Anyway, I am home, and it was hot.  

The plan for this weekend was to get out with Holly and a friend she met at the Women’s Hunting Camp.  Her new friend wanted to get a taste of deer hunting, so Holly must have figured the sadistic thing to do would be take her out on a mid-season, public land hunt.  One thing I can say with some certainty… if you come back for more after one of these trips, you’ve definitely got hunting in your blood.

Also along on the trip was my friend Dave Allen.  Dave spends most of his weekends working on the habitat projects up at Coon Camp Springs, and this would be his only weekend to actually use his B-zone deer tag.  In a couple of weeks we’ll have paying clients up at Coon Camp, which is sort of like hunting… only not quite.  It’s as close as we’ve been to actually getting to hunt the property since we started the habitat projects up there, though. 

The final member of the planned party was Payton, the 16 year-old son of another friend.  This would be Payton’s first time hunting big game.  He’s followed along with me a time or two, but on this trip he’d be toting a .270 and a valid tag.  It would be quite the hunting party.

Except for the party pooper… Holly.

As the weekend got closer, Holly emailed to tell me that, due to some things going on in her professional life she’d have to bail on the hunt.  With her out, her friend would also be pulling out of the trip (and who could blame her for not wanting to go out alone into the wilderness with three strange, armed men?).   That certainly put a bit of a damper on the plans, but Dave and Payton were set to go and of course I was chomping at the bit for any opportunity to get into the field.

We set up camp at the trailhead and proceeded to spend two and a half days swatting flies and sweating.  We saw a few deer, but no legal bucks.  By Sunday, as Payton and I sat on a high ridgetop overlooking a dense field of chemise and scrub oak, the temperatures were tapping the 106 degree mark.  My brain was boiling inside my skull when I finally decided to call it a day.  By the time Payton and I staggered back to the truck, my eyes were rolling and my head felt like someone was pounding from the inside out with an 8-pound sledge.  It didn’t help to find that we’d somehow gone through an entire case of water in less than two days. 

Dave had taken the “scenic route” back to camp (he’s a bit of a madman) and finally came stumbling in around 4:00.  We briefly debated heading out for the evening hunt, but without water, I didn’t want to chance it.  I’ve had a couple of real close calls with dehydration and heat exhaustion… no need to reinforce the lessons.

We relaxed in the little bit of shade that was left in camp until the shadows were starting to fill the canyon.  I decided we’d break camp and drive up to a lookout to do some glassing.  While I doubt anyone was up for a 500 yard sprint if we actually spotted a buck, it was a nice way to finish out the day.  Besides, I had the new 25-75x82mm Field Scope from Nikon that I wanted to try out. 

Of course, we were glassing the area that I would have hunted that evening, if we’d had the energy (and the water).  With about 45 minutes of shooting light left in the day, I spotted movement at about 900 yards.  Sure enough, a deer stepped out into the clearing.  Another followed, and then I made out the shape of one more in the bushes.  I put the spotting scope on them, and cranked up the magnification.  At about 40-power, I could clearly see that at least two of the deer were does.  The third wouldn’t show me a good look.  I cranked the scope up higher, but at about 60x, the tripod was too unstable to get a clear picture. 

I backed off the power and waited for the third deer to step into the open.  Just then, the largest doe looked back over her shoulder, into the dense chaparral.  Her ears pricked forward and her tail flicked.  Suddenly all three deer bolted across the clearing and into a draw.  I kept the glasses trained on the clearing, hoping to see that they were running from a randy buck, but nothing ever stepped out.  The shadows got deeper until it was nearly impossible to see anything at all. 

As we got back into the truck, I wondered aloud which of us would have been willing to make the dive into the canyon and across the meadows to attempt a shot if a buck had, indeed, appeared.  I got blank looks and then Dave, one of the most hardcore guys I know, shook his head.  “You guys could have him,” he said with a snort. 

I still wonder what he’d have said if a buck had shown up.  I enjoyed the mental picture of a breakneck race between him and Payton as they jockeyed to get into range and take the shot.  Me?  I’d have been there to shoot the whole thing on video… right from the truck.

On this hunt, I got my first real opportunity to try out some optics from Nikon.  In addition to the Field Scope, they also sent me the Monarch X, 10.5×45 binocular.  I used the binocular in NC, during my bowhunt there, but in that thick country you can’t really see more than 75 or 100 yards so it wasn’t much of a trial.  Out in Kokopelli Valley, on the other hand, there are sweeping vistas where quality optics are your best friend.

