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Hunting and Fishing Rifle, Shotgun, Handgun, Archery, Blackpowder Saltwater and Fresh Water |
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Looking for a hunter to show me the ropesnin Northern or Central CA
I'm going to attempt to make this request for a hunter to show me the ropes without making it sound like some kind of gay dating app post lol.
I'm a 36 year old very safe and responsible firearm owner. I'm a humble guy and can take instruction. I train annually in tactical shooting and I am interested in trying hunting but there is a big leaning curve and I don't want to unwittingly run afoul of the DFG. I didn't grow up with a family who owned guns. I've been out turkey hunting once but we didn't see any toms. I took the hunter safety class, have my hunting license (and a CCW), purchased deer, pig, bobcat, upland game tags. I have all my own equipment. Please let me know if any of you guys would be willing to let me buy you a coffee and tag along on your next local trip So I can learn through observation. Very much appreciated! |
#3
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My advice would be to hang around this forum for a while which will show people you are serious. Ask questions, etc. and participate so people here will begin to know you online. Yeah that sounds like match.com but I dunno how else to say it.
Think of your request as something like a motor cycle club at a bar and when the new guy shows up asking where he can get some patches for his MC vest, then if nobody responds he walks outside and goes home. Being straightforward with you (not to sound condescending, hopefully this doesn't come across that way) a post like yours shows up every week or two and typically the person never responds again. I've offered to take some people before or teach them and either they disappear or something comes up and they flake on me.
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#5
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Guided/Semi Guided Wild Boar Hunts In Central California, Shay Balesteri 831.594.1270 |
#6
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You need to ask questions and research, there's no stupid questions. As children most of us started off hunting rats, ground squirrels, birds like english sparrows, starlings, etc. Then we graduated to upland and small game, then deer, then some of us went to larger animal, more dangerous.
Your best friends are BLM, CDFG, and the NFS, ask them for information, locations, and maps. Generally speaking we can hunt legally accessible BLM lands, but verify and check for restrictions. Here's the link to a hunting research topic that I recently posted. http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/s....php?t=1370759 The BLM navigator links in the topic below are still in a pilot stage, something it works and sometimes not? http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/s....php?t=1349030 |
#10
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Hire a Guide
Retain a guide and go on a guided hunt. You will get access to great land and good guidance from someone that hunts regularly.
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Benefactor Life Member, National Rifle Association Life Member, California Rifle and Pistol Association |
#12
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If you can fork out 450$, you can consider a semi guided hunt over a weekend in Sonoma. Mel Carter in the Jesseshunting.com forum organizes a group or two every October. Newbies are generally welcome. This is a good deal for a private land hunt.
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#13
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Winner winner. I take a lot of new hunters and divers out on trips. But a prerequisite for hunting is to always go with a guide first. The $600-$700 for a pig hunt will teach you way more than I can in a weekend. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
#14
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Why em see A |
#15
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I grew up near you. It was tough hunting out there. On a very rare occasion, we saw does. We almost never saw bucks during the season. We got a few turkeys but found out later we probably shouldn't have been hunting out there (house nearby but was out of view -- no Google maps back then). Mule deer numbers are way down from where they were in the 60s. Too much development & habitat fragmentation. The gobblers are everywhere near suburbia (crazy amounts near the prison at Granite Bay as I recall) but very difficult to find on public land. Some folks say that pigs are a nuisance but the tag fee increase and businesses that depend on them say otherwise. Now I'm near Fresno. The hunting isn't much better but at least I know where I can go and not see a single person for days on end -- something that was much more difficult back around Sac.
If you want good odds of killing something, you have 3 options: 1. Pay up for a private hunt. 2. Get drawn for a lottery hunt where success rates are better. 3. Go out of state. My choice is option 4: lose the kill as the primary objective & use the hunt as an excuse to learn more about this land we live on. Of those deer that we have here, our doe/buck ratios are about 15:1 -- pretty darned horrible. Deer have learned our patterns well so that many are nocturnal for most of the season. Success rates are only 5-10% for most public lands. We all think we have better odds than the next guy but so does everybody who walks into a casino. If you only enjoy the hunt when you're killing something, you'll have to find somewhere else to hunt -- private or out of state. If you find another objective, you may find some success. Sorry, living in the most heavily populated state has many drawbacks -- hunting opportunities is definitely one of them. |
#16
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If someone decides to take you out. I suggest meeting for a drink or something like that and see if you hit it off and are cool... Don't want to be in the woods with some jerk off.
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All of them do something better than the 30-06, but none of them do everything as well. |
#17
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The reality is, most people don't know how to hunt deer. (I said most) |
#19
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Most folks don't know how to hunt deer -- true. I'm probably one of those dopes. But that doesn't seem to matter much in other states. Here, you can have all the skill in the world & still eat tag soup. I have a neighbor who hunts a month solid each year and usually gets a deer (not always, just usually). But I also have a friend in the midwest who just shows up at a feeder or box blind and is only skunked by choice (looking for bigger deer). Personally, I'm convinced that you have to get lucky before you can test your skill rather than skill that determines your luck. In other words, it's mostly luck. At least for public land. The only way to get more lucky is to just keep showing up. |
#21
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#23
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When Pheasant season rolls around you can come hunt some birds i have a good dog that loves to hunt. German Shorthair Pointer.
