Arizona has fantastic OTC archery opportunities for both resident and non-resident hunters. Each unit is managed off a species-specific buck quota. Once a quota is hit that unit will shut down the following Wednesday at sundown for that particular species. While that is true, the tag itself is not species-specific and can be used on Coues deer or mule deer. For this article, we will be focusing on Coues deer.

With all that said—and in light of the coming January archery season—I’m going to take time to lay out exactly how I e-scout for rutting Coues bucks here in my home state of Arizona. I’ll go through how to pick out an area, finding the right country for the job, best glassing set-ups, and more.

For the purpose of this article, I will be mainly focusing on e-scouting for spot and stalk bowhunting Coues deer.

Finding the Right Unit

The first thing on the docket for e-scouting Coues is simply narrowing down a unit in which to hunt them. This means now is the time to turn on the Unit Layer for Arizona.

Coues deer mostly inhabit the southeastern portion of the state, but they do range north of that past the Mogollon Rim and even into the White Mountains. I suggest doing a little digging on buck quotas here. Areas with bigger quotas are usually going to have more deer. You could also simply click any given area on your onX maps. A tab will pop up giving the name of the national forest and there will be a “Hunt Unit” option below that. Click that and you’ll see a breakdown of the huntable species in the area.

Another thing you could do is turn on the Arizona Game Distribution Area Layer for Whitetail Deer. This will show a layout through the whole state of where the Coues whitetail deer inhabits.

There is ample opportunity in Arizona for Coues, so you really can’t go wrong in any of the units. The key is finding the right area within that zone.

Elevation For Coues

Coues deer are incredibly adaptable and can live anywhere from 2,500 feet all the way up to 10,000 feet. With that in mind, I do believe there is a sweet spot. For me, that is between 4,000 – 6,500 ft. This is where your topo map comes into play. This elevation offers a great variety of cover, glassing opportunity (visibility), and archery huntable topography.

Huntable Country

As I’m sifting through areas on my map, I like to turn on the Hybrid mode within onX. Because on top of picking the right elevation, I also want to make sure the country I’m planning on walking into isn’t too dense with cover. This wouldn’t bode well for spot-and-stalk bowhunting. It needs to be huntable. My favorite type of country to look out for is broken country. Areas that open enough to glass, but offer enough cover and topography to make stalks and avoid being seen. A person could absolutely succeed in more open terrain or dense terrain for that matter, but your highest likelihood of success will be hunting these broken areas.

Water Matters

Another thing you’ll need to keep in mind is that this is indeed a desert, so water matters. I always have my water layer turned on because of this. Animals will 100% congregate around water sources here, be it a perennial spring, creek, or even a stock tank. Bucks need to drink, especially after chasing does around. So, water within the spots I’m looking at is mandatory. If it’s not there, I look elsewhere.

The tough part here is proofing the water source. Springs are the toughest, but with a little research on backpacking websites you can often find out valuable info about their reliability. Perennial creeks, streams, and rivers though can be identified right from your onX screen. Unbroken blue lines indicate a perennial water source and broken blue lines indicate seasonal. Stock tanks can also be seen right from satellite imagery.

In areas where there isn’t a definite perennial water source, I’ll try to section off spots that are showing several springs and stock tanks that are relatively close to one another. This can be achieved by simply zooming out on your maps to show a wider area. Doing this just ups the odds of there being water in one of those spots, which in turn ups the odds of animals being there.

Roadless Areas

If you’re anything like me, running into folks on a hunting trip isn’t on the top of your to-do list. I like a good chat just like the next guy, but when I’m hunting, I want to be alone. So to avoid that, the next thing I’ll do is start sectioning off spots without roads going through them. These don’t have to be wilderness areas, but those are always nice, so make sure you’ve got your Wilderness Area Layer on. And don’t think you need to hike 10 miles in, because you don’t. A mile off the road will likely leave you alone in Arizona.

