NM Deer hunting

[derrelw]

This year for the 1st time in 6 years I drew a deer tag here in New Mexico (Unit 17). It was my 3rd choice but a tag is a tag and it was listed as a quality hunt so off we went for 4 days in the San Mateo Mountains in south central New Mexico .

The weather was perfect as was the country and conditions so I was really optimistic that we would have a successful hunt. We found some good water holes with fresh tracks and a large bedding area with lots of fresh poop so we hunted the area around it.

After 4 days we saw a total of about a dozen does / fawns but not a single buck.

I did have a 6x6 Bull Elk walk right past me and drink and graze less than 100 yards from me for over 1/2 hour, that was fantastic!

The few animals we saw were in great shape, looked very healthy and well fed.

We did see quite a bit of wolf poop but never saw or heard one.

I'm not sure if it was the drought or the wolves but the area should support WAY more deer than we saw.

I won't be putting in for the Unit 17 draw any time soon.

I did have a GREAT time anyway and it is some beautiful country. (Better than working any day!)

 

[sbhooper]

I hunted that area years ago when I lived in NM. We hunted elk and at that time it was 100 percent draw for mz. We never saw any numbers of deer the five or six years that we hunted it. I don't think that it has ever had a lot of deer.

Are you sure that you were looking at wolf crap, or was it lion? I did not know that there were any wolves put into that area.

 

[derrelw]

I'm sure it wasn't cat scat, I've seen quite a bit of that over the years. This was just like coyote crap only WAY bigger, we have coyotes on our property **** near every day so I'm quite familiar with that.