Nothin for opening day

Well, sad to say I didn't bring any deer back from the D6 opener in California. I have to say I was impressed by the number of deer we saw this year, after several years of seeing very few deer. In all, we saw 15 deer, which is a laughable number for any other state, but not half bad for California. Lots of spikes too, which bodes well for the upcoming years. Anyways, 10 miles of hiking and several hours of glassing later, no bucks are comin home with us for now. I guess I'll probably put in a few more days, but I'm really waitin for a storm to blow in in October!! Guaranteed some big ole bucks will be harvested if it happens.
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Not a bad number at all. Did you spend 2 full days out? What elevation were you at?

I'll be hitting D3 (a new area for me) this coming weekend. I hope there aren't a lot of hunters around. It's a 3 mile hike from the closest road. It's always nice to hunt away from the road hunters.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where the deer are spending their summer, or where they will be coming from once we get some weather.
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Actually it was just one day, at about 7000 feet. I generally hunt several days at about 9500 to 10,000 feet this early in the season, but didn't really have the time to put that trip together. I'm not familiar with D3, aside from knowing it's further north. The DFG puts together some good info, I found this about D3:
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/hunting/deer/docs/cazonemaps/d3zoneinfo2007.pdf
Read through that, and it gives good info on what areas to hunt. I can't testify for any areas in D3, but their info for D6 is right on. My advice is go to one of the listed high country places early and then try one of the late season areas if you get some weather. More than anything, get away from the people. The area I hunted was miles away from any accessible road. Not only was there less competition, but more deer!! I didn't talk to anyone else who had even seen a deer. One more thing, as dry as it is, water is important. One area I glassed was probably 1000 or so yards above a canyon with a river running through it, and I had several groups of deer bedded down on that hillside. Water is keepin the deer close, so find somewhere high, away from the crowds, with plenty of water. Sorry for such a long post, but good luck and lemme know how ya do!!
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I'm back from D3. Didn't see a single deer.

On Saturday I hiked in about 4 miles, to roughly 7000ft in elevation. It started snowing on me about 10AM. There were no hunters out there. Hardly any wildlife at all.

The guy that came with me got exhausted and we decided to call it a day and get him back to camp early.

On Sunday I spent some time in lower elevation.

I'm definitely not in the right spot.

I'll try again when I get back from Idaho towards the end of October.
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Sorry to hear it. Did ya check out any of the spots on the website? I went up to D6 Saturday while it was stormin, saw 20 deer and my brother took a nice little forkie. Puts me at over 30 deer in two days of huntin, not a bad start to the year.
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I hiked just southeast of Bowman mtn. The guide said it could hold deer early to mid season.

I just gotta keep plugging away.

Glad you saw more deer. Congratulations to your brother!
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