Oregon Unit 34 Upper Deschutes

[CJ1962]

I have family members in Oregon that drew this rifle deer tag last year and didn't see a buck during their whole hunt.  They drew it again this year (it has about an 80% chance each year with 0 pts).  Anyway I was thinking of traveling down their to see if I could help.  I looked up the hunt on goHunt and see that it has had less than 15% success the last few years and the only advice was to "Hike into isolated canyons to find bucks".  So I started looking at the unit on Google Earth and my first thought was ... good luck finding an isolated canyon, the whole unit looks like it is covered by roads.  Seriously, other than part of the Western boundary that is in a wilderness this hole unit appears to be crisscrossed with roads.  Anyone have an familiarity with this unit and any tips on where to start?

TIA

[cbond3318]

I lived in Sun River for a few years. Never hunted down there but did explore quite a bit. My take on it is yes, roads and single track everywhere. High use area year round, southern end of the unit near Crane Prairie/Wickiup was more isolated . There was 3 buttes down south of Wickiup that only had rds at the bases . Could get away from users up on the slopes of those. Hard to pattern deer movement in those big flats. Saw some nice deer occasionally. Gets poached pretty hard down around La Pine. Been 5 or so years since I was there.

If I were to hunt it, I’d be looking for pockets between all the rds and hang as many cameras as I could get my hands on.