Well, I got a pass and they let me off the island. 
I made plans with a good and old friend that I hadn't seen for a few years, who now lives ouside of Vernon; to check out some deer hunting in the north Okanagan. Work issues cooperated at both ends, all systems were go and I headed out Oct. 18 for the dry country. I just got home yesterday.
Now the Coles notes version of this story is this. This was brand new country to me, my buddy knew bits and pieces of it fairly good. We hunted hard Friday, Saturday and Sunday but he had to get back to work. I continued on and left the area on Tuesday. We scouted real hard, covered a ton of ground saw a pile of deer and some unbelieveabley beautiful country. We were unable to take a buck but I'd do it again in a heart beat. If you want to hear the whole loooooong story, read on.....
The area we were in is the northern end of the arid Okanagan valley. At this point the Monashee mountains rise up out of the valley and as you head north and east into the mountains the forest explodes into a mix of cedar, fir, larch, hemlock and balsam of impressive proportions. The understory here isn't too bad at all to move through but vision is limited by the shear amount of trees. Head down hill to the south and west and there is a "line in the sand" after which arid sidehills of sparce Ponderosa pine and fir are lined at the foot with sage and short grasses. At the foot of the hills it flattens out and its lush farm land. And as I came to find out virtually all private land.
Thursday night we headed to a place that Doogs had chosen for camp. Bloody gorgeous Right on a pristine lake into the lush zone with mountains rising all around it. No one around. We set up our modest camp, sat around the fire catching up and working a bottle of Yukon Jack in our rain gear getting pelted by a fierce little storm. This is good we thought. It had been dry for a couple of months until now.
Early the next morning we loaded up my old Pathfinder and headed north. We scouted hard driving a lot of area, getting out in 20 or so spots to walk and carefully look for sign. Doogs made notes of everything we found. We ended up quite a ways up the valley and ran out of deer sign but started to see quite a bit of moose sign and some huge swamps. Note to self: apply for moose draw next year
The next day we still hunted a prospect place at first light and explored more up that valley to finish the day off, seeing sign but nothing too impressive.
We came back to camp at about noon and made a big breakfast. We talked it over and decided to concentrate the rest of the day on checking out more of the high country. We finished the day off nearer camp and headed up a trail that showed on the map to link up with the next valley. The trial petered out and we came to a pretty bad washout and we got out and walked in about a kilometre. There were fresh tracks in the soft silty now wet soil that crossed the trail in a couple of spots. The trail improved so I returned to the truck to give the washout a try while Doogs continued on down the trail.
The leading edge was about a two and a half foot vertical drop and half the road was gone ahead of it. I crept down into the hole, eased it through and climbed out of the far side slowly and surely. No sweat I thought just as my front end came down from the sky too far to the right and I slid off the road into the wash out again. f**k! I got out and saw where I had a chance to climb back onto the road and gave it a couple of trys. I was close to flipping over so I took it real easy. No sir, too slick.
I honked the horn as we agreed I'd do if I had any trouble and Doogs came back to give a hand. After both talking it over the best bet seemed to back the hell out of that mess and head on down! With Doogs carefully directing me the lil truck popped back out without issue.
We cursed that frigging road and my map but being the lazy afternoon we decided to go ahead and shoot a some grouse on the way down as they were everywhere. Doogs shot two and it was a real treat to see his 8 month old Water Toller pup get her first grouse lesson. Not much teaching needed there, she had them in her mouth delighted with the prospect - we just had to watch she didn't get too carried away as she seemed to be on the brink of tearing them up.
Doogs and Ginger:
It was almost dusk when we got near the bottom of the trail as we came around a slight curve to the right when I barked "Whitetail!". This was my first ever whitetail deer hunt and I had wondered how good I would be at quickly identifying them over mule deer. Bloody hell there was no question here, as a smaller deer in the rear flashed its white flag and a huge second white tail sailed in the air over the head of the smaller one. The rear deer bounded into the timber to the left. The larger deer bounded out of sight around the curve. I stopped the truck and shut if off.
