Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Blacktails

Jackson County, where I live and hunt is every bit as steep as those photos show, but much brushier!

If I were you, I'd put in for a muzzle loader hunt for the N. Muzzleloader unit 100M and plan to hunt the McKenzie and Indigo Units.
You have a good chance of catching the rut and migration in that country. A chat with the F&W can help you pin point places to start.

The Applegate Unit 128M is probably the best hunt, but takes more time ( preference points ) to draw.
There good bucks in all those areas.

Poison Oak:
If you don't know what it looks like - find out!
The Applegate is chock full of it....and I'm not kidding.
If your not sure, try to hunt @ 3000 ft elevations or better - but know that the majority of the deer will be down low in the brush choked, oak draws.

Cascade mountains buck with my .270.

Oldest son's first blktl, Applegate.

2nd son's first, also an Applegate deer.


Good luck!

have to agree.... i cant look at those pictures and think blacktail country. a "proper" blacktail hunt would require being covered from head to toe in soaking wet fir needles. thousands of small cuts from blackberry vines. And all of that to maybe see 5 or 6 deer on a good day

I agree that black tail populations are WAY! down, I also think that a 2% success rate on public land in NW Oregon is rather optimistic?, the terrain, vegetation density and VAST!!!!!! amount of "private" land for them to hide on give them the edge.
Our season is also in October, how many deer are out running around when it's 80*?, not many?
I've hunted white tail in Wisconsin and it's pretty gravy compared to hunting black tail here!
All you guys back east that think we're poor hunters, come on out here and show us how o do it!

You are correct about one thing, you can't imagine it.


I remember a BBQ once in North Florida and a guy asked me about Alaska and I told him a few things and that I missed living there. He responded like you, "I can't imagine Alaska has anything that Jackson County doesn't have"

I replied "You are right, you can't imagine it"

Steelhead you'd be the one to answer my question. Im know you've hunted both.

Nope, Vermont wins that.

I have done quite a bit of blacktail hunting, but my success rate clearly establishes me as one of the non-experts.

That being said, I too would strongly advise against showing up anywhere in Western Washington for a Do-It-Yourself hunt. Surprisingly, access is getting harder and harder. The areas open to the public are starting to get more and more crowded, and the quality of deer has dropped significantly in the last 6-8 years. Hair Loss Syndrome really depleted the population, and it has struggled to recover.

Jesse Jaymes accurately described the behavior of blacktails here. On two occasions I have seen blacktails exhibit absolutely stunning steadfastness--once a doe allowed my partner (who was coming up to join me) pass within 10 feet of her. She was bedded in some vine maple and just lowered her head as he came by. He never saw her. In fairness to him, he was approaching from the backside and had no real chance of seeing her, unless he looked back over his shoulder. But, the point is, she didn't break; she held tight. It makes me wonder how many hundreds have done the same thing to me over the years!

Being self employed, I take off a bunch of time to hunt. Last year, I shot the second buck I saw in 14 days of hunting. Two years ago, I hunted 16 days and killed the first buck I saw. My partner hunted 17 days and did not see a buck--and he was one of the finest hunters I have ever known, as his trophy wall will attest.

I'm not tying to dramatize it, either. You don't have to be a great hunter to kill something over here. You just have to have access to decent land and have a fair amount of time available to hunt. Anybody who can put those two things together stands a good chance of filling their tag. But remember, "filling your tag" means about an 85% chance of shooting no better than 3x2 buck (not counting eyeguards). 3x3's are fairly uncommon, and 4 points are what we live for.

So anyway, that's what the world looks like through the eyes of an everyday joe. Don't get me wrong, I love it and won't quit until I can't go. But some folks, after 10+ days of trooping around in the rain, lose their taste for it. It can get disheartening.

Anyway, best of luck to you in getting a blacktail! Every blacktail is trophy!

If I had to travel and buy out of state tags, I'd go to SE AK for a Nov. rut hunt.
Heres a look at WA tag prices.Last time I was in AK. a nonres. deer tag was $150.

Those wide open rolling hills make blacktail harder to hunt than mule deer?

You've had a hunting career I can only dream of, but I'm really not sure what you're getting at with that post...

Well, I'll have to agree about the gentle "blacktail" terrain and climate in California. I lived and hunted there and consider the deer in California and southern Oregon "pseudo" blacktails. And yes, my first choice to get a "blacktail" if I was from out of town would be in that open oak and grass hill country in Northern California. Stay away from the real "rain deer" black tail haunts. Try this blacktail country I where I was hunting black bears last week. I'm still picking out Devil's club and various other thorns from my bod.

There were four elk in the photo below but I can only find two of them, close enough to reflect flash in their eyes. Deer trails are tunnels the deer, and hunters, crawl though. Add thorns and deer much smaller and more camoflaged than elk. It is raining in the photo.



Did anyone mention steep? Besides thick and wet?



The area below is an "easy" place to hunt blacktails, with some recent clearcuts. It is raining on snow in the photo. Blacktails in that area are scarce and furtive, like hunting Brer Rabbit in his briar patch.



The best blacktail hunting I got into last Fall was to climb up and hunt the timber and brush mountainside a half mile above the waterfall shown below, in drenching rain.




Definitely go to California or Southern OR for a blacktail unless you have a local to take you out in Alaska.

The above look like the Olympics behind my home, I spend a lot of time hunting deer there. There are open areas, clearcuts ,meadows if you know where to go. Get some altitude and things thin out a bit. I am an addicted blacktail hunter and always hold out for the more mature, secretive bucks. They can get big. A blacktail is a smaller cousin of the mule deer and twice as paranoid as any whitetail.

