New to HBC…Mule deer

[down_under]

Hey HBC,

A bit about myself… I moved to BC from Australia last August with my partner who is originally from Ontario and we are currently living in Vancouver. I’m in my late Twenties and have always loved the outdoors and foraging/finding my own food, I’ve been fishing/spearfishing my whole life and spent a good amount of time hunting deer, pigs, and goats back home as a teenager up until a couple years ago when work and travel put that on the back burner.

I’ve always been interested in the challenge of hunting in North America and didn’t think I would ever get the opportunity to live/hunt in BC. So after waiting enough time to be considered a BC resident my partner and I did our CORE/PAL course recently.
In hindsight I should’ve done the PAL as soon as I moved here as I could be waiting a while to receive it lol. With this in mind I went ahead and bought a crossbow so I can still put in some shooting practice and get out hunting this season while I wait for the PAL.

I have invested in the necessary gear for backcountry backpack style hunting and have decided that since I’m hunting with a crossbow and mule deer have a bow only season September 1-9 in most regions; Chasing Alpine Mule deer would be a good first hunt.
I’ll be taking Friday off work the next two upcoming weeks and using those weekends as scouting trips then I’m taking off Aug 31-Sep 8 for hunting.

Originally I was looking in region 3 specifically MU’s 3-15, 3-16, 3-32 and 3-33 as they look like they have the most Alpine but then I looked at the regs and realized they are also open to rifle and only 4 point bucks. Could anyone offer any insight into other Mu’s in region 3 or other regions that have good alpine habitat or areas that hold Mule deer during bow season early September?

thanks,
down_under

[interior]

In my experience, I’d look at unit 3-13.

[RyoTHC]

In my experience, I’d look at unit 3-13.


That’s my stomping ground.
real tough unit for mule deer if you don’t know where to look.
around Kamloops and tunkwa would serve MUCH better I’d imagine.

I personally would not recommend 3-13 until you’ve got some experience finding the sign and the food sources for the deer.

[grouse14]

Hunted first week up in the regions you mentioned last year, alpine and along the fraser. Busted my a## and turned up tons of bears and 2 bucks, luckily one was a 4x4. If I were to bow hunt that zone I would hunt the fringes of the private alfalfa fields along the Fraser river, tons of smaller bucks dropping out of the fields to bed. Later that week I ran into some youth hunters in Princeton, they took several bucks and passed on lots of legal deer.

[interior]

That’s my stomping ground.
real tough unit for mule deer if you don’t know where to look.
around Kamloops and tunkwa would serve MUCH better I’d imagine.

I personally would not recommend 3-13 until you’ve got some experience finding the sign and the food sources for the deer.
If he’s looking for alpine he won’t find it around Tunkwa or close to Kamloops, unfortunately. He could try 3-38 but I haven’t personally hunted that area before.
if you decide not to specifically hunt alpine, anywhere in region 3 that allows any size buck in bow season will be a good option. Find an old burn on google earth and hike in away from the main roads and you’ll have a good opportunity to find deer.

[RyoTHC]

If he’s looking for alpine he won’t find it around Tunkwa or close to Kamloops, unfortunately. He could try 3-38 but I haven’t personally hunted that area before.
if you decide not to specifically hunt alpine, anywhere in region 3 that allows any size buck in bow season will be a good option. Find an old burn on google earth and hike in away from the main roads and you’ll have a good opportunity to find deer.


you make a good point, I overlooked that.
I just know from numerous years of hunting that area it’s a tough go for 4pt +

becomes a bit easier for any buck but then they likely aren’t in the alpine anyways by then.

[down_under]

If he’s looking for alpine he won’t find it around Tunkwa or close to Kamloops, unfortunately. He could try 3-38 but I haven’t personally hunted that area before.
if you decide not to specifically hunt alpine, anywhere in region 3 that allows any size buck in bow season will be a good option. Find an old burn on google earth and hike in away from the main roads and you’ll have a good opportunity to find deer.

Thanks for the suggestion interior, do old burns do better than recent ones or vice versa? Looks like a lot of the burns in region 3 are more recent.

thanks

[interior]

Thanks for the suggestion interior, do old burns do better than recent ones or vice versa? Looks like a lot of the burns in region 3 are more recent.

thanks

I have had the best luck in 5-7 year old burns for mule deer but everyone has different opinions. Pick an area on google earth and check it out. Hike away from main roads and find good areas to glass from. If you don’t like what you see, try a new area the next weekend. As Ryo mentioned, Tunkwa is a good area to check out. It gets busy with hunters but I’d say over 90 percent don’t leave their vehicles to get into harder to reach areas. If you’re not looking for a trophy buck you’ll have a good chance in that area.

[RyoTHC]

I have had the best luck in 5-7 year old burns for mule deer but everyone has different opinions. Pick an area on google earth and check it out. Hike away from main roads and find good areas to glass from. If you don’t like what you see, try a new area the next weekend. As Ryo mentioned, Tunkwa is a good area to check out. It gets busy with hunters but I’d say over 90 percent don’t leave their vehicles to get into harder to reach areas. If you’re not looking for a trophy buck you’ll have a good chance in that area.