We waited a couple of minutes whispering a game plan. I had a better look at them than Doogs and said it happened too fast and far enough away that I wasn't sure if they were bucks or not. We decided I'd go into the bush to the left and work the sidehill and he would slowly stalk the right side at the edge of the trail looking so see if I'd be able to flush it out. I climbed up a bit of a bank and into the timber. Wow. Thick! And quite noisy with a lot of dry branches on the ground. I made a slow circle up the bank and back down seeing nothing. I came back down and Doogs said I flushed it all right but it was a doe. Plan B - lets find the bigger one...
This time it was Doogs' turn to work the bush down hill. He covered the whole area down to the river but saw nothing and I saw nothing from my vantage point covering a couple hundred metres each way of the trail. We finally ran out of light and headed back to camp.
Back at camp another long lost buddy (Doogs' brother) was there waiting for us. He's not a hunter but pretty good at keeping up to us on the Kokanees and we had a good old time around the fire reliving old storys from growing up together up north. We all shut up for a bit around midnight and listened to the coyotes houling from across the lake. I wondered why a guy couldn't just live like this..........
The next morning we headed back to the spot where we jumped the whitetails at day brake and set up for a still hunt. Nothing showed so we we reworked the area but found no new sign. Time to get out of this freaking high country we figured and find a way to the next valley that was doable.
We doubled back to civilization and headed up the valley to the west through farm land. It was mid day and no deer sightings were made through the farmland. We headed up the valley and worked some semi open grazing leases mixed with forestry land. There was quite a bit of sign up there, some of the best of it was posted no hunting though. Nearing the end of the day we tryed yet another trail that was supposed to get us back over to camp to no availe. So we headed back home through the farm land again. Well jebus H Kriste man there were deer all over the place at dusk. All behind barbed wire and signs. We saw a dozen does or so. And I spotted a very big bodied two point about 150 yards into a posted field right just before the end of legal light.
We had agreed shortly in to this hunt that a big part of the mission was to cover and learn a lot of ground as this could be an annual thing. So the next day we headed quite a way south to check out another valley with some farmland likely posted we figured, but a lot of crown forestry land at various elevations. We didn't see a lot of huntable area through the farm land but as we climbed up a bit things started to look very interesting...
They're battling the cursed mountain pine beetle out there as is the case with a lot of the interior. There were a lot of recent cut blocks up there and the canary grass and other browse was chest high We split up and worked one of these areas and saw a lot of sign. It was high noon though so they were likely bedded down some place as we saw nothing. We got back in the truck and headed up hill.
The road started to crap out a bit and we were thinking of turning around but I decided to cross one more switchback to get to a better turn around. We just got into the draw and spotted two muley does up hill about 150 yards. I shut off the truck and we stayed silent for a few minutes. We figured there could be a buck in the background, rehearsed that its 4 points or better season and decided I'd circle around the draw on the far side and climb up to the ridge line above and he'd stay hidden just off the trail to see if I flush anything.
Wholey steepness batman! It was a lung buster creaping up through the pines with very little top soil and greasy wet clay underneath. Noisy as hell too as even with the recent rain the litter was dry. I stopped a lot to catch my breath and broke over a small ridge half way up where I could see the whole slope. There they were, with two more deer behind them. I raised my rifle and cranked the scope to 9. They were ~ 150 yards away and partly hidden by shrubs. I glassed each one, taking quite a while to get an accurate read on the furthest two but soon determined they were all mule does. I came back down after watching them for about 20 minutes and seeing no sign of a buck.
Unfortunately this brings us to mid Sunday and Doogs had to head back and get ready for work. We split up agreeing that next year we need to come later as there was no sign of the rut anyhwhere in our travels. He headed home and I decided to head up towards the farmland of day three and see if I could find some huntable area.
There were pockets of unposted land, but none of it made me real comfortable near where we had seen all the deer the evening before. I saw another road on the map on the other side of the river that looked promising and thought maybe I'd camp out there too. This held a series of lagre acreages, virtually all cattle shows. Pretty much everything was posted. It was getting near dusk and man did I start to see deer.
(pic taken at dusk and lightened look reeeeeal close..)