To do this, I’ll draw shapes on my maps of areas that meet the above criteria. Click on the “Draw Shape/Measure Area” tab in your tools. You can mark large potential hunting areas by doing this, so you don’t lose track in the process of e-scouting. I’d mark off several areas, just to make sure you have backup spots.

Access Points

Now that we’ve found a unit, the right elevation, the right country, and if water is present, it’s time to figure out how to access these spots in the first place. To do this, we need to make sure our Roads and Trails Layer is turned on. As you can see, Arizona has no shortage of roads. So much so that folks rarely leave them. Which is good for you!

This is pretty self-explanatory. Mark access points into the country you want to hunt. Emphasis on “points” though. While Arizona does have a lot of roads, some of them are wicked bad and not passable in a truck. For this reason, I always have the Motorized Roads and Trails layer turned on. It allows you to click a road and will give a breakdown of the surface type and what type of vehicle is recommended for travel. Even with that said, there is only so much you can tell; the road could be completely washed out in sections. Which is why I always will notate several different access points into an area.

Glassing Spots

Glassing is without a doubt the best way to locate Coues deer. So, next for me is cataloging potential vantage points to glass from. I’m not a big fan of glassing from the bottom up, as it limits visibility due to the vegetation. Glassing from the top down, or at least across at equal elevation, is way better for seeing what’s lurking about. Using the 3D Mode here can give a person a real good idea of what their view will be from any given glassing point.

A good rule of thumb here is to put the sun at your back in the morning and glass into the sun for the evening. Which basically means glassing southern exposures the first part of the day and northern exposures after the fact. That will no doubt put deer in front of you. It works, but is not my favorite setup.

My favorite glassing setup is looking west at a long north/south main ridge with fingers coming off of it. I know that sounds very specific, but hear me out. By looking to the west first thing in the morning, you’ll be looking at an eastern exposure. So, the sun will be on it first thing, which means deer. The fingers coming down off that main ridge will have two sides to them. The northern side will usually be thicker and the southern side will usually be more open. This means that I can watch deer go back and forth from feeding to bedding.

Closing

Everything I’ve outlined above is proven. It is my process that I’ve acquired through years and years of chasing Coues deer around the Arizona desert with my bow. And while there is nothing, and I mean nothing that beats boots on the ground scouting, most of us are not blessed with abundant free time to spend in the hills outside of hunting. So, e-scouting is our ticket to planning a quality hunt. It’s a damn good one too if you have your ducks in a row.

Bowhunting Coues deer during the rut in Arizona is nothing short of incredible. Between their captivating presence on the landscape to the stunning country they inhabit, it is a treat to walk among them. And an even bigger treat to test your skills as a spot-and-stalk bowhunter, as they are arguably the most challenging critters to stalk in North America. They are the gray ghosts of the desert and after hunting them, you can expect to be haunted for the long haul.

The post E-Scouting for January Archery Coues Deer in Arizona With Josh Kirchner appeared first on onX Hunt.

To date, onX and the TRCP have identified 16.42 million acres of landlocked public lands in 22 states. In the Upper-Midwest, we have found over 300,000 acres landlocked. In the Mid-Atlantic, over 80,000 acres of public lands are inaccessible because of being surrounded by private properties. In the South, a diverse history of treaties and survey systems has had significant implications for the way that public lands were organized and why so many acres do not offer legal access for hunting or fishing. 

This new report from the TRCP and onX for the South notes:

“Following the Civil War, Congress enacted the Southern Homestead Act to reduce speculation and encourage land ownership among formerly enslaved people, but the law was repealed in 1876 as the Reconstruction Era came to an end. As a result, the remaining federal estate in the South was subject to massive land sales in which timber and mineral interests accumulated huge swaths of forests.

The 1930s saw the establishment of state forests and parks, in part with the help of Civilian Conservation Corps workers, who built facilities and infrastructure.

The result of all of this is today’s unique system of county, state, and federal land holdings and, unfortunately, a remnant patchwork of landlocked public lands.”

As we dig deeper into the four states featured in this landlocked report, we see that each has its own challenges and unique opportunities for improvement thanks to the efforts by key organizations. 

