Shoobee
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Saturday July 14, 2012 opening day for bowhunting buck deer went as follows at FHL.
"Hunting opportunities for Saturday, July 14, 2012 through
Sunday July 15, 2012 include:
*Deer, Pig, Jack Rabbit, Coyote, Cottontail
Hunt Areas open for hunting Saturday, July 14, 2012 through
Sunday July 15, 2012 are as follows:
Archery Only: 1, 4, 8, 11, 13B, 14
General Weapons: NONE
Archery, Muzzleloader, Birdshot: NONE
Archery, Shotgun, Muzzleloader: 13E
All Other Areas Are Closed - NO ACCESS"
Of these, the best zone was T/A 1, with expansive areas with easy access to hunt.
In a distant 2nd was 11, with a relatively small strip of open area with easy access to hunt.
In 3rd was 13 the "archery only" zone, always archery only, although all the open zones today were archery only as well.
T/A's 4 & 8 & 14 are what I call CJ/ATV only zones. In other words the roads are so steep and rough that unless you have a Jeep CJ with front and rear axle lockers, or an ATV (which I am not even sure FHL allows because I did not see any anywhere), you are not going to get in, or out, alive.
Zone 1 filled up quickly, as did 11, so if you did not get there at 3 pm on Friday you did not get there early enough for a pass.
There were half a dozen bucks running around Zone 1, about 3 bucks running around Zone 11, and I did not hear anything about the other zones in terms of bucks sighted.
Most hunters today felt that "none of the good zones were opened to hunting." The base was training a company sized infantry unit, in their jihad towns for CQB, and so there was a lot of troop movement all over the central and south end of the fort, including on Saturday. Lots of live firing on their gunnery ranges as well.
So it was not a great weekend for trying to hunt FHL.
I think all of the bucks have probably been pushed out of these particular zones, and so the game that now begins is watching for when FHL MWR opens any new zones, and then try to jump into one of those and be the first one there, oh-dark-thirty, in position, so the other roadhunters can push the bucks up towards you.
I saw several bucks on the fringe of the grasslands and the scrub above them. Plus they came all the way down to the 2 rivers, the Nacimiento and the San Antonio, as well, at some point, either late evening or early morning.
There are tons of doe's everywhere as well, with about half of them accompanied by spotted fawns or yearling fawns.
The elk herd is healthy too. I saw the great harem master who has 9x8 tines. There was also a 3x3 (ugly) male elk as well, and he and the harem master were jousting (not actually sparring, just jousting). The Harem master had 15 cows in his herd. A big coyote was watching the joust, in case either one of them got killed or wounded, enough to feed a coyote. It was a breathtaking sight.
The problem with all the elk on the fort is that there are elk trails and elk beds everywhere, therefore you cannot get a good read on where the deer trails and deer beds are.
I almost stepped on a diamond back rattler, about as long as your arm, who was coiled right on a deer/elk trail that I was climbing. Two more steps and I would have been on top of it. I normally leave snakes alone, but since there was a chance I might step on him again, on my way back down the hill, I kill him, took the rattlers, and left him on a rock belly up for the buzzards to find.
My stalk on a buck was textbook perfect, and I got within 42.5 yards, before he noticed I was there. From below, I could only tell he was a buck. I could not tell how many points. As I studied him from 42.5 yards away, I could then tell that he was only a spike buck in velvet. One of the spikes may develop a fork in about 6 more weeks. So I backed away and sneaked back down the hill quietly, so as not to be noticed by him anymore.
I will come back in 6 weeks during the rifle season to the same place, and see if I can find him again and see if he has grown a fork or not. Otherwise, next year he will be on my list.
When I was recon-ing Del Ventury Road, a cat of some kind sneaked across the road ahead of me from south to north from the reservoir across to the gully opposite it. I could not tell if it was a lion or a bobcat. It was either a really small lion or a really big bobcat. Could have been either. It definitely was not a coyote. I had seen about half a dozen coyotes over the past few days. The coyotes always strike up a chorus around midnight, and then again every hour on the our. Around 4 a.m. they raided the campsites for anything they could grab, running through it with a fury, and yelping up a storm.
The campground did not fill up completely, but enough so that Zones T/A 1 & 11 & 13 filled up fast on Friday afternoon. Leaving only 4, 8, and 14 unfilled, which are crappy areas however.
Most of the bowhunters I talked to seemed to be from Salinas.
This one particular group was particularly obnoxious, with 3 families together, screaming fighting kids, lights, a generator, and music to high heaven. It sounded like a tailgate party to an NFL game until midnight over there. Most of us did not get much sleep in that end of the campground.
