Monday, November 8, 2010

New Boots Make all the Difference Grouse Hunting


About Six and a half years ago I moved to Tooele. I bought a pair of boots. I wore the tread off in one hunting season. I bought a better pair of boots. I blew the heal out in 5 or so seasons. But I didn’t quite realize it. It wasn’t until the end of last season hunting in Hell’s Canyon for Chukar, and applying a new coat of water sealant to my boots, that I realized the stitching was bad. But I’m cheap. So I kept wearing them. This year I have been out hunting three times. I’ve got a couple places I like to go. My favorite never failed until this year.
Oh I see grouse, but I wasn’t hitting. The first trip was nothing new. I wonder why I even attempt middle canyon. The brush is so thick you can’t get a good shot. But it is fun trying I suppose. But up above Jacob City, that is my favorite hole. I nearly always get a couple good shots. I remember two years ago I got three in one clearing. I shot one as it was heading down the clearing, reloaded my first barrel and went to fetch the bird. Sure enough two more flushed. Bang bang. Best shooting I’ve ever done. 9 pounds of meat in my back pouch later and I was waiting to limit out on grouse for the day. Didn’t happen.
Grouse hunting in Utah can be some of the trickiest wing shooting there is. You walk across, up and down some of the steepest terrain known to man. Add to that a thick mat of pine needles and cones shedding off the Douglass fir and Ponderosas, underbrush waist high, and countless trees knocked over by numerous avalanches. Might find it better not to try after a snow storm, I did. The grouse have the advantage in this territory. It doesn’t matter that you have a twelve gauge loaded with six shot and five.
The grouse themselves don’t often cooperate. Sometimes they just sit. Sometimes they fly out behind you. Sometimes they fly from the other side of the tree. Flushing, they sound something like a Black Hawk taking off from a battle field. The adrenaline comes in and you pick up your gun as you look to see where the bird is. Half the time it is ducking behind another tree when you pull the trigger. Lots of trees get trimmed in this manner. But then you get those days.
The weather is cool, and your breath dissipates in front of you as you head into the clearing. You hear that familiar flush, and see the bird. You pull the trigger and watch it fold. Beautiful. Nothing makes a wing shooter feel more alive and accomplished. But this year that wasn’t happening, and I was missing the good shots.
So Friday came along, and my friend Kevin and I decided to make an afternoon of it. The grouse were thick but not cooperating, and again, even missing the good shots. We ended up heading down a steep draw and my boots were not helping. I wasn’t getting the footing I needed to feel comfortable, and was beginning to think these boots might kill me. Then it hit me, they might have everything to do with your lousy shooting. Not that I’m always that great of a shot mind you. But I’m not as lousy as I was shooting either.
Saturday I decided to buy a new pair. I bought the best I could find at Big 5, for 29.99, Itasca something or other. Then I decided to break them in for an hour or two before sunset. Well, it’s never a good idea to hunt the same place two days in a row, but I did anyway. I only saw two grouse.
Heading into a clearing at the far end of a patch of pine, I had one grouse fly out from behind a sizable Ponderosa. Going on a little further, I got the flush or a life time as a second one took off from the underbrush like a Huey under fire. Under fire it was. The number six shot strafed its back, and knocked it on the first shot. Shooting slump cured. (I hope).
In all honesty though, it was a good lesson. Make sure your boots are in good repair. Wing shooting is tricky and if you can’t get your feet planted firmly, likelihood is you are going to miss. Not to mention it’s just dangerous walking around in thick forest on a steep hillside with a shotgun and shoddy shoes.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Deer Hunting, or an Excuse to Enjoy Utah


