We waited until the first cracks of dawn came over the mountains that first morning to head out. We wanted to get an idea of what was around us and hopefully see some game on the way to our first trail head. The weather was much colder than we had anticipated, the temperature in the truck read 8 degrees that morning. We had plenty of layers, and were aware that the weather in Arizona can fluctuate from one extreme to the next fairly quickly.  Our first trail head was about 30 minutes from the house so we got there just as the sun was coming over the mountains. There were two hikers at the trail head getting ready to take one of the three marked trails that originated from that trail head. They appeared to be heading west towards the towering peaks in front of us. We headed in a north west direction, there were miles and miles of public land ahead of us and we were ready to explore. We had walked for a little over a mile, only seeing jack rabbits flushing from random cactus’ throughout the landscape.

I brought a bleat call along, knowing the deer would be rutting and not knowing for sure if it would be useful for deer out west. I pulled it out when we were up on a high ridge and hit a few bleats in each direction. We hung out for a few minutes waiting to see any movement on the landscape. We had seemed to walk into an animal-less area. We continued on when out of the corner of my eye I caught movement about 200 yards to our left and downhill. There was a small coues deer doe running down the hill to a dry creek bed. She darted in out of the brush, only visible for seconds at a time. She couldn’t have been more than 40 or 50 pounds, much smaller than the whitetails we are used to. She crossed the creek bed and began running up a snowy hillside. I figured, it would be much easier to watch her with the snow on the ground, hoping maybe she’d kick a buck out of it’s bed while on the move. She somehow disappeared under the brush and we lost track of her. We continued on the hike pushing further up the ridge lines to get to higher ground. We saw two more coues deer doe that morning. They were fast, elusive, and difficult to see. We didn’t feel confident that we were in an area with a lot of game. After hiking a 4 mile round trip back to the truck we decided to try another trail head.

We left the first trail head and headed north. I had another way point saved on my maps for a trail head a few miles away that seemed to get us around 5 miles from the main highway and would put us on some high ridge tops so we could glass. As we were driving back the forest service road we saw about 7 or 8 camps set up, anything from campers to tents. This made us a little nervous that there’d be more pressure, but at least we hopefully were coming into an area with more game. At the trail head parking lot, there were two other trucks, one with snow still on it, someone was obviously out for a few days in the back country. We decided to hike the trail up to a ridge where we could glass down a long drainage out to a wide flat spot. We had what looked to be miles of area we could glass. We set up a few hours before dark and started scanning the landscape. It didn’t take long to spot two does at around 600 yards away, feeding on a hillside. We weren’t seeing any rut action or any mule deer. We stayed until dark and then decided we should try somewhere else the next day.