There's a half dozen does there. In one field I counted 25 Not a sign of a buck yet though. I made it to the end of the road seeing does all over and turned around. I had seen one bit of land that appeared to be crown a few kms back and figured I could get there and glass before dark. Part way back I saw two guys sitting on quads glassing a posted field with their rifles ready. I wanted to go and ask them how to get permission to hunt around there but thought that would be a major prick manouvre as there wasn't much light left and I didn't want to bust them.
Then I ran into a lady trying to get two cows into her gate with her border collie and had to stop and wait so I didn't spook them worse. I watched it get dark right there, and that was all she wrote...
I got up early the next morning and decided to head up into the forestry land and tall grass - to muley country.
I got myself set up for a first light still hunt with a 40 acre or so grassy block up hill of me, another bigger one to my left and a good line of sight up the trail to my right. After about 20 minutes I spotted a deer right in front of me half way up the slope. Up with my binocs I could see it was a doe but a whitetail! She was looking behind her and I was getting a good feeling. Out came another doe, and another, and another until there was 5 of them. I watched them for about as half an hour but alas - no buck. They headed into the timber and I followed later but saw nothing.
Back to the truck for lunch, and I decided to check out where we had seen the mule deer nearby. I pulled over about 400 metres before the draw and quietly got out of the truck. Saaaaanortt! To my left behind some brush in a clearcut I turned to see a large mule doe looking at me about 150 yards away. She snorted twice more loudly and all of the sudden deer started bounding all over the place. I raised my rifle and followd them. One, two, three, four, five - all does, and away they went into the timber. I worked the whole area after staying quiet for a while but they were gone to Kukamunga and no bucks were present.
Well folks that was pretty much it. I spent the rest of Monday traveling towards Kelowna on the back roads saw a couple more mule does but no bucks. Headed on down through the OK connector and down Princeton way which was also new to me and found some good looking moose and deer areas there too but only saw tracks and nothing in them.
Pretty dang frustrating in a lot of ways but I am not dissapointed. We will return. Next year later as there was no sign of the rut anywhere yet. I know there are some big bucks there cause I did see some tracks that - well - never mind.... Maybe next year.
I made plans with a good and old friend that I hadn't seen for a few years, who now lives ouside of Vernon; to check out some deer hunting in the north Okanagan. Work issues cooperated at both ends, all systems were go and I headed out Oct. 18 for the dry country. I just got home yesterday.Now the Coles notes version of this story is this. This was brand new country to me, my buddy knew bits and pieces of it fairly good. We hunted hard Friday, Saturday and Sunday but he had to get back to work. I continued on and left the area on Tuesday. We scouted real hard, covered a ton of ground saw a pile of deer and some unbelieveabley beautiful country. We were unable to take a buck but I'd do it again in a heart beat. If you want to hear the whole loooooong story, read on.....
The area we were in is the northern end of the arid Okanagan valley. At this point the Monashee mountains rise up out of the valley and as you head north and east into the mountains the forest explodes into a mix of cedar, fir, larch, hemlock and balsam of impressive proportions. The understory here isn't too bad at all to move through but vision is limited by the shear amount of trees. Head down hill to the south and west and there is a "line in the sand" after which arid sidehills of sparce Ponderosa pine and fir are lined at the foot with sage and short grasses. At the foot of the hills it flattens out and its lush farm land. And as I came to find out virtually all private land.
Thursday night we headed to a place that Doogs had chosen for camp. Bloody gorgeous
Right on a pristine lake into the lush zone with mountains rising all around it. No one around. We set up our modest camp, sat around the fire catching up and working a bottle of Yukon Jack in our rain gear getting pelted by a fierce little storm. This is good we thought. It had been dry for a couple of months until now.Early the next morning we loaded up my old Pathfinder and headed north. We scouted hard driving a lot of area, getting out in 20 or so spots to walk and carefully look for sign. Doogs made notes of everything we found. We ended up quite a ways up the valley and ran out of deer sign but started to see quite a bit of moose sign and some huge swamps. Note to self: apply for moose draw next year
The next day we still hunted a prospect place at first light and explored more up that valley to finish the day off, seeing sign but nothing too impressive.
