Check in on what you are hunting this year and what with.

Also if you have some California game pictures post them, I like seeing what this state can produce.

I have my D3-D5 tag and heading out the next two weekends to try and arrow a forked horn or better.

Here is the distribution of deer through out California

Hows a burro deer differ from a mule deer?

First of all, they aren't found in the New York-Providence Mtn area where the map has them. They live where the Desert Ironwood grows, which is much further down the Colorado River and in a much warmer climate.
They run the same size as the Rocky Mtn. Mule Deer, but are colored or marked alot differently. They are a sort of yellowish brown in their winter coats. Their skull caps are brown not black. Their rump patches are alot smaller and no where near a distinct. Their summer coats, however are repoorted to be very similar to that of other deer. Can't verify this myself as I've never seen one in summer coat. E

I'm in the Southern Mule Deer area, down SW - D16.

_________________
Eric

I've got family in Santa Maria and when I go visit I always see deer. Now I've been told by both sides that they don't have mule deer or blacktails around there and vice versa.

I don't know who to believe.

I see deer along 166 between Maricopa an Santa Maria and I see lots of deer along 101 between Santa Maria and Buelton.

So for you locals,..what species of deer are they most likely..?

I'm in A Zone North.
Columbian Blacktails.
I often hunt B zone as well, but not this year.

Passed up a dozen bucks so far looking for two humdingers that we located during archery season.
Like a needle in a haystack.

My avatar shows a 25" wide blacktail my son took a couple years back.


If you are looking for horn porn here are three of the best Mule Deer to ever come from California.

Dang!

Big ole guys. Wonder if they were X zone bucks.

My Aunt's FIL owns some land in North A. If my Aunt's husband was not a butthole I would have access to some good blacktails.

Just love all the ignorant fools who think there's no hunting heritage in California. Awesome bucks!

I no longer live there, but grew up hunting small game, upland birds and waterfowl there. Used to BBQ fresh killed pheasant for Thanksgiving. Flew in the morning, dinner in the evening. Still good hunting for large game too. Despite the very left wing politics.

Regards, Guy

The ones I've seen there are Columbian Blacktails. The tops of their tails are all black. Which is the easiest way to tell. Further south, you are suppose to get California Mule Deer. They have a black strip and a black tip on top of their tails. They often run a bit larger than the true blacktails.
The deer that show up in my yard are marked like Blacktails but are not recognized by Boone & Crocket as such because they easily interbreed with the local California Mule Deer that summer in the mountains.
I've seen deer as high as 8000 ft. marked like blacktails as well as California Muleys. Then there are the Rocky Mtn. Mule Deer that show up where the zones tend to mix. Heck, I had a biologist point out a Ca. Muley wintering with a heard of Rocky Mtn. Muleys in Mono county one time.
It other words, this deer sub species bussiness can get kind of confusing. E

Grew up in PA hunting whitetails and it took me a while to get use to hunting out here.

Hunted X12 last year for the very first time (took 4 years of points) hunted hard and shot a nice 3x4 on the next to last day, saw a huge 4x4 immediately after I pulled the trigger but was still happy with my first x zone buck!

This year I am hunting D9 in the Piute mountains south of Lake Isabella. Last time up there I saw 5 bucks by 9am first morning. Only problem they were all forkies.

I used to hunt the Paiutes when I lived in Los Angeles, years ago. Killed a couple of nice four point bucks there, up in the Clear Creek canyon that runs from Miracle Hot Springs up to Havilah.

Also used my 1946 CJ2A Willys to get around. That bugger would go anywhere!

Good luck.

L.W.

Mix of breeds. Vandenberg airforce base had a lot of mule deer brought in during the 70's and you clearly see it in some of the genetics, much larger ears and bigger bucks. I believe scientific basis all of the deer on the central coast are mule deer but can also tell you than anything more than a forked horn is rare regardless of what they eat or how long they live. I hunted the Drum Canyon area of Los Alamos for a long time and never put a tag on a buck that looked anything like what most of us consider a mature mule deer. I think the biggest I ever tagged was well under 150lb live weight and horn wise about a 20" forked horn with eyeguards that was at least 5-7 years old. Every year some good bucks, mature 4x4 over 25", come off the base. The deer you see off of Hwy 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield are even smaller, not a log of food base out there for them.

Also over the years I got tired of dogging rattlesnakes and poison oak so I head for B5 in the Wilderness.

I hunt southern A-zone. These were from near Hwy 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield. I figure they are California mule deer. My wife with her best buck.


A couple of mine.



Here's the average little forkie from last year in Ventura County.


The first two above are about as big as they get in body size. They usually yield about 80 pounds of boned meat. The average fork horn yields around 55 pounds. Fork horns are common. There are a fair number of 3X3s around. One from two years ago-still in velvet.


4X4s are rare but do exist. I have killed two that I remember in 30 years. One from 1983.

Nice group of bucks there Marc. I know some buddies that laughed at the thought of bragging about a 3 pointer until they hunted out here.

Living on the ranch for the first 20 years of my life I always collected sheds and I have one matching set of horns from a 4x4 that would probably be a 22-24" spread at most. Those horns dwarf every other buck I have ever seen in that area. We averaged 8-10 bucks a year and most were 3-4 years old and produced. Marcs numbers for meat yield are right on the money.

Thanks, we do have to be satisfied with a little less than the boys back east.

The best buck I have seen on the hoof here was in June on a scouting trip. He was a 4X4 that would have gone well over 25". He was hanging out with another 4X4 that was only a little smaller. Nowhere to be found when season opened. They were adjacent to private land where no hunting was allowed so they probably stayed there during season.