This was my second year deer hunting in Utah, or anywhere for that matter. I didn’t get a deer. I saw two moose, and around fifty does, but not one buck. Part of me wonders if the deer in Utah are hermaphrodites. I have seen bucks here and there, just not during hunting season. In fact there is a nice buck that lives in the empty field behind my neighborhood. I didn’t get a deer, but I did have fun.
If nothing else, deer hunting is an excuse to get out and enjoy the outdoors. I hiked trails I normally would not have. I found off road trails I would not have tried otherwise.
I’m usually a bit leery about going out hunting the opening day of season. If I do go I try to go somewhere where I doubt there will be a lot of people hunting, but where there is at least a chance I’ll see something. Last year I tried the Lakeside Mountains. This year I went to the Deep Creek Mountains.
The problem is scouting. They say you need to scout. I try to get out to a few places and do that. But I don’t always have the time for scouting. One might debate whether or not I have the time for hunting. The places I scouted this year close to home didn’t have much sign of deer. So reading in “Gold Panning Utah” that there were deer in the Deep Creek Mountains, I headed west the night before opening day.
Day One
The Deep Creek Mountains are not easily accessible. You can take any number of routes through the west desert, Weiss Highway, or the old Pony Express route, or take I 80 to Wendover and hang a left on the 93 and head toward Gold Hill. Getting there is one thing, getting in them is another. By the time my friend Kevin and I got there it was near dark. We camped below Indian Farm Canyon. We set up the tent at dusk. Dinner consisted of Bushmills Irish Whiskey we picked up in Wendover and wasabi flavored almonds before the rain blew in. The next morning was near perfect weather.
We and began scouting. The roads do not go very far back in the canyons. Most of the area is either Indian Reservation or Wilderness. We tried our luck on a road that followed Granite Creek. The canyon was deep and the road took us from desert to pine before it turned into a hiking trail. This area is best hunted on horseback as it is a wilderness area, and inaccessible by car. We had to cut our hike short though. I had some pastoral visits that needed to be done in the evening, so we left around noon. We got back around 5:30 after stopping for lunch in Wendover.
This range will get some return visits for gold mining and rock hounding. It would be nice to pick over the old mine tailings there for minerals. I doubt I will hunt there if I don’t have a horse or a lot more time.
Day Two/Three
Sunday I made a couple shut in visits after church and headed back out in the rain. It was cold rain. I thought I might try a hike up Lambs Canyon just off of Parley’s Pass that drops the 80 down the Wasatch into Salt Lake City. I haven’t hiked the Wasatch much at all. Most of Lambs Canyon turned out to be Private property, but heading back in far enough I found a little game trail heading up a hollow. It looked fairly decent. I slipped and slid up the trail, stopping every so often to scan the hill sides. It was funny the scat changed in size with the elevation. At first the scat on the trail was that of deer, then elk, but as I climbed the elk scat grew bigger. I continued and came up through scrub oak to the top of the ridge where I was greeted by a cow moose and calf, that were no more than 10 feet away! No wonder the elk scat was so huge! I was able to take a couple pictures with a disposable camera before momma moose showed signs of perturbation, at which point I decided to hunt elsewhere.
I made my way up the 80 and then the 40 to Daniel’s Summit where I camped a cold night in the Jeep. I managed to find a few trails to check out in the morning. Before turning the engine off and making a pillow with some spare clothes. It rained until three in the morning before the snow started. The next morning an hour before shooting hours I started the Jeep up and began to head toward the trails I had found the night before. Only to find I tree blocking my way. I was happy I decided to stay down lower where others were camped nearby. That could have been a little dicey in the morning! I got out and walked the road about 3 miles. Not seeing one hoof print in the fresh snow I went back down and decided to take a different road.
I took a right off the first fork in Main canyon, which took me to finding a road promising to take me to Wallsburg and with no tire tracks I decided it was worth a shot. The travel was decent. I got out a few places where I saw deer sign and followed the tracks up the ridges to spot with binoculars, but was disappointed. Continuing down the road I found a heard of about 15 does but not one buck among them. Then another tree, forced me to turn around again. I hunted the top of Daniel’s Summit the rest of the morning before heading home for more pastoral visits.
Day Four
Tuesday I spent most of the morning and afternoon in town. I worked at the office and enjoyed the company of friends and parishioners, before putting on the deer hunters costume filling the tank with gas and heading off to Silver City (no services) Utah. And Just where the 36 and the six meet there were 6 does eating in a field. I suspect the pipeline workers laughed as I glassed them all over.
I found a nice road that took me behind an orchard of some sort and a couple other fields in the valley between the East Tintics and highway 6. To my amazement there is quite the network of trails and dirt roads back in there, not at all visible from the highway. I found a few other people were road hunting as it were back in there. I found few opportunities to do much else myself. But there were good roads heading up to mines back in quite a few of the canyons, and many opened up on to ridges where a man could stand and glass in the cold wind. Beware of mine shafts though. Spelunking is not my sport, and I don’t recommend it to others. Many of these “roads” are nothing but old Mule Cart paths about the width of a Jeep. The snow and sleet made the paths especially enjoyable. But I had no luck and returned home for a comfortable sleep in a warm bed.
Day Five,
I got up about five filled the Jeep with gas and headed to Mt. Timpanogas, famous for its Timpanogas cave. A friend had told me to try a spot down by Cascade Springs. The Snow was thick driving through Lehi and into the canyon, almost whiteout conditions. I found a nice trail just below salamander flat where deer had come through. So I walked the trail which led me into a canyon that forked right and left. I went left into the canyon following the trail. The deeper I got in there the fewer tracks I saw. So I decided to head back up over the ridge between me and the Jeep.
Snow was still falling, and the off trail experience was fun. I saw lots of tracks and kept expecting to see a buck startle up in front of me. It took though a lot longer than I expected. I began to second guess my orientation before I heard cars on the road below me. I came up just above Salamander Flat. The deer had been very active around there, but there weren’t any to be seen.
I picked up some trash along the road as I headed back down to the Jeep and proceeded back up the mountain. I hate to see trash on my hunts. The only responsible thing to do is pick it up yourself, though. Why people insist on throwing crap out their windows is beyond me. Getting to the top, I met another hunter who alerted me to the fact that three cars had gone off the road when he was making his way up. Later that day they shut the road down. I made my way toward Cascade Springs and hiked another two canyons, and a ridge and saw no tracks, no scat, no deer!
Deciding to leave I spotted four does down in a gully. On my way through Sundance I saw one doe, and 8 turkeys.
I went to Mt. Nebo. You can access Mt. Nebo from Payson, where I again filled up and grabbed a Subway sandwich. Mt. Nebo is mostly wilderness except for a couple roads that go through it. It is beautiful country. Quite a high mountain with spectacular views, it is named after the Mountain from which Moses viewed Israel before dying.
The road had been well traveled by the time I made it, and the snow was packed hard. I followed the road to the other side of the mountain before hiking to an old Onyx quarry where I scared up another couple turkeys and a doe. By this time it was late afternoon, and I headed back up the road to Mona Pole Road. I was done hiking.
Mona Pole Road is quite interesting, especially covered with snow, ice, mud, and hunters. There weren’t many hunters on this road, but this road is a quintessential off road experience. Not really a road at all. It bisects the Nebo wilderness. It starts out innocent enough. But then you turn a corner and see that to the right of you is a wall, and to the left is pretty much a straight drop for a few hundred feet. At places the road is a bit tamer. But it isn’t for the faint of heart. I’m not sure how far I made it down, but I met a party hunting off of quads what I estimate to be half way down. They instructed me that there was a tree blocking the trail a little further down and I should turn around. On the way back up I spotted four does and glassed them over hard as I had 20 minutes left in the hunt.
Spectacular views and some fun offroading that is what I got on the hunt this year.