44a mule deer

[bowhunter-tw]

My buddy is hunting 44a, has been hunting since friday and is only finding does. Any advice where he should be looking for bucks? He has been in the tres alamos wilderness around smith peak. 

[1uglydude]

In those desert units you typically find the does in the foothills this time of year, but the mature bucks tend to be out in the flats.  If he's only seeing does then he needs to look farther away from the hills.

[Jfos]

4 hours ago, bowhunter-tw said:

My buddy is hunting 44a, has been hunting since friday and is only finding does. Any advice where he should be looking for bucks? He has been in the tres alamos wilderness around smith peak. 

How green is it out there , and is there a lot of standing water?

[bowhunter-tw]

1 hour ago, Jfos said:

How green is it out there , and is there a lot of standing water?

Not very, not much standing water

[Jfos]

59 minutes ago, bowhunter-tw said:

Not very, not much standing water

Find water and glass the flats within like 1.5 miles around it!  Find think areas that have food and glass hard.

[PRDATR]

3 hours ago, bowhunter-tw said:

Not very, not much standing water

Not suprised. THere hasn't been rain in quite a while. Remeber, deer are browers not grazers but will eat cactus fruit.

[Yuma Outdoorsman]

I have the same tag. I know of close to 30 tag holders that have been hunting 43A&B/44B so far. Only 2 groups have seen deer. One group saw a buck headed to water yesterday evening and spooked him and were not able to get a shot. We saw deer 4 miles from the closest drinker. Some of the other people I know of with tags have sat water in the mornings and evenings and walked within a couple miles of the waterholes and are not seeing anything. The whole desert is not as green as I thought it would be with the rain we got during the monsoon, but there are pockets that are greener than others. I had 6 nice bucks hitting water regularly until October and the biggest 2 have not been back since the beginning of October. Typically, the flats hold good bucks this time of year and that is where the bucks were the other day when we stumbled into them. The flats are hard to glass sometimes because the deer are 4-5 miles from the closest hill and seeing them is dang near impossible because of the heat waves. Just have to cover some ground and hope you can find some fresh tracks. We tend to look for ferry duster in the fingers and once we find that, we start seeing deer tracks. If he's seeing does, I am sure there are some bucks not too far away. Hopefully he finds a couple. 

[lancetkenyon]

Smith Peak is a tough area to hunt.  I see more bighorn on it that deer, but I have seen some good bucks on top.

I would be looking at catching some deer coming into or out of the fields around the area.

[creed]

My favorite unit

[lapazflats]

I hunt these units regularly and this year has been tough. Sent you a pm with my contact info-hopefully share some info that’ll help your buddy out. 

[Yuma Outdoorsman]

Was your buddy ever able to find a buck? It was a tough hunt this year. Very warm and the deer weren't moving long in the mornings. Those flats are tough to cover but they hold some good deer. 

[bowhunter-tw]

He was not, he wasnt able to make it out. He is recently between jobs and with gas prices he couldnt get out there 2.5hrs there and back. 
 

I was out in 22 scouting and same thing, warm weather and the deer not moving. Found a little forky shed though

[Jfos]

23 hours ago, Yuma Outdoorsman said:

Was your buddy ever able to find a buck? It was a tough hunt this year. Very warm and the deer weren't moving long in the mornings. Those flats are tough to cover but they hold some good deer. 

How do you go about covering the flats especially when glassing is out of the question because of no high points?

 

 

[Yuma Outdoorsman]

15 minutes ago, Jfos said:

How do you go about covering the flats especially when glassing is out of the question because of no high points?

 

 

Walk your butt off 😂😂...In my area, a lot of times deer use the main washes at night and bed down in what I consider “finger washes”. The secondary washes that often run into the big wash. We have several main washes that are BLM marked roads that we can drive in our unit. Once I get to an area where I see fresh tracks or a lot of tracks over tire tracks in the bigger wash, I start going and looking for the tracks in the finger washes. Once you can narrow down the finger washes they are using, usually you can start walking them and making loops off the main wash. Keep in mind, I always know where the water is in relation to where I’m hunting. Deer feed their way up to water and back down. My #1 plant I look for is ferry duster. If you find green ferry duster in a finger wash off a big wash, I can almost guarantee there will be deer tracks in it. They love that stuff. It’s a lot of boring walking and not seeing much but if you stick with it, you can usually run into some deer in a seasons time.

[HyNoon]

Alot of walking.... alot