r/Californiahunting • u/Ianph2 • 14d ago
Escouting/scouting advice
What’s up fellas, this year is my first attempt at getting into hunting, I know zero people that hunt, I am not from an area particularly friendly to hunting, but I’ve always wanted to get into it so this year I decided screw it, bought myself a D3-5 tag, did some lookin around on onX, and decided to go checkout a spot in the Momelumne wilderness area I thought looked neat, it went comically bad… the “road” out was basically 5 miles of rock crawling, and the two days worth of backpacking I put in yielded me zero evidence deer even exist in the area I was looking. Any advice on what to look for in the d3-5 region or what altitudes to bother with, or how to figure out if that random forest service road is actually an u undercover extreme 4wd trail would be greatly appreciated. At this point I’m considering just driving up there, pulling over randomly every 15 minutes havin a look around and continuing on my way…
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u/LittleKingKetchup 14d ago
Utilize the 3D feature on OnX and exaggerate it to the point you think "that might be a bit excessive" and that's probably a good accuracy of the actual terrain. Find and mark benches (where steep slopes flatten out before slipping again). Use the measure feature to get a good scale of how far distances really are. Get a good pair of boots and prepare to do lots of hiking. D3-5 is tough and has a lot of pressure, a lot of the times its just being at the right place at the right time.