To be perfectly honest, I was climbing a lot this summer up in the Sierra and I just plain forgot to buy a second D16 tag on August 2nd. So, when I realized my mistake and confirmed that they were sold out, I checked what was still available and saw that D19 had some tags for sale. I've been going up to Idyllwild forever and I had also driven through another portion of D19 this summer that caught my eye as a place I'd like to hunt for deer. I bought the tag and did some E-scouting and found an area that really caught my eye. The elevation runs from 8,000 down to 4,000 and has a million little folds in the land to hide deer. It's pretty open and has lots of feed including scrub oak, jojoba, ceanothus and others.... I had been focusing most of my scouting days on D16 but I was able to get out to D19 a day last week early and sort out the roads, trails and where I wanted to glass from. It was windy the day I scouted but I was able to find a couple pairs of doe with fawns (all looking very healthy). I also got the sense that this was a place that deer could do well in. It was big country, rough, and if you are willing to hike, it was a place you could get away from people.
As the opener approached I was watching the NOAA forecast like a hawk. I was really pleased to see some chances for precipitation in the forecast and generally cool temps across Southern California. Much of the rain didn't materialize but cool weather prevailed and some rain did fall across the region including at South Bay Rod and Gun Club while I was shooting last week. I was really happy about the weather since the last few years the D16 opener has been 90+ degrees (and D19 opens 3 weeks earlier). Ultimately, the forecast for opening day was for moderate winds in the morning progressing to 40-50 MPH winds in the evening. Some people have expressed that they like hunting in the wind but I don't love it. In my experience it causes deer, and game animals in general to bed down earlier than they otherwise would. If you find an animal before it beds down, this can be beneficial because the winds will generally keep it in that spot. However, if you don't find what you're looking for before everything beds down, you aren't likely to find it after that. I have watched this over and over again - deer will bed down for the day by 8 AM or earlier on a day that I would generally see deer on their feet until 10 or 11 AM without wind. I didn't like the forecast but I was off that day and decided I would hunt the morning and just go home if it got really windy and I hadn't seen anything yet.
With my stuff packed and ready to go I had my alarm set for 3:30AM. I have 2 English Setters and a mutt, and my parents were on vacation so we had their two dogs as well. One of the five dogs started scratching at 2:45AM and woke me up. I tried to get back to sleep for about 15 minutes and realized it wasn't going to happen and so I got up then. With coffee made I was on the road and the drive was uneventful and I was surprised I wasn't seeing others on the road once I got off the freeway. When I had scouted the week before I hiked in from a trailhead. During the week since I had scouted I had found a road that joined the trail a mile or so beyond where I had hiked in from. I really didn't know if the road was open, gated, passable or not and I didn't want to try and figure it out on opening morning so I went back to the trailhead and hiked from there. Maybe 10 minutes into my hike I could see lights ahead and then I knew that the road was open and some people had a camp there already. I pressed on as I didn't have high expectations for the day anyway. As I walked through their camp which was on the trail I said good morning and good luck and moved on. I got to my glassing spot, about 2.5 miles from the truck 10 minutes after shooting light which is a little late but I had only done the drive and hike once before. I sat down and got started. The wind was gusty in the morning but not so strong that I felt it would keep everything down. Regardless, I didn't see anything for the first hour, other than people. The camp I had passed was big and there were other trucks pulling in as I walked through, more than a dozen people all together. It seemed there was an orange hat on every other ridge and draw. The good thing was that I was above them all and most of them were still-hunting through the big canyon that I sat above. I kept glassing areas that I had previously noted as places likely to find deer either on my previous visit or via E-scouting. At about 745 I glassed the top of a rounded hill that I felt was a good spot and saw a single deer lumbering across it in a way that immediately screamed buck to me. I hadn't seen it's head yet but it's body language told me it was a buck and as it's head appeared from behind a bush I saw a nice rack, even from over a mile away. It's hard to explain but big bucks just walk differently. Its a slow lumbering walk with a head bob, younger deer and does just don't walk that way. Since I was hunting by myself, I left my spotting scope at home. I was glassing with my 15's and I could see that the deer was at least a really big fork, possibly better. This was the only deer I had seen thus far and being a mature buck, I was happy to focus on him. I heard some foot steps crunching on the path below where I was sitting and said hello to the hunter who was passing by. He asked if I had seen anything and as I watched the buck walking across the top of the mountain I lied and said I had seen "mostly just a lot of people," only a half lie really. I wished him luck as he moved on.
