Opinions on this years 12a archery hunt

[couesmagnet]

I’m curious to hear some opinions from people who used up their points this year on the kaibab archery hunt. I know there was quite a bit of point creep this year.
I’m sure there’s several non residents on here that drew it.
I was up there myself hunting with a really good friend. It was super tough for us. The deer numbers were embarrassingly low. I was blown away by even the lack of does we saw. The deer numbers are just mind blowingly low. It’s scary how low the density is now up there. My buddy was extremely lucky to have arrowed a 185 4 by 4. I know of most of the good bucks killed up there and those were very few. From what I can gather it seems I heard of maybe 6 bucks over 180 killed in total.
I want to see what others opinions are of their experience. Hope some had a better experience than we did. 4 dinky bucks a day was the norm and an average of maybe 10 to 12 does a day. Been hunting the kaibab with frequency since 1986. Flabbergasted at the deer numbers now a days. What’s everyone else’s opinion of what they experienced?
Seems like the point creep the kaibab has experienced is totally unfounded in merit.

 

[coueser]

Sorry, I was not on the archery hunt this year but I did hunt the Kaibab late rifle in 2021. Talked with WM Todd Buck on the hunt and he said the fawn recruitment had been bad for the years prior - I don't remember exactly, but he said on average they see ~65 fawns/100 does on surveys but it had been down to ~30 fawns/100 does for the 2-3 years prior. We are seeing the results of those poor years now. They have decreased tags, and it will help, but it seems for over a decade now tags keep getting decreased on the Kaibab and yet the quality and numbers don't seem to have rebounded as hoped. . . Probably should have cut the doe hunts earlier and I don't even want to guess how many bucks are wounded/loss on the archery hunt every year. I think cutting those tags will help but it seems that the herd up there is really struggling to rebound. I agree with your statement that the current quality is lagging behind the reputation but, honestly, the same could probably be said for almost all deer hunting in the west. I'd still take a Kaibab/strip tag over any other AZ tag; its just not what it once was.

 

[LIK2HNT]

Does not sound good, but your friend did make it work. And got a good buck to boot.
Hope it’s not that bad. Heading down there in a few weeks to help my friend on his early rifle hunt.

 

[huntazido]

Everytime I go up there I try to do some varmint calling. On the early rifle hunt, head down into the low country for some dogs. From my experiences, very few deer hunters are down in that country on the early hunt.

 

[Largebull]

Everytime I go up there I try to do some varmint calling. On the early rifle hunt, head down into the low country for some dogs. From my experiences, very few deer hunters are down in that country on the early hunt.

There are Resident deer down low , A lot don't hunt it............BULL!

 

[crazymonkey]

I was up there two years ago for the hunt and it was the same . We did see lots of doe and fawns . 1 small buck the day before the hunt and I had a small group of 4 bucks pass my stand at 110 yds so outa my archery range for sure. We did run into Abby the game officer at the lodge and she said deer were down then . Not the hunt it was the first time I drew a tag about 12 years ago . Saw 42 bucks the first day and had deer every day it didn't rain . Shot a good 4x4 and lost it due to punching it right in the shoulder and didn't penetrate. Won't use rage broadheads again it was only a 18 yd shot .

 

[couesmagnet]

Wanted to add, there are several 200 inch plus deer there this year. From the people I talked to that spent lots of time up there, there’s at least 10 bucks over 200 and decent number of low 90 s type deer.
There are some really good bucks up there this year and not just a couple. So know if you have a tag or are making the trip with your buddy it’s far from a waste of time. Dreams could be made.
It’s the deer density that I’m blown away by.
Standard spots that have been good forever were just shy of being void of deer. Just seeing a deer was kinda exciting in stuff that’s been really good for years.
There was a pretty good number of deer in and around the burn but that’s where all the tags go every year. It’s a circus in there and not much fun to hunt because of it.
I’m no wildlife biologist , but theres no way they can’t increase the population up there by 25 percent without a care in the world.
Many areas that used to hold decent to good populations of deer were basically not being utilized or at 80 percent reduction or more.
I sure hope somehow that lots of spots that have deer every year , have them again. I didn’t see any ecological changes in these areas that looked diff or worse. Nothing looked diff in fact.
I wouldn’t issue another doe tag if I was g and f. Add the money lost in sales to the buck tags. Shoot as many lions as the quota allows, and hope for an increase.
Good luck to all this year up there. There’s some really good bucks to be found this year.

