Every hunter, I suppose, has his favorite deer country. For my part, I have hunted deer over a vast area, but if were I pinned down to just one locality, I’d pick the beautiful Kaibab National Forest on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
The Kaibab has what it takes to be one of the finest deer areas in the entire United States—beautiful scenery, a wide variety of country to suit both the still-hunter and the horse-hunter, and plenty of deer—big ones!
The next time you visit the Grand Canyon, look over toward the north rim, across the great colorful gorge. At the very top you’ll see a blue line above the spectacular reds and pinks of the canyon. Binoculars will show you that the blue is comprised of trees—tall, thick conifers that are a part of Kaibab National Forest.
Suppose you are on the south rim near the famous El Tovar Hotel, where most tourists first glimpse the great canyon. You decide to investigate that forest for yourself, to see what the canyon looks like from the north rim. Well, an airplane can take you over in a few minutes, but if you want to drive there in your car, you’d have to travel more than 200 miles. Yet, if you’re a deer hunter, your reward will be worth the 200-mile drive.
Elsewhere in the US, about one deer hunter in ten gets his game. But records show that in the Kaibab, nine hunters out of ten come away with venison. Quite a difference! Kaibab regulations permit the killing of either bucks or does, but it’s venison nevertheless. Furthermore, the great plateau that forms the north rim of the canyon is largely limestone, and limestone bucks are the ones that grow the largest antlers.
More than a decade ago the Kaibab contained somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 deer, far too many for its food supply, as the herd had been protected by the federal government since 1906. But starting in 1924 deer were trapped and hunted. Many starved in hard winters. Now, with an estimated 17,000 deer, the range is still excellent, and the Kaibab is producing some of the finest mule deer heads in the country.
Kaibab hunting varies greatly with the weather. If the fall has been clear and mild, hunting season will find the deer scattered all over the mesa, from the spruce and aspens of the summer range, to the open canyons of the winter range. Then a man usually has to work—and work hard—for his big buck. But if a heavy snow has fallen and the deer have abandoned the high country, hunting is relatively easy for the good shot. I have seen as many as 17 big bucks in one day in the Kaibab. On the other hand, I have hunted four days to see and kill one good one.
In the fall of 1937, when my wife and I reached the forest, bent on getting two bucks, we expected one of the hardest hunts of our experience. Actually, we had so much luck we were almost embarrassed by it.
All the way in on that late October day we had heard discouraging reports. Hunters had been coming out with small bucks and does, some without any. The weather had been mild and the deer were scattered, wild, and hard to get. Some of the sob stories we listened to would wring your heart.
When we landed at the Moquitch camp, which is run by the famous lion hunter Jack Butler, we heard the same story. Only two big bucks had been brought into Moquitch. Few hunters had seen any.
“The Kaibab’s pretty tough this year,” Jack told me. “Better take the first really good buck you see. Shoot and shoot fast, as the big ones are up in thick timber and plenty broncho!”
The deer were scattered all over the mesa, but the guides agreed that we’d have to go 20 miles or more to the very top if we expected good heads. That night we mapped out our campaign with guide, Jimmy Lee. We’d ride to the top the next day, hunting on the way, and leave our horses in a corral at about 8,000 feet. Another guide would drive our car up and be waiting to bring us back. Then the second day we’d drive to our mounts in the car and start out after the big fellows. That was our plan, but by 9 o’clock the next day my wife had her buck.
We had started up a dim trail through a very deep canyon just before daybreak. We started seeing does and fawns as soon we began to climb. Coming out of a canyon, I saw three deer run out of a patch of brush at my right and disappear into a side canyon.
I hadn’t got off my horse, but something told me one of the deer was a buck. Perhaps I had seen an antler flash in a patch of sunlight. By the time the deer ran up the other side of the canyon, I had my rifle out of the scabbard. The scope showed me a big doe, a spike, and a pronghorn with antlers about ten inches in length. All of them ran up the side of the canyon and stopped in the shadows of the pines about 200 yards away.
“They are all does, aren’t they?” Eleanor asked as she dismounted.
“No, the lowest one’s a spike and the upper one’s a pronghorn,” I told her.
“I don’t believe it!”
“Well, I’ve got a scope and I know.”
“Want to take the prong, Mrs. O’Connor?” Jimmy asked.
“I don’t know, should I?”
“Well, the last party I had sent out went back with two does and were glad to get them.”
“What do you think?” she asked, turning to me.
“Do what you want.”
And all that time the three deer stood there while we had our conference, frozen like statues.
“Maybe you couldn’t hit him anyway,” Jimmy said.
“The heck I couldn’t.”
So her little .257 cracked and over across the canyon lay a very dead buck. We dressed him out and loaded him on a horse.
Just to compare notes with my previous Kaibab trips, I counted the deer we saw that day. There were 51 in all. And those 51 deer weren’t all does and fawns by any means. Four or five times I bounced off my horse, grabbed my scope-sighted rifle, and followed bucks as they flashed through thick timber. I fired only one shot and that was an error on my part.
Jimmy and my wife were 50 yards or so ahead of me when I heard Jimmy yell, “There goes a big one!”
I got off and saw four deer running through the timber. When they disappeared, my wife said the last one was a buck and I thought she meant the big one. From the way they were headed, I knew they would cross an opening in the timber about 250 yards from where I sat, ready. One by one they dashed through the field of my scope. The first two were does. So was the next. My finger itched on the trigger. Then the last came out. It was a confusing experience.