I was lucky to have found him when I did because the buck bedded only a few minutes later. I watched him walk behind a bush and he never reappeared. Even from over a mile away, I was very confident he had bedded. I could see some ground around the bush in all directions and felt confident I would have seen him had he moved. I watched the bush for another hour and thought about whether I should put on a stalk or not and at about 8:40 packed up my stuff and started hiking. The buck had bedded in a place I would never expect a deer to bed. Typically they will bed on north facing slopes in the shade, or, in very strong winds they will attempt to find some shade on the lee-side of a hill out of the wind. This buck bedded on the top of a hill, in howling wind, on a slope that was leaning into the sun, not away from it. He was on the shady side of the bush, but other than that it was not a place I would expect a deer to bed. Unpredictability is really one of the fun things about hunting though, wild animals do have things that they generally do, but at the end of the day they are wild and will do whatever they need/want to do, and it's often not what a person might expect. In all honesty I felt that this stalk had a relatively low chance of success: There was no way for me to get above the deer; I was not going to be able to see him at any point during the stalk; there was a barbwire fence less than 100 yards from him on my side. I was essentially just going to have to still-hunt to him once I got close and be ready to shoot.
After about two hours of hiking I was within a few hundred yards of where I expected him to be. I got my gun ready and extended my shooting sticks to standing length, and set my scope to 4 power, which is what I like if I think I might have to make a quick shot. I slowed down and began to glass every patch of shade I could find, knowing that while I had been on the move he could have moved anywhere, but was likely still on this hill somewhere. The hill he had bedded on was rounded and covered in scattered brush and there were very few landmarks for me to identify his location once I got close. Here's what it looked like through the binoculars (from my original glassing spot, not during the stalk):
Here's a zoomed in image with the red spots indicating the bush that the buck had bedded behind.
The gradual angle of the hill, the sameness of all the brush, and the fact that I was below where he was made sorting out his location very difficult. I tried to move only when there were strong gusts of wind to cover my sound. The wind was basically a steady 90 degree crosswind coming from left to right with the buck straight in front of me (if he hadn't moved). In this instance, I felt it was a fine wind and I didn't want to expose myself trying to move to a perfect downwind position. Luckily the hill was quite open and I could avoid brush and stepping on crunchy leaves most of the time. As the barbwire fence came into view I really took my time and used my glass. Not seeing anything yet I continued to move up. A few minutes later I spotted movement off to my right! It was a pair of Coyotes downwind of the deer moving straight toward his location. My first thought was, these coyotes are going to f**k me! I couldn't yell at them because I was within 150 yards of where I had bedded the deer. I tried waving them off. One of them saw me and didn't like that I was there and trotted off, but the other didn't seem to care and kept on it's course. The other soon rejoined it's hunting partner and kept moving toward the deer. I realized that there was nothing I could do. I'm not a superstitious person, but I had another thought then: Some cultures consider the Coyote to be good luck, maybe this can work to my benefit. I moved up a little bit and set up my sticks with my rifle on them. The Coyotes kept moving and all of a sudden I saw antlers come up from behind a bush and the buck made two big jumps and stopped, looking right at me, in a perfect shooting lane at less than 100 yards! He was exactly where he had originally bedded. I zoomed in to 8, fumbled with the safety for a second because for some reason it was off (I honestly can't remember if I took it off when I set the gun on my sticks or what), put it back on, took it off again and put the crosshair on his right shoulder and squeezed one off. I saw the buck run off, looking hit and he disappeared right away. I felt sure it was a good hit. The Coyotes seemed to know it too, as they kept moving in the direction he had gone and I watched them sniffing around. I pulled the trigger at 1135 and tried to will myself to wait for 15 minutes. What sounded like some final death kicks and the fact that the Coyotes seemed very interested in something in the direction he had run got me moving after only a few minutes. I didn't want to share with them. When they saw me moving they finally disappeared. I forced myself to go to where I thought he was standing when I shot him, but found no blood. I then just started walking in the direction he had gone, at the same time sure he was piled up dead but also very anxious that I wasn't finding a blood trail. I probably walked only 40 or 50 yards but was becoming very nervous at the lack of evidence when I turned to my left and saw a hoofed leg sticking up in the air. I moved to him with my gun ready but he was dead as can be, piled up in patch of prickly-pear cactus (it was everywhere on this hill). I couldn't believe it! He was a big bodied deer, with a beautiful rack and an old white face. There were still little dried up strips of velvet remaining on his antlers, and the bone was transitioning from yellow to brown. Here's how I found him:
I thanked the old buck for his life, took some pictures, tagged him and got to work. Here's a few more with yours truly:
This buck was very healthy, and in comparison to other deer I've harvested in Southern California seemed to have a big body and thick neck. I think he was pre-rut.
