Martin Gastanaga

Well here I go again writing another post? I guess I just had to tell everyone about the unbelievable trip I had for the opening day weekend of deer hunting. It started out with a drive up to some of the family property outside of Paradise Valley, Nevada. The cabin sits about 6500 feet in elevation which is about 3500 feet above the valley floor and about halfway up the Santa Rosa mountain peak which is 9878 feet in elevation.

The first night we stayed at the cabin to wake Friday morning at ooh dawn thirty and start our ascension to base camp which was at 7800 feet and three miles away. We traveled up a trail that was build in the mid to late 1800’s called Government Trail which was made by the cavalry when they came to the valley to have one of the west’s last battles with the local Indians. After the battle the military made the trail to travel further west, the trail is about 15 miles long and runs west over the pass starting just outside of my families property ends at the bottom of Rebel Creek on the west side of the Santa Rosa Range.

The morning started out being cool but clear, we completed the hike in less than 4 hours with my pack weighting about 95 pounds. When we reached camp we set the tent and proceeded to eat lunch and take a nap. Afterwards, I hiked half way up to the summit to scout out the terrain and the possibility of deer. By the time I returned the wind had picked up to about 40 mph and major storm clouds were on the horizon. Once I got back to camp we started to make dinner and crawl into the tent to try to keep warm. We had just finished dinner and it started to rain hard and the wind was howling. In the middle of the night I woke to find about three inches of water flowing around the outside of the tent. I decided that there was not much I could do, so I went back to sleep and woke around 4:30 am to find the rain turned to snow and we had about an inch of new snow over the course of the night. Once we got a few things in order we start our hike to the ridge line for opening day.

We hit the ridge line and a large out cropping of rocks where we started to glass the large bowl in front of us for deer. After a couple of hours we start further up the hill where we jumped a bunch of does bedded down just below where we had been glassