Yuma Outdoorsman

Well, we hiked 9 miles. Only saw a couple young bucks. I found 3 drop antlers and my brother in law scored on a giant bighorn ram dead head. We eliminated a lot of country and scratched an itch I’ve had for awhile. On to the next.

Headed out in the morning! Hopefully I’ve got some photos to share after. Got a 7 mile hike planned...hopefully find some good sheds and even bigger bucks! 🤞🏻

I've got cameras on 5 different waterholes and not one of them had quail coming to drink. I was so bummed. I have seen a couple coveys out scouting for deer but the numbers are way down compared to last year. Thanks for the report. That is some very good information.

Where I'm at we don't have much grass but there is some areas where it can get between the ankle and knee and man it is sketchy walking through it in late September/October when the rattlers are looking to fatten up. Luckily, the few I've seen, I saw them before they saw me.

It is so thick in the area I've got deer on camera that I don't think I could glass them up if I wanted. There are mountains around but that buck in the photo I attached in the original post, I saw him run across the road in front of me and he was 3 miles away from the closest hill. It would've been impossible to see him from any mountain because of how deep cut the washes are. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of walking.

It's pretty simple in my opinion. More does for bucks to breed equals more fawns to have a chance to be born. More fawns being born equals more chance for bucks to be born. More bucks that are born, more of a population of bucks there will be. I wouldn't mind seeing Arizona implement a law saying a buck has to be a forkie or bigger to harvest. I understand some people don't hunt for antlers but giving the younger bucks a chance to leave mama gives them a chance to survive to reach maturity. I'm not a biologist though.

What a great monsoon for the desert this year. Gotta love it. More rain today!!!

It's getting so bad that pretty soon, all the "youtube stars" are going to become patch pirates with sponsors all over their clothes like what has happened in the fishing industry. Average Joe's in the local tournaments started making their own jerseys and adding all these sponsors on them and they aren't even really sponsored. I already see them on their instagram posts tagging every dang outdoor company, bow company, rifle company, coffee, blah blah blah...social media and the "look at me" mindset has changed the terms "hunter or hunting" ....I do enjoy videos on youtube where it's people out hunting for themselves and not trying to plug a sponsor or nothing. Those are enjoyable.

The deer I had on camera in July looked horrible but once we got rain, they fattened up over the next couple months. Hopefully that buck did too. If this dang weather would break, it would make it a lot easier on them and it would make it a lot more intriguing to want to go hiking through the hills to find them before the season. The 105+ degree days lately in Yuma suck. Woke up to 81% humidity on Saturday. That is terrible. It's saying 108 for this week still. I do see some light at the end of the tunnel though as there are some 99's showing on the 15 day now. Hopefully you have some good stuff on those other areas you placed a camera.

I bet he has short tine length but sits 27-29" wide. He looks like he has a pretty skinny body. Not much of a gut on him. I hope he comes back on camera for ya and you can see what he turned into. It's sometimes pretty shocking to see how fast their antlers grow.

Get him! 🤜🏻...awesome buck!

Not sure if you hunt around the farmland or not but I know some people who spotlight fields for fun this time of year and areas where they typically see 200-300 deer were empty. They saw less than 5 deer the couple hours they were out. The desert is so green the deer aren’t coming to the fields. That is satisfying to me 😂....

Dude July/August was so terrible. On drinkers where I usually have 20-25 deer each night, I was getting 2-3 max. Most of them were spikes and forkies or does. I took them down for a while and now in September the waterholes are finally being used again.

Congrats on the nice buck and thanks for the write up.

What camera do you use? That has awesome quality.

I saw a ton of grass along the shoulder of HWY 95 between Yuma and Quartzsite last week. HWY 95 is notorious for deer being hit. All I could think about was how many would get hit this season fall feeding along the road. Hopefully the desert being green keeps them off the road. This was a buck that just got hit a couple weeks ago.

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-central-southern-az/maricopa/town-of-gila-bend-declares-state-of-emergency-due-to-severe-flooding-after-friday-nights-monsoon-storms If you have a 39 tag this year, you will need some waders to deer hunt. ****edit: Apparently a canal broke in Gila Bend and that is why the town flooded so bad. The monsoon is the reason the canal broke.

Before and after. Love to see it.

Quick update. Got some cool lightning shots before the storm moved closer to Yuma. Crazy to see how these storms develop and build over time. There is going to be some happy animals soon.

Such a beautiful thing to see in August. The desert needs it so bad.

In Yuma valley we got dumped on. Solid rain for about an hour and it went straight down HWY 95. I feel like Yuma was the last place in the state to get rain 😂😂

haha hard to mistake that!!! thanks for sharing that. I am going to let a few people I know check.

It says it'll take 5-10 days to show on the portal after the opening date. Did your buddy's dad just draw a general season tag and not realize it?

No I have not. What is funny is that we think we see a lot of pressure in certain areas we hunt but when I come on here and read report, it sounds like our pressure is minimal in comparison. Like you said though, we have far less deer in these 40 units than other units in the state.

Man I did the same thing today and my jaw hit the ground. There was one that hunted the fields in 41 and they talked about how hard they hunted and blah blah blah and all they did was shoot deer in the field or on trials less than a 1/4 Mile from the fields. I bet the pressure out there this year is going to be even crazier than and it already is. Sounds like dove season every opener from what I’ve heard.