Should the High Hunt be permit only?
In a word...No.
People can plan on seeing lots of camps and lots of hunters if they decide to hunt anywhere near a trail system
regardless of how many miles they put on their boots. That shouldn't surprise anyone. But, every year excited newbies pull into popular trailheads and march headlong into both near and far flung basins that they assumed only they knew about because they e-scouted it via Google Earth. Then, they don't see any animals and are invariably upset that "their" place has other hunters, that the entirety of the wilderness areas are teaming with hunters.
On the other hand, if you want to scout your butt off in wildly out of the way places you've come to intimately know over the years and pattern a group of bachelor bucks, you'll have opportunities to put a tag on a buck every year. That aspect of High Hunt is really not that big of a deal, relatively speaking. There are lots of deer in the backcountry. What is a big deal is getting all the meat, antlers, cape, rifle or bow and camp gear out without the meat spoiling or capes slipping. More people think they can hack that sort of death march than actually can. Even more are poorly equipped for the wild swings in weather. T-shirt and shorts sweating your balls off one day and then the next wearing three layers under rain gear while rain, sleet, snow and high cold winds hammer you. Given the rarity of monster bucks to begin with, why subject yourself to lugging out an average sized deer in those conditions just for the meat?
The overlooked truth of the matter is that logistically it’s much easier to kill a buck for meat later in the year close to the road during general season in other parts of the state than it is to death march a 100+ lb. pack umpteen miles and thousands of vertical feet out of remote wilderness areas back to the rig. But, some crazies like me relish the fine and pleasant misery.
If someone manages to scratch and claw their way into my favorite spot only to find that my hunting partners are already there and have been for years, then I say more power to them. It’s public ground and they definitely put the sweat equity into getting there. What I don't appreciate is when the same exact person comes back the very next year, knowing full well that we'll be there, and screws up everyone’s opening day hunt thereby wasting all of our valuable scouting time and energy. Have some common decency and go someplace else.
Case in point...a couple years ago I observed a father and son walk over a ridgeline I like to sit on during High Buck. The area doesn't have monster buck genetics, but it does hold deer if you know where to look…during the right times of day...with multiple sets of eyes looking.
Not having seen anyone up there before I was genuinely surprised to see them but nevertheless waved hello and struck up a conversation with them. They were visibly deflated to see someone else comfortably bivied up there and even more so when I told them that my hunting partners and I have hunted the area every year for a long time and will continue to do so until we are old men that can't. They climbed up a hellacious route and claimed to not have seen a thing all day which wasn't a surprise to me at all given how few deer there are on that side of the drainage in dry years. It was obvious they were on the steep part of the learning curve but they were giving it the ol’ college try and seemed to be enjoying their time in the backcountry. Good for them! I was envious that I hadn’t been able to share that sort of experience with my father. It was late in the day and they were a little anxious to find a way off the mountain in the dark and back down to their camp. They did not want to go back the way they came and asked if I knew a better way. I could have kept my mouth shut and let them bushwhack their way down through alders and cliffs, but I kindly gave them some insightful instructions on the fastest/easiest/safest way for them to get back down. They thanked me and off they went. I wished them well and didn’t expect to see them again.
Flash forward to the next year….My hunting partner and I had patterned a group of bachelor bucks and had their usual daily routine dialed in. We were intent on taking a 4x4 apiece on the opener. Not huge bucks by any stretch of the imagination, but the rest of our fall season was jammed up with other hunts and work and family related responsibilities. This was our chance to put some mule deer in the freezer so we decided a 1,2,3 BANG! was the thing to do. Much to our surprise consternation, through our bino’s at daylight we noticed two youngers guys in blaze orange standing a few hundred yards below us on an outcropping of trees and rock near where we had patterned the bucks. There was no sign of the bucks but a couple of does were feeding not 50-60 yards behind them. You could not pick a worse place to sit and glass if you were hunting the area.
My hunting partner and I said, “Well, there goes our morning hunt.” The big glass and the makings for some Starbucks VIA coffee and breakfast came out of the packs.
I put the big Swarovski spotter on them and instantly recognized one of them as the son of the duo from the prior year. "Huh. That's interesting.", I thought. We sat out in the open plain as day making coffee and eating breakfast while soaking up the morning sun and watched them below. They were completely oblivious to the deer right behind them while they ineffectively use their small binoculars to glass the few small visible openings around them around them and far off hillsides. Eventually one of them panned around and they finally noticed us up on the ridge hanging out. We waved and smiled back though they probably couldn’t make out the latter with their binos. The looks of shock and denial on their faces was priceless and we could see them commiserating on what they should do next. Shortly afterwards the does caught their scent and began bounding away across a larger opening. They jumped up and ran after them, apparently hoping they were bucks that they might be able to catch out in the open. Once they realized their folly, the guy in the lead that I recognized finally just sat down out in the open sunlight glassing down into alder choked avalanche chutes. Ha, like that was gonna be productive! I wasn’t particularly happy with them but after all its public land so I calmly made my way down to say hello and see if we could sort out each other’s plans so we wouldn’t screw up each other’s hunts the rest of the trip. I eased down to him and said good morning. His body language suggested that he wasn’t all that happy to see me, but he was polite enough and said hello and that he was up here with his younger brother. I said something along the lines that I remembered him from last year and that I was a little surprised to see him up here again after the conversation we had.
He replied, “Yeah, I thought you’d be up there.”
Wait…WTF??? Seriously???
I thought to myself, “So, you thought I’d be up there and yet you still decided to come up here, clearly without having spent any time scouting it, thereby screwing BOTH our chances and wasting BOTH our time and energy when there are a bunch of other places to hunt? What kind of jerk does that???” I was pretty angry with his response, but I kept my temper at bay and let his idiotic comment pass, but not too subtly reminded him that I had already told him that four or five of us have been hunting these basins for years. I went on to say that we probably ought to sort out our respective plans so that we aren’t screwing up each other’s hunts for the rest of the trip. He evidently caught my drift and he rounded up his brother and we never saw them again that season. Hopefully they've found their own honey hole.
Getting back to the topic, if a guy wants to find an out of the way place to go during High Buck, he can and he won't see another soul for ten days except maybe for some mountaineers. That said, if you decide to go to a place that's obviously out of the way, you'll probably bump into others.