 

[Largebull]

They need to do away with the Youth doe hunt if they didn't. Thats Arizona's Deer factory ,sad they are letting it get this bad.........................BULL!

 

[wweaver79]

I think they cut the youth doe tags way back this year or last from 100 to 25 or something like that

 

[coueser]

Couesmagnet, just curious. . . Do you feel like the Mangum fire burn area is holding a lot of deer and spreading them out from the Warm Fire burn where they usually are dying the summer?

 

[couesmagnet]

Coueser, I wish I had an answer but I’m not sure what’s going on up there. It’s still a magical place to be, the numbers are just way down including the doe population.
Good luck to all this year up there. Some dreams will come true for some hunters for sure!!

 

[muleyboy]

I’ve been bow hunting in the Kaibab since I was old enough to get a tag and I’m almost 50 now. I’ve seen this happen over there before. Great number of deer and a good buck to doe ratio then the next few years the herd seemed to all but vanish. My daughter got a returned tag 4 years ago and we saw lots of deer but we noticed the fawns were missing. The next year she drew a tag and the deer were all but gone in the area we hunt. It was odd. Had a friend there this year and he said it’s the same now. The only deer they saw was in the burn by Jacob Lake. His brother got a nice 4 point. Hopefully it’s just a cyclical issue and they will come back?

 

[Deerdon]

I actually spoke to the biologist when she started the original doe hunts up there with 2000 tags. (she might have retired last year?). She specifically told me she was actually trying to reduce the herd population overall and with a particular goal to increase the buck to doe ratio. Unfortunately, she left the high doe tag quota in place for many years...and at the same time the plateau was experiencing a severe drought. During our conversation I made an argument that, using her logic, if you have 100 deer in a pen and 1 of them was a buck...you could shoot 98 does and certainly accomplish a 1 to 1 buck to doe ratio....but that would also mean there were only 2 deer left! She claimed the winter range was overgrazed and the herd needed to be thinned. For those of you that remember her...Amber Munig. Anyways, I understand the occasional need for F&G to step in and use certain management practices, but I don't remember much of an issue with that particular herd and starvation due to winter kill? It pains me when a masters degree somewhere is used to go against what mother nature has been doing well for a hundred thousand years!

 

[rockymtnhunter]

OK, I'll weigh in on this topic - I worked for the FS on the North Kaibab in '71, '72 and '77 - my "credentials" -B.S. Forest Mgt USU; former chairman of Montana Fish and Wildlife Conservation Trust., 37 years of federal experience addressing wildlife mgt issues, such as grizzly bears, blackfooted ferret, bighorn sheep, elk and mule deer., and perhaps most important an avid hunter for 50+ years.

Back then you bought an counter deer tag (and it included a turkey tag)- I saw few archery hunters then - just a few camps widely scattered around, I'd say there were fewer than 200 archery hunters. And what about the deer? "lots" of deer - I'd see an average of about 125-150 every day, and bucks were probably 40% of that number. Habitat was good - there was a lot of logging happening then, which created a lot habitat improvement (IMO). I often saw deer in areas recently logged. Deer were widely found most everywhere on plateau, all the way from the NPS boundary in the south up to north of Jacob Lake. A rule of thumb was if you saw aspen then the would be deer. The FS was doing a lot of work managing for Kaibab squirrels. There were not many wildfires - and any fire that started was attacked & controlled in 24 hrs -the Saddle Mtn in "64 was the most recent "big" fire that everybody talked about.

What about big bucks back then? Yes, I would see 6 or 7 "big bucks" every day of work and hunting - now that I'm more experienced in scoring bucks, they were probably 180-200 pts. I took a 6x7 non typical in "72. It was typical that archers were highly successful, I would see a few camps where everybody tagged out from small forkies to big 4x4's. I'm not sure what deer population was, but it was probably 15-25,000 based on my anecdotal observations.

FS relaxed it's fire mgt policies in the mid-to-late 80's and began managing wildfires for habitat improvement purposes - that led to numerous large fires in late 80's until now. My experience is that deer population peaked in 87-89 - lots of big bucks, but AZGFD and FS issued 2000 doe tags during those years - I was there and it was a bloody massacre, many does were shot and left laying. I continued to bow hunt through then early-to-mid 90's. By 1997 it was clear to me that the Kaibab archery tags would need to be issued through the draw system - deer numbers were good,' but number of hunters was going through roof, I estimate 2500 to 3000 bow hunters - it was a circus.

