Bill's Nevada Hunt: The Real Story
Page 2
First posted November 16, 2010 Last edited November 24, 2010
The Story Part 4: The Beginning of the Tale
Oh, those guesses.I kept a great journal, hoping that I'd have just what you need to fill in those daily segments with exciting adventures. Tales of seeing, stalking, planning, choosing or rejecting, etc.
But it didn't happen that way.
I kept track of everything I ate, and every dump I took. If you want to do the math, I've got the numbers.
I can fill in the early part of the trip later. Let's dismiss it for now, though, with just the fact that I shot no buck. And in the sixteen days of the deer season I saw zero deer nine of those days, five in a row and four in a row. And my total sightings, excluding those deer in the irrigated field near the mouth of McMaughn Canyon, came to 24 (5 bucks).
But the real story did begin during deer season. It went like this...
Deer Season October 28
On 10/28, day 8 of the season, I relocated camp. (No, I hadn't been lost all that time and finally relocated camp. C'mon!) On 11/2, day 13 of the 16 day season, I began hunting what I've named "The Breach" ("Once more unto the breach, dear friends..." Henry V, Act III), which I hunted, with great hope, 'til the bitter end.
I chose the place from the map. I left camp at 1:15 PM, drove down out of Horse Canyon to the foothill road (well-maintained dirt), and north. I passed the entry to Becky Peak, passed the Terror of Broncos (later...), lefted on the little triangle (not much used, another 'wiper' roadlet), which led to a not-so-well-maintained road, which ran a mile or so, lefted, lefted, and finally lefted onto an unmaintained two-track, another wiper (Look closely at the pic of the Bronco. You can see brown streaks along the side. Now you know what a 'wiper' is).
This road snaked between adult pines and junipers, and petered out only halfway to its map extent. A few more broken branches and car dents, and I was turned around and parked.
From the car I could see much of the nearer, to me paired- on the map butterfly, openings. The facts that they were so visible (to anyone) and their small size made me decide to go beyond them to the larger hillside, unseeable from the car, around the corner. So I set my direction to pass below the outcrop at the butt of the butterfly, and began walking.
Map of hunt. Blue dot- car; line of hike; green dot- sit; pink polygon- viewable hillside:
Click here for larger size map.
The cross-country hike was gently up, but not straightforward. It was all thick pine/juniper/mt. mahogany. Fortunately, it was of medium age, so there was no underbrush, but it wasn't so old that branches no longer met their neighbors. But, fortunately again, elk and wild horses had made adequate tunnels through the forest. Never a straight line, at least in the directions I desired, so I was zig-zagging from avenue to suitable avenue, and with less ducking and fending than some other hikes I'd made.
This was not as thick as this maze I barely escaped from:
...but not as open as where I'd parked:
and with the occasional small opening as you see. There were plenty of tracks and poops, of all ages, of horses, elk, and deer. Looking good! There were also patches of snow/ice still remaining from a week before.
I reached the ridge, and trekked up. With just a little looking I found a perfect lookout. There was a 5-pt elk shed nested there, so I think I might not be the first to discover it. On the edge of the ridge, with a break in trees, with an old burned juniper trunk lying perfectly to form both a screen against my movements and a shooting rest, I could see nearly all of the hillside opposite. The range directly across from me was a nice 225 yards, with much of the hill within 350. Of course, much was also farther, a good 700+, but I'd cross that bridge if and when I might come to it.
The hillside was beautiful; should host feeding animals. Here're two pics that show some of the lower and higher of the hill. The ridgelet on the right is the hooked bench/point high in the clearing on the map. The 'pocket' is the open sage depression beyond it.
This is a composite of two photos of The Breach. Unfortunately, Bill had a lot of sky in one and not much the other, so the contrast is quite different; I have tried to compensate, concentrating on the hillside, not the sky.
I settled in, and at 4:15 I saw a buck at the bottom of what I call 'the pocket', uphill at 425 yards. It must have been bedded in the sage or under one of the scattered pines, as it materialized suddenly. Right off I knew that it wasn't monstrous, so I kept scanning between inspections. Almost immediately I saw a bull elk above it, on the skyline. Oh, man! It was huge! I couldn't see the buck in the sage with my naked eye, but the bull, 200 yards farther away, nearly blotted out the sky! A short bounce of the binocs let me compare bodies instantly. The size difference was astounding!