A few years ago another hunter found a head with the dried out hide attached. It was a 4X4 that measured 23-1/2". Probably a lion kill. It was a beautiful buck.

There used to be a bunch of beautiful bucks hanging in the Buckhorn Saloon in New Cuyama on Hwy 166. The Buckhorn is closed now. The deer were killed in the mountains around there by Lamar Johnston, a local rancher, years ago. Lamar passed away some time ago and I suppose his son has the heads now.

X9a this year so its a mix of Inyo and rockey mtn. muledeer. For those in D11 this year this buck was taken almost in sight of downtown L.A..


Richard

That's a dandy! I killed the 4 pt. pictured above on the south side of Mt. Waterman in the evening. I spent the night with him there and all the lights of LA and the San Gabriel valley were spread out below.

I used to hunt around Mt. Pacifico and above Mill Creek Station also but haven't been out there in many years.

We've sure hunted some of the same ground. On the weekends my pa used to drive me over to pacifico and round mtn.from wrightwood to hunt on the weekends. This was back in the late 80s.

Richard

Went out today. Had a 2x2 come about 30 yards but he was covered by some bushes. Only saw his head.

Then I watched a few 2x2's and a 3x2 eat at about 350 yards away.

I can not wait till rifle season.

Sorry for no pictures. I left the camera in my backpack which was in the truck.

Some one I know just shot his deer.



Nice 8 pt for Cali.

Marc

How wide was your wife's 4x4, 22 to 24"? Looks mule from the picture.

I always thought from Dublin/ P-town west were all 100 pound blacktails except above Marin county.

Allen

Allen not sure where your from but these are the herd of bucks that hang out at the chabot range and a whopper blacktail, about as thick as I have seen for body size from the San Ramon foothills.

What is that hanging off his chest? Was this buck drinking out of the nuclear cooling pond?

Here is another local buck. DP I have no idea, I posted this picture a while back and someone identified it as a relatively common cyst of some sort.

BTW If I'm not mistaken wild pigs can be shot in CA year round without limit

You are correct. 20 dollars a tag and there is no limit for how many you take.

I remember when wild pigs were considered a non game animal, no tags and no limit. Then someone at F&G decided they wanted some $$ for managing these destructive pests and fees/tags were implemented along with big game rules.

MtnHtr

Hemiallen, missed your question. My wife's buck was only 19-1/2". I take a good pic, huh? My 3X2 was 20-1/2" but it looks smaller. The width of the ears on these deer is about 19".

We spotted a buck last week across the same canyon the wife's came from. The inside spread was even with the ends of his ears so he was a 22" to 23" buck. Trouble was, he was 430 yards away in poor light and facing away. I would have taken a poke if he had turned broadside but he didn't. He just went straight away up over the top of the ridge. I missed a good buck the day before at 376 yards at first light. He was broadside but I could hardly see him through the scope. I could see him fine with the binoculars. It turned out the fast focus on the scope was about a half a turn off. I am going to tape that thing so it can't move.

D-13 opens Saturday so I will be at it again. I was looking for a good buck in A zone. I will probably kill the first legal buck I see in D-13.

Here is a blacktail my Aunt's friend shot yesterday.

22 1/2 inch spread.

Those are nice bucks you guys are killing!

Very nice work guys, I really dont think Cali deer hunting gets as much respect as it should for the difficulty involved. It can be damn tough to punch your tag on public land. I ate my tag soup this year and passed on a couple tiny forked horns but never saw anything worth trying for.

Weather has been tough up in the B zones, at the beginning of the week it was 88deg at the peak and at the end of the week it was 28deg with a couple snow flurries.

Just curious, can the burro deer get to B&C proportions? I've never seen one make book.

Hoping to get lucky with the weather this week and see if I can't notch my tag in the Sierras off HWY88. Hopefully, the snow has pushed some of those high bucks down to lower elevations.

I went up 88 two weeks ago. Saw nothing and heard no shots all day.

I am going up HWY 4 next Monday, I also hope the snow pushed down some of the bucks.

Blacktail season is four weeks old here in the part of the B-zones I hunt. All the bucks we saw the week before have hidden too well for my tastes.

We have seen some bruisers way past our rifles capabilities, and we use Weatherby Magnums. But, the weather has been making the ground quieter, and we found a path into the area where we spotted the big ones. My friend Brian got his daughter onto a very nice 3X3 on opening morning about a mile down slope of where we have been concentrating. But those bucks might never show up again, you just can't pattern Blacktails.

My backpacking trip into the Marble mountains was a big zero too. However the country is spectacular, and there was lots of bear.

I have put in an awful lot of effort, but that is Blacktail hunting in a nutshell here on the north coast.

We have just under two weeks left, and despite some disappointment in our being skunked so far, we believe it will work out.

B-zone is always too short when the grape harvest is still going.
Hope I can get up there sometime next week.

Hi California hunters,

I have a couple questions:
What type of deer are around Yosemite National Park?
Do any Rocky Mountain Mule Deer in CA regularly get big enough for the records or is it just your blacktails?

Good luck to you all.

The Yosemite area has California Mule Deer which are migratory with the lower elevations hosting blacktails.
Yes, Kalifornia has produced some book heads in both Rocky Mtn Mule Deer and the desert dwelling Burro Deer. E

There are at least two California Mule deer non-typicals that have made the all time book, and are listed under the B&C Rocky Mtn mule deer category. One huge non typical buck was former number 3, it came from the Yosemite herd (it's mount now wears a rocky mtn cape though).

MtnHtr

Here's a 205 gross typical Muley taken in Northern California in 2005.



This 31" 10 x 9 monster was taken just east of the B&C Blacktail boundary in Redding Ca.

(Thanks Parrey)

And people think California deer are small.

Those are two very nice bucks.