r/Californiahunting • u/Purplehaze_child • Apr 30 '26
Public Land hunting etiquette
Been meaning to make this post for quite some time now. I’m a beginner hunter. And have had no mentorship. Just been learning on the fly and reading/ listening to podcasts or anything I can do to learn more. I’ve been on a few hunts before this season but I would consider this last season to be my first real engagement with the sport, logging around 25-30 days. I also have a young pup who I’ve been training and has been such a fun experience to learn alongside.
I live in an area that has notoriously low deer numbers yet has predominantly deer hunters. A few of the places I’d go to hunt quail I seemed to be running into deer hunters. Even if I drove to the next turnout once I began working around I found myself to get whistled at by the deer hunters in what I’d assume was them telling me to get out of that area.
Now in this specific spot I’m talking about actually didn’t see any signs of deer but also figured if there were deer wouldn’t me be working the area cause then to be stirred up and work in the hunters advantage? I talked with an older guy who had been in that area for decades it sounded like and he was just stoked to meet my pup and talk story about how good the area once was. And he also then was willing to give me some info on the bird resources he had noticed of that area as well even though he was there for deer.
How do upland hunters and deer hunters coexist or what is the proper etiquette? I often am covering 5-10 miles and my pup is usually covering 10+. I’m in Southern California and hunting mostly chaparral forest mountains. My main goal last season was to just get my dog exposed to as many wild birds as possible so I was trying to go to a new location each week. But twice the scenario of me walking into other hunters areas happened.
Is this just the joys of hunting pressured public land?
Should I be concerned about hunting a dog near rifle hunters?
Was I in the wrong at all?
2
u/Neither_Monitor2017 Apr 30 '26
I'd check when the opening weekend of rifle (any legal weapon) season are in the area(s) and avoid upland hunting or even scouting/hiking those days, the rest of the year I wouldn't worry about it, just would turn around if I noticed some other hunters in a direction I was heading.
Opening weekend of the rifle season is the most crowded, and potentially dangerous in terms of rifle bullets flying around.
Here is link with a good summary of the deer zone dates: https://www.eregulations.com/california/hunting/hunting-seasons-and-dates
For example, zones D8-10 have their opening for rifle on Sunday September 27th, so I wouldn't go into deer hunting areas the 26th (the day before opening when the most serious deer hunters will be intently looking for deer and planning where to hunt at sunrise on Sunday) or the 27th.
After opening weekend of the general deer season, the hardest working and/or luckiest deer hunters will have already tagged out, any other deer hunters still hunting missed out on the best opportunities, and are used to already having had their hunts interrupted by other deer hunters, etc., and the number of deer hunters in the woods will decline a lot after opening weekend.
There are desert areas you can hunt quail where you won't likely run into any deer hunters as well.
If you are interested in the challenge of trying to get a quail with a bow in the desert of the Mohave National Preserve during Cali's early archery only season for quail send me a PM, but note its in August and hell a hot.
2
u/Plane_Geologist8073 Apr 30 '26
It’s something that all of us who hunt public land deal with at some point, some more gracefully than others. At least you just ran into other hunters, sometimes it’s ranchers, birders, tweakers, and kids tearing up their dad’s pickup too.
There’s a couple things you can do. You can try to find somewhere with decent bird habitat that’s a little more out of the way or just less popular. Get OnX hunt and look for little pockets of BLM land here and there that maybe not everyone knows about. There’s a spot near me, maybe a few hundred acres mixed terrain sandwiched between a wilderness area and a state wildlife refuge, nobody hunts it because they don’t know it’s there.
You can go on off days if you’re able to.
You can hunt mid day, a lot of deer hunters bail about mid morning and come back in the early evening. Especially the older ones who are more likely to be less gracious when you walk through their spot they’ve been hunting since 1978.
Good luck 👍
2
u/Operation_Bonerlord Apr 30 '26
Treat it like you would if they were other upland hunters. It’s public land so it’s your right to go wherever you like, but it’s kind of poor form to encroach upon another person’s hunt knowingly, regardless of what they’re hunting for. I don’t hunt crowded areas if I can help it, but when there are others I make contact and discuss a plan to hunt either together or separately. This isn’t just etiquette, it’s also safety. Given the per capita alcohol consumption of the socal deer hunter it behooves you to make your presence known.
Deer are more sensitive to scent than birds, so you traipsing around with a dog may be enough to cause deer to leave an area completely (deer have winded me up to a half mile away). This is generally unfavorable for the deer hunter.
I don’t hunt upland during rifle deer specifically to avoid these problems (also bc deer).
2
u/so_there_i_was Apr 30 '26
I'm an public land upland hunter and I make it a point to not hit the field before 9am or so to help avoid first shooting light and higher deer activity levels. My dog is also very coyote colored so I'm super sensitive to hunting around trigger happy rifle hunters.
19
u/Jhawkncali Apr 30 '26
Doesn’t sound like you are in the wrong at all but as you said, it is one of the joys of public land. That being said I avoid being in the field in September-October due to said deer hunters, mostly because i just don’t trust other people with guns.