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New CA bowhunter looking for some advice

I moved to CA from the midwest a few years back and am looking to get back into bow hunting for deer. I drew a archery tag for x4 for and am looking for some advice. I am unfamiliar with the zone and am looking for a place to start. I was thinking of hunting public ground (of course, I don't know anybody) and backpacking in. I have an ATV and would love to use it if I could. I need to get up there and do some scouting, but am looking for some advice on where to focus on.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help. Love the forum!

Josh

You should check into joining the California Bowmen Hunters and maybe attend local 3-D shoots at some of the California archery ranges. You will find no end to advice and conversation with fellow bowhunters. For information about CBH you can visit our Big Game Club site at www.cbhbgc.com

Hunting public land in Cali can be a tough proposition. Very little public land within 1-2 hours of major cities is open the hunting, and what is open is so overpressured the animals are scarce. 3D shoots or talking to guys with hunting setups at the local range works pretty well. What part of the state are you in?

Did you draw X4 or A7?

Either way, they're both a great tag, but if you have an A7 tag, you've only got 3 weeks till opener, IMO, you should have been asking these questions as soon as you got the tag.

I've never hunted the area, but I have a good friend in Susanville and I'll talk with him and PM you, but just from conversations, he says he's seen big deer around Eagle lake and the BLM lands on the east end of the zone.

You need to spend some time doing research, preferably backed up with boots on the ground.

Spend several hours on Google earth, then get out there for a weekend and get to a high point and do some glassing at sunrise/sunset. There's tons of big deer in this zone, you should have no problem at least scouting. No one's gonna tell you "go to this GPS loc and sit behind this rock and wait."

Don't forget, there's a huge game refuge in the middle of the zone that you need to steer clear of.

How much time have you spent on CA's DFG site? You know they publish the kill locations of the X zones year by year, or at least used to?

Take a look under Hunting Tips and Where to Look for Deer in the link.

I can't find the kill location map, they stopped doing it several years ago and I found it a year or two ago in archived stuff, but can't relocate it. If you can though, they have maps of each X zone with kill locations for the measured year with a colored dot for gun and archery kills.

Idyllwild - good knowledge.

Josh, much of the hunting in Ca is done driving roads.

If you scout the area and find some good habitat off the roads you will probably be alone especially in a draw unit. I would look for water source

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