I got to work taking the deer apart in the way I always do: First gutting, then remove the front and hind quarters, remove the backstrap, remove both tenderloins, flip the deer, repeat, then remove neck meat last and cut off the head. I caped the deer thinking I might want to mount him. But I'll wait and see what I can do in Arizona first. The heart was completely destroyed so I left it and the other organ meat for the Coyotes as thanks for giving me the assist. This deer was in really good shape, he had a lot of fat on him!
It took me a few hours to break him down and get him loaded up. My pack always feels very heavy with an entire deer loaded up on it in addition to all of my gear, but this one was unusually heavy. Initially I couldn't get my pack on. I had to take the rifle off, get the pack on sitting down, roll over onto my hands and knees and then stand up. I always bring one trekking pole and use my shooting sticks as the other pole. The rifle had to be slung over the top of the pack frame, which isn't as secure as it is in the rifle holder on my pack, but it'd have to do. I started hiking at 4 PM. The first mile would be the hardest, it was cross-country down the mountain. I took my time and had only a few scary moments where something shifted under foot and I thought I might twist an ankle, but I was able to catch those falls. Once in the canyon bottom, I quickly got back to the trail and from there on it was just a mental game: one foot in front of the other, seemingly forever. It's depressing how frequently you have to rest with a load like that. The trick is finding a boulder or some other structure that you can back up to and put the weight of the pack on without putting the pack on the ground. Sometimes you find the perfect spot that your pack rests on at standing height and you can unstrap and get a real break, you just have to be careful not to float away once you get that weight off.... other times you just lean into a hill and can get the weight off enough to get a good rest without actually taking it off. As I hiked I hoped that the big camp was still there and I might be able to beg a ride the final 1.25 miles to the trailhead. Eventually the sun set, I put on my headlamp and continued the misery. I caught glimpses of lights periodically, indicating that the camp was still there. I received texts of congratulations from people I had notified and from my wife checking to see that I was ok. Trying to preserve my phone battery, I ignored them other than to let my wife know I was good. As dsuk and darkness had set in the wind had picked up as forecasted and was blowing very hard. I couldn't wear my hat anymore, and the buck's cape and one of the quarters on the back of my pack kept shifting loose. Eventually I got them secured well enough. At around 715 I stumbled into the camp as they were rearranging their trucks and said hello and asked if they had any luck. They hadn't, and initially they seemed reluctant to talk to me but eventually they welcomed me and wanted to see the buck and chat a little. One of the men was going home for the evening and said he would be happy to give me a ride to my truck. They became more and more friendly as we talked and offered me a gatorade, a beer (the best beer I have ever had in my life, ever), and even some short-ribs and tortillas. We made small talk while I ate and thanked them over and over again. Eventually it was time to go and I wished them luck on the rest of their hunt and told them where I had found the deer (not that it really matters). The man who gave me a ride, Juan, and I talked about hunting in California, Arizona and Texas, about optics, and about how we both shoot .270. I was so exhausted I could have cried at their generosity, had I not been so dehydrated. Back at my truck I loaded the meat in the cooler and changed my shirt and started the drive back to San Diego. Having started the day with relatively low expectations, I couldn't believe how well it had turned out. Another Southern California buck in the books. Had the Tenderloins last night, tender and delicious! I ended up weighing the meat after processing it and vacuum sealing... All of the meat with only 4 shank bones (probably less than 1.5 pounds of bone total) and the light plastic laundry bin that I put it in to weigh was 66 pounds.
