Kaibab

[WAcoueshunter]

Kaibab.

I have family in Arizona and have hunted coues deer with them for about 20 years, but I’ve never hunted muleys there.  However, for Memorial Day this year my family visited the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  If you haven’t been there, the north rim is the Kaibab Plateau, the land of Teddy Roosevelt, very large mule deer and the next door neighbor to the Strip.  We camped out in the Kaibab National Forest during our Memorial Day trip.  After seeing it in person, I decided to put the easiest Kaibab muley rifle tag down as my first choice this year in the AZ draw.  And lo and behold, I drew.  I believe I had seven points, which is really only five years’ worth plus a loyalty point and hunter ed point. 

The early west side hunt I drew has 500 tags.  That sounds like a lot, and it is.  Hunt dates are 10/26 – 11/4.  No rut, no migration, tons of tags - that’s how a NR can draw this unit with 5 effective points!  This is the Arizona equivalent of a general rifle season. 

I drove down on Wednesday, 18 hours, with the plan to scout on Thursday with the hunt starting on Friday.  I only had four days to hunt (Friday – Monday) before I needed to get back to work.  My cousin and our other buddy from Phoenix would come help me for the weekend, although they had never hunted the Kaibab either.  We had some circles on a map from a friend who used to guide down there, but that was our only starting point.  Well, that and a bunch of internet scouting. 

So I head out Thursday morning to scout and stop at the first circle on my map.  It’s a large burn, surrounded by a mature pine forest (most of the plateau is mature pine forest).  At my first stop, I can see three other trucks.  The season hasn’t even started yet and this place is packed.  I drive a bit further, and more rigs.  I glass anyway, but don’t see any deer.  There are roads every few hundred yards in all directions, so it’s not like you can just hike and get away from the crowds.  No green dot system or closed roads, there are trucks and ATV’s on every maintained road, two track and path you could get a side by side through.  But, the burn is covered in bitter brush, has young, thick aspen thickets all over, and there are scattered small ponds and tanks with water.  Plenty of food, water and cover, makes sense the deer are in there.

[to be continued]

[ribka]

I used to bow hunt there in the 80’s when they had OTC tags. Saw some monsters in there.

Good luck beautiful country.

[WAcoueshunter]

I used to bow hunt there in the 80’s when they had OTC tags. Saw some monsters in there.

Good luck beautiful country.

I think it would be an awesome place to archery hunt.  The deer density would make for a lot of opportunities, and there's always the chance for a monster.

[redi]

congrats on a great tag. Your hunt is exciting so far. keep us posted and good luck.

[WAcoueshunter]

After about an hour watching trucks drive around in the burn, I bailed on that spot and headed into the forest to drive some roads and see a few other spots.  There are deer in the forest and way fewer people, and I saw probably 20 does and a handful of small bucks that day.  But you can’t glass much in there, and I just didn’t feel like stumbling around in the forest all day.  The deer migrate off of the Plateau to the winter range below in November, and there had been some snow the last two weeks so apparently some of the deer had already migrated.  Part of my driving that day was to check the edge of the upper Plateau, the oak covered transition areas, and the juniper/sage areas down below to see if I could find concentrations of deer.  But I didn't see much down off the upper Plateau.  So after driving for most of the day hoping to find a good spot in the forest, I headed back to the burn that evening, very frustrated.  But that night I did some short hikes, bumped into some deer, and glassed up one giant that I put to bed.  I would be right back to that spot in the morning for the opener.  All in all, think I saw six bucks that day, but just the one that was mature. 

Here are a few deer pics from the forest.  Also a few pics from the very west edge of the Kaibab, where it dumps into Kanab Creek.  The Grand Canyon is on the left.  This is the winter range - if anyone has the points to draw the late Kaibab rifle tag, this would be an incredible hunt.

[to be continued]

[Doublelunger]

Umm, can you type faster please!?