I pulled the trigger just as my brain registered that I didn’t want that buck. He was a four-pointer, but a small one. I probably would have missed him even if he had been wearing a rack like a rocking chair, but I did miss. I was glad. Afterward, Jimmy told me that the good buck had been in sight a fraction of a second and he had left the others to go his own way.
At 4 o’clock we reached the corral. We had ridden almost 40 miles over rough country, and we were tired. But we were in big-buck country at last—a wide, beautiful plateau covered with tall, yellow pines, with spruce, fir, and aspen thick in the canyons. There, the big fellows would stay until the snows fell.
The next morning we were back at the corral and ready to start before daylight. The fall had been mild, but even “mild” weather is pretty nippy in late October a mile and a half above sea level. That first couple of miles, before the sun came over the edge of the mesa to melt the hoarfrost, we shook and shivered.
We saw but a few deer that second day, as the cold and the approaching winter had driven the does and fawns lower, though snow was yet to fall. When we’d strike a good-looking canyon I’d hunt on foot, as the country was so thick that a couple of bounds would take a buck out of sight.
Once I saw a fair buck lying on the top of a ridge between two shallow canyons. He was completely unconscious of my presence. He looked lazily about, wiggled his big ears, got up to browse for a minute and lie down again. I left without disturbing him, bent on getting a larger one.
Around 10 o’clock we were riding along a ridge when I heard a buck snort in the spruce to my left. Then I heard the thump of running feet and the crash of brush. None of us saw him, but his tracks told me he was a big fellow. Cautiously we followed, working upwind, circling to head him off. Eventually we lost his track on a rocky ridge and gave up. But we knew we had hit paydirt at last and that the day would bring us shots at the big buck we wanted.
The end of the hunt came far quicker than I had expected. We were on our horses and had circled wide in a vague hope of cutting the track of the buck that got away when I heard my wife say, “There’s a great big buck, right over there in the timber. Want him?”
I looked and there he was, a bit less than 200 yards away, standing. He was motionless, frozen, looking for all the world like the storybook buck the tyro so hopefully dreams about, but which the old hunter seldom sees. A little patch of sunshine filtering through tall pines made his great antlers gleam, and shone on the gray-brown of his fall coat. His head was a good one, but how good only the tape measure would show.
It was almost a shame to shoot that beautiful buck. He didn’t have a chance in the world. My 7mm came out of the saddle boot, and the picket of the 4X scope came to rest against his shoulder. He went down at the crack of the rifle, kicked feebly for a moment and was still.
Then we found out why the buck had acted so foolishly. He had been bedded down to get warm in that spot of sun. Hearing us, he jumped up, and he stood there confused, still numb with sleep.
He was a big buck, one of the eight or ten really good ones that had been taken so far that season. He had a symmetrical four-point head with main beams of 27 inches.
We photographed him, dressed him out, and loaded him on Jimmy’s horse. When we reached the Fredonia-Grand Canyon road, we took him off and sent Jimmy back to the corral with the horses to get the car. We had been hunting in a wilderness, but now we sat by a road where cars full of tourists from every state in the union streamed by. Some stopped and admired the big fellow. Others said it was a shame—little knowing that the deer of the Kaibab must be taken out to conserve their food supply.
Back at the Moquitch, we butchered both bucks, skinned out the heads and stowed them away. It was an interesting hunt, but an easy one, and we had fired but three shots between us.
Kaibab deer are wild deer. They are never fed, never pampered; but they are watched and surveyed, and the hunting is rigidly supervised. Every year the forest service makes estimates of the increase, the losses from various causes, the condition of the range. The deer taken by sportsman are weighed, examined for health and disease, and the percentage of bucks to does is recorded. The herd is a crop and it’s treated like one—something that will have to happen eventually all over the United States.
All sportsmen who come to the Kaibab must check in at one of the four camps, where they can rent wall tents, horses or guides; or they may pitch their own tents and hunt on foot, as they see fit. But when they get their deer, they must check it with the forest and game officials, have the meat sealed, and surrender the deer tags on their licenses.
The Kaibab is a grand place and comes close to being a deer-hunter’s paradise. If you are looking for big heads, the Kaibab has them. If you want scenery, it has it second to none. If you simply want venison, it’s there.
Some time when your vacation comes late, combine a trip to the north rim of the Grand Canyon with a Kaibab hunt. If you do, you’ll have an experience you’ll never forget.
HUNTING IN THE KAIBAB TODAY
Hunting in the North Kaibab today is primarily in Game Management Units 12A east and west, and in portions of Unit 12B. Many record-class animals have been taken from these units, and over the years numerous articles by Jack O’Connor and other outdoor writers have created expectations of finding monster mulies behind every tree and bush.
Certainly, the North Kaibab herd is one of the most studied of all the nation’s mule deer herds. It’s now managed with the goal of maintaining a high buck-to-doe ratio, increasing the number of older-age bucks for hunters to harvest, and providing for higher success rates in late-season hunts.
Two general deer seasons—early and late—are held in 12A east and west. This year’s early season runs from October 23 through November 1 and the late season from November 20 through November 29. It’s difficult to be drawn for these popular hunts, particularly the late-season hunt when deer are approaching the rut. For example, in 2005 only 50 permits were issued for 3,373 first- and second-choice applicants for the 12A east late hunt, and only 175 permits were issued for 5,837 applicants for the 12A west late hunt.
Note: “Grand Canyon Bucks” originally appeared in the September, 1938, issue of Outdoor Life.
A special thanks to O’Connor historian Eldon “Buck” Buckner for sharing the author’s photographs from his Kaibab hunt in October, 1937.