Good luck to all on your hunts this year! I probably won't hunt D16 other than to help some friends fill their tags. Coues hunt coming in mid-November, that hunt is always a ton of fun!
As the opener approached I was watching the NOAA forecast like a hawk. I was really pleased to see some chances for precipitation in the forecast and generally cool temps across Southern California. Much of the rain didn't materialize but cool weather prevailed and some rain did fall across the region including at South Bay Rod and Gun Club while I was shooting last week. I was really happy about the weather since the last few years the D16 opener has been 90+ degrees (and D19 opens 3 weeks earlier). Ultimately, the forecast for opening day was for moderate winds in the morning progressing to 40-50 MPH winds in the evening. Some people have expressed that they like hunting in the wind but I don't love it. In my experience it causes deer, and game animals in general to bed down earlier than they otherwise would. If you find an animal before it beds down, this can be beneficial because the winds will generally keep it in that spot. However, if you don't find what you're looking for before everything beds down, you aren't likely to find it after that. I have watched this over and over again - deer will bed down for the day by 8 AM or earlier on a day that I would generally see deer on their feet until 10 or 11 AM without wind. I didn't like the forecast but I was off that day and decided I would hunt the morning and just go home if it got really windy and I hadn't seen anything yet.
With my stuff packed and ready to go I had my alarm set for 3:30AM. I have 2 English Setters and a mutt, and my parents were on vacation so we had their two dogs as well. One of the five dogs started scratching at 2:45AM and woke me up. I tried to get back to sleep for about 15 minutes and realized it wasn't going to happen and so I got up then. With coffee made I was on the road and the drive was uneventful and I was surprised I wasn't seeing others on the road once I got off the freeway. When I had scouted the week before I hiked in from a trailhead. During the week since I had scouted I had found a road that joined the trail a mile or so beyond where I had hiked in from. I really didn't know if the road was open, gated, passable or not and I didn't want to try and figure it out on opening morning so I went back to the trailhead and hiked from there. Maybe 10 minutes into my hike I could see lights ahead and then I knew that the road was open and some people had a camp there already. I pressed on as I didn't have high expectations for the day anyway. As I walked through their camp which was on the trail I said good morning and good luck and moved on. I got to my glassing spot, about 2.5 miles from the truck 10 minutes after shooting light which is a little late but I had only done the drive and hike once before. I sat down and got started. The wind was gusty in the morning but not so strong that I felt it would keep everything down. Regardless, I didn't see anything for the first hour, other than people. The camp I had passed was big and there were other trucks pulling in as I walked through, more than a dozen people all together. It seemed there was an orange hat on every other ridge and draw. The good thing was that I was above them all and most of them were still-hunting through the big canyon that I sat above. I kept glassing areas that I had previously noted as places likely to find deer either on my previous visit or via E-scouting. At about 745 I glassed the top of a rounded hill that I felt was a good spot and saw a single deer lumbering across it in a way that immediately screamed buck to me. I hadn't seen it's head yet but it's body language told me it was a buck and as it's head appeared from behind a bush I saw a nice rack, even from over a mile away. It's hard to explain but big bucks just walk differently. Its a slow lumbering walk with a head bob, younger deer and does just don't walk that way. Since I was hunting by myself, I left my spotting scope at home. I was glassing with my 15's and I could see that the deer was at least a really big fork, possibly better. This was the only deer I had seen thus far and being a mature buck, I was happy to focus on him. I heard some foot steps crunching on the path below where I was sitting and said hello to the hunter who was passing by. He asked if I had seen anything and as I watched the buck walking across the top of the mountain I lied and said I had seen "mostly just a lot of people," only a half lie really. I wished him luck as he moved on.
