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Posted by TCThe averages at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area this[more ...]
Wed Nov 19 2008, 12:54PM
Posted by Bill CollectorI was both stoked and concerned when I found out I[more ...]
Mon Aug 25 2008, 07:18AM
Posted by boarslayergoing to be hunting the ventura santabarbra county[more ...]
Mon Aug 04 2008, 05:59AM
Posted by Bill CollectorYou need to make em a sponsor.LOL
Mon Jun 23 2008, 02:36PM
Posted by TCyea i looked at the santa rosa thing and its very [more ...]
Sun Jun 22 2008, 02:45PM
Posted by Bill CollectorLOL She never saw you coming. Good luck on gettin[more ...]
Thu Jun 19 2008, 07:38AM
Posted by TCyou the man, i am gona try and get a tag for A and[more ...]
Wed Jun 18 2008, 07:25PM
Posted by Bill CollectorMy wife & I managed to draw Mule Deer tags and[more ...]
Sat Jun 14 2008, 11:22AM
Posted by Band CollectorRay, I posted a thread a while ago in the photo s[more ...]
Thu Apr 03 2008, 09:34AM
Posted by TCI cant wait till waterfoul season
Fri Mar 14 2008, 05:15PM
Jorge Azpeitia Buck
My day started off at 3:30am. I knew I had the entire day to hunt so I was going to make the best of it.
I reached my spot at 4:00 am and began the hike up, hoping to be in position to begin glassing by sunrise. It was unusually warm out so took my sweatshirt off.
I reached my glassing spot by 5:30am and I could faintly make out a saddle above me that I have always wanted to check out but never did. Should I climb up to it? I don't know this particular saddle so I decided to wait until daylight before I would go up there. The first hint of daylight sent me up the slope to the crest of the saddle.
It's 6:30am now and I can glass for miles. Two hours into it and no sign of deer moving. Only a couple of coyotes to keep me company. I somehow think they know I won't shoot them when I'm deer hunting in fear of spooking the deer.
8:00 am and no movement, it's time to move again. I begin glassing a ridge behind me about a mile away. A well used deer trail catches my attention and I begin following it down the side of a steep ridge. Hum, there's a small deer bedded on the side of this cliff, wonder what its doing all alone up there? Wait a minute, there's a huge buck hot on the tail of a doe! Game on! How am I going to stalk this buck? I can now see there are at least five doe with him and a small yearling. I could hike back down and approach from below, but they'll surely see me before I even reach the base of the ridge they're on.
I can't cross cut the ridge due to the sheer cliff sections that will certainly result in my untimely death. No choice, I have to climb to the summit above me and hike over to the ridge they're on, and then drop in from above.
8:30am and its beginning to get hot. I'm about to do two things that I never do when I'm hunting alone. I never leave the area that I made plans to hunt because I make maps and satellite photos for my wife in the event I do not return within a reasonable time and I was going to bank on the fact that I could call someone to pick me up on the side of the road about three miles where I started. If I'm going to have a shot at that buck, I have to go for it. I strap my rifle in the carrier in my back pack and I take my long sleeve shirt off. Here I go. The slope is so steep I'm climbing on my hands and knees. A rock here a step there, I finally see the top.
9:30 am I'm at the summit and spent. I drink one of the two water bottles I brought with me and I rest. My legs are burning. Sweat is pouring into my eyes. No breeze. No relief.
The summit ridge consists of two large hills I have to hike over before I can begin my descent to the buck. I've made it this far, too late to turn back in defeat. Let's go. Up and over one hill I glass to make sure the deer haven't moved. Up and over the next hill and I glass to have my heart sink, I can't see the deer. Where did they go? I'll stick to the plan and continue to the ridge they're on. Damn it's hot! At 3600 feet you think it would be a little cooler.
