Headed to the Blues for deer season

[400out]

I may just bring my bow and try to stick a bear and just let my buddy carry the rifle. even in the burn areas its conducive to stalking with a bow?

be kind of tough in the burned area I think but where your talking I don't think is burned, jackelopes picture is a ways away from the wenaha but shows the terrain 

[Sumpnneedskillin]

There's no animals left in the Blues (elk, deer, bear, grouse, etc), the wolves ate them all and went back to ID and OR.  

[HuntHigh]

OK well when i do my scouting  i guess ill decide what I'm going to do. who knows i might just tag out in the highcountry  b4 I head over there for deer. and i may just become the pack mule for my buddy


  i don't really smoke but if i get over there and see a wolf or five i might have to end up smoking a pack all at one time. 

[jackelope]

The stuff that isn't burned down there is really thick where there's timber and/or trees. There's some open country, but it's tough. If you spend the time, you'll see deer(and bears I guess) but not like what you might think. When I was doing my scouting and talked to the biologist and he told me what to expect as far as deer numbers, I got really nervous about my permit. 15-20 deer a day is scary. When we hunt late season stuff, lets say, in Chelan county, we probably see 15-20 deer in an hour.
I don't think much of anything burned in the Wenaha units. My hunt was in the Tucannon.
This pics is on the border of the Tucannon and Wenaha units, kinda like about the junction of Dayton, Tucannon and Wenaha, or dang close anyway. I snapped a few pics from the road. It's almost like the road was the fire line for the School fire back in 2005.

[jackelope]

OK well when i do my scouting  i guess ill decide what I'm going to do. who knows i might just tag out in the highcountry  b4 I head over there for deer. and i may just become the pack mule for my buddy


  i don't really smoke but if i get over there and see a wolf or five i might have to end up smoking a pack all at one time. 

I could name about a thousand other places that would be a hell of a lot worse places to be than in the mountains in the Blues...succesful scouting trip or not....it won't be a bad trip.
Make sure you have a lion tag, Lord knows there's enough of them *censored*s down there.
Good luck and keep us in the loop.

[HuntHigh]

thanks for the great info. I'm going to check out some maps and talk to some ppl.  it looks like a great place to be if i do or don't fill a tag. I'm just excited to check out a new spot!!! and Ive been on a late hunt in the cascades  and seen 300+ deer a day. my brother got a 160ish  buck on that trip along with my dad and i filling our tags  on 120ish  bucks

[mtncook]

The fire that burned through the Tucannon unit and did the most damage was the Columbia Complex, the year after the School Fire. Very little of the Wenaha unit burned. For the most part the Washington side of the Wenaha is south facing, yes there is timber but alot of great open sided ridges that hold deer and elk.  Bears you bet, I wish my clients would knock down more. The biologists here give alot of info from their desks, they fly winter counts and use that info for the whole year. At least they tell everyone the same story.  Good luck on your scouting but remember that seeing game in June or July does not mean they will be there in Oct.

mtncook

[Pathfinder101]

Highhunt,
Good luck finding mule deer in the Wenaha.  They are there, but are few and far between, as has been stated over and over on this thread already.  It's brutal country, as has already been stated too.  The saying around here is; "The Blues aren't high, but they're deep".  Also, very thick in a lot of places.
I have met a couple of old timers that used to hunt muley's back in the "old days" in the Blues.  They all said the same thing; still hunt the thick timber.  Unfortunately, to do that, you have to already know where the deer are.  I tried it years ago with a couple of buddies.  We bailed off into the wilderness.  Hunted like madmen and camped cold for 4 days.  Didn't see a single deer, buck, doe, fawn or otherwise.  Plenty of elk, LOTS of bear and cougar sign, but no deer.  Haven't done it since.
Had a buddy that decided to try it last year.  He had the time to scout in the summer.  Bailed in there and did a couple of weekend marathons, but only saw a couple of does.  He chose to hunt somewhere else come fall. 

[400out]

and still no one believes there are no deer in the blues  It really makes you think WHY!

[elkinrutdrivemenuts]

Yeah its a great area! You should go down into the bottom and push the ridges with a couple buddies, thats how you get em to move up there! Ill sit at the top and shoot the ones you kick up to me.

But seriously, I have been obsessed with the area since I was a child, it is to big and rugged to not have a good muley population.  It was a great place in the 70's and 80's according to my father and grandfather, but it started going downhill and the deer just weren't in there anymore.  I cant figure out why it doesn't hold more deer.  Usually I only see does during the season, if that.  but really it comes down to being in the right place at the right time.  However, if you get a tag for the late season, or wanna chase them with a bow, you will see more deer.  I switched this year to bow and saw more bucks than I did scouting all year.  First time in my life I have seen legal bucks during my season.  If you don't need meat its a beautiful place to hunt and camp and who knows, you may get lucky.  You don't need to go into the wilderness though, there are remote places you can hunt and at least have a nice camp to come back to at night. 

[Pathfinder101]

I have heard a couple of theories as to why the muley populations have plummeted since the 70s.  For one, elk and deer don't compete well, and the downslide of the deer happened to coincide with the uptick of the Blues elk herd.  Another reason is predators.  Bear and cougar play hell on the fawns in the summer.  By August it is not uncommon to see 4 or 5 cows per calf, and we have a healthy elk population.  Imagine the same ratio for a sparse mule deer herd.
Here is one encouraging thought; I have been told that the mule deer in the Blues live in isolated pockets.  If you find a productive "pocket" chances are that you can return there and find deer in it every year...

[elkinrutdrivemenuts]

That does make sense, there is so much area for them, they can just find a place to hide out and avoid pressure.  I haven't seen a "pocket" up there, but I have see hell holes ; )  Sometimes I wish the game department would work on restoring the muley population as hard as they did the elk, that should be their next project. 

[Hot Lunch]

the blue mtn. mule deer population is in really sad shape, call the Forest service bio and they will tell you the same. Elk population is so-so, and the predator population in spectacular.

I had always wanted to hunt the  blues for deer, but having a family member with a farm in the foothills naturally that where I spend all my deer hunting time. I have heard and seen some pictures of great bucks taken from the blues. This past year I spent one full day sun up to sun down in the Wenaha wilderness. I actually had scouted a lil bit the year before and saw 8 mule deer. I went to that same exact spot and saw 2 more deer. They were two far more me to see if they had antlers, but through my binos even if they did nothing big. I did see 4 bears and chatted with the patrol officer and he told me he sees about 7 cougars a year and countless bears as well as some deer and elk.

The predator-prey balance is seriously out of control and birthing rates are very low in the blues. Back in the 50's-70's some of the forest service guard stations had so many deer hanging around them they were a real problem. Those days are obviously  long gone. If you are going to go to the blues, be prepared to have the foothills as a back up option. There is a lot of private ground open to hunting on the Coppei (sp) creek areas, thousand and thousands of prime blue mtn foot hills, lots of deer, elk, pheasants, bears and turkey on this ground.

[gonehuntin68]

yeah       no deer or elk in the blues

[Pathfinder101]

Hot Lunch makes a few good points.  I don't know that the "birth rates" in the Blues are low though.  At least not for elk.  I see elk herds in June with plenty of calves.  See the same herd in August/Sept and you see 4 or 5 cows per calf.  I don't think it's the birth rate, I think it's the calf survival rate that is the problem.  Mule deer may have a low birth rate, I don't know... honestly, I don't see enough of them in the mountains to formulate an opinion on it  
X2 on what the game warden told you about cougar and bear.  The predator situation is out of hand.