In short, I was pretty impressed with the Monarch X.  It’s probably unfair to compare them to my Leica Geovids, but they did actually compare somewhat favorably (and consider that they’re about one-fifth of the cost of the Leica).  The glass is clear and bright under all light conditions from pre-dawn to dusk.  I was able to pick out the subtle shades of a doe feeding in chemise at well over 700 yards, which I think is a good test of any hunting optic. 

The Monarch X is also fairly lightweight (don’t recall the actual weight, but you can find the specs on the Nikon website), and felt good in my hands during extended glassing.  I expect that with a tripod mount, these would be an excellent choice for most western hunting situations… especially when backed up with the Field Scope. 

I’ll be putting these glasses through their paces a lot over the coming months, both on my own hunts and while guiding.  I especially looking forward to using the Field Scope while guiding at Coon Camp Springs this season.  I expect it’s going to be a really useful addition to my gear. 

Here’s how he tells it:

I was hunting on the Tyson/O’Ferrall ranch part of Golden Ram Sportsman’s Club in Bzone near Covelo.  The deer were not very active on opening day of rifle season.  But with all the rain we got that night the deer were moving on Sun morning.  Was walking through some thick stuff and as I came over a hill top I saw the butt of a deer running away from me.  So I circled around back down to the left and came up towards an open area that I could see something that did not look like a bush.  Looked through the binos saw that he had a nice fork on the right.  Took the 30-06 off my shoulder and took a real nice shot at 75 yards.  Got him right in the pump station.  First Buck and big game animal ever I was SO EXCITED!  Now I cant wait for the phone call from the butcher to pick up my steaks, sausage, and jerky!

Congrats, David!  That’s a great first buck, and here’s to many more over the years!

I intend to be out there next weekend for what will be my only weekend in the B-zone rifle season this year.  So much for all those plans I had to do a lot of deer hunting this year!  Where did the season go?

Up in Michigan,  Arthur’s (Simply Outdoors) nephew, Tyler, scored on a nice little doe to kick off his whitetail deer season.  According to Arthur’s account , while Tyler helped finish off a deer last year, this is his first solo kill. 

I still remember how that felt when I was a kid, so congratulations to Tyler!  Here’s to many more successful hunts!

Closer to home, my friend and fellow Skinny Moose blogger, John Martin has been keeping a chronicle of his 2010-2011 hunting season on his Western Wanderer blog.  So far, the mythical blacktail buck has eluded him, but he and his daughter, Erin, have been out there giving it their best.  On a recent hunt in Sonoma County, John and Erin had a couple of close encounters with feral hogs.  The first shot went wild, but a few moments later, Erin connected for the one-shot kill, and her wild hog was on the ground. 

Nice work, Erin!  Now your dad just needs to take a lesson from you and score his own critters!  Good luck over the remainder of the deer season.

So in lieu of my own hunting, I thought I’d do an update on one of my friend’s hunts.

Some of you may remember my last Mythical Blacktail Buck tale and my friend Saul’s report of success.  I finally got around to getting a photo of his animal and, as I expected, it turned out to be a trophy jackalope.  It’s a nice specimen, Saul, and you deserve to be proud of it… especially since you were hunting in Sonoma County.  With all that wine around, most folks down there can’t hit the broadside of the wine cellar.

(OK, seriously, an A-zone buck is always a good thing.  Judging by the last one I killed and ate at the Hedgepeth Ranch, this one should be great on the table.)

Well, according to an email I received yesterday, my friend Sol may have the proof in his cooler as we speak.  I received the email as I came back down off the mountain from my own, unsuccessful archery hunt, so I only gave it a cursory read.  I don’t like doing email on my Blackberry, so I figured I’d give it more attention when I got home.  I deleted the local copy and headed for the house.

Unfortunately, when I fired up my laptop at home, it ran for about three minutes, made a fizzling sound, and died.  No Blue Screen Of Death… nope… this time if just, plain died.   With the laptop went all of the email I’d received over the weekend.  But what I recalled from Sol’s email indicates that he did, indeed, kill something that may or may not have been a blacktail buck.  He was hunting up at the Hedgepeth Ranch, one of my favorite spots, and decided to hit a new area.  Through the fog he spotted his target, and with a well-placed shot his quest was ended. 

Of course, from the description he sent (there were no photos), it’s possible that he actually took a common jackalope instead.  Sol’s relatively new to this hunting thing, and a big jackalope does look a lot like a blacktail deer.  In fact, I’ve nearly made the mistake myself.  I actually saw two forked-horn jackalopes up in Kokopelli Valley during my hunt on Saturday, but they were too far out for me to get an arrow in them.  I started to stalk them up the mountain when I realized what they were and returned my attention to my real quarry, blacktail bucks. 

