audsley

Now there's a real laugh. Private portions of ranches usually contain the ranch house, if there is one. So ranchers are going to start letting us shoot near the house? I favor finding ways to incentivize ranchers to be better stewards of the land for wildlife, but this is idea is ridiculous and suggests that some of our ranchers are not too tightly tethered to reality. Ranchers lease public lands for a single purpose: grazing. Now they think their grazing leases have purchased them the right to sell wildlife. Since when? If anyone finds their proposal logical, try this: We'll all go file mining claims on ranchers' leased land, pay the small fee required to register the mine, scratch around in the dirt occasionally to keep the claim qualified as active, and then if the rancher wants to build a road, tank or fence, he can pay us for the right to do it! After all, if we've paid for the right to mine, why can't we have the right to sell other rights? With respect to the logic employed, how's that any different from what these ranchers are proposing? I don't mean to paint all ranchers with the same brush, but some are dumber than their cattle. Ranchers lease public land with the understanding there will be wildlife on it and the public will come there to hunt. If they can't accept that, they shouldn't lease public land in the West. They should move to Iowa and buy a farm. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In more than 20 years of Coues hunting, I have never encountered a rattlesnake during a November or December hunt. I did once encountered a small feisty rattler on a cold day in November, but that was in Desert Mule Deer country on the Empire Ranch near Sonoita. I do not give any thought to rattlers in November and think nothing of walking in the dark. However, you just never know. My wife once encountered a small one on the pavement of the Bear Canyon tram road, near Sabino Canyon, the day after Christmas! And it was rattling away and ready to rumble! But a snakebite in mid-November is an extremely low-odds event. I've never heard of a hunter being bit in November. It's the dove and early season quail hunters who need to step carefully.

When the moon is not full, I generally find more deer in the mornings than in the afternoons. Probably because it's cooler. But it's been my impression that during full moon periods (such as we'll have opening weekend of this year's November hunt) many Coues bed down right around sunrise or even a little before. And possibly for that reason, they may get up a little earlier than usual in the afternoon. But that's just my experience. Does this seem accurate to the rest of you? Of course, this is purely an academic question because I'll be hunting both the morning and the afternoon each day I'm out. I'm just trying to make some sense of what I'm probably going to experience a couple of weeks from now.