We came back to camp at about noon and made a big breakfast. We talked it over and decided to concentrate the rest of the day on checking out more of the high country. We finished the day off nearer camp and headed up a trail that showed on the map to link up with the next valley. The trial petered out and we came to a pretty bad washout and we got out and walked in about a kilometre. There were fresh tracks in the soft silty now wet soil that crossed the trail in a couple of spots. The trail improved so I returned to the truck to give the washout a try while Doogs continued on down the trail.
The leading edge was about a two and a half foot vertical drop and half the road was gone ahead of it. I crept down into the hole, eased it through and climbed out of the far side slowly and surely. No sweat I thought just as my front end came down from the sky too far to the right and I slid off the road into the wash out again. f**k! I got out and saw where I had a chance to climb back onto the road and gave it a couple of trys. I was close to flipping over so I took it real easy. No sir, too slick.
I honked the horn as we agreed I'd do if I had any trouble and Doogs came back to give a hand. After both talking it over the best bet seemed to back the hell out of that mess and head on down! With Doogs carefully directing me the lil truck popped back out without issue.
We cursed that frigging road and my map but being the lazy afternoon we decided to go ahead and shoot a some grouse on the way down as they were everywhere. Doogs shot two and it was a real treat to see his 8 month old Water Toller pup get her first grouse lesson. Not much teaching needed there, she had them in her mouth delighted with the prospect - we just had to watch she didn't get too carried away as she seemed to be on the brink of tearing them up.
Doogs and Ginger:
It was almost dusk when we got near the bottom of the trail as we came around a slight curve to the right when I barked "Whitetail!". This was my first ever whitetail deer hunt and I had wondered how good I would be at quickly identifying them over mule deer. Bloody hell
there was no question here, as a smaller deer in the rear flashed its white flag and a huge second white tail sailed in the air over the head of the smaller one. The rear deer bounded into the timber to the left. The larger deer bounded out of sight around the curve. I stopped the truck and shut if off. We waited a couple of minutes whispering a game plan. I had a better look at them than Doogs and said it happened too fast and far enough away that I wasn't sure if they were bucks or not. We decided I'd go into the bush to the left and work the sidehill and he would slowly stalk the right side at the edge of the trail looking so see if I'd be able to flush it out. I climbed up a bit of a bank and into the timber. Wow. Thick! And quite noisy with a lot of dry branches on the ground. I made a slow circle up the bank and back down seeing nothing. I came back down and Doogs said I flushed it all right but it was a doe. Plan B - lets find the bigger one...
This time it was Doogs' turn to work the bush down hill. He covered the whole area down to the river but saw nothing and I saw nothing from my vantage point covering a couple hundred metres each way of the trail. We finally ran out of light and headed back to camp.
Back at camp another long lost buddy (Doogs' brother) was there waiting for us. He's not a hunter but pretty good at keeping up to us on the Kokanees and we had a good old time around the fire reliving old storys from growing up together up north. We all shut up for a bit around midnight and listened to the coyotes houling from across the lake. I wondered why a guy couldn't just live like this..........
The next morning we headed back to the spot where we jumped the whitetails at day brake and set up for a still hunt. Nothing showed so we we reworked the area but found no new sign. Time to get out of this freaking high country we figured and find a way to the next valley that was doable.
We doubled back to civilization and headed up the valley to the west through farm land. It was mid day and no deer sightings were made through the farmland. We headed up the valley and worked some semi open grazing leases mixed with forestry land. There was quite a bit of sign up there, some of the best of it was posted no hunting though. Nearing the end of the day we tryed yet another trail that was supposed to get us back over to camp to no availe. So we headed back home through the farm land again. Well jebus H Kriste man there were deer all over the place at dusk. All behind barbed wire and signs. We saw a dozen does or so. And I spotted a very big bodied two point about 150 yards into a posted field right just before the end of legal light.
We had agreed shortly in to this hunt that a big part of the mission was to cover and learn a lot of ground as this could be an annual thing. So the next day we headed quite a way south to check out another valley with some farmland likely posted we figured, but a lot of crown forestry land at various elevations.