I noticed in '97 a few places where a browse line showed in a few aspen stands; usually an indicator of too many deer. Today you see an obvious browse in and around the 2006 Warm Fire burn (hereafter referred to as "The Burn"). So what's going on? Here's my on-the-ground observations - now in the places I bow hunted prior to 1997, i see very few deer - habitat appears to be in excellent condition, but few deer to be seen. During the past 10 years I've been with hunters on the late rifle hunt, and the winter range on the west and north sides looks pretty good to me, seems like it could support more deer. I understand a big on the constraint on winter range is water sources.

The Burn has served as a huge magnet in terms of deer in and around it - the tremendous aspen regeneration drew deer like crazy, and hunters - it not only created a lot of high quality deer habitat, it also visually opened up a huge area that could be glassed, so hunters could spot bucks from long distances, and there are a lot of roads so access is good. At times my pre-season scouting and during the archery hunt, it seems like all the deer are in the Burn - I know that's not true, but deer can hard to find outside the Burn.

Will the Mangum Fire draw deer like the Burn - IMO not likely, because a major part of it swept through lower elevation areas that were P-J and mixed PO

 

[couesmagnet]

OK, I'll weigh in on this topic - I worked for the FS on the North Kaibab in '71, '72 and '77 - my "credentials" -B.S. Forest Mgt USU; former chairman of Montana Fish and Wildlife Conservation Trust., 37 years of federal experience addressing wildlife mgt issues, such as grizzly bears, blackfooted ferret, bighorn sheep, elk and mule deer., and perhaps most important an avid hunter for 50+ years.

Back then you bought an counter deer tag (and it included a turkey tag)- I saw few archery hunters then - just a few camps widely scattered around, I'd say there were fewer than 200 archery hunters. And what about the deer? "lots" of deer - I'd see an average of about 125-150 every day, and bucks were probably 40% of that number. Habitat was good - there was a lot of logging happening then, which created a lot habitat improvement (IMO). I often saw deer in areas recently logged. Deer were widely found most everywhere on plateau, all the way from the NPS boundary in the south up to north of Jacob Lake. A rule of thumb was if you saw aspen then the would be deer. The FS was doing a lot of work managing for Kaibab squirrels. There were not many wildfires - and any fire that started was attacked & controlled in 24 hrs -the Saddle Mtn in "64 was the most recent "big" fire that everybody talked about.

What about big bucks back then? Yes, I would see 6 or 7 "big bucks" every day of work and hunting - now that I'm more experienced in scoring bucks, they were probably 180-200 pts. I took a 6x7 non typical in "72. It was typical that archers were highly successful, I would see a few camps where everybody tagged out from small forkies to big 4x4's. I'm not sure what deer population was, but it was probably 15-25,000 based on my anecdotal observations.

FS relaxed it's fire mgt policies in the mid-to-late 80's and began managing wildfires for habitat improvement purposes - that led to numerous large fires in late 80's until now. My experience is that deer population peaked in 87-89 - lots of big bucks, but AZGFD and FS issued 2000 doe tags during those years - I was there and it was a bloody massacre, many does were shot and left laying. I continued to bow hunt through then early-to-mid 90's. By 1997 it was clear to me that the Kaibab archery tags would need to be issued through the draw system - deer numbers were good,' but number of hunters was going through roof, I estimate 2500 to 3000 bow hunters - it was a circus.

I noticed in '97 a few places where a browse line showed in a few aspen stands; usually an indicator of too many deer. Today you see an obvious browse in and around the 2006 Warm Fire burn (hereafter referred to as "The Burn"). So what's going on? Here's my on-the-ground observations - now in the places I bow hunted prior to 1997, i see very few deer - habitat appears to be in excellent condition, but few deer to be seen. During the past 10 years I've been with hunters on the late rifle hunt, and the winter range on the west and north sides looks pretty good to me, seems like it could support more deer. I understand a big on the constraint on winter range is water sources.

The Burn has served as a huge magnet in terms of deer in and around it - the tremendous aspen regeneration drew deer like crazy, and hunters - it not only created a lot of high quality deer habitat, it also visually opened up a huge area that could be glassed, so hunters could spot bucks from long distances, and there are a lot of roads so access is good. At times my pre-season scouting and during the archery hunt, it seems like all the deer are in the Burn - I know that's not true, but deer can hard to find outside the Burn.