Back in syphilization today, I logged on to the work computer to catch up on the news.  Imagine my shock at the image of a blacktail buck, and the accompanying story about the apparent decline of the blacktail deer population in CA.  I’d already heard about some of this in a release from the DFG a few weeks ago, but this article offered more detail. 

Since they use hunters’ harvest reports to create a picture of the population density, the researchers are still trying to determine if the issue really is a population drop, or if it’s related to reduced hunter success rates. 

A team of scientists led by the California Department of Fish and Game is fanning out across the rugged mountains of Mendocino, Glenn and Lake counties in an attempt to figure out just what is going on.

“The deer population harvest has been steadily declining,” said David Casady, an associate wildlife biologist for the Department of Fish and Game. “One of the things we’re studying is whether the population has decreased or just the harvest. Most likely it’s the population that has decreased and the harvest is just tracking that.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/23/MNG31EV7G9.DTL#ixzz0xRkLg14V

The researchers will also have to sort through several theories as to why we’re seeing this decline.  A popular argument among some hunters is that the mountain lion population is growing unchecked due to the ban on lion hunting.  This may be so, but some folks also need to consider that depredation hunting and public safety kills average over 100 lions per year.  During the only sport hunting season in CA, hunters took 118 lions.   That’s not much of a decrease in the annual take. 

Other theories include degradation of habitat by non-native invasive plant species… due in large part to modern, wildfire suppression policies. I think there’s a real good argument there, although that’s another convoluted discussion. 

And there is one other plausible thought out there.  Maybe the reduction in population is a natural result of a balanced system, as wild predators increase to take more deer then there are less deer for human hunters. 

Personally, I expect that the answer lies in some combination of all of these theories.  With the documented upsurge in black bears and coyotes, and the likely growth of the lion population, there are more predators feeding on fawns.  At the same time, the spread of invasive plants is choking out native forage.  Finally, there are less hunters taking to the field, and those who are hunting are spending less time at it due to the economic times. 

Regardless the outcome of what is sure to be  a lengthy examination, there’s no question that it’s a complex situation.  The answer and resolution promise to be equally complicated.

I thought this would be a little more fun than the usual 10 minutes of footage in which I don’t get anything.  Hope you enjoy.

Matt took this fat, blacktail forkie down south of me, in the Central Coast region during the second week of the A-zone archery season.  In his email, he made sure to mention to all the cold-weather hunters that it was 104 degrees out there when he  arrowed this buck. 

Matt’s got a pretty solid streak running, with an annual buck, and any number of wild hogs and turkeys.  With a little gang of young’uns coming onto big game hunting age, he’ll have his hands (and his freezer) full soon. 

Anyway, I guess this is further proof that there are bucks in the A zone.  I suppose now I’m gonna have to head out this weekend and see if I can find one of my own.  Not looking forward to 100 degree heat, though.

Or at least I’m pretty sure I did.  But it didn’t really happen at all like I’d planned when I set out on Friday evening.

To begin with, it wasn’t a magnificent, blacktail buck, emerging unsuspecting on a foggy, cool morning from a cluster of oaks.  It wasn’t even a barely-legal forked horn that I lucked into as I stumbled clumsily down the rice-krispy hillsides.  And I didn’t shoot it with the bow. 

No, this was a spotted fawn, and it met its heartbreaking demise at the front right tire of my Dodge Ram truck. 

In almost 30 years of driving, I have never hit a deer.  Even driving many nights in rural, southeastern NC where the deer are so overpopulated, I’ve always managed to avoid hitting the animals.  But on Friday night, as I was covering the last few miles up to the Golden Ram’s Hedgepeth Ranch, the streak ended abruptly… not in shrieking brakes and rending metal, but with a sudden flash and a sickening thump. 

The roads climbing up above Lake Sonoma are narrow and winding, barely two lanes, and in many places the brush and grass grow right to the pavement’s edge.  It’s a tough crawl with a big truck, especially with the trailered Samurai in tow.  I’m fairly attentive when I drive those roads at night, because hogs and deer both cross regularly.  Just last season, I stopped and despatched a big boar hog that someone else had hit and left in the middle of the road… his spine broken, he was still full of fight. 