Florida

With 75,000 landlocked acres inaccessible to the public, Florida has the most publicly-inaccessible land among the states in the South we analyzed. Working to make more public lands available for outdoor recreation is Florida Forever, a major conservation and recreational lands acquisition program that has been used by the state since 2001 to open 818,000 acres to the public with $3.1 billion in funding.

North Carolina

When settled, North Carolina used an older survey system called “metes and bounds” to create most of its property lines by following geographic features and other landmarks. Today, the state has been left with 49,000 acres identified as landlocked. Work by the North Carolina Land and Water Fund to protect the state’s drinking water sources has expanded to include other conservation and recreation needs, such as boosting public access. In 2020, $11 million was appropriated through the program for land acquisition so more people in the state can hunt and fish.

Arkansas

In Arkansas, 28,000 federal, state, county, and municipal acres remain totally landlocked. Of those acres, 10,000 are adjacent to water, leaving a lot of potential hunting and fishing grounds inaccessible. Thanks to the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council, which was established in 1987 to manage and supervise grants and a trust fund for the acquisition, management, and stewardship of state-owned properties, $20 million is funded annually to acquire more lands for natural areas, state parks, and state forests.

Tennessee

Of the 22,000 acres of landlocked public lands, over half (15,000) are adjacent to water. Fighting to acquire and protect wetlands and other habitats across the state, Tennessee created the state Wetland Fund in 1987. The program makes public access a priority with new land acquisitions. Typically funded at between $12 million and $19 million each year, the

Wetland Fund is an effective tool that could be applied to unlock inaccessible public lands for generations to come. 

You can help the cause. You can write and call your state’s representatives to let them know why it’s important to have access to public lands. You can also identify areas of opportunity in your area and share land access opportunities with onX. Together we can open up more lands for hunting and fishing. 

Ready to learn more about the South’s landlocked acres? Read the full South’s Landlocked Public Lands Report here.

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In the second installment of our regional report series, we’re looking at untapped hunting and fishing opportunities in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The Mid-Atlantic’s Landlocked Public Lands Report details more than 80,000 acres of public land with no permanent, legal access.

The report notes:

“These local, state, and federal public lands are legally open to public hunting and fishing, but they are surrounded by private land with no public roads or trails to reach them. Landlocked parcels range in size from just a single acre to many hundreds of acres and guarantee access to no one except the neighboring landowners and those with permission to cross private lands.

Today, when time in the outdoors is more valuable than ever, unlocking public lands represents one of the most obvious and actionable ways to provide more opportunities for more people to enjoy the woods and waters of our country.”

So, how can this acreage be opened up to the public? The report notes, “Landlocked public lands are best made accessible through cooperative agreements with private landowners that result in land exchanges, acquisitions, and easements, but this critical work cannot be undertaken without funding. When it comes to opening inaccessible public lands, even small projects can offer big benefits.”

Here are three regional programs that support such cooperative agreements:

New Jersey: Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey (CHANJ)

Recognizing the threat posed to wildlife by the increasing density of development within the state, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection in 2019 launched an innovative program known as CHANJ to secure and improve habitat connectivity. By mapping core intact habitats and opportunities to establish corridors between them, the program helps guide strategic land acquisitions to benefit both game and nongame species, as well as sportsmen and women who enjoy new and improved access to public lands.

New York State: Environmental Protection Fund and the Open Space Conservation Plan

The New York State Environmental Protection Fund and the Open Space Conservation Plan work hand in hand to conserve natural resources and open space and provide for public access to outdoor recreation. Supported through a real-estate tax, the EPF provided $300 million toward a wide range of conservation programs in 2020 alone, and the land acquisition portion of the program has been funded at around $30 million annually in recent years.

Pennsylvania: Community Conservation Partnerships Program (C2P2)

Pennsylvania’s C2P2 program is administered by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to conserve and acquire land through several methods, including the acquisition of lands to be added to existing state parks, forests, and gamelands.

