Hunting

This year I successfully drew a deer tag; a buck tag to be exact. Its been a couple years since I've hunted so I was quite excited. When you put in for a tag, you are allowed to put in for 5 different areas that you would like to hunt. I put in for 3 areas and drew my 3rd choice-an area that I had never hunted before and was really familiar with it at all but always thought that it might be a good area to try. Unfortunately, due to the events of this summer, I wasn't able to get out and scout very much until a couple weeks before the season opened. However, I have gathered a lot of opinions on where to go and where not to go or 'if you go there you will a good pair of shoes and possibly a horse, etc...... Well, I have scouted on foot, on a-wheeler and on horse and have come to the conclusion that this is a very tough area to hunt!!
My season opened yesterday and my dad and I headed out and decide that we were going to hunt Hoffman Canyon which is in the Tobin Mountain range. We had scouted it before, a little bit, and decided that it had looked the most promising. Before long, actually we were into it a few hours, we were on top of the Tobin's looking down both the east side and the west side-what a view. At this point we had gone about 3-4miles and hadn't seen a thing. There was a lot of sign that there were and are deer in the area(sign meaning poop, beds and tracks) but we had yet to see anything. The weather was crazy; wind blowing really bad at times, rain, hail and sun. One minute you are freezing and then you are hot-the best thing was to simply keep moving.
After making the trip up following the ridge line of the left side of the canyon, zig-zagging back and forth so as not to be a silhouette on the ridge and to be able to 'glass' as much area since there was sign that the deer seemed to be about everywhere, we decided to come back down through Hoffman Canyon, after all, the bottom of the canyon didn't look to bad or to steep compared to what we had been on. Boy, where we wrong!!! We had roughly 3 miles to cover back to the truck through the canyon and it was tough. The vegetation was so thick that without a saw you couldn't get through it and there were many places that extremely steep so, needless, to say it was interesting. We only slipped a few times and thankfully neither of us made a quick trip to the bottom.
We finally made it back to the truck after starting 9hrs before and covering around 6-7miles. We started our hunt and 5700' elevation and went up to 8000'. We arrived back at the truck barely able to move, shaky and sore in ways that I don't think I have ever been sore in. My feet felt like I had been walking with steal boots, my backpack developed steal straps at some point and my gun gained at least 30lbs! Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration but I do have blisters to prove that my boots were not nice to me and my toes and shoulders are very sore to the touch.
We didn't come home empty handed though............

Here is dad taking a much needed break in a nice little grassy spot in the bottom of the canyon. Notice the sunshine-it had just quit raining with hail a few minutes before.

Yep, we were beat and still had about 2 miles to go in what we thought wasn't go to be to bad of terrain to traverse. Our hope was dashed quickly!!

There are big deer in that area though; this is a 6 point shed that we found at the beginning of our hike.

And this is what I'm guessing a lion kill that we found in a drainage in Hoffman Canyon. He has a 25 and1/4" spread-4 point.

The day spent with my dad was great even though we didn't get a deer or even see one. The thought of what we had accomplished is satisfying in and of itself although I would not repeat the part that was in Hoffman Canyon itself; I would consider the area and canyon to the left of Hoffman and I am possibly going to going to the backside where we saw lots of other draws that have water and are not steep at all. Being on top of that range and in the clouds and they were sailing by was really cool. At times you couldn't hardly see a thing and then you could see the sun's rays coming through into the valley-it was beautiful! The hunting will continue!!

Here are some pics of some of out 'finds' when we went scouting a week ago.

A little 2 point found in the Buffalo Mtns. when Sara and I went horseback scouting. This was all that we had seen there-no other sign but we had a fun ride.

Some old traps from a trap line in an area of the Tobin's not far from Golconda Pass that has been washed out due to extreme flash flooding-wish I had pics to show, it was amazing what the water had done to the rocks! I'll get them one of these days.

Oh, this is from hunting yesterday-proof that my boots weren't nice. We have a 'love/hate' relationship.