A friend and I with Late November rifle tags in 29 went scouting in the Chiricahuas yesterday. We saw a few coues does and a black bear sow with cubs inside the National Monument boundary where we went looking for printed maps, we saw a few turkey in Pinery Canyon and one more Coues doe browsing down by the mouth of Turkey Creek Canyon but other than that nothing. We were there all day, dusk til dawn scouting for where to hunt but got almost zero usable data. We saw a fair amount of sign in Pinery Canyon by the creekbed but couldn't locate a good spot to glass from. We hiked up in Turkey creek over Turkey Pen saddle and spent a few hours glassing Turkey Pen Canyon. Lots of green ground cover, the area looked great but we saw absolutely nothing. We spent the last of the fading light in Rucker Canyon in a spot that looked good but again saw nothing.
I think we're going to try North and Eastern areas like Emigrant, Wood, Brushy, Oak, East Whitetail, and Jhus canyons next time. I'm only third year into Coues whitetail hunting and have had little success previously, though I've hunted hard and hiked a lot. Rifle hunted 34a and 36b past two years, plus a lot of time last year with a bow up in Redington Pass and a bit down in Madera Canyon. I usually look for water sources near slopes with ocotillo, manzanita, and oak. I saw very little of that in the western chiricahuas yesterday, found some ocotillo and manzanita in Rucker canyon. The AZGFD write up says try the upper reaches of the major drainages but those areas look more like heavily forested pine with limited visibility for spotting. And there's the very real possibility that access to those upper reaches will be difficult and unwise come late November and snow.
Soo, any tips? We stopped near Fort Bowie in the morning and I liked the terrain but we didn't spend much time there, that area is where I plan to start scouting on our next trip.