On a national level, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) remains the most powerful tool available for establishing and expanding access to public lands and waters. And it just got more powerful, with the recent passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, fully funding the program at $900 million annually for wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation, including $27 million that is dedicated to public access. Importantly, the LWCF is not just limited to federal projects—at least 40 percent of the program must be used for state-driven projects. State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plans, commonly referred to as SCORPs, are developed by each state to set priorities for state-side LWCF funded projects and represent a key opportunity to unlock public lands.

Ready to learn more? Read the full The Mid-Atlantic’s Landlocked Public Lands Report, along with our previous landlocked public lands reports, here. In 2018, we worked with TRCP to create “Off Limits, But Within Reach: the Federal Landlocked Report”, and in 2019, we joined forces for the “Inaccessible State Lands in the West” Report. With the foundation provided by those two larger-scale reports, we are now delving into regional access issues.

Our next report with TRCP, to be released this autumn, will cover landlocked public lands in the Southeast.

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Read “The Upper Midwest’s Inaccessible Public Lands” and our other recent reports with TRCP to learn why landlocked public land exists and why increased access is important for all outdoorsmen and women.

This latest report details the importance of public land for all Americans:

“Public land access is foundational to America’s hunting and fishing traditions. It ensures that outdoor opportunities exist for all of us, regardless of our income, connections, or property ownership.

But in Minnesota and Wisconsin, sportsmen and women are largely losing out on more than 300,000 acres of public land where there is no permanent, legal access.

These local, state, and federal public lands are surrounded by private land with no public roads or trails to reach them. Landlocked parcels range in size from just a few acres to nearly 4,000 acres and—although they are, as a general rule, legally open to public hunting and fishing—guarantee access to no one except the neighboring landowners and those with permission to cross private lands.

Today, when time in the outdoors is more valuable than ever, unlocking public lands represents one of the most obvious and actionable ways to provide more opportunities for more people to enjoy the woods and waters of our country.”

In this third installment of landlocked reports, we are presenting the total inaccessible acres of city- and county-owned parcels at least an acre in size in addition to the state and federal parcels. Locally-managed land in the upper Midwest, such as certain tax-forfeited lands, offer vast and little-known potential for hunting and outdoor recreation. In addition, to reflect the substantial number of lakes and rivers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we’ve also analyzed the number of publicly-held acres that are adjacent to water which may provide access.

The report notes that, “… For a Midwestern hunter looking to hang a tree stand for whitetails, set up an ambush for turkeys, or work a woodlot for grouse, access to an overlooked public parcel could be a game-changer. And easy access to a lakeshore or riverbank might give a parent the only place where they’ll be able to teach their kids to fish for walleye, pike, or smallmouth bass.

Strategically unlocking as little as a few dozen inaccessible acres at a time could mean the difference between someone having a place to explore the outdoors and not.”

The report revealed Minnesota currently holds 248,000 total landlocked acres and Wisconsin has 55,000 total landlocked acres.

Landlocked public lands are best made accessible through cooperative agreements with private landowners that result in land exchanges, acquisitions, and easements, but this critical work cannot be facilitated by land trusts, conservation organizations, and public agencies without funding. One of the most significant programs for helping with this is the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The federal LWCF remains the most powerful tool available for establishing and expanding access to public lands and waters. And it just got more powerful, with the recent passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, a bill that fully funds the program at $900 million annually in support of wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation, including $27 million that is dedicated to public access. Importantly, the LWCF is not just limited to federal projects—at least 40 percent of the program must be used for state-driven projects, making it available to help open state- and county-owned lands for public recreation. The bill was recently passed by the Senate with broad, bipartisan support.

Legislation in Washington, D.C., can sometimes seem very far away. So what can you do to help create more access in the places you spend some of your most precious time? Write and call your state’s representatives. Identify areas of opportunity in your immediate community (and, while you’re at it, share land access opportunities with onX) and connect with your representatives. Let them know the access opportunity and why it’s important to the community.

This will be the first of three regionally-specific landlocked reports released by TRCP and onX in 2020. The next two reports will focus on states in the Northeast and the Southeast.