[WAcoueshunter]

I got to my parking spot Friday morning in the dark, opening day, and as I’m gathering my stuff another truck pulls up and two guys get out.  So I hustled to get in front of them to my glassing spot.  That worked, those two guys went another direction, but I got to my spot and see two other guys already there, and there are another two rigs on the back side of the big buck’s aspen grove.  Good grief, there are people everywhere.  I moved over a bit to give them room but where I could still glass up the big buck’s hiding spot.  At first light, the guns start firing, and it sounds like a war zone all around.  There must have been four sets of firing within a half mile of me in the first thirty minutes. 

I didn’t see the big buck from my glassing spot, but did see quite a few other deer moving out and about, mostly deer on the move that had been bumped.  Frustrated by all the glass, rigs, and flying bullets, but encouraged by the number of deer, I decided to get more aggressive and took off on foot, trying to look into small draws and cuts that couldn’t be glassed well from the roads and ridges.  That worked, I saw eight bucks that morning.  Unfortunately one of those was the giant from the night before, when I bumped him out of a thicket at 150 yards.  He was big – like a 26x26 box frame – but all I saw was him high tailing it out of the country after I walked into his bedroom.   But I liked my approach – let the masses sit on the ridges and glass, and I’d work the aspen thickets and soft spots they couldn’t see.  That evening I did more of the same.  Looked at OnX to find the soft spots away from the main roads, and slowly worked my way through, glassing where I could and still hunting the aspen thickets.  I saw another six bucks that night, but none big. 

[Karl Blanchard]

Tagging

[WAcoueshunter]

My cousin arrived with another buddy Friday night.  We went separate ways Saturday morning to cover more ground, but they stayed in radio contact in case they found something.  I went back to the area where I’d seen the big box frame buck, and there were four rigs parked on the ridges all around him, and more driving by on the roads.  I left and went a different direction, finding some smaller bucks here and there.  Late that morning I glassed up some running deer at about 1,000 yards, and focused in just as the lead buck crested the skyline.  Another giant, he was going mach 5 in the wrong direction, but he had one of those long, splayed out frames that had to be 30+ inches.  Good to know there was still a big buck or two around after all that shooting!  I quickly got back to my truck and moved areas to where I thought that buck was headed.  But when I got there, I pulled up to park and looked out to see two guys boning out a buck on the hillside in front of me.  It didn't turn out to be the buck I had seen - these guys had shot theirs a couple hours before - but seeing them working away on that hillside confirmed that the big buck was probably in the next county.  I would be back looking for a new deer that evening. 

[WAcoueshunter]

After Saturday morning, I still thought my best bet was to effectively still hunt the soft spots between the roads and ridges.  Keep doing the work, and eventually I’d find a mature buck that was in a place I could shoot.  So I got dropped off about 4pm and starting working my way into the wind through a few draws and small ridges that had good cover and were not glassable from a road.  I hadn’t seen a deer yet, when at 4:45 I started around an aspen thicket and a tall heavy buck lumbers out at 20 yards.  Yes, 20 yards.  Tall and heavy, I didn’t need to know more.  I had the wind in my face, and he was just feeding out of the cover into the bitter brush when I kneeled down and put one through his lungs. 

And just like that, it was all over.  I got on the radio to call in my cousin and friend to help – the silver lining of having roads everywhere, it makes for a pretty short pack.

[WAcoueshunter]

My goal was to shoot a mature, representative Kaibab buck, and I’m a sucker for mass.  Couldn’t be happier the way this worked out.  This guy has 42” of mass, along with 17” G2s, 13” G4s and 23” main beams.  The bio at the check station aged him at 5 ½. 

[jackelope]

Congrats, man...that is a stud of a buck.

[BrownGoinDown]

Thanks for the post, that was fun to read and an awesome buck for sure!

[MtnMuley]

l'd definitely enjoy looking at that buck on my wall for the rest of times.   

[cedarriver]

Very cool Buck. Love the mass and height!