Anyone ever find trophy quality game in areas your would never expect it?

[Elite]

So long story short, I have always hiked way down in river valleys and far from any road or quad trails to set cameras and hunt thinking I would find more mature game.

I was driving late at night and noticed a massive moose in the ditch of a major highway. So I decided to shed hunt it in the spring and found a pile of moose sheds and deer sheds not far from the highway and some were large.

So I put some cams up and have got the biggest elk I have ever got on cam and a few mature moose.

I just can’t make sense how that area along a major highway and an area that has atv/dirtbike trails everywhere holds mature game?


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[MuleyFever]

Shhh...

 

[Hnthrdr]

The areas are really busy, but maybe they aren’t busy off trail or there is gnarly terrain or private where the game can seek refuge, who knows? But they may be else where during season which is how they are getting big

 

[Baddog]

Maybe they figured out dirt bikes aren’t trying to kill them and just let them ride on by while napping in the brush…

 

[Steve300xcw]

For a long time now, folks have been killing big shit outta lil pockets that all the real hunters go by as they are on their way to go deep into the brush.

This isnt anything new

 

[Elite]

Maybe they figured out dirt bikes aren’t trying to kill them and just let them ride on by while napping in the brush…

I was wondering that also but there is a lot of hunters with quads but I am assuming they quad way deep into the bush and don’t hunt the start of the area maybe


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[KenLee]

I've killed so many deer close in to subdivisions that I abbreviate their first and middle names to ""CC". For example, "Country Club Pete".

 

[Macintosh]

Animals pattern people way better than people pattern animals.

 

[Slickhill]

I once flew over the parking area of the main access point to a very busy GMU on the first weekend of moose season. Roughly 1/2 a mile from dozens of trucks and trailers and maybe 200 yards from the main trail that literally had SxSs and rigs traveling down it at that time there was a little willow covered knob. On top of that knob laid a 60ish inch bull and three cows. No telling how many outfits rolled by within 200 yards of him “going deep” in search of a bull.

I killed my biggest mule deer about 300 yards off a main trail. I parked and walked over the first rise and he was calmly feeding. I know he was within earshot of the trail because I could hear the wheelers going by. He was an old Roman nosed tooth worn fellow too.

They are where you find them and that may be where nobody else looks because it’s too close or too obvious.

 

[Jimmy]

I'm convinced that driving late at night is a form of scouting.

 

[Maverick1]

@cnelk - go deep. Veerrrryyyy deeeeep.

 

[Pochuck]

I'm convinced that driving late at night is a form of scouting.

I agree - saw the biggest whitetail of my life driving home at 4am right in the middle of a suburban road. Have very very rarely seen bucks driving around during daylight

 

[jayhawk]

I used to have a great deer spot. All you had to do was park and walk over the hill and they they were almost without fail.

 

[Hydra6]

My first trip to Wyoming about 10 years ago, the hotel parking lot was covered with antelope.

 

[Dos Perros]

There's a unit I know has 380 to 400+ inch elk but for some reason no one seems to talk about it. One time a giant elk got killed by a vehicle and discussed on a hunting forum and everyone was like "oh he must have been on a walk-about or something." Like they couldn't even consider the possibility he spent his whole life there.

 

[TaperPin]

Hunting is like fishing - pockets of small water with little human traffic hold some whoppers. Younger me caught a nice size slightly deformed old high country trout under a certain rock one Spring, then the same fish under the same hard to get to rock later that summer, then multiple times the next year. Same rock. How many big old trout have I missed out on assuming odds were better passing up that rock for 10x as many easier rocks, as if fish were sprinkled uniformly between all the little pockets.

A weather old buck past his prime, with overgrown hooves not being worn down with much use even though his habitat is half rock, sat watching the world close to a bend in the road where it’s hard to pull over. Made me wonder how many years he sat on that little ridge before I had come along.

The biggest antelope have to survive the gauntlet of pickups on two tracks running them back and forth, back and forth. It’s hard to hide in much of the sagebrush country. When the hunting is good, the best horns have been found in pockets, and when the hunting is hard, sometimes very hard, good goats can still be found in the pockets.

I like to hunt pockets that are hard to glass - being shy and solitary (or having anxiety issues) isn’t just a trait of some humans, or dogs, or cats, or horses, or cows, but if it swims, walks or flies, some would rather be by themselves in little draws that people rarely make it to, even if it doesn’t make sense.

 

[nomadicbohunk]

Around 20 years ago there was a new world record level desert sheep living under an interstate that went though a canyon. It like didn't move around at all outside of rutting. The state folks and my biologist boss knew about it and found it amusing. They were like, "Don't tell anyone, we want to see if anyone ever finds it." I came into the office and was like, I just saw the biggest sheep ever and it's in the stupidest spot.

Two 200ish inch mule deer were living year round in a weedy leaky dirt tank on a main road. I did tell a couple folks about that. A guy flagged me down and talked with me. He was guiding his 14 year old kid and 70 something dad (who looked like he was about to die). He emailed me back later and told me his dad had terminal cancer and they tagged out on them. I felt good about that one.

When I lived in Iowa, there was a 178 typical after deductions whitetail living in a 100 yard square patch of willows next to one of the busiest boat ramps in the state. I know how big it was because I know the army corps guy who shot it. We were both after it and found out after. I wiffed a shot on it.

I live in VT right now. There's a huge for here 140's whitetail living in town. It's bedded a few times in my friend's mom's flowers. Like out in the open in a flower bed. I think it's huntable on public, but it's going to be a mean one to do right. There are hardly any deer around and there's just this big one living in yards instead of all the protected natural areas scattered around town.

We have a house in fancy town CT. One of the gazillionaire neighbors has a very fancy wrought iron deer fence up over their 15 acres with motion sensor gates and the whole 9 yards. The fence probably cost more than the house we live in. My estate manager buddy I would coordinate hunting with told me this one and I verified it with my own eyes. There's somewhere in their fence where deer can get in. Come hunting season all the mature deer we're after end up in there. It's like a high fence manicured garden zoo of big deer. He learned about it as the person with the fence was really mad the deer were hammering her shrubs. They go in around late October and leave about December.

 

[Chris in TN]

My first trip to Wyoming about 10 years ago, the hotel parking lot was covered with antelope.

Dad and I stayed at a hotel in Craig, CO, two(?) nights before season opened one year and there were two very decent (by my low standards) bucks in the hotel parking lot.


I keep noticing a theme on this site that everyone talks and jokes about the 'secret' of animals living close to the road if you just find those pockets they live in. The problem is, for most of us that takes a lot of years that we don't have. I have killed deer on public land here near my house that were close enough to a highway that I checked the legality of my 'stand' site before I hunted there (I mean I measured its distance from the road on GE). But I also knew that those particular deer weren't always that close to the road and certain conditions led me to go there. It's awesome to kill stuff close to the road but if I head west with 'find game near the road' as my strategy I quickly end up fitting into the stereotype of the 'lazy out of shape easterner road hunting'.

Hunt near the roads: lazy slob
Go deep: stupid zealot.

*shrug*

 

[Yoder]

I look for whitetails in places I think "what idiot would hunt there?" Right next to the road, close to houses, right next to parking lots. People walk through some of the best sign just to get a mile back.

 

[Macintosh]

SHUT. UP.