I'm at the top of the ridge, its 10:00 am its all down hill from here. Thank God, no more climbing. I release my rifle from the back pack. I load a round into the chamber; at this distance I still have a shot, a long shot, but a shot never the less. It about two hundred yards to the area where I spotted the deer. I have a large green bush for reference. I know what I have to do. Hike down as quietly as I can. Every step has to be deliberate and calculated. I can feel the warm updraft in my face so there is no way they can smell me coming. I'm fully camouflaged so as long as I don't move they can't see me. I taken two of their survival senses away, they can only hear me, I have to be quiet. I'm crawling my way through some of the nastiest brush I've ever seen. The thorns are three inches long and piercing my legs and sides as I move. The rocks are loose and sliding under my feet.
This isn't going to be easy. I glass to see them on top of the ridge feeding. I can't continue, they'll see me. My bush of reference is about one hundred yards away. The is a small ridge I can side cut just before the area where I saw the buck rutting. I'll go there and as long as they stay on their side, I can move freely with out being noticed. Could it get any hotter, I'm asking? I reach a ledge with bushes and a fold in the terrain that shield me from view of the deer feeding below me. I only see doe, four of them.
I have a small forkie below me, its 10:45 am. He doesn't know I'm here and it's a 30 yard shot to his chest. Where's that buck? I begin to think I should take the forkie and end my day with a good chance I can be home well before dinner. Oh man! A doe has made me and she is staring right at me. She can't tell what I am only that something isn't right. I set the cross hairs on the forkie's chest and I notice movement next to the doe.
It's him! He's standing there with four doe watching me. A 4x3! As I place the crosshairs on the large buck's chest, he turns and gives a clean spine shot. Safety off, breathe, breathe, squeeze. Whack! I can hear the bullet hit him and he tumbles down the side of the ridge. I got him! I wait a few minutes then I go find him. He settled on a ledge and his head is still up swinging around looking for me. I fire another shot at his neck and miss as it swings out of the bullets path. Round three, I place it just behind his rib cage to have it travel into the boiler room. He's down. He's down, it's over. I can't stop shaking. There I was on the side of a steep ridge sweating, bleeding, and shaking. I can't image what the grin on my face looked like as I had this 4x3 at my feet. I'm sure I had that look of a young school boy just after his first kiss from a cute girl. You know the look, shocked but pleased.
Its 11:00am and I have six hours before dark to get this buck off the ridge. He's big about 160 pounds. He is an old buck. The scars on his neck and shoulder told of his battles for dominance over the doe he was with. His nose was white and worn with age. An eye guard broken off. His antlers are chocolate brown. Four on the right, three on the left.
The first shot that hit him on the back traveled upward just under the skin. The second shot that hit him went in just behind the ribcage, no exit wounds. I sat there with him for an hour before I started to wonder how I was going to get this large buck off the steep slope I was on. I tried to drag him to a flatter part of the ridge. He's too heavy and my legs are spent barely able to hold my own weight. Hum, this is going to take a while. I field dress him to shed some weight. He's still too heavy, I can't move him. I see I have to quarter him. I was able to get about sixty pounds of meat strapped to my pack and his antlers rested well on my packs shoulder straps. Down the ridge I go. Every step felt like my last. My legs were burning and cramping. I could feel my feet burning and blisters forming under my toes and heels. Half way down I fall to my knees in exhaustion. I reach the bottom of a canyon next to a road at 2:00 pm. I call my father in law to come pick me up and I sit there reflecting on what I had just experienced.
As I type this and place it in electronic memory. I think back to the heat, the pain, the thorns, the exhaustion, and the following day feeling like I survived a car wreck. Would I do that again? Would I look forward to it next deer season? With the antlers in my hand and the scars on my arms I look up to the sky and think, hell yes. Hell yes I'll do that again! I'm a hunter. That's what I do.