The post Report: The Upper Midwest’s Inaccessible Public Lands appeared first on onX Hunt.

onX has joined with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) to inspire and endorse a new bill that would direct money to land-managing agencies for digitizing outdoor recreation-related maps.

The federal Modernizing Access to Our Public Land Act (MAPLand Act) would require the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture as well as the Civil Works Department of the Army to translate paper maps and records related to public access to federal lands and waters for outdoor recreation into standardized, digital map data.

What would this mean for you? More complete and detailed information about road and trail access as well as a better visual depiction of hunting and shooting regulations.

Want to know what the bill includes?

Congress recognizes that fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation are important traditions for millions of people in the United States, and it also recognizes that the lack of information and ease of finding information contributes to declining participation in outdoor recreation. GPS technology and smart devices have the ability to provide detailed information to the public in real time, but many records are still on paper.

Therefore, the bill states that agencies that oversee the vast majority of federal public lands (including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, United States Forest Service and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service) should make a concerted effort to translate paper files into digital mapping datasets and make that information available to the public.

Within 30 months of the bill’s passing, the secretaries would work together to develop data standards so the various agencies are collecting and recording data in the same format.

And within five years, the secretaries would ensure that the following types of information are available to the public in a digital format:

1. All federal easements, reservations, and rights-of-way on private land that provide public access to public land
2. Open / closed status of roads and trails on federal lands
3. Opening and closing dates of seasonal roads and trails
4. The classes of vehicles and types of recreation that are allowed on each segment of road and trails on federal lands
5. Boundaries of areas where hunting and recreational shooting are prohibited or restricted

The agencies would then be required to update the data every two years. The Modernizing Access to Our Public Land Act would provide a total of $20 million to the departments of Interior, Agriculture and Army over four years to accomplish this task.

“Public land recreation has been revolutionized by handheld GPS technology in smartphones and other devices, allowing users of all types and experience levels to know where they stand in the outdoors,” said Eric Siegfried, the founder of Montana-based onX. “After spending over a decade gathering recreation information for our customers and making it easily discoverable, we continue to find valuable recreation information that exists only on paper. The data need to be complete, easy to find, and easy to use for the public to fully understand the recreation opportunities available to them. The MAPLand act is a much-needed investment in the outdoor recreation industry and in the future of empowering the public to get outside and experience our public lands.”

The United States Forest Service alone has tens of thousands of easements that are yet to be digitized—a lack of resourcing and funds means many of these records are still on old papers in storerooms around the country.

“The MAPLand Act would greatly strengthen ongoing work to expand and create new public access across the country while simultaneously helping the public discover and better understand the access and recreation opportunities that our public lands currently offer to all Americans,” said Joel Webster, Senior Director of Western Programs at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “After collaborating with onX over the past three years to identify the acreage of landlocked public lands across the West, we can’t think of a better bill to help solve many of the biggest challenges when it comes to accessing our federal public lands for hunting and fishing.”

The bill was introduced by U.S. Representatives Blake Moore (R-Utah), Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and by U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Angus King (I-Maine), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Barrasso (R-WY), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Steve Daines (R-Mont), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz).

The post Watch This Bill: The Modernizing Access to Our Public Land Act appeared first on onX Hunt.

January in Montana can be brutal. Days are short and gray; the sun barely peeking over the horizon just after 8AM and then setting around 5PM. Temperatures swing at random, often driven lower by a significant wind chill. Snow falls then melts, and is soon replaced by even more of the white stuff. For skiers and snowsports lovers, it’s a veritable winter paradise. For a shelter dog out on his own in the mountains surrounding Missoula, it can be downright deadly.

Heeler mix Yoda is no stranger to hard times. Currently awaiting adoption at Missoula’s Humane Society of Western Montana, he came from a so-called “animal sanctuary” where he was held in tight quarters with 80 other dogs and 40 cats. After being rescued from his crowded situation, Yoda was carefully cared for in an undisclosed location for 18 months before being transferred to the Humane Society of Western Montana. There, while awaiting adoption, Yoda worked on his innate fearfulness and shyness with the careful help of shelter staff and volunteers.