I also find the bulk of tunkwa hunters focus on Oct 10-nov 1 so they can shoot any mule buck any white tail buck or a white tail doe.

If there’s point restrictions or doe is closed it’s a pretty peaceful area.

[HarryToolips]

Burns and alpine is great early season, but don't overlook clear cuts as well, many offer great forage for them.. find ones closer to water sources as it's generally quite dry early season.. also, because your planning on going early bow only season/ youth only season the bucks for the most part won't be acclimatized to hunting pressure therefore you should be able to find younger bucks especially, closer to roads..

[down_under]

So my girlfriend and I went on a scouting trip this past weekend. I e-scouted two spots with the first one being 2200 m elevation and second spot being max 2000.
The first location looked to have good open alpine country and a ridge that I could glass for 2-4 km in multiple directions and could also move camp to glass other areas easily..Obviously this was pending access. After driving 20 km up forest service roads and resource roads; the final road that would get us to within a 3 km hike to the spot ended up being so grown over that it didn’t even look like it was there originally, after looking at iHunter we found another route that would get us within 5 km and tried out best to get up there but the road eventually had saplings growing in the middle of it and shrubs growing onto the road either side and I didn’t feel like scratching the sides of my truck too much so we turned around.
The second spot was a 2 hour drive from the first and I hadn’t really e-scouted it much besides marking a route to get up the ridge/mountain, camp location and water access.
From this spot I could only really glass the opposite ridge that had two Alpine-ish openings amongst the trees; the side of the ridge that we hiked up was an old burn as was the country down lower where we parked the truck and lots of clear cuts. Where the burn had been was quite dry.
Once we got up top we made our way to a small lake/pond that I had marked out to get water from and planned to setup camp on the highest point to the West of it to hopefully also glass from. It was a bit over 600m from where we got up the ridge to the pond. Even though it was Alpine elevation the trees were quite thick and there seemed to be a lot of moisture and green growth, lots of stunted blueberry patches with some holding fruit; on our way I found what looked to be a deer bed and footprints on a few game trails, we spooked a grouse and began to see some old bear and deer scat. As we approached the edge of the pond which was in a depression surrounded by thick trees there was some movement on the other side which turned out to be a moose! It walked away slowly and I was surprised it didn’t spook sooner since we were making a lot of noise through the thick stuff. After seeing the moose we filled up out water bladders while also noticing that the muddy area that transitioned from the pond to a green meadow/swampy patch was littered with fresh Moose, Wolf and Bear tracks with the latter having some hefty prints and multiple different sized bears.
We made our way to the camp spot on the highest point and found fresh moose scat and prints. It turned out that the location wasn’t good for glassing the opposite ridge even though it was the highest point as the trees were too tall and the ridge was quite wide and dropped elevation gradually so we made our way down down towards the opposite ridge to hopefully find some kind of bench and opening to glass from. While walking there was lots of old bear scat, prints, wolf prints and some fresh/soft bear scat full of berries from a large specimen. I realized that the area was too thick to find a glassing spot so we made our way back to where we originally come up top to setup camp; from that spot I could see the top of the opposite ridge but none of the valley below or much of the tree line where deer could be bedding so it wasn’t optimal for glassing. It was too late to glass as we had to setup camp so we did that, had dinner and got an early nights sleep.
I got up just before day light the next morning to glass what I could and didn’t see anything so after a while I moved to the side that we hiked up to glass the old burn but couldn’t pick any deer up (it was pretty hot by then and in hindsight I should’ve glassed there first thing in the morning since the original spot wasn’t the greatest visibility).
We packed up camp midday and hiked back to the truck shortly afterwards. Some takeaways from this scouting mission were that trees and vegetation is always going to be thicker than it appears on google earth, be realistic about glassing locations and look at the map in 3d more thoroughly to make sure visibility is good.
Even though the spot wasn’t good for glassing I think it could be a great place to set up trail cams and still hunt through the timber at first light; I could imagine that it could be good for predator calling a bear in from the more open side as well if the wind is right.

On another note, I checked the status of my Pal application and it says it’s been processed and should come in the mail within two weeks. That opens up more opportunities for rifle hunting so I feel confident in checking out some proper Alpine in MU’s 3-15, 3-16, 3-32, 3-33. I would appreciate anyone’s guidance in narrowing down what MU could be good to go scout? Also how long do Mule deer hang around in the Alpine? If I have to wait a few weeks for my Pal to come back it could well be mid to late September by then.

thanks

[Redthies]

You’re going to find the majority of google earth scouting leads to incredibly overgrown roads, and likely disappointing in person experiences. Glassing is great, but not a big producer of cut tags in the southwest of the province. 3-33 is thick as phuck for most of it. Getting above tree line anywhere in that zone will involve a lot of bushwhacking. There are tons of blacktail and mule deer up that way, so I’d spend a bit more time just getting to know the area, and look for busy game trails at any elevation. Focusing on high alpine will probably be frustrating for you until you figure out the “easy” access points, and those spots will be probably be busier than you’d like.