But, it was deer season. So I kept my attention on the buck, occasionally admiring the elk as an ornament of the day. I worked hard to turn the buck into a shooter, but it stubbornly remained an average 3-pt. It had a nice Roman nose, though, which kept me trying. At that distance, against sage, it's not easy to resolve small items like antler tines.
He looked up at the bull, grazing on top of the pocket, only once that I noticed. But he also looked right and up a few times, and soon another buck came into my view. This one was wider and had more mass, but after awhile I decided that he, too, only sported three tines per. Oddly, his body seemed smaller. After a bit, and after some posing, the newcomer began chasing the first around and around the trees. All three guys, the only animals I saw, were out there until dark.
I counted the bull as a 7x8, with a crown, small threes, and some bumps. In my inexperience I guessed it at 377 and definitely a shooter ... in four days.
For the first time on the trip I needed a flashlight to get back to the Bronco. For the trip I'd bought the same type that Ted has been wowing us with, a 4Sevens Quark Mini AA(2), and its intense light helped me to navigate the animal tunnels. I was able to look farther ahead than my incandescent would have allowed, letting me choose real avenues, not dead-ends. While I'm on the subject, both of my other purchases also proved themselves- a Spot headlamp like Craig's, which also afforded more distance and enabled me to use both hands to steady the elk's rack as I navigated lanes wide enough to squeeze the brush-catching antlers through (I own an old headlamp, but the light on the modern LEDs is so much stronger); and a Wyoming Saw II, longer than my regular, which made sawing off the rack easy, not knuckle-bruising.
Somehow I had trouble finding the car, even with GPS in hand; probably spent 15 minutes circling, and would have been absolutely lost without the unit.
Back to camp, seeing a rare jackrabbit in the headlights. This was the day that I'd first set the traps. There were three dead mice waiting for me, eight more snapped while I was building the fire, cooking dinner (a can of chili, a can of green beans, a beer), and relaxing, one while I was noting the eight in my notebook, two more a little later- one of them while I was baiting the trap of the other-, then another, and two while I slept -- 17. I hit the sack at 11.
Paul asked: What made you decide to view that hillside as opposed to the open ground a mile or so up hill (to the W)?
That has the main road through Becky Peak. It's gonna have tons (NV relatively speaking) of people driving through.
Paul: ... or some other place?
Had already tried some other places. Camp is 3 1/2 miles south. I was looking for pockets others might be ignoring or that were farther away than they want to hike. Hunting uphill (packing downhill) is always a consideration.
Paul: Reason to believe the animals would be at lower elevation?
No, but much of the white areas (no trees or significant brush [sage doesn't count], for those not mapwise) on peaks and crests is mainly small rock, not sage/grass/dirt/rock like the lower, hillside, Breach. I don't know if it's true timberline, or what.
Larsen asked: How far from camp to Bronco (driving - not as crow flies)?
6 1/2 - 7 miles. Took about 1/2 hour.
Ted asked: Are there two Becky Peaks? I searched with Google Earth and it flew me south towards Ely from your camp.
I doubt it.
Here's a modified pic from the BLM (Becky is a wilderness area now (!), the yellower area.
From north to south- Bronco, sit, elk, camp.
David wrote: It is great to see the pix of the actual hunting territory. The pinyon pines and junipers at times look like they were pretty tall.
At times. Young forests, like the maze I mentioned, are impossible. Medium forests, like that on the way to my lookout, are OK to walk through, if one keeps alert, and old ones, like where I parked, have tall, well-spaced trees.
David: That kind of territory can hide a lot of game (ie, hard to see). Amazing that there are so few deer. Hunted out? There looks like good feed and cover. Water is always a limiting factor, but there seems to be some constant water in some of the areas.
All of those ages of forests make great cover, shade, and food. Everywhere I went I considered great territory. Plenty of water within deer distance.
Not hunted out, at least not legally. The rancher you'll hear about guessed that the elk were shoving the deer out. I don't think I buy that. One local who stopped by my car said that he didn't bother applying for that area because of the lack of deer, but goes elsewhere. There were deer all over when I was there ten years ago.
Here's my "Honey Hole", though I found not a grain of sugar, that drew me back this year to my first camp. The pic on the left is the left side of the draw, covered with impenetrable mahogany, and the right is the right side, a beautiful feeding ground.
(Blow all these up to get the full idea.)
This is looking over Spring Valley in the background. I'm sitting just south of the actual peak of Lovell.