"Hunting opportunities for Saturday, July 14, 2012 through
Sunday July 15, 2012 include:
*Deer, Pig, Jack Rabbit, Coyote, Cottontail
Hunt Areas open for hunting Saturday, July 14, 2012 through
Sunday July 15, 2012 are as follows:
Archery Only: 1, 4, 8, 11, 13B, 14
General Weapons: NONE
Archery, Muzzleloader, Birdshot: NONE
Archery, Shotgun, Muzzleloader: 13E
All Other Areas Are Closed - NO ACCESS"
Of these, the best zone was T/A 1, with expansive areas with easy access to hunt.
In a distant 2nd was 11, with a relatively small strip of open area with easy access to hunt.
In 3rd was 13 the "archery only" zone, always archery only, although all the open zones today were archery only as well.
T/A's 4 & 8 & 14 are what I call CJ/ATV only zones. In other words the roads are so steep and rough that unless you have a Jeep CJ with front and rear axle lockers, or an ATV (which I am not even sure FHL allows because I did not see any anywhere), you are not going to get in, or out, alive.
Zone 1 filled up quickly, as did 11, so if you did not get there at 3 pm on Friday you did not get there early enough for a pass.
There were half a dozen bucks running around Zone 1, about 3 bucks running around Zone 11, and I did not hear anything about the other zones in terms of bucks sighted.
Most hunters today felt that "none of the good zones were opened to hunting." The base was training a company sized infantry unit, in their jihad towns for CQB, and so there was a lot of troop movement all over the central and south end of the fort, including on Saturday. Lots of live firing on their gunnery ranges as well.
So it was not a great weekend for trying to hunt FHL.
I think all of the bucks have probably been pushed out of these particular zones, and so the game that now begins is watching for when FHL MWR opens any new zones, and then try to jump into one of those and be the first one there, oh-dark-thirty, in position, so the other roadhunters can push the bucks up towards you.
I saw several bucks on the fringe of the grasslands and the scrub above them. Plus they came all the way down to the 2 rivers, the Nacimiento and the San Antonio, as well, at some point, either late evening or early morning.
There are tons of doe's everywhere as well, with about half of them accompanied by spotted fawns or yearling fawns.
The elk herd is healthy too. I saw the great harem master who has 9x8 tines. There was also a 3x3 (ugly) male elk as well, and he and the harem master were jousting (not actually sparring, just jousting). The Harem master had 15 cows in his herd. A big coyote was watching the joust, in case either one of them got killed or wounded, enough to feed a coyote. It was a breathtaking sight.
The problem with all the elk on the fort is that there are elk trails and elk beds everywhere, therefore you cannot get a good read on where the deer trails and deer beds are.
I almost stepped on a diamond back rattler, about as long as your arm, who was coiled right on a deer/elk trail that I was climbing. Two more steps and I would have been on top of it. I normally leave snakes alone, but since there was a chance I might step on him again, on my way back down the hill, I kill him, took the rattlers, and left him on a rock belly up for the buzzards to find.
My stalk on a buck was textbook perfect, and I got within 42.5 yards, before he noticed I was there. From below, I could only tell he was a buck. I could not tell how many points. As I studied him from 42.5 yards away, I could then tell that he was only a spike buck in velvet. One of the spikes may develop a fork in about 6 more weeks. So I backed away and sneaked back down the hill quietly, so as not to be noticed by him anymore.
I will come back in 6 weeks during the rifle season to the same place, and see if I can find him again and see if he has grown a fork or not. Otherwise, next year he will be on my list.
When I was recon-ing Del Ventury Road, a cat of some kind sneaked across the road ahead of me from south to north from the reservoir across to the gully opposite it. I could not tell if it was a lion or a bobcat. It was either a really small lion or a really big bobcat. Could have been either. It definitely was not a coyote. I had seen about half a dozen coyotes over the past few days. The coyotes always strike up a chorus around midnight, and then again every hour on the our. Around 4 a.m. they raided the campsites for anything they could grab, running through it with a fury, and yelping up a storm.
The campground did not fill up completely, but enough so that Zones T/A 1 & 11 & 13 filled up fast on Friday afternoon. Leaving only 4, 8, and 14 unfilled, which are crappy areas however.
Most of the bowhunters I talked to seemed to be from Salinas.
This one particular group was particularly obnoxious, with 3 families together, screaming fighting kids, lights, a generator, and music to high heaven. It sounded like a tailgate party to an NFL game until midnight over there. Most of us did not get much sleep in that end of the campground.
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