Tag: National Forest

Arizona OTC Archery: Part 2

On By jlrineer1In Back Country, Hunting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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.

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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.

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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.

 

Arizona OTC Archery: Part 1

On By jlrineer1In Back Country, Hunting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

After seeing numerous hunting shows and online hunting videos highlighting how undervalued the Arizona OTC archery mule deer/coues deer hunt is, I decided to look into it. Arizona offers a license that is good for 365 days. They also require you to buy a hunting license in order to apply for any big game points. So I already had a nonresident hunting license that was valid from Feb 2018 until Feb 2019 due to the Arizona elk draw. Their OTC deer tags are also valid for the entire year. So a 2019 deer tag can be used in January during the archery rut hunt, the early archery hunt in late August/September, or the late archery hunt in December. I first started by seeing how expensive it would be to get there, get transportation, and stay there. So I looked up the flights from Philadelphia. They were around $350 to $400, which I felt was reasonable. Then the rental car, for a week in a 4wd truck or SUV it was around $400, again something that was reasonable. Then I searched for lodging, hotels seemed expensive, but AirBnB seemed very reasonable, I found a place for $45 a night.

With all the accommodations looking like they would work out I decided to try to enlist some friends to go with me. I got one right away and a few maybes. Everyone’s big concern was using a compound bow out west. Many people started using crossbows when they became fully legalized a number of years ago and haven’t practiced with their compound bows in quite some time. I tried to convince them that 3 months was more than enough time to practice at 50 or 60 yards to feel confident at shooting out west. I wasn’t having any luck, so it looked like it was just going to be 2 of us going. We booked everything for Jan 1st to the 7th. We’d have 5 full days of hunting, which is all we could get away with when it came to our wives. We knew it wasn’t going to be much time, but you never know unless you try.

We found an AirBnB in the center of the state, surrounded by national forest, so that was a good starting point for doing some internet scouting. I went to OnX maps and started looking for trail heads, pull offs, anything that looked like it would get us off the road and onto some higher ground to glass. In all I probably had around 30 way points saved to my phone that we could check out once we got there.

We set off on New Years day to the airport, all loaded up and ready to go. This was the first time either one of us ever flew with firearms, we were taking pistols with us in our bow case. So we wanted to get there early in case there were any issues. Everything went very smooth, the airport website outlined everything to do well enough that we didn’t have any hiccups. We landed in Phoenix a little after 830 pm and stood at the luggage carousel waiting for our bags. No one told us that the firearms wouldn’t be coming out there. So we sat there for about 10 minutes until after the last bags were taken off the carousel confused, slightly annoyed, and worried. I finally went down to the baggage office and before I could ask what where our bow case with two handguns in it was, the lady behind the desk announced another gentleman’s name and told him his firearms had arrived around back. Relieved I stood in line and gave her my information so they could retrieve my case. I guess I should have known that an airline wouldn’t send guns through the luggage carousel, but I honestly didn’t even think about it. We got out bags, took the airport bus to pick up the rental truck,  then headed to the Wal-Mart to get our tags.

We arrived at the first Walmart that was in along our route to the AirBnB. When I initially looked at hunting in Arizona I had called the fish and game office for information and to figure out the tag buying process. The lady on the phone told me that while I could buy a tag over the phone it would be a long process and it was just easier to get them when you got into town. The tag season runs from Jan 1st of that year until Dec 31st. Since we were hunting on the first day of the year the fish and game office didn’t really have an easy way for us to get a tag that wasn’t to be sold yet. We stopped at the Walmart and made our way back to the outdoor section. A worker was standing in the back at the counter and we asked him if we could buy a hunting license and an over the counter deer tag. He rifled through some boxes that had deer tags in them then shifted to under the counter pushing things around and pulling more boxes out. After a few minutes he indicated that they had not yet received the new deer tags for the year. Shocked and visibly annoyed I asked what the hell are we supposed to do then? He told us that maybe some other Walmart’s in the Phoenix area may have deer tags but it’s doubtful. The only place he knew for sure to have them was the Flag Staff Walmart. We walked out of the Walmart to the truck. There’s about 10 Walmart’s in Phoenix so Justin started down the list calling. The first 3 were a no on having the new deer tags. So I called the Flag Staff Walmart and they said they did have tags. The Walmart was two and a half hours away which was about an hour farther than we had to travel and we were quickly coming up on 9:30 pm. So I asked the employee if they knew of anywhere between Phoenix and Flag Staff that would have deer tags available. They asked if we had checked the Walmart in Payson, the town 5 minutes from where we were staying. I hung up called the Payson Walmart and we were in luck. Only problem was we had 30 minutes to get an hour and a half away because the only lady that does deer tags was leaving at 10pm. I practically begged this lady to stay late so we could get deer tags. She put me on hold for a few minutes then came back on the line and said she’d train someone quickly to go ahead and get there whenever we could.

We rolled into Payson around 11 p.m. that evening, the parking lot was covered in piles of snow, the air was cold, the truck thermometer was reading in the 20s. We made a Beeline for the outdoor section. They had the tags out and ready for us. Unfortunately the crash course in training the employee received was less than adequate. After 4 different employees had to be called and some reading comprehension assistance from the two of us the license and tags were filled out. We made it to the front where we had to explain to the cashier that we actually had to pay for the license and tags. After we had paid we were so preoccupied with getting the tags taken care of we had kind of forgot that we wanted to get food for the week. So we got a cart and headed to the grocery section. A few loaves of bread, a couple of pounds of meat, couple of pounds of cheese, a case of bottled water, some gatorades, and a few other snacks was enough to hold us over. The AirBnB didn’t have a stove, not something we thought of at the time of booking since it was such a good price. We both decided some TV dinners would be fine for dinner the next evening and microwave hot pockets would work for breakfast.