Unfortunately, Friday’s little victim was barely as tall as the grass from which she emerged suddenly( I say “she”, although I don’t know why…maybe because that little face with the big eyes and lashes looks so feminine to me).  I spotted her  just as she appeared under the right, front corner of the truck.  Stopping in time was not an option, and I have hauled trailers long enough to know not to panic and swerve, especially on these twisty roads.   I felt the steering wheel thump slightly as the tire passed over the little body, and another thump as it rolled under the chassis. 

As soon as it was clear, I slowed to a stop, set the flashers, and jumped out with the flashlight.  Josh was following right behind me, and he stopped as well… puzzled at why I jumped out.  He’d seen something come out behind me, but thought it was a piece of plastic or something.  Whatever it was, he told me, it had flopped back over the edge of the road and into the bushes on the steep hillside.  We covered the ground below with our flashlights, until I found a patch of hair and blood where the little deer had scraped on the asphalt.  A couple of drops of blood (very little, actually) showed the trail off of the road and this is where I focused. 

About 20 or 30 yards downhill, I caught the gleam of two eyes, but after a moment I realized that this was a healthy, adult deer.  A doe.  Momma.

I could anthropomorphize here a bit, and suggest that she was glaring at us in hostile recrimination.  But really, I’m sure she was wondering what just happened and trying to decide if she or her little one were in danger.  I didn’t hear the youngster bleating or thrashing, thankfully, but I’m sure momma deer knew something was wrong. 

Josh and I continued to look, and finally spotted the little deer curled up in a thicket of branches about 10 yards off the road.  I kept my distance and looked for obvious signs of injury.  I could see blood, but it wasn’t until the fawn stood and tried to hobble away that I could see the real damage to the right shoulder and the leg, dangling below.  It didn’t look very good at all.  She (or he) disappeared again, and I fully expected to hear her tumbling down the steep grade, into the draw below. 

I felt like I had a decision to make.  My first instinct was to go get the pistol out of the truck and put the poor thing out of its misery with a quick shot.  And maybe that would have been the right thing to do.  But as Josh and I bounced the ideas around, we both knew that deer can survive quite well on only three legs if they can avoid predators long enough.  She wasn’t raising a lot of fuss to attract coyotes or lions (although she was probably in shock at the time), and momma was right there.  If the internal injuries weren’t too bad, she could possibly be mobile enough to get through the first year.  They’re incredibly resilient animals.

Maybe that was wishful thinking, trying to ease the guilt I felt, but that’s the decision I made.  We’d leave her be, let nature do what it would.  I was nearly certain that the little thing would be dead by morning either way, but I felt like I could at least give her a chance.  I felt awful as I climbed back into the cab and continued on my way.

And that was about as close as I got to a deer or a hog all weekend.  I saw one doe on Saturday morning, and Josh and I bumped one out of a bed that afternoon, but neither of us saw a buck.  I spotted a bunch of pigs, but nothing was in a place where I could stalk it.  Pressure on the ranch was pretty high, with the cowboys rounding up cattle through my main hunting areas, and a lot of hunters all over the place.  It was also hot as blazes.  By the time I wrapped up Sunday’s morning hunt, I was ready to go home. 

Despite the downer experience on Friday evening, it was a nice weekend.  It was awesome to get out and hunt with a new friend, Josh, and of course any day out in the Sonoma County hills is better than sitting around in town. 

I’m hoping to get out again before the rifle season opener, but I guess that’s all dependent on work and life.

ADDENDUM: It occurred to me that some readers might wonder why we didn’t try to capture the fawn and take it to a wildlife rehab center.  First of all, it was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.  But more importantly, the stress of a capture attempt would certainly have caused further injury to the little deer and likely would have been fatal even if the initial injuries weren’t.  The hillside there is extremely steep and covered in loose dirt and rocks, which would have made the effort dangerous to Josh and myself as well.  Capture was simply not an option.  However, in retrospect, I think it might have been kinder to have shot her.

I’ve been waiting eagerly all spring and summer for this, especially since I haven’t even had a chance to chase hogs over the past few months.  The jones has been particularly bad over the last two or three weeks.  I’ve had to turn down a couple of guiding opportunities over at Native Hunt due to work obligations, and I know those guys had some great hunts going on. 

This weekend, as I mentioned before, I’ll be joined in the field by Josh, a regular commenter here and an excellent blogger in his own right.  You can see his blogs at Ethics and the Environment and Lands On The Margin, and read what he’s thinking about too.  I think he’s just about as ready to get out and hunt as I am!

The video and still cameras will be along, and maybe I’ll even actually get some footage this trip.  Stay tuned!