I was lucky to have found him when I did because the buck bedded only a few minutes later. I watched him walk behind a bush and he never reappeared. Even from over a mile away, I was very confident he had bedded. I could see some ground around the bush in all directions and felt confident I would have seen him had he moved. I watched the bush for another hour and thought about whether I should put on a stalk or not and at about 8:40 packed up my stuff and started hiking. The buck had bedded in a place I would never expect a deer to bed. Typically they will bed on north facing slopes in the shade, or, in very strong winds they will attempt to find some shade on the lee-side of a hill out of the wind. This buck bedded on the top of a hill, in howling wind, on a slope that was leaning into the sun, not away from it. He was on the shady side of the bush, but other than that it was not a place I would expect a deer to bed. Unpredictability is really one of the fun things about hunting though, wild animals do have things that they generally do, but at the end of the day they are wild and will do whatever they need/want to do, and it's often not what a person might expect. In all honesty I felt that this stalk had a relatively low chance of success: There was no way for me to get above the deer; I was not going to be able to see him at any point during the stalk; there was a barbwire fence less than 100 yards from him on my side. I was essentially just going to have to still-hunt to him once I got close and be ready to shoot.
After about two hours of hiking I was within a few hundred yards of where I expected him to be. I got my gun ready and extended my shooting sticks to standing length, and set my scope to 4 power, which is what I like if I think I might have to make a quick shot. I slowed down and began to glass every patch of shade I could find, knowing that while I had been on the move he could have moved anywhere, but was likely still on this hill somewhere. The hill he had bedded on was rounded and covered in scattered brush and there were very few landmarks for me to identify his location once I got close. Here's what it looked like through the binoculars (from my original glassing spot, not during the stalk):
Here's a zoomed in image with the red spots indicating the bush that the buck had bedded behind.
The gradual angle of the hill, the sameness of all the brush, and the fact that I was below where he was made sorting out his location very difficult. I tried to move only when there were strong gusts of wind to cover my sound. The wind was basically a steady 90 degree crosswind coming from left to right with the buck straight in front of me (if he hadn't moved). In this instance, I felt it was a fine wind and I didn't want to expose myself trying to move to a perfect downwind position. Luckily the hill was quite open and I could avoid brush and stepping on crunchy leaves most of the time. As the barbwire fence came into view I really took my time and used my glass. Not seeing anything yet I continued to move up. A few minutes later I spotted movement off to my right! It was a pair of Coyotes downwind of the deer moving straight toward his location. My first thought was, these coyotes are going to f**k me! I couldn't yell at them because I was within 150 yards of where I had bedded the deer. I tried waving them off. One of them saw me and didn't like that I was there and trotted off, but the other didn't seem to care and kept on it's course. The other soon rejoined it's hunting partner and kept moving toward the deer. I realized that there was nothing I could do. I'm not a superstitious person, but I had another thought then: Some cultures consider the Coyote to be good luck, maybe this can work to my benefit. I moved up a little bit and set up my sticks with my rifle on them. The Coyotes kept moving and all of a sudden I saw antlers come up from behind a bush and the buck made two big jumps and stopped, looking right at me, in a perfect shooting lane at less than 100 yards! He was exactly where he had originally bedded. I zoomed in to 8, fumbled with the safety for a second because for some reason it was off (I honestly can't remember if I took it off when I set the gun on my sticks or what), put it back on, took it off again and put the crosshair on his right shoulder and squeezed one off. I saw the buck run off, looking hit and he disappeared right away. I felt sure it was a good hit. The Coyotes seemed to know it too, as they kept moving in the direction he had gone and I watched them sniffing around. I pulled the trigger at 1135 and tried to will myself to wait for 15 minutes. What sounded like some final death kicks and the fact that the Coyotes seemed very interested in something in the direction he had run got me moving after only a few minutes. I didn't want to share with them. When they saw me moving they finally disappeared. I forced myself to go to where I thought he was standing when I shot him, but found no blood. I then just started walking in the direction he had gone, at the same time sure he was piled up dead but also very anxious that I wasn't finding a blood trail. I probably walked only 40 or 50 yards but was becoming very nervous at the lack of evidence when I turned to my left and saw a hoofed leg sticking up in the air. I moved to him with my gun ready but he was dead as can be, piled up in patch of prickly-pear cactus (it was everywhere on this hill). I couldn't believe it! He was a big bodied deer, with a beautiful rack and an old white face. There were still little dried up strips of velvet remaining on his antlers, and the bone was transitioning from yellow to brown. Here's how I found him:
I thanked the old buck for his life, took some pictures, tagged him and got to work. Here's a few more with yours truly:
This buck was very healthy, and in comparison to other deer I've harvested in Southern California seemed to have a big body and thick neck. I think he was pre-rut.