I was replying to the statement of blacktails being less difficult than Florida whitetails, nowhere did I say that blacktails were tougher than muleys, however a guy I know that grew up just up the road from me moved to Idaho many years ago and became a very successful outfitter in Preston Idaho.
He learned how to hunt, in the same steep, hot dry chapparral country that I call home.
He went on to guide lots of hunters to many truly large Muleys over the years.












He often told me that "if you can successfully hunt our blacktails then you will not have a problem in big mule deer country."
I think Larry was on to something.



A couple years back my son and I stopped at a game check station and while the Wyoming game warden was inspecting the big muley that my son had killed he scratched his head gave my kid a pat on the back and said to us " of all the non resident hunters we see, you California boys sure seem to show a very high percentage of success."
I took that as a fine compliment.



The photos of the dry grass country are near my home.
Hunting bucks there in the hundered degree weather of July, August & September make things a tad more difficult than the photos may lead you to believe.
The lower two pics show the Trinity Alps in Northern California.
They compare in ruggedness to anything I've encountered in the Rocky mountains.
My brother in law was a smoke jumper from Missoula Montana.
He spent many miles in these California mountains with me and swore those Alps were some of the meanest mountains he'd ever encountered anywhere.


If you consider this "gentle" I really am a pusssy.

Salmonella I wasn't referring to the roughness of the terrain. I was trying to compare the deer themselves. Almost nocturnal, extremely skittish and a tendency to inhabit extremely thick brush during hunting hours.

As you can tell I'm razzing a bit with the pseudo blacktails and gentle terrain. I never could figure out why Califrnia has deer season in the hottest time of a hot country. I killed a buck one time in N. California when it was 108 degrees. That do add some degree of difficulty in steep brushy terrain.

Coastal mtn folks consider the Rockies to be relatively gentle terrain with open vegetation also. (Now I'll have the Montana/Idaho Mountain States boys mad at me also!)

Will ditto that good blacktail hunters tend to do even better on mule deer. Ditto as well for those who can hunt Roosevelts in rain forest when they head east to Idaho or Montana: the ones I've hunted with are deer and elk killing machines in such open forest country. One of them said to me about the Rockies this past week: "You can SEE the ground on the opposite side of a canyon! You can WALK around under the trees!"

In your Trinty Alps photo, I can't tell how tall the brush is in the open portions out of the timber. It looks like you could glass animals on an opposite mountainside. Farther north we can only do that above timberline, or in some clearcuts.

Amusing thread.

I'll add California has probably the most bio-diverse deer habitat in the lower US with a variety of terrain in it's 44 deer management units:


Blacktail hunting in the commie state can be extremely easy on some of the private ranches and extremely challenging on public ground. The terrain and elevation varies, its been amusing to see what someone posts while making a comparison. The state has it all when it comes to terrain, jungle rainforests, lower oak and chaparral, thick timber, high alpine, and even desert.

MtnHtr

CA's fish and game determined long ago thru surveys hunters would rather have the opportunity to hunt rather than limit tags to everyone and have hunters sit out like the Nevada residents do. In fact alot of Nevada residents hunt CA as non res during the years they don't draw in their home state. In order to give residents a chance to hunt, the CA DFG sets most of the general seasons to end before the rut. Since certain coastal deer herds start rutting in late September, the DFG sets the A zone coastal zone hunts to start in July and end in late Sept.

And not all of CA's deer hunts have hot weather, I've encountered snow and temps down to 15 degrees in the upper Sierras during deer season - plenty cold! Cold Mediterranean Climate

"even rarer in this regard is the cold forest climate of the Sierra Nevada Range. This "cold-forest" climate is spread across the Sierra Nevada northward into the interior mountains of Oregon and Washington's Cascades, and eastward through Idaho's Bitterroot and Salmon Mountains."




Blacktail Country.com

MtnHtr

I think the variety of terrain is the key here. Even in the Yolla bolly wilderness you can be at elevations of about 6000ft and if the deer have already migrated you can drop a couple thousand feet and dig them out of the oak trees and acorns.

I have never had whitetail but it seems the blacktail are diet dependent on how they taste. I think when they drop down and start eating a ton of acorns the meat taste a little funky.

Looking back on my hunting log I take a mature deer for about every 9 days in the field. I put plenty of miles on my boots getting away from the roads and I am usually in position at first light and dont start back until Im out of shooting light. My days in the field are limited and I try to make the most of it. My typical day is to be set up on a feeding ground at first light and if nothing is active by 9am start moving based on the wind and weather. If its has been cold I try to start glassing eastfacing slopes where they will be trying to get warm with the first rays of sunlight. If its been hot (anything over 80degrees)I spend 90% of the time glassing any piece of shade I can find.

In regards to blacktail subspecies I know BC says that I5 is the dividing line but I dont believe it for a second. I have killed old mature bucks with big forks and typical blacktail traits as well as bucks looking much more like mule deer with regards to ears and tails.

After opening day, success for mature bucks depends on the weather and temps. If there's snow or rain there's hope! (at least where I hunt)

MtnHtr

Salmonella-
I see now you typed blacktail & mule deer. For whatever reason I read that as blacktail vs. mule deer. Completely changes the context, my apologies.

Pretty country btw. I grew up in the land of the clifftop whitey, I'm used to steep...