LAST EDITED ON Jul-14-18 AT 05:46AM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Jul-14-18 AT 05:40?AM (MST)
Like what was already mentioned, if it were me I would go up a couple of weeks before the season start. This will give you an idea of where the deer like to be without the pressure.
I totally agree with BOHNTR. The 80's and early 90's were some great years to be on the Kaibab hunting deer. I wish somehow it could be like that every year. My dad got three bucks on the early hunt in the late 80's and early 90's that were all in the 178" to 205" range. Also in the late 80's his friend got a 200+ inch buck on the archery hunt.I remember when I was little in the early 90's before I could hunt walking through the woods with my dad while he archery hunted, and how good it was compared to now. The deer just seemed to be pushed right by you often and the bucks were bigger.
I can't remember the exact dates of when it got worse but I'm thinking that it was the late 90's. This was probably after that big fire but I'm not 100 percent on that. I remember going up to visit my dad on his early rifle hunt in 2000 I believe. It was a hot dry hunt with bugs and nats everywhere. He sat a tank down lower all day in the heat with a bug net, and heavy scent lock clothing. He ended up getting a buck that way, but it wasn't that big. Being up there on that hunt is when it kicked in to me that the Kaibab herd was changing.
I bow hunted it every year in the early 2000's until it went to a draw. There were some ok years in there but you could notice a decline.
I believe it was 2005 when I had the early rifle hunt and it was a tough, tough hunt. My dad also had the same tag and it was the first year that he's never gotten a deer on a hunt. Again it was a mild hunt and 1000 hunters.
I also believe that the hunts for the reduction of does has affected the herd pretty hard. I also believe that the 1000 tags year, after year, after year when the deer were really not there has made it hard to recover. They said that the reduction was because of the fire and loss of feed. I see their point to a point, and it somewhat makes sense and logical. In some of the mid elevation of the Kaibab where the big fire was the oaks are coming in thick finally. We aren't going to live forever though, and need to see a quality herd in the near future.
When I as up on the archery hunt in 2014 it was an ok hunt. It wasn't great, and it wasn't really bad. It was better than 2005 and a lot worse than the early 90's. In the last maybe two or three years being up there I thought that the deer numbers were coming back a little bit which is good news.