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"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln |
#24
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+1 on the guided hunt.....get a pig under your belt you'll learn a lot about BG. Birds are a little easier sometimes but you don't need a guide but you do need time in the field
Good luck
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One life so don't blow it......Always die with your boots on! |
#26
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that sounds like its all on private. unless you know someone or are wiling to pay, you wont get on ranches.
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All of them do something better than the 30-06, but none of them do everything as well. |
#27
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OMG this sounds so hotttttttttttt! |
#29
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Not true at all, if you notice the same guys on this form are successful every year, that's not dumb luck.... |
#30
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You don't have to start with big game.
Rabbits are everywhere. And coyote hunting is fun.
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It cannot be inherited, nor can it ever be purchased. You and no one alive can buy it for any price. It is impossible to rent and cannot be lent. You alone and our own have earned it with...Your sweat, blood and lives. You own it forever. The title is....."United States Marine". |
#32
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100 people line up for a coin-toss game. Rules are simple, flip heads & you win, tails you lose. Winners advance to the next round. Losers are eliminated. Basic probability math shows us that there will be about 6 rounds before there is one remaining player, who is the winner of the tournament. We KNOW that person is not a skillful coin flipper. He's just lucky. Yes, he flipped heads 6 consecutive times -- nearly impossible mathematically. Yet he is not the least bit more skilled than the others. It was all luck. If you've ever prospected for business, you'll find luck is a big part of it, too. The only way to get more lucky is to just keep playing. Boneheaded, slimy salesmen can do very well because they just doggedly keep asking for the sale from tons of people every year. They can have no skill at all but just raw persistence. But very skilled salesmen can wash out in a couple months because they lack the persistence to keep calling, keep asking and keep drumming up new leads. Put them in front of a prospect in a competitive situation and they'll nail it every time. They're clearly more skilled. But their skill doesn't matter if they can't get lucky often enough to use it. So for deer hunting in CA, I still contend that luck is HUGE if you're on public land. The fact that some folks are successful year after year does not indicate that luck isn't an overwhelming factor in their success. More likely, lucky hunters spend more time hunting and increase their odds of getting lucky again by sheer frequency of exposure. Spend a month sitting almost anywhere in the D-zones and you're bound to get lucky at some point. But only retired folk have time for that. Often, you have to hunt under conditions that are less than ideal because that's when you can get out. Once again, good luck lets you prove your skill. Bad luck never lets you find out. But, all that aside, you don't have to be that skilled in other states. So, even if I concede that skill is the primary reason why some are successful, then we have to wrestle with the question of why skill is so important here but not elsewhere. If you have to be the ultra-hunter here in CA in order to be successful, it is only because it largely way more difficult to hunt in CA than elsewhere. So it sort of proves my point -- hunting here is hard & largely luck-driven for the average Joe. As much as I like to think that I'm more skillful than the average Joe, I'm probably not. And neither are most of us. Sort of like how we all think we're better than average drivers. If you want to lower your odds of dying in a auto collision, your best bet is to spend less time on the road. You can train yourself like a pro and drive a beast of a truck but those are all somewhere below simple exposure to risk (driving time) in priority. For driving, focus on avoiding being un-lucky first. For deer hunting out here, focus on getting lucky first. Worry about skill later. As far as I can tell, until the DFW has the primary objective of plentiful, healthy wildlife populations, not much is likely to change for the better. They want as many tag sales as possible (recreational hunting days, by their definition, in other words, more people hunting more days is their objective, not healthier populations, balanced ecosystems or hunter success). I get it. Managing wildlife costs money. We have to pay for it somehow. But here we are with rotten success rates, falling populations over many decades and tons of habitat loss/fragmentation. So what we're doing is clearly not working. Those folks have a tough job, for sure. I have no answers. But the problems are pretty clear. |
#33
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Of note you have mentioned baiting in other states. Then trying to compare it to a state that does not allow baiting. Forget it, i will show some self control and refrain because its just not worth it. |
#34
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Ok, good luck this season, let us know how you do.....
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#37
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CVShooter I think I know what you're saying.
No matter how much experience or skill or cunning you have you'll never be as productive as if you were in another state with more game or on private land, etc. Is that right? That's probably true but it focuses on the thing you can't really change (the quality of the hunting where one lives) and not on the many, many things you *can* do to increase your odds. Scouting, putting hunting days in, studying the game, getting physically fit or whatever else. I mean -- isn't that what hunting is? The work you put in? The time and energy spent in the act? If it was just grabbing some meat off the shelf I know of a few places a lot closer than where I hunt. |
#38
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#39
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This is good advice if you can afford it.
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