Certified professional dog trainer Mariah Scheskie describes Yoda as “fearful” and “a pretty special guy.” She notes he needs particular housing with multiple fences, as he can be considered a “flight risk” due to his troubled past. But despite it all, he’s slowly learning to enjoy people.

“He’s great at the shelter,” Mariah notes. “He enjoys it. He sees tons of people and goes on walks.”

Yoda was fostered to an area home in January but escaped, leaving Mariah and other Missoula-area volunteers with a conundrum. Yoda had escaped into the mountains surrounding Missoula, an area that is home to a healthy population of predators. Mountain lions, in particular, are a constant concern. The winter weather was also a factor: a shelter dog, on his own in the Montana mountains, seemingly didn’t stand much of a chance.

Mariah’s first hope was a random phone call from a hiker who had seen Yoda while trekking the trails behind her house. She had been unable to get close to Yoda, but the sighting at least provided a position of reference. Mariah met the woman, who explained the sighting location and promptly pulled up the onX Hunt App, where she had recorded her hiking path using the Tracks feature. Mariah took a snapshot of the track and then got the Hunt App the next day, quickly zeroing in on where the hiker had traveled and finding intersecting trails in the area for varied access.

Now with a concrete sighting location Mariah rallied her hiking friends, and soon a posse was combing the mountains, looking for tracks and any signs of Yoda. Everyone was armed with the Hunt App and marked any dog print or predator sightings with Waypoints and then shared them with Mariah. Predators were doubly a concern, as the team had set humane traps and were baiting them with food, hoping to lure Yoda into a safe capture. Mariah kept local wildlife professionals’ numbers on speed-dial in case the team caught something they didn’t want to catch.

“We had to hike in. Pull the trap up, and pull a cart up with us,” Mariah notes. The trap site was nearly three miles from the nearest road, making for a round trip of six miles. Some people went up twice a day, putting out food and setting the trap during day and checking at night.”

Mariah also deployed a new cellular camera, hoping for sightings and an easier way to monitor sections of the trail, but a fierce windstorm affected the camera’s ability to transmit data.

The team continued to work the old-fashioned way—looking for tracks. Every night the team would assess the day’s Waypoints and Tracks, studying the terrain and any patterns in Yoda’s movement. There’s a science to safely recapturing a fearful dog.

“Catching fearful dogs is very different from catching your own dog,” shares Mariah. The key to catching a fearful dog is to establish a feeding pattern / routine near the area with the trap. Keep them coming for several days so they develop a routine—you want the dog to associate the sound of people coming and leaving with snacks and food. We bungee the door open and let them go in and out for a few days, then when we’re feeling like the pattern is really reliable, we go ahead and set the trap.

“In Yoda’s case, there was a time crunch; the night before we caught him it was 0 degrees, so everyone felt the crunch. The wildlife professionals were quite concerned about predators in the area as well.”

All in all, Yoda was in the mountains for 12 nights before he was safely captured in the trap. He’d been missing for an entire week before the hiker first sighted him and called Mariah; the team then spent five days hiking up mountains, searching for tracks and carefully setting traps. It was a long process; one requiring patience, perseverance and long hours in the mountains. And while it was the volunteers’ effort that eventually saw Yoda safely recaptured, the team was grateful to have the Hunt App with them in the mountains.

“It really was a lifesaver,” Mariah commented. “When we started, I had no idea where we were going. It really was a helpful tool, especially when our cameras were down.” Most people on the rescue team didn’t have the App. “It’s not just for hunting!” Mariah shared with a laugh.

Yoda is now back at the Humane Society of Western Montana enjoying full meals, a cozy place to sleep and nice long walks with volunteers. It’s taken a few days to recover from his impromptu adventure, but he’s in good hands and is quickly returning to his normal, healthy self. He’s awaiting adoption with the right person in the perfect home—one with plenty of well-fenced space to roam.

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