Thu Nov 20 2008, 02:05PM by TC
Posted in Big Game | |
KERN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
At the KERN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, On Wednesday, Nov. 19, there were 68 hunters who shot 109 ducks and six coots for a 1.69 average. The duck kill included 40 gadwall, 21 shovelers, 13 mallards, 13 cinnamons, nine greewings, five wigeon, five pintail, one ringneck, one bufflehead, and one unidentified duck. Kern is open to waterfowl hunting through the state reservation system or a daily drawing for remaining sites after all reservation holders are admitted to the area. Refills are also permitted throughout the shoot day. Shoot days are Wednesday and Saturday. For more information, call 661-725-2767 or the comprehensive hunter's hotline at 661-725-6504, normally updated after each hunt day.Thu Nov 20 2008, 01:23PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
SAN JACINTO WILDLIFE AREA
At the SAN JACINTO WILDLIFE AREA, there were Wednesday, Nov. 19, there were 89 hunters who shot 313 ducks and seven coots for a 3.60 average. The duck bag was made up of 165 greenwings, 54 wigeon, 32 shovelers, 16 cinnamons, 13 pintail, seven ruddies, seven gadwall, five mallards, four redheads, four bufflehead, three ringnecks, two scaup, and one wood ducks. San Jacinto is open to waterfowl and pheasant hunting through the state reservation system or a daily drawing for remaining sites after all reservation holders are admitted to the area. Refills are also permitted until 2 p.m. Shoot days are Wednesday and Saturday for waterfowl, and Mondays for pheasants during the pheasant season. For more information, contact the wildlife area at 951-928-0580.Thu Nov 20 2008, 01:22PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
Extra effort leads to trophy class D-14 buck
.JPG)
Even veteran Southern California deer hunters know that any buck can be a trophy in local hunting zones. And when deer hunters from outside this region see a California mule deer buck from here that is an actual trophy class deer, they often turn up their noses because they don't realize our deer are smaller than Rocky Mountain mule deer bucks from Utah or Colorado.
David Sylvester of Crestline knows what a local trophy buck looks like, and after nine years of hunting the D-14 hunting zone in the San Bernardino Mountains he finally managed to shoot a real trophy on the last weekend of this year's season. Sylvester's buck was a four-by-three buck with good antler mass and a 23-inch wide spread. Friends, for the California mule deer subspecies, this is a whopper -- even with crab claw forks.
Because deer densities are so low on public land hunting areas throughout Southern California, it takes a major effort to find an older age class buck that has lived long enough to grow a set of trophy antlers. After years of hard hunting and a number of smaller bucks, Sylvester learned the big, old boys live in "the deepest, ugliest canyons you can find."
"Those are the places that produce," said Sylvester.
Sylvester has become one of a handful of D-14 hunters who shoot deer every year in the local mountains, and he's to the point where letting smaller bucks go is as much a way to prolong his hunting season as it is to try to find a trophy buck..JPG)
This year, he was working hard trying to help his younger brother Jeremy get his first buck, and that's when he first saw the big trophy buck he would later shoot.
"We were hunting about a week before I shot the buck when we first saw this deer. When I spotted him, I told my brother, ‘That thing's huge for here. Jeremy, you've got to shoot this deer,' " said Sylvester.
The weather was nasty, fog and clouds were flirting with the mountain peaks and canyons where they were hunting, and the buck was 340 yards across a canyon. It was a long shot. The improvised field rest wasn't all that sturdy, and Jeremy missed the shot. Then the fog rolled in. It wouldn't clear so they climbed around the mountain and made sure Jeremy missed the buck. Both hunters were heartbroken.
Sylvester really wanted his brother to bag his first deer and this one would have been a whopper.
"I thought it was the biggest forkie I'd ever seen," said Sylvester.
The next and last weekend of the season, Sylvester went out that Saturday morning into the same area where they'd seen the big buck. The weather had done a 180-degree turn. It was hot and dry. Even through it was still relatively early in the morning, Sylvester was about to head back to his Jeep when out of the corner of his eye he spotted the face and ears of a deer of a bedded in the shade.
Sylvester remembers thinking, "Oh my God, it's that buck." While scrambling to find a rest to shoot and measuring the range, but before he was set up a doe spooked, and the buck got up and started walking off with her. But a quick shot with his Savage .270 dropped the deer.
"It took me nine years of hunting this zone to land a buck like this," said
Sylvester.
It also took him over four hours with a backpack full of boned out meat and antlers to get out of the canyon where he'd shot the deer.
"That's why he was there," said Sylvester.
Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:25PM by TC
Posted in Big Game | |
Limits of Birds at San Jacinto Wed
The averages at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area this morning is about 3 birds with under a dozzen limits so far. Here we have pro staf Paul and Pat with 2 dogs, 2 guns, 2 hunters, and 2 limits.
Email in your reports and photos to Hunt@976-HUNT.com right from your cell phone or home computer. 
Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:23PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
Hot, windy weather drives duck hunting into the tank
Duck and goose hunting results tanked across Southern California's public waterfowl hunting areas over the weekend thanks to unseasonably hot weather and Santa Ana winds.San Jacinto Wildlife Area held up better than the Wister Unit of the Imperial Wildlife Area, but neither were good this week. An influx of wigeon at San Jacinto helped boost the duck average, but it was still only about a bird per hunter over the two shoot days, while Wister and the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge both had averages of less than a bird per hunter with only a handful of geese taken.
Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:23PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
SAN DIEGO CITY LAKES
At the SAN DIEGO CITY LAKES, there were a total of 28 hunters at BARRETT LAKE on Wednesday, Nov. 12, and Saturday, Nov. 15, this past week. They shot a total of 44 ducks for a 1.57 average. The duck bag was made up of 11 ruddies, nine ringnecks, seven shovelers, five bufflehead, four mallards, three greenwings, two gadwall, one wigeon, one cinnamon, and one wood duck. At SUTHERLAND RESERVOIR on last Thursday, Nov. 6, and Sunday, Nov. 9, there were no hunters. Reservations are still available for Barrett for all Wednesday shoot days from November through January and for all shoot days at Sutherland. For more information and to request a hunting information packet, hunters should call the lake's office at 619-668-2050 or e-mail -email-.Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:22PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
KERN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
At the KERN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, there were 87 hunters on Wednesday, Nov. 12, who shot 257 ducks for a 2.95 average. The duck kill was made up of 51 cinnamons, 49 shovelers, 40 gadwall, 36 mallards, 24 greenwings, 20 ringnecks, 10 bufflehead, nine pintail, eight redheads, six wigeon, three ruddies, and one wood duck. On Saturday, Nov. 15, there were 83 hunters who shot 123 ducks for a 1.48 average. The duck kill included 26 gadwall, 23 greenwings, 23 shovelers, 21 cinnamons, 14 mallards, three redheads, three wigeon, three bufflehead, two pintail, two ringnecks, two ruddies, and one wood duck. Kern is open to waterfowl hunting through the state reservation system or a daily drawing for remaining sites after all reservation holders are admitted to the area. Refills are also permitted throughout the shoot day. Shoot days are Wednesday and Saturday. For more information, call 661-725-2767 or the comprehensive hunter's hotline at 661-725-6504, normally updated after each hunt day.Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:22PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
FINNEY-RAMER UNIT of the IMPERIAL WILDLIFE AREA
At the FINNEY-RAMER UNIT of the IMPERIAL WILDLIFE AREA on the Alamo River south of the Salton Sea, there were a total of 11 hunters from Monday, Nov. 10 through Sunday, Nov. 16 who shot a total of 25 for a 2.27 average. The duck bag was made up of six shovelers, six ruddies, five greenwings, three wigeon, three gadwall, one pintail, and one cinnamon. Finney-Ramer is open to hunters seven days a week under a self-registration and self-reporting system. For more information, contact the Wister Unit at 760-359-0577Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:22PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
SONNY BONO-SALTON SEA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
At the SONNY BONO-SALTON SEA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, there were 10 hunters Wednesday, Nov. 12, who shot seven ducks for a .70 average. The duck bag was made up of six cinnamons and one shoveler. On Saturday, Nov. 15, there were 41 hunters who shot 17 ducks for a .73 average. The duck kill was made up of four greewnings, three ruddies, two mallards, two gadwall, two cinnamons, two goldeneye, one pintail, and one ringneck. On Sunday, Nov. 16, there were nine hunters who shot two Ross' geese and one snow goose for a .33 average. The refuge is managed as part of the Wister Unit. For more information, contact the Wister Unit at 760-359-0577.Wed Nov 19 2008, 04:21PM by TC
Posted in Waterfoul | |
