My First Mule Deer Hunt

[2Loose]

My first real hunt was in 1954, when I was twelve. It was in a burn on the NW side of Eagle Lake in Lassen Co., CA. I was using a borrowed lever action 30-30,and I bagged a nice 4 pt on opening day with that gun! He trotted right up to me as others were making a drive toward the burn, I was sitting on point on one side of the burn and that buck trotted right out of the brush about 30 yards from me, bang!

That sort of thing, letting a "first hunt" family member sit point on opening day was SOP in our family, I don't remember anyone ever not tagging on their "first hunt" days in our family.

Then it was my turn to "beat brush" after that. Which just meant walking through, 4-5 of us spread out abreast, toward an open area where one or two waited. Almost always successful for at least one legal animal.

My Dad had 3 brothers, and I had a lot of cousins, so those hunts were family affairs. We'd go to a chosen area a week ahead of time, set up camp, Mom had all our lessons (4 boys in my family), as we were out of school for at least 2 weeks on those hunts, and she'd keep us up on our lessons in camp each day.

During those years Dad and I had put together a pretty nice 42 military jeep from a lot of junk parts Dad had scrounged, it was my first major "car project", when I started the jeep was a bare body sitting on blocks. We put the later Willys "F head" motor in it, and a hood scoop on the hood to accommodate the overhead intake and carb setup. It had free/lock hubs in front, and the rear full floating axles allowed us to pull the axles and bolt on covers to keep the oil in. With the windshield laid down and the driver's seat open, we'd load all our camping gear in that jeep, really loaded it up, then we'd tow it to the hunting area behind a Chevy station wagon. Had a series of those wagons, new each year, 55, 56, 57, that all made it far back in on dirt roads to near our hunting camp area, then we'd drive the jeep in the rest of the way to the camp, everybody else walking in.

One of those years it snowed pretty heavy on the last night while we were in camp. We broke camp, loaded up the jeep, walked out to the Chevy wagon, hooked it up, put chains on the wagon and the front wheels of the jeep, and started driving out. The road followed the edge of Eagle Lake and then up a fairly steep climb, the main road up out of that area, that was still dirt in those days. Everybody else trying to drive out was stuck, sliding off the road. Dad put me in the jeep, locked the front hubs, and had me push the Chevy wagon up that steep, slippery, snowy dirt road with the front wheels of the jeep, going past and around everybody else! I was literally steering the back end of the wagon with the front end of the jeep! It was an interesting lesson for this young man!

I'll never forget those hunts!
Aloha,
Willy

 

[grumpyvette]

Id love to go back there and hunt the area again but from what Ive heard from friends I know the area now requires a very limited number of permits / lottery draw and its nearly impossible to get the area you request, or even consistently get areas close to it, its as thought California purposely wants to reduce interest in hunting, or the ability of hunters to plan a hunt successfully

the first time I went out of state to hunt (california)
I bought a decent rifle case,
to make it easy to find in case there were several hunters with similar cases
I painted mine in
ALTERNATING

HOT PINK
SKY BLUE
BLOOD RED
ELECTRIC GREEN
PASSION PURPLE
AND
HAZARD ORANGE

3" wide STRIPES
needless to say it stood out from the other luggage cases
while I waiting to board the plane I see the guys loading luggage on the plane DELIBERATELY drop several rifle cases off the conveyor belt, by pushing them off the edge with their feet , then picking them up and throwing them back on the conveyor belt, where most fell off a second or third time before they go loaded in the planes cargo section, I was REALLY PISSED and complained immediately and was told they would look into that..with a stupid smile from the boarding girl I complained too!
I never heard a word from the air lines about this later, it was the LAST time I flew with firearms
(btw the case was dented and heavily scratched but the rifle inside was fine) so it pays to buy a good quality case.
Ive mentioned this several times in the past and Ive heard from several others witnessing similar airline firearms cargo treatments
I left my rifle out their with a trusted friend for the next few years, so I would not need the rifle to go through the repeated abuse
after a couple years hunting California with that friend, we drove out from Florida to Colorado, almost every year for the next 35 years,,my CALIFORNIA friend drove out to Colorado, met and hunted with us that year and several other years, its a 40-46 hour trip one way depending on weather and traffic, driving strait through swapping drivers about every 4-5 hours

 

[2Loose]

My brothers tell me Lassen Co. has gotten as bad! Susanville, where they live, is about 20 miles w. of the Nevada state line. They hunt a lot in Nevada these days. And the masses of drunken fools that come up from the Valley to "hunt" are a real danger to the locals, and the local cattle! "This is a cow, do not shoot it!"

Hunting on Maui has gotten that way too, all private land, and with the overcrowding caused by the tourists, it's gotten almost impossible to get premission to hunt. When I was hunting Haleakala National Park in the late 60's through the 80's, our local hunting club had a deal with the Park, we'd be deputized so we could carry firearms into the Park, and we'd hunt goats around the rim, and chase 'em out of the center of the crater where the tourists were hiking, although there weren't too many back in those days. Haleakala Crater is the size of Manhattan, a huge bowl surrounded by a rim with two old lava outlets, one on the N side, one on the S. The crater floor is about 7000', the rims run from 9000' to 10000'. You gotta have strong legs and good lungs to hunt that area!

In the late 80's we'd work on volunteer crews to fence the rim of the crater, goat and pig proof fencing! You can imagine how difficult that was, helicoptered in with tools and fencing each day! After the fencing was in, we went in with horses and did some kill-offs. The Park Service wanted all the goats and pigs inside the fence removed. It was a slaughter. Most brought their semiautos, mostly .223, and there I was with my bolt action Roberts! It sounded like a war zone in there, they kept the tourists out while that was going on. I did pack out on horseback some awfully nice pork roasts and ribs though. The goats we just left behind. The billys weren't much good for eating, way tough and gamey, the nannies were a little better, particularly if you got a young one in milk. Half grown kids were the best goat meat. Then I made several trips in after that with a Park Ranger in charge of the snares to catch the last few, and help clean out the snares. We left one sow pig and one female goat with radio collars as "Judas" animals. They'd roam the fence line on the inside looking for ways to get out, as all the other animals were on the outside, and if they found one, we'd patch that, shoot the radio animal to get the collar back, and put another captured young animal back in with the collar. It's amazing the native Hawaiian plants that started coming up inside the Park after getting all those animals out. Pigs and goats are not native to Hawaii, they were brought in by humans, invasive species all! Even the animals the so-called Native Hawaiians brought in are considered invasive, as they came very recently, currently the date is thought to be about 600 A.D., a very recent immigration in human terms. And the ecology of the Islands changed dramatically when those humans got here. The early humans brought pigs, dogs, chickens and rats with them when they came.