How do you residents do it ?

[Steiny]

How about some of you resident western boys coming off a few pointers for a non resident who hunts muleys in Wyoming every year.

As a non resident 1200 miles away scouting isn't much of an option, nor is developing a relationship with a landowner to get on private ground. That leaves paying a big fat trespass or guide fee, or hunting public ground.

We've done both and have been successful, so not complaining, but would like to pick up a few tips in regards to hunting the public stuff. Don't want any location suggestions, just "how do you do it" type stuff. Would like to kill average or better bucks.

We hunt arid foothill type stuff, open broken country w/ Junipers and limited timber in the drainages and on the hill tops. Most of the ranches have alfalfa meadows in the bottoms that fill up with deer in the evenings, but you rarely see bucks on them. We see a couple good bucks about every year, but don't often kill one. I know there are some good ones out there.

We have all the maps showing ground ownership and know how to use them.
Any ideas to help short cut the learning curve for a midwestern boy would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[DeerKing]

Get further from the roads. Sounds like you are hunting way to close to road access. Don a backpack or get up 2 hours earlier and put some miles between you and the next guy. Not that hunting close to farms/roads can't be successful but you'll have a better overall experience by finding a place where you don't have to compete with other hunters.

AntlerQuest Hunt Consulting

 

[Moosie]

there is opne trick I've implimented but not always stuck too.. It's 2 part but it works.

1. Take the area you're going to hunt, get a Topo Map and Color ALL the roads in RED. Red lines are "bad". Now take the same area and take a Blue marker and MArk all the trails. Blue isn't as bad as Red. Now look for the Spot the Furthest from Red or Blue. BINGO

2. If you're going to take the time to do the research, take the time to leave early enuf. I'm not a Huge Backpack fan of waking up in the cold, But I do often leave 2-3 hours Before daylight to get were I need to be by Sun up.

Two, easy, helpfull hints.

 

[BrianID]

It might sound too simple but the best way to find older bucks is to hunt places that others don't hunt as often. Hiking harder, Controlled hunts and private land put you in places that others don't hunt as often. I find one of the fastests ways to leave other hunters behind is to climb the steep hills. Even after getting a half mile from the road when the hills are steep you won't see many other hunters.
The narrow strips of BLM land offer access to large portions of public land are also another good place to look.
As you probably already know the best way to get a big muley is to put as much time in scouting and hunting as possible. Deerking is a very good example of this.

 

[Steiny]

Thanks guys .... keem em coming.

Looks like burning up boot leather is a big part of the equasion.
The easy to get to public places seem to be crawling with hunters and four wheelers.

 

[Oak]

Along the same lines as what the others said: don't be afraid to hike back to camp in the dark. I think the last half hour of light is the best, so stay back in the hills and glass until it's too dark to see. Even if you don't have time for a stalk that night, you'll know where to be the next night.

Oak

 

[Steiny]

Last fall we hunted a private ranch and the rancher had us walking out drainages. That was a pretty effective tactic. Bucks were holed up tight in those little cuts and ditches, and they bail out top when they got wind of you. We killed a couple nice ones this way, and saw quite a few others.

Then you watch those Eastman videos, and they seem to hunt just the opposite, strictly glassing for long periods , then setting up a real careful stalk. They talk like that is the only way to hunt.

Any thoughts regarding these different methods ?

 

[BuzzH]

Steiny,

I used to hunt about like you did for mule deer. It is effective but there is some major problems with hunting that way. I didnt like it because you were pretty much always shooting at deer that were jumped and moving. You didnt have a lot of time to look a buck over before you either passed him or shot him. I always felt like THEY had the advantage as most of the real good bucks we saw would get the hell out of dodge long before we were close enough to shoot them. Another thing that I didnt like was when you spook deer bad they usually dont return for a while and they're damn hard to re-locate.

I soon learned that the best way to kill mule deer was to glass, glass, glass. You didnt blow all the deer out of your area, you could make sure what you were looking at size wise, and the deer you shot were usually relaxed and just standing there or bedded.

Heres some we took in consecutive years hunting them by jumping them out of the brush:

Shot these in a day and a half of jump shooting...

 

[JoseCuervo]

Buzz is a bit hard on Mule Deer Populations in the West...




