20B Youth Hunt Help

[JiminAZ]

Hello, sort of a Hail Mary here.  Been lurking the forum for years, finally joined a couple months ago to buy some items.

Have 2 of my sons on the 20B hunt now.  We scouted the Constellation road/ Buckhorn Road area and also up by Bumble Bee over to Crown King pre-season.  I'll be first to admit we didn't invest enough time but saw enough sign to figure some prospective areas.  We chose to work the Constellation/Buckhorn area this past weekend and the results were very poor.  So far we've seen a pair of does with a spike buck right at dusk.  By the time my son got a scope on the animal, it was too dark to discern the spike.  This was at lower elevation like 2600-3000'

I think a lot of it has to do with the moon.  Just so bright right now you could read a newspaper at night.   Combine that with a little pressure and they go nocturnal.  Still we should be seeing more sign.

And I'm thinking the 78% success rate GFD posted for this hunt was a misprint.

Found some areas in the western Buckhorn area at higher elevations that are just great ecosystems.  Water, browse, quail, rabbits, coyotes, etc.  No cattle. Not a deer to be seen and sign is minimal.  Another area we found looked fantastic, walked the area's bottom washes over about 1/2 mile on two drainages and found one deer track cutting the wash, and an old mountain lion track.

I'm thinking we may need to beat feet a drainage or two away from the roads to find animals.

If anyone has had success and would be kind enough to point me to a more productive area, I'd be all ears. I know I haven't earned my chops here, but throw myself at the mercy of the internet (ha ha).

Thanks.

[ruthunter]

I spent (2) days out there this weekend glassing around helping a jr pig hunter. We saw (5) bucks in two days. We were in the same areas you mentioned. We never hiked anywhere. All we did was glass from the roads. I wouldn’t hike anything unless you are on a stalk. The full moon I believe has the bigger bucks bedded at daylight but the smaller spikes, two pointers and small 3’s seemed to be active for the first 2-3hrs.

[JiminAZ]

thank you - confirmed my suspicions.  Heaven knows I'm not God's gift to deer hunting so sometimes I wonder if I'm just clueless....

[yotebuster]

Are you guys using tripod mounted binos?  I’m not help there but it’s just a matter of finding them unfortunately.  Rut hunter is a desert muley finding machine, but if you are up high and glassing from tripod mounted binos you should start turning some up.  That unit should have deer from top to bottom.  

[JiminAZ]

Spent several hours glassing yesterday afternoon.  Have 13x minox's on a tripod.  Looked under every bush and tree I could find.

We are going higher.  I may be offline for a couple of days depending on service.

[culpritz]

20b is tough this year hunted it for years definitely the worst I’ve scene it my daughter and I were out for 3 days saw probably 60 does  2 spikes and a button buck. I think the moon had a lot to do with it.

[JiminAZ]

So I've been meaning to get back to this thread and relay how we did.  Ended up eating tag soup but I have to say we learned a lot and your tips helped.  By the final day we had found some great looking territory with water and north facing slopes with good cover, and good sign.  A few days of less moon and more cool weather and I bet we'd have been able to get at least one.

Moral of the story:  we didn't do enough scouting pre-hunt.  The moon and heat made it more challenging but there were some good deer taken in the unit.  Just not by us.

Again, thanks for your tips and help.