Will the Mangum Fire draw deer like the Burn - IMO not likely, because a major part of it swept through lower elevation areas that were P-J and mixed PO

Rocky Mountain hunter, that’s a perfect synopsis of it all. I drew 3 tags between 87 and 91. I believe the population was at 25 to 30 k. There were 2000 plus any deer tags if I remember right. We found 3 abandoned does because they were any deer tags and dudes were leaving their does to shoot bucks. It was an absolute slaughter and there were lots of big bucks in the range you said there were.
We sure were lucky to have witnessed all those bucks. I remember one camp had 6 tags and there wasn’t a buck in it under 180. A couple were 200 inchers.
The late hunt draw odds were 25 plus percent. I think In 1988 there was over a thousand any deer tags on the late hunt alone. 2000 plus any deer tags on the early hunt the same year.
We saw some great bucks back then on the archery hunt in upper sowatts, and in numbers. So much country up there isn’t even being utilized anymore. Even the middle zone ie Burt corral, , little mountain , big springs, had lots of deer on the archery hunts. 15 to 20 plus buck days. You’d be lucky to go into that stuff now and see a couple bucks at best. Stuff looks amazing still. Even better actually. But almost no deer.
Great write up and spot on across the board. We were lucky to have been hunting back then, especially on the kaibab. Fantasy draw odds and lots of big bucks.

 

[fin little]

I had a 12AW late buck tag in 91 , there was 1300 buck tags . There was that many on the early hunt also I think. I dont recall how many doe tags but it was a lot. The Kaibab is a dry mountain. It also has a history of over grazing and habitat destruction back to times when it was a refuge and deer werent hunted. I was told the more water they develop on the winter range the more deer the west side can sustain. It takes 30 yrs to recover damaged habitat so they tend to be cautious on deer numbers. Im not sure the low deer numbers up there are deliberate. It seems to be a problem all over the west. Oh concerning the bow hunt. I hunted many seasons in the 80s 90s . It was awesome. Pine Hollow( south of little mtn) was big buck heaven.

 

[yotebuster17]

Ahhh the good ol days (syndrome). People tend to remember all the good times as an amalgamation of the peaks of every year combined into one highlight reel. Is the kaibab as good as it used to be? Likely not. Is there a lot more pressure on it to be the best now that NR tags are essentially once in a lifetime and resident tags are only a few times in a lifetime? Yep. About all they can do is cut the doe tags, manage the buck tags and try to manage the predators the best they can, oh, and hope the whole place burns in 10% chunks annually.

 

[wweaver79]

and hope the whole place burns in 10% chunks annually.

This ^^^^

They did at least cut the doe tags and buck tags got cut way back. Some 2000 acre fires every year would be great for sure.

 

[Deerdon]

Ahhh the good ol days (syndrome). People tend to remember all the good times as an amalgamation of the peaks of every year combined into one highlight reel. Is the kaibab as good as it used to be? Likely not. Is there a lot more pressure on it to be the best now that NR tags are essentially once in a lifetime and resident tags are only a few times in a lifetime? Yep. About all they can do is cut the doe tags, manage the buck tags and try to manage the predators the best they can, oh, and hope the whole place burns in 10% chunks annually.

And start logging again!

 

[rockymtnhunter]

Rocky Mountain hunter, that’s a perfect synopsis of it all. I drew 3 tags between 87 and 91. I believe the population was at 25 to 30 k. There were 2000 plus any deer tags if I remember right. We found 3 abandoned does because they were any deer tags and dudes were leaving their does to shoot bucks. It was an absolute slaughter and there were lots of big bucks in the range you said there were.
We sure were lucky to have witnessed all those bucks. I remember one camp had 6 tags and there wasn’t a buck in it under 180. A couple were 200 inchers.
The late hunt draw odds were 25 plus percent. I think In 1988 there was over a thousand any deer tags on the late hunt alone. 2000 plus any deer tags on the early hunt the same year.
We saw some great bucks back then on the archery hunt in upper sowatts, and in numbers. So much country up there isn’t even being utilized anymore. Even the middle zone ie Burt corral, , little mountain , big springs, had lots of deer on the archery hunts. 15 to 20 plus buck days. You’d be lucky to go into that stuff now and see a couple bucks at best. Stuff looks amazing still. Even better actually. But almost no deer.
Great write up and spot on across the board. We were lucky to have been hunting back then, especially on the kaibab. Fantasy draw odds and lots of big bucks.