Hunting California D14

This blog is dedicated to deer hunters who choose to hunt, or are stuck hunting California's zone D14.  This zone is basically the San Bernardino National Forest.  Hunting in California can be problematic.  Hunting and hunters rank one step higher than tax-cuts with our lop-sided political leadership in The Golden State. Hunting in Southern California can be frustrating and downright impossible at times.  California, specifically D14 hunters need all the help they can get and I hope this site can be a place where we can help each other.

When I started this hunting process around July 2017, I found the lack of information sharing and discussion regarding D14 , even Southern California deer hunting, appalling.  I didn't really expect hunters to be sharing their honey holes with coordinates and a map, but more general information like weather conditions, topography, elevation, feed/cover, herd behavior, and whatever else might have contributed to successful hunts. [ E.g. I thought falling acorns were like crack to deer.  Sunday of opening weekend, before light, I found an oak tree dropping acorns the size of my thumb on an established deer trail, near a stream, with fresh tracks all over it.  I sucked into a bush with full camo and scent control. I never saw anything that day.  What did I do wrong?  I hope to find out.]

A month prior, our family took an RV trip through seven western states where my sons saw what "real" wilderness and wild game looked like.  They asked me if we could go hunting sometime.  I've lived in Southern California for about 30 years and bird hunted about 10 of those years with mixed success.  Usually, the mixture was heavy on the unsuccessful side.  But I never tried for deer.  I looked into getting a deer tag in Utah.  My boys were excited about that prospect.  They saw about 4 nice bucks on our way to go fishing one morning in Utah.  Eventually, I decided to "practice" in our own "backyard."  People say that we (Southern Californians) are a bit spoiled and desensitized to the beauty and diversity found within an hour drive in any direction.  Utah is a 6-hour drive.  I decided California would do this time.

I chose D14, well, because it's close and we've camped, fished, and boated around there for years.  I was familiar with it.  Also, California's lead bullet ban has not reached D14 yet and I'm still not sure how this crazy state can blame the decline of the condor on lead bullets!  Years ago, when condors were much more prevalent, we had a lot more hunters with lead bullets and a lot fewer people!  You do the math!  Our state defeats common sense at every turn.  Anyway...

Although I have not shot/hunted a deer in 33 years, we were eventually successful and punched our tag, but it was in no way due to my hunting skills and more due to dumb luck! In successive posts I will show you all the places we failed and the things that we tried that didn't work.

I think I know what went wrong...

Map of every place we failed

You will notice light blue circles on every general location we hunted D14 from the rifle opener to the last week.  I've learned since that my scouting was not sufficient.  The first place we scouted, and subsequently hunted during opening morning, was out west of  Mountain Home Village.  We had found water, trails with tracks, and scat (although I'm not sure how fresh it was).  We never really set eyes on any deer during our scouting, but knew that they would be in for water or cool, shady beds at sometime.  Come opening morning there were at least two other groups of hunters who had pushed up the valley, past our "watering hole" where we were camo'd in.  If deer were going to come to our little watering hole, they weren't now.  The hunters cut them off by their presence and left us with nothing.  I spoke with them afterward, and they did see a small herd of does, but no bucks.  Were those our deer we were waiting for?  Most likely.  Lessons learned:  Scout like you hunt or at least until you see something and know where it's going and when.  Go where the hunters are not.  Seems simple.

The second place I scouted during the summer were the hills above Silverwood Lake.  It was here I discovered the problem with using Google Earth and hunting D14 in general.  The hills are way steeper than they appear and the brush in lower elevations (below 6,000) is so dense as to be mostly impassable.  If it was not a hiking, or extremely well used game trail, I could get nowhere.  All I did was road scout this area for the most part.  We did see a doe crossing the road on the way down, however, we never hunted the area.

Resuming opening day, I remembered what I had read that deer go up in hot weather and down in cold and nasty weather.  We went up the mountain.  We went to the Jenks Lake/Barton Flats area along with dozens of our fellow venison enthusiasts.  They, like me were "road hunting" in late morning desperation.  Road hunting, in as much as you are driving around looking for deer activity off the roadsides, is fine at that.  Most hunters know that shooting from a vehicle, especially on a road is extremely illegal.  I'm sure most of those guys knew that.  What they may not been aware of is that the area of Jenks Lake is right on the border of two shooting zones.  BLM Shooting Zones (D14).  SBC Shooting and Hunting Areas  (The maps are from BLM.  They're the same map, but the 1st one is zoomed and cropped for D14.)  If you look at the maps, the yellow areas are where you can hunt with a rifle, and the blue areas are shotgun or bow only.  The maps don't have small roads on them, and therefore, it's very difficult to know exactly where you can get yourself in trouble or not in those border areas like Jenks Lake.  If anyone has better shooting zone maps, PLEASE SHARE!