Steiny,
The best advice above is to get a pair of boots and get as far from roads-people-activity as possible. And even better advice is to remember that you can save a lot of wear and tear on your boots by using your binoculars. Buy good boots, get in shape, buy good glass and learn how to glass for deer.

If you can put a "barrier" between you and all the other hunters, you will usually do well. Sometimes that is miles, sometimes it is just a river that nobody else wants to wade. Sometimes it is a deep canyon that causes you to go down and back up in the first bit.

This buck probably meets the "average or better" description, and to find him I had to scramble up some granite rock faces for about 75 yards after 2 hours of climbing. Any slip at the wrong time probably would have meant a LifeFlight helicopter ride out of the hills, assuming somebody found me. Needless to say, I saw no other hunters in this area, and this guy had no idea I was in his neighborhood.

 

[BuzzH]

Steiny,

Gunner just brought up another good point...kind of inadvertently, but a really good point none-the-less.

That is, dont shoot the piss out of the deer in your areas. Those pictures I posted were in an area that had some potential for good bucks. The first year I hunted there we only took 2 bucks out of the area. One of those was a buck I killed that had a spread of 30 inches. The bigger of those 2 bucks in the top picture we killed the second year we hunted there and is about 27 inches wide. Then the following year we shot the 4 in the picture. We hunted there another 3 years and killed 2-3 bucks per year, mostly all average 4x4's.

We really over-hunted those bucks and I'd never make that same mistake again. It was the first decent mule deer spot I'd ever been in, and I admit my buddies and I got a little greedy. It wasnt good enough that I killed a buck there every year, but then I had to take a couple buddies, my Dad, and brother...and everyone shot a buck. It would have been much wiser to hunt for just the couple bigger bucks we saw and either get them or go without. I guess you live and learn, but we really put the hurt on them, and I now feel a bit bad about it. I also think it makes sense to hunt with one or maybe two other people with similar goals.

The point is, if you just want to hammer a deer, do what we did. If you want to hunt truely large bucks, you have to be willing to go without killing a deer every year. I think we could have taken an above average Montana mule deer out of there every year if we would have concentrated on that instead of everyone filling their tags.

Not that it wasnt fun, but I think as a responsible hunter, you owe it to yourself and the animals to realize what kind of an impact you're having. WE screwed that area up, no question about it.

 

[Erik in AK]

Steiny,
You may have already considered this so please forgive If I'm telling you what you alredy know (but it wasn't mentioned in this thread as yet)

Don't overlook the topography of your area. Just like fish, mulies relate in generally predictable ways to the lay of the land.

In the west south and west facing slopes tend to be warmer, drier and less vegetated and north and east facing slopes the opposite; cooler, wetter and greener. My experience in NM and ID has reinforced my observation that deer tend to orient themselves on a mountain opposite the weather or season. When its hot they're on the cool side and when its cold they're on the warmer side.

Look for timbered benches near saddles or narrow passes. Deer bed in the benches and bail over the saddles into the next drainage if needed. I like high bowls as well. In a lot of country bigger bucks will be up at the timberline until snow pushes them lower.
Mulies also tend to bed just below the crest of ridges with the wind at their backs so they can scan downhill to their front and use their nose to cover their blind side.

In fact if you do nothing else you can use the opening day crowds in to push deer to you in the area you're already familiar with. If crowd pressure tends to consistantly start from the same point, say a particular stretch of road and continue in one direction and that direction leads to hills then study your maps and locate the likely escape routes--usually brushy canyons and draws--and see if they lead to a connecting ridge system. If you can get out early and post on a ridge overlooking such an escape saddle you will see deer moving ahead of the crowds--purposefully but usually not hurried.

If the escape country can be accessed without to much difficulty you should expect lots of company. Look for places about a mile or more from the nearest easy access.

Steep is your friend

I agree with the others that the real trick is get out and away from the crowds. If that's not possible then get ahead and uphill of them well before shooting light.

 

[Steiny]

Excellent thoughts thus far. Appreciate all the feedback.
Keep it up if you have more.

How about when to go ?
My experience has been best going the last week or so of season, as hunter numbers thin out a bit. What are your thoughts ? Is the opener better ?