But this isn’t just anybody hunting deer in CA… this is me and Holly, the NorCal Cazadora.  And as typical as the tale of our hunt may have seemed, hunting with Holly is never a typical event.  She’s driven to learn, and willing to put in the effort to make it happen.  And brother, we put in the effort this weekend!

The place we hunted is set in a big, box canyon (I call it Kokopelli Valley) that runs about a mile or so straight back from the trailhead to the back of the “box”.  The valley itself is relatively mild terrain, with some little ups and downs, the worst thing to deal with is the star thistle (that stuff can poke right through the padded knees of my MilSurp BDUs!).  However, my favorite way to hunt this place is to climb the western ridge which is about an 800 foot elevation gain over about an eighth of a mile… fairly steep and covered in new-growth scrub oak and jumbled, dead manzanita.   From up there I can sit and glass almost the entire valley, as well as the surrounding ridges and hillsides.  It’s a real catbird seat, although it’s getting a little tougher to hunt it nowadays.

Several years ago, a raging fire burned through the entire place, burning down acres of big pines and some really monstrous manzanita, along with the apples, figs, and grapes that marked an old homestead.  All of this past weekend, I couldn’t help remarking on how much things had changed as the habitat recovered.  Fire is good, in most of this western environment, and I am always impressed by the way the land recovers.  I’ve been able to observe these changes in Kokopelli Valley from the first day after the fire until now… and it’s pretty damned awesome.

It was a relaxed trip, for a change, once I decided to skip the midnight road trip and head out early on Friday.  After meeting for an early breakfast, we drove through the hills toward our spot.  As we passed through the low ground on the way in, we passed herd after herd of blacktail deer… and nary a buck in the bunch.  I’d been pretty excited earlier in the week, because the rut was going full bore near my home in the SF Bay Area, but what we were seeing here was a little disappointing.  Not only were the bucks not with the does… they weren’t even showing up on the fringes.  It’s pretty amazing how much difference a hundred miles or so can make in the deer behavior. 

So anyway, we’d rolled in along with Kat and set up camp down in the developed campground area (a pit toilet is better than taking care of business in the poison oak… especially with two women in camp).  Kat would serve “camp wench” duties, since she’s still recovering from some surgery, and Holly and I would ride out each morning to hunt.  Cyrus (the wonderlab) would hang out and provide entertainment. 

Besides the obvious goal of a deer hunt, there was another point to this particular trip.  Holly is generally new to hunting, particularly big game, and wants to learn more about it.  I’m not sure what qualifies me to take the role of mentor/instructor, but I figured the least I could do was to get her out there in the field and show her some prime habitat.  I’ve been pretty fortunate in this area over the years, and it’s consistently held deer.  Even so,it usually takes a few trips to find a legal buck. For many California hunters, it may take many seasons.  Hitting the field for one weekend out of an entire season certainly isn’t any way to up your odds of success, but it’s better odds than sitting in front of the television! 

I’d considered doing a recap of each day in the field, but there’s not a lot of point to it.  The bottom line, of course, is that we did not kill a deer.  In fact, despite seeing somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 deer over the course of the weekend, we didn’t even see a legal buck.  There was little indication of the impending rut, and the mature bucks were still hiding in the inaccessible cliffs in the Snow Mountain Wilderness, just over the western ridge.  I showed Holly where they probably were, but I don’t think she was any more excited than I was at the prospect of trying to get one out of that hellhole… if we could even find one in the first place. 

The thing is, during the early part of the season it’s not too unusual to find a buck or two out in the “valley”, but soon after the first guns come out, they disappear over the ridge during the daylight hours.  It takes some pretty serious hunting to find a buck at this time.  Then, as the rut approaches near the end of the season, they’ll start coming back out to stake out territory and check out the does.  We’d apparently hit Kokopelli Valley during that lull in between peak times.  The huge, bright, half-moon all night didn’t help either… althought it made for some might pretty scenery in the pre-dawn hours.

Despite my best efforts (and my anatomical anomaly), I think Holly probably picked up a few ideas about deer hunting techniques and tactics.  We certainly saw plenty of sign, old and new, and she had lots of opportunity to get a feel for the way deer move and feed… at least in Kokopelli Valley.  I know I had a great time, although being the only human male in camp with two women, I was constantly on the defensive.  They can be merciless… and the stuff they talk about!  I’ll never look at a tent bag the same way again, I can tel you that! 

Looks like my blacktail season is over for this year, but I’m looking forward to next season!  Maybe we can get Hank to join us next time… if for nothing else than to take a little of the heat off of me!

Oh… and there may be video when I get a chance to process it.