California Wildlife Encounters

By Guy Nixon and Ben Nuckolls

Hunting in California doesnt get much attention. With thick brush in hot temperatures, many hunters and writers pick easier states. However as other states have hunts requiring ten or more years worth of preference points to draw a tag, Californias over the counter two bucks a year, begins to look better. We have huge Boone and Crocket black bears. The wild hogs are open year round no limit. Its hunting you can do, but you need to use different methods and different tools. Here are some exciting hunts and useful information you just wont get anywhere else. We have gone all out to make some of Californias wildlife problems easier to understand in a fun and humorous book. The hunting here in California can be some of the most intense and challenging in the West. When you do get a trophy here it means more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477114865

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Ben Nuckolls and Guy Nixon.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012909132

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-1485-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-1484-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-1486-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

About the authors

Why We Hunt

Thirty Inches for Thirty Years

Skipper The Stock Killer of Spanish Flat

Triple Threat

Cougar Canyon

Who’s Tracking Who?

Tracking

The Grasshopper Buck

The California State Record Shed Antler

The Effects of Sheep and the Atom Bomb

Using the Acid test to find Big Bucks

How Come The Deer In Those Old Photos Don’t Even Look Like The Deer I See There today?

Death By White Fir

Not All Brush Is Equal

Deadly Western Weeds

Trail Cameras

Are We Becoming Too Dependent On Optics?

Hunting With Vintage Firearms

Hunting Tactics (How to use a dog to get deer.)

My Father The Buck And The Beagle

The Chess Master

Old One Eye

Bear Hunt 2005

2006 California Black Bear Hunt

The Ghost Bear, Jacob and The Albino Deer

Hunting With The Stone Age

Hunting Trophy Wild Hogs

Jay Bruce

A Utah Deer Hunt in 1942

Rattlesnakes And Sheds

We Need to Include More People in Our Hunting Experience

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No picture or content of this book may be reproduced

without the written consent from the authors.

In the Spirit of my Grandfather’s Grandfather

Claws of the Red Panther Bill Nixon Red Corn of the

Middle Rivers Band of the Great Osage Tribe

This book is collaboration between two-long time friends.

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This Placerville buck is a Stag. Infertile he will never shed his velvet and if you were to see him in hunting season he would be a prime animal to remove.

A Wild Indian Coyote Ben Nuckolls and a Civilized Indian Red Panther Guy Nixon. The joke is my Grandfather was an Osage Indian. The Osage were a Civilized Tribe while Ben’s Comanche were Wild Indians. I leave you to see if there is much difference between us. We would like to thank Donna Richardson for her photo and David Smith for his help. It was our objective to bring some of the wealth of wildlife information, history and stories we have, to you. You will find these true stories fun and educational.

We concentrated on California because it’s where we live and work.

To quote my Father, We live here because we want to, not because we have to. I think you will see why.

About the authors

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(Red Panther) Guy Nixon (Redcorn): Has a Bachelors of Science in Biology with an Emphasis in Wildlife Management and a Minor in Geology. Twelve years experience working for the US Forest Service and six years working as a Wildlife Manager for the Mt. Toro Hunting Club, near Salinas (specializing in Blacktail and Wild Boar). Guy has also organized three Deer Habitat Improvement Projects in the El Dorado National Forest in cooperation with the Mule Deer Foundation and the US Forest Service. He has also produced five Videos, Hunting Blacktail Deer, El Dorado’s Wonderful Wildlife, Hunting Wild Western Hogs, Hunting Desert Mule Deer and Coues Deer and Hunting New Zealand. Also a contributor to the following magazines, Mule Deer Foundation, California Game and Fish, Trophy Hunter and California Bucks.

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(Coyote) Ben Nuckolls: is an avid outdoorsman. In the early 90’s he worked for the California Department of Fish and Game Region 2. During his ten years with the DFG he worked with the Wildlife Investigations Unit. This unique opportunity to work with and capture Tule Elk, Desert Bighorn Sheep, Mule Deer, Blacktail Deer, Black Bear, and Mountain Lions. After that Ben became an Officer on the El Dorado County Animal Control Unit. He is a Licensed Veterinary Technician.

Why We Hunt

By Guy Nixon

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Bryan my son age three.

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We enjoy the hunt because it encompasses the essence of living. It is both spiritual and reality that mixes the past with the future. We don’t hunt because we are human, we are human because we hunt.

We hunt because it is the essence of living, the cycle of life. Plus you know your food had a good life as well, no additives or preservatives.

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Thirty Inches for

Thirty Years

By Ben Nuckolls

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Independence, California. 2009 My good friend Roberta Della Ripa drew the much sought-after G-3 Goodale hunt tag after thirty years of applying. She beat the 114 to 1 odds in drawing the tag. So when she asked me to help her out, it only took me half a second to say yes. I kept my camera rolling during the hunt so I was able to get some other successful hunters on film as well. Here is the story.

