Bucks love to bed near feed, especially early in the year when there’s little pressure.

Successful scouting means continually seeking out new areas. Hunting pressure quickly pushes bucks out of prime areas, so you’ll need multiple backup areas. Be sure to scout the secondary ridges. These are the lower or middle ridges where bucks feel safe. On Monte Cristo the main roads follow the top and bottom of the mountain. But in the deep, dark interior, bucks feel safe.

Although I wasn’t inspired to pull out my camera and document our first antlerless deer sighting, I considered this trip a good learning experience. The biggest lesson was how much more area I still needed to cover. A second scouting trip was quickly planned and executed (see tomorrows post with pictures!)

Good luck on your own scouting adventures.