We didn’t get in until late that night around 1 a.m. Arizona was two hours ahead of eastern time so in reality it was closer to 3 a.m. for us. We unloaded what we needed to quickly got organized and got to bed.

The Final Chapter in Idaho

On By jlrineer1In Back Country, Hunting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

By the end of the third night we were cold, tired, and wore out. The prospect of finding anything actually living in the area was bleak. We had decided to pack up our camp and make the 7 mile hike back to the airstrip. Hopefully maybe we’d stumble across a deer or elk track on the way back. The plan was to get to the airstrip and investigate the cabins a little more. On our hike out we hurried past them and didn’t get a look at all of them. I was hoping maybe one of them was unlocked and opened to the public.

We packed all of our gear up and the tent. Each of our packs weighed about 45 to 50 pounds. On the hike back they may have been a little bit lighter due to having less food in them, nonetheless they were still on the heavy side. We winded through the timber between the mountains, all of us looking forward to finding a cabin unlocked and open, with plenty of firewood in the area. The tent at this point was completely soaked as were our clothes.

Justin was leading the group, I followed behind him about 10 yards then Matt was another 20 yards behind me. We were about 200 yards from the small cabins that lay just before the air strip when I heard a howling from something up ahead. My first thought was that we maybe we stumbled upon some wolves milling around the cabins looking for scraps. Justin dropped to a knee, he had the same thought. My gun was strapped to my pack as was his. I came up on his side and un-clipped his gun from his pack and handed it to him. We couldn’t tell where the animal was at, we just heard it howling and yipping in the distance. He raised his gun up to see if he could get a better look. We both spotted it at about the same time. His gun dropped, it was a dog. We weren’t expecting to see a small dog in the back country. A national forest service worker was at the cabins with her dog. She ended up coming out of the cabin to see what her dog, an Australian cattle dog, was barking at.

We made our way up the trail to her. She asked if we had any luck and what we were after. I told her we saw a small bull moose in the next valley over. She immediately knew which one we were talking about, she had been living in the back country all summer clearing trails and doing forestry work, she knew where a lot of the animals were. We told her we were after elk and deer but had no luck finding any. She kind of laughed and said we were in the wrong area for elk and deer. There was a small herd to the north of the airstrip by about 4 miles that she had seen about 2 weeks prior. We guessed that’s where the guys from the private ranch had killed the small 6×6 the week prior. Then she pointed to the south and told us that about 10 miles that way there was another small herd, she only saw cows in that herd, but guessed there were probably a couple of bulls in the area. We thanked her for the information, then asked if any of the cabins were for public use. She told us that if she was staying that night she’d have no problem letting us sleep in the cabins while she was there but she was flying to a nearby airstrip then hiking back to our airstrip. She was assessing bridges through a large forest fire area.

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Disappointed that we couldn’t get into one of the cabins for a night to get out of the miserable weather and get a good nights sleep, we walked down to the air strip to talk about a game plan. The first order of business was to use the outdoor toilet. The temperatures were frigid and sitting on the seat was not pleasant but I didn’t care I had to go. We gathered around at the airstrip where we had been dropped off 3 days prior. Everyone agreed due to the trouble of getting out to the back country we should call back to the bush plane office and see if they’d be able to come get us Friday evening or Saturday morning. When we got a hold of them they said a bad weather system was coming in and they could either pick us up that afternoon or it would probably Sunday at some point. I told them I’d call them back and let them know what we wanted to do. We decided as a group that we didn’t want to get stuck out there for 3 more days in the snow so we’d let them know to come and get us that afternoon.

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Justin and Matt had taken a walk to the end of the runway to blow a few bugles just to see if they would get a response. We had tried this a number of times over the last couple of days with no luck this time was no different. They had just returned back to the runway where I was posted up scanning the surrounding area. To the west at the tree line about a half a mile away we spotted something.  I pulled up my binoculars and saw a person emerging from the treeline on a trail, then a dog, then a second person. They were headed our way. When they got over to us we were curious as to where they had come from since we were in the middle of no where. It was a husband and a wife with their dog on a 14 day backpacking trip from the Western side of the back country to the Eastern side. They were on their 9th day and a little over 80 miles in so far. On their whole trip the only animal they had spotted was a big horn ram while they were pack rafting down the Salmon river at the beginning of their trek. This made us feel a little bit better about leaving, they had just walked the trail up from where the forest service worker had told us there were elk. They stuck around while the first plane landed and dropped them a prearranged package of food then went on their way heading south to cold mountain.

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Our plane arrived with our original pilot he told us we weren’t the first group to not see a whole lot of game in the area. He said the only person he had heard of getting anything in the back country was a guy solo hunting who had walked 15 miles from one airstrip to kill a bull. Then walked 15 miles to the next air strip four separate times over a number of days to pack the bull out. It was definitely an experience we all grew from and you would definitely need more time to hunt an area as difficult as the back country of Idaho. When we go back we’ll be a little better prepared and hopefully have some luck on the hunting side of it.

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A bull Moose we saw traveling through Western Montana on our way home