We didn't see a lot of huntable area through the farm land but as we climbed up a bit things started to look very interesting...They're battling the cursed mountain pine beetle out there as is the case with a lot of the interior.
There were a lot of recent cut blocks up there and the canary grass and other browse was chest high We split up and worked one of these areas and saw a lot of sign. It was high noon though so they were likely bedded down some place as we saw nothing. We got back in the truck and headed up hill. The road started to crap out a bit and we were thinking of turning around but I decided to cross one more switchback to get to a better turn around. We just got into the draw and spotted two muley does up hill about 150 yards. I shut off the truck and we stayed silent for a few minutes. We figured there could be a buck in the background, rehearsed that its 4 points or better season and decided I'd circle around the draw on the far side and climb up to the ridge line above and he'd stay hidden just off the trail to see if I flush anything.
Wholey steepness batman! It was a lung buster creaping up through the pines with very little top soil and greasy wet clay underneath. Noisy as hell too as even with the recent rain the litter was dry. I stopped a lot to catch my breath and broke over a small ridge half way up where I could see the whole slope. There they were, with two more deer behind them. I raised my rifle and cranked the scope to 9. They were ~ 150 yards away and partly hidden by shrubs. I glassed each one, taking quite a while to get an accurate read on the furthest two but soon determined they were all mule does. I came back down after watching them for about 20 minutes and seeing no sign of a buck.
Unfortunately this brings us to mid Sunday and Doogs had to head back and get ready for work. We split up agreeing that next year we need to come later as there was no sign of the rut anyhwhere in our travels. He headed home and I decided to head up towards the farmland of day three and see if I could find some huntable area.
There were pockets of unposted land, but none of it made me real comfortable near where we had seen all the deer the evening before. I saw another road on the map on the other side of the river that looked promising and thought maybe I'd camp out there too. This held a series of lagre acreages, virtually all cattle shows. Pretty much everything was posted.
It was getting near dusk and man did I start to see deer.(pic taken at dusk and lightened look reeeeeal close..)
There's a half dozen does there. In one field I counted 25
Not a sign of a buck yet though. I made it to the end of the road seeing does all over and turned around. I had seen one bit of land that appeared to be crown a few kms back and figured I could get there and glass before dark. Part way back I saw two guys sitting on quads glassing a posted field with their rifles ready. I wanted to go and ask them how to get permission to hunt around there but thought that would be a major prick manouvre as there wasn't much light left and I didn't want to bust them. Then I ran into a lady trying to get two cows into her gate with her border collie and had to stop and wait so I didn't spook them worse. I watched it get dark right there, and that was all she wrote...
I got up early the next morning and decided to head up into the forestry land and tall grass - to muley country.
I got myself set up for a first light still hunt with a 40 acre or so grassy block up hill of me, another bigger one to my left and a good line of sight up the trail to my right. After about 20 minutes I spotted a deer right in front of me half way up the slope. Up with my binocs I could see it was a doe but a whitetail! She was looking behind her and I was getting a good feeling. Out came another doe, and another, and another until there was 5 of them. I watched them for about as half an hour but alas - no buck. They headed into the timber and I followed later but saw nothing.
Back to the truck for lunch, and I decided to check out where we had seen the mule deer nearby. I pulled over about 400 metres before the draw and quietly got out of the truck. Saaaaanortt! To my left behind some brush in a clearcut I turned to see a large mule doe looking at me about 150 yards away. She snorted twice more loudly and all of the sudden deer started bounding all over the place. I raised my rifle and followd them. One, two, three, four, five - all does, and away they went into the timber. I worked the whole area after staying quiet for a while but they were gone to Kukamunga and no bucks were present.
Well folks that was pretty much it. I spent the rest of Monday traveling towards Kelowna on the back roads saw a couple more mule does but no bucks. Headed on down through the OK connector and down Princeton way which was also new to me and found some good looking moose and deer areas there too but only saw tracks and nothing in them.
Pretty dang frustrating in a lot of ways but I am not dissapointed. We will return. Next year later as there was no sign of the rut anywhere yet. I know there are some big bucks there cause I did see some tracks that - well - never mind.... Maybe next year.
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