A five year wait (Pre-Season)...

The 09-10 season was somewhat special for me, I got to hunt in my ranch myself, it may sound weird, but since we always have hunters comming in the ranch, I mostly get to scout, take pictures and only hunt predators. Last time I had the oportunity to hunt the ranch was back in 04-05 season getting a nice coues deer at the time.

With the economy being in bad shape hunters comming to Sonora declined, as a result we were not fortunate to get someone to come and hunt the ranch, so all the hard work I put in by scouting, having trail cameras set up, was about to be tested if were going to be succesful.

I started scouting and setting up trail cameras two months before the seasons started. Getting some nice deer still on velvet. BTW I never got to see most of these deer with my own eyes.

Mule deer trail camera

Here are a couple of pictures, that came up in 2 diferent trail cameras, the deer look in good shape being the pick of the drawght season, yesturday we had some same at the ranch finally, after about 5 moths of no rain. It will be harder to get pictures of the deer, I will be changing them soon.

I like the eye guards on this one, they are pointing to the outside instead of going up, very wide, I am not sure about the forks tough.


Look at those bumped up ears, couple of fights or barb wire?



This is one masive and wide deer that I have been looking up this same camera, looks to have potential, we'll see how it develops.

Couple of deer that come in to water, they mostly come in groups of 4 or 5 bucks.

Might be the same group, but I keep looking for any marks or scares to make out every deer, there is one I call Quijote, since it has a big mark on the right of the shoulders, very easy to point out.

Another group with daylight, I belive this is one of maybe 5 pictures I have with daylight, they all come in when its dark. The buck facing the camera looks much taller then the rest I have been looking at, hopefully it will develop big forks too.

The Cat Camera

It's been 3 year now since I started ussing trail cameras, and I have to admit, it is an addiction. I started out with one camera, placing it only a month before the season and taking it off as soon as the hunting season ended, and now I have 5 at the same time year round.

Since drawght hits hard here in Sonora, the represos (I never know how to say this in english, there is always diferent words, tank, dirt tank, pound, wash, etc) are all dry and I put in some metal tanks with water to keep deer comming in, but this also pulls in coyotes, bob cats, mountain lions.

As you can see and to my amazement, deer and cats can live togheter. It looks like deer are waiting in line for the bobcat to finish and have a sip of water.

This is the one that caught my attention, I know its a small mountain lion, but still, I did not belive they could be together in peace, or that is what I perceive. I haven't found any dead deer.

Here are some other pictures of bob cats hanging out at the same metal tank.

Las Glorias Muley

I was lucky enough to get invited to a cousins ranch, to hunt eather mule deer or coues deer, he had tags for both, I had hunted the previous season and ended up taking a shoot at a really nice coes deer and clean missed, it was bedding at 400 mts (about 450 yards), but that is another story, I knew some good areas for spottig deer, as I got to the ranch on a saturday evening, I didn't miss a second and went ahead to this area.

Once I got on top of the first series of hills, I got to see a couple of coues deer, small buck and doe, they got spocked and I went ahead to the next hill... as I got to the top I saw another coues deer doe looking away from where I was, very intrigued by what the doe was looking at, I sat down and started glassing towards where the doe could not take the eyes off.

I did not see any movement for 15 minutes, I was looking in to a deep wash with thick brush, when I got to see a deer leg at 450 yards. I had to stare at that same spot for another 15 minutes until I actualy got the deer, It was 5 does, a small forky and "the big buck". It was getting late and I was running out of light.

The deer started moving closer but very slowly, I could not contain myself for a long time, I waited for the deer to get at about 300 yards, as they got to where I wanted just waited for the buck to stop. Pulled the trigger and nothing happend, a couple of does went ballistic, but the big buck just cuddled into a couple of small brushes, put in another round in the chamber and this time I got him, the deer went down.

Since I didn't have much light I gatther my thing and went down hill to get my buck, I called in the radio for back up to help me get the deer out, but help was too far away and I had to move fast. i got to the deer just as the sun went down, I had to take a couple of pictures before preparing to pack the deer out, I had to use the timer and ran back and forward to see how I was doing on the self picture taking, I guess I did alright.