I got to work taking the deer apart in the way I always do: First gutting, then remove the front and hind quarters, remove the backstrap, remove both tenderloins, flip the deer, repeat, then remove neck meat last and cut off the head. I caped the deer thinking I might want to mount him. But I'll wait and see what I can do in Arizona first. The heart was completely destroyed so I left it and the other organ meat for the Coyotes as thanks for giving me the assist. This deer was in really good shape, he had a lot of fat on him!
It took me a few hours to break him down and get him loaded up. My pack always feels very heavy with an entire deer loaded up on it in addition to all of my gear, but this one was unusually heavy. Initially I couldn't get my pack on. I had to take the rifle off, get the pack on sitting down, roll over onto my hands and knees and then stand up. I always bring one trekking pole and use my shooting sticks as the other pole. The rifle had to be slung over the top of the pack frame, which isn't as secure as it is in the rifle holder on my pack, but it'd have to do. I started hiking at 4 PM. The first mile would be the hardest, it was cross-country down the mountain. I took my time and had only a few scary moments where something shifted under foot and I thought I might twist an ankle, but I was able to catch those falls. Once in the canyon bottom, I quickly got back to the trail and from there on it was just a mental game: one foot in front of the other, seemingly forever. It's depressing how frequently you have to rest with a load like that. The trick is finding a boulder or some other structure that you can back up to and put the weight of the pack on without putting the pack on the ground. Sometimes you find the perfect spot that your pack rests on at standing height and you can unstrap and get a real break, you just have to be careful not to float away once you get that weight off.... other times you just lean into a hill and can get the weight off enough to get a good rest without actually taking it off. As I hiked I hoped that the big camp was still there and I might be able to beg a ride the final 1.25 miles to the trailhead. Eventually the sun set, I put on my headlamp and continued the misery. I caught glimpses of lights periodically, indicating that the camp was still there. I received texts of congratulations from people I had notified and from my wife checking to see that I was ok. Trying to preserve my phone battery, I ignored them other than to let my wife know I was good. As dsuk and darkness had set in the wind had picked up as forecasted and was blowing very hard. I couldn't wear my hat anymore, and the buck's cape and one of the quarters on the back of my pack kept shifting loose. Eventually I got them secured well enough. At around 715 I stumbled into the camp as they were rearranging their trucks and said hello and asked if they had any luck. They hadn't, and initially they seemed reluctant to talk to me but eventually they welcomed me and wanted to see the buck and chat a little. One of the men was going home for the evening and said he would be happy to give me a ride to my truck. They became more and more friendly as we talked and offered me a gatorade, a beer (the best beer I have ever had in my life, ever), and even some short-ribs and tortillas. We made small talk while I ate and thanked them over and over again. Eventually it was time to go and I wished them luck on the rest of their hunt and told them where I had found the deer (not that it really matters). The man who gave me a ride, Juan, and I talked about hunting in California, Arizona and Texas, about optics, and about how we both shoot .270. I was so exhausted I could have cried at their generosity, had I not been so dehydrated. Back at my truck I loaded the meat in the cooler and changed my shirt and started the drive back to San Diego. Having started the day with relatively low expectations, I couldn't believe how well it had turned out. Another Southern California buck in the books. Had the Tenderloins last night, tender and delicious! I ended up weighing the meat after processing it and vacuum sealing... All of the meat with only 4 shank bones (probably less than 1.5 pounds of bone total) and the light plastic laundry bin that I put it in to weigh was 66 pounds.
Good luck to all on your hunts this year! I probably won't hunt D16 other than to help some friends fill their tags. Coues hunt coming in mid-November, that hunt is always a ton of fun!