The G-3 hunt takes place in the beautiful eastern Sierra along Highway 395, and our base camp was in the Independence Campground. A variety of habitat exists along the Goodale hunt zone, which includes lava beds, sage flats, sand hills, pinion pines and the historic Paiute Grinding Rock Range.

We scouted two days prior to the opener and saw approximately 200 different bucks, most at the 6000-foot elevation. The early morning temperatures fluctuated from 17 degrees to 32 degrees, causing the mule deer bucks to go into the beginning stages of the annual rut. Many bucks were seen with broken antlers from fighting, we even witnessed a buck fight between a big 3 x 4 and a 2 x 4. Opening morning was brisk, and the air was filled with a strong odor of buck musk. We saw several bucks in the canyon, but Roberta wanted to make sure she used her tag wisely. Spotting scopes were used to make sure we had a clear view of the bucks’ headwear. From what we heard, we found that approximately thirty-five draw tags were issued, and four Open Zone tags were in use during this hunt, so competition was fierce for a wall hangar.

After looking over many bucks in the twenty to twenty-four-inch range, we decided to wait for another day to find our wall hanger. We were lucky to witness a very happy hunter in another canyon who scored on a terrific buck taken with his Mathews bow at forty-six yards. His name is Jerry Maytum from Lancaster, California, and his bruiser buck had a twenty four-inch spread. Depending on how you look at this non-typical, he’s either an 8 x 9 or 8 x 14 if you count all his junk. A true trophy, nonetheless and a rough field Pope and Young score of around 170.

Another buck we saw get harvested was one by Ron Ruffoni from Stockton, California. He made a clean shot on a nice 3 x 4 that had some scars from fighting. We saw a total of four bucks harvested on the opener, most waiting for that big one and the approaching snow storm to come.

On day 2 we glassed on a cold 17 degree early morning and found a buck with a harem of seven does. The buck looked nice and wide, but at about 600 yards away, we could see that he had some antler damage from fighting. We guessed him at around 30 to 31 inches and a very respectable 3 x 3. So we made a stalk through the canyon to get a better look. All his attention was aimed at his female counterpart. We were able to get within 75 yards undetected.

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What we saw was a large-bodied mule deer that sported a 3 x 3 frame and his antlers were not perfect by any means, but a true trophy is in the eye of the beholder, and all the memories that are created.

We could clearly tell that he was pushing that 30-inch wide class and maybe more if he was intact. We knew that a legitimate thirty-inch class buck was hard to find, even in this zone. So Roberta made the decision to take the buck.

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She carefully loaded her 30-06 with 160 grain bullet and steadied herself for a shot. At 70 yards away she put the crosshairs on the buck’s neck and gently squeezed the trigger all in one motion, the majestic buck fell with one clean shot. As we approached the downed buck, Roberta was ecstatic! This was her largest buck and a well-earned trophy! She knew her father was looking down at her from the heavens and was proud of her!

After thirty years of applying for the tag, the thirty-inch 3 x 3 was hers! Roberta’s husband of thirty-nine years, Mario, and a close family friend, Wayne, all helped make this hunt possible and gave hugs and cheers for a job well done.

Skipper The Stock Killer

of Spanish Flat

By Guy Nixon

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It started when I noticed that somebody had broken a bunch of limbs off my fruit trees. Since our son Bryan and his friend Colton had been playing there the day before, it was logical for me to assume they were the ones climbing into the trees, causing the damage. When Bryan came home from school I asked that he and his friends better stop damaging the fruit trees. Bryan insisted it wasn’t the two of them. They hadn’t done it.

The next day after work I was in Wal-Mart and noticed a motion—detector-activated game camera on sale for $40, and bought it. Once home I tied it up in one of my fruit trees and turned it on. Saturday morning I took out the film chip and looked at the pictures. NO less than NINE different bears were coming into my orchard at all times of the day and night to get fruit! I headed right into Bryan’s room and apologized for my accusations, and showed him the pictures of all the bears. We had a black sow with two little cubs, a red sow with a blonde two-year-old cub, a young blonde sow, a very fat old boar with a glistening black coat, a thin scarred-up black boar and a huge brown-to-blond boar. Due to his size my wife called the big blond bear Skipper and the smaller, but scarred-up boar, Gilligan. I knew I had a bear, or maybe three—but NINE of them! It became fascinating to see who was coming and going through at all hours of the day and night for the fruit, and our family learned to check BEFORE running out into the orchard.

A month or so after getting the camera (April 2007), our neighbors Jeff and Jane Barnhart (whose son Joseph is Bryan’s good friend), told me a bear had killed their two pigs. The bear was seen by Jane as it took a 250-pound pig in its mouth over the four-foot-high-fence. Jane told me the bear was blonde colored and very large. I showed her a picture of the bear I felt met the description and she confirmed it was that bear.

The Barnhart’s proceeded to build Pork Knox. They poured a concrete floor, raised the fence to eight