 

[OSOK]

I think everybody has pretty much got you covered. As far as when to hunt! I like opening morning the best. Especially in areas that see lots of pressure. If you're able to find a particular animal or prime area before the opener, you're best opportunity to kill is opening morning before anybody else buggers them. Hunting pressure will often decrease as the season goes on, however this isn't always true. If the season you're hunting is several weeks long, like it is in Wyoming. I like to hit opening weekend, and make my return trip if needed sometime during the middle of the week. Crowds will be way less during this time. Traveling as far as you I'm not sure how I'd work that out though!

 

[The Hedgehog]

My opinion

If you are looking for bigger animals, be sure you are hunting in an area that has them. Make some calls to the USFS, Game and Fish, BLM, locals, etc. Pick an area that for some reason might turn up a big one, or consistantly produces good animals. If the place is over-pressured and has never produced much, you should find somewhere else to spend your time.

Once you have a general area picked, get some high-level topos like BLM maps and find some areas that have remote, difficult access, and aren't covered with roads. Narrow the focus to a few specific areas based on your findings that are open to hunting. Order the detailed quads.

From the detailed quads, find areas where you expect game will be hanging that are off the beaten path and have all the ingredients, food, cover, water, shade if it's early in the season.. then, ...this is important.... find areas where you can glass this country from (such as open hillsides, peaks, avalanche chutes) that are adjacent to where you want to hunt. Expect that sometimes the areas to glass from might be harder to get to than where you actually want to hunt.

Buy some good optics, spend some denero, a good spotter and binos.. good tripod.

Go to your hunting area before the season, a few days, and glass from the vantage points for the first few hours and last few hours of daylight. Be there to glass at first and last light. The days glassing and not hunting will probably be well spent and you can probably plan on hunting fewer days. Depending on what you see, chance are you will have a good plan ironed out for opening morning.

 

[OSOK]

GH,

"Go to your hunting area before the season, a few days, and glass from the vantage points for the first few hours and last few hours of daylight. Be there to glass at first and last light. The days glassing and not hunting will probably be well spent and you can probably plan on hunting fewer days. Depending on what you see, chance are you will have a good plan ironed out for opening morning."


I thought about bringing up the last point on the way out the door last night. You beat me to it.

"If you are looking for bigger animals, be sure you are hunting in an area that has them. Make some calls to the USFS, Game and Fish, BLM, locals, etc. Pick an area that for some reason might turn up a big one, or consistantly produces good animals. If the place is over-pressured and has never produced much, you should find somewhere else to spend your time."

Steiny,

I'll throw you a bone. Not that the area I hunt in Wyoming needs any more pressure than it already has, Buuutt! Regarding Greenies advice above, Region C Woming isn't exactly known for it's quality...

 

[Steiny]

10-4 Osok, understood region "C" isn't a trophy mecca, looks like most Wyoming B&C deer come from southwest part of state.

Record book doesn't mean much to any of us, we'd just like to get some decent quality animals, good enough to hang on the wall. We see them every year and have killed a few. Likely, as non residents we don't have the expectations a local would. Also, we're getting to know our way around that region, after several years.

Question .... How would the Fish & Game Dept. know what was killed where, anyway ? They don't have any kind of a check in system that monitors quality anyway ... do they ?

 

[OSOK]

They don't. The information is a requirement of B&C upon entering an animal into the book. One of the reasons I never will enter an animal into any book... B&C bucks are "Extremely" hard to come by in any county/state of the Western United States.

That's cool, if you guys are stoked wackin 24" 4x4's that leaves more good ones for the rest of us, locals.

 

[The Hedgehog]

Steiny, the tips I gave were not only from a resident, but a nonresident, and not specific to just deer. I've had a dozen or so Wyoming big game licenses and where I did what I mentioned above, I did pretty good. Granted, that's a very simplified version. I have deer and antelope applications for Wyoming in now, but got rejected on elk. Planning is pretty important, and in my opinion, a pretty fun part of it.

You'll have a heck of a lot better chance at a "decent" animal in an area that exceptional bucks are taken regularly. The best advice I have is you have to be hunting where there are some big ones. If you are for some reason attached to where you are at, and the animals are good enough, understandable. If you want a better buck, sounds like you should consider somewhere else. Make phone calls, ask lots of questions, and be able to recognize the BS.

You also mentioned when to go... depends on lots of things... sometimes the opener, sometimes after changes in weather or rutting, sometimes after animals are pressured. You can use all that stuff to your advantage.

 

[Steiny]

Changing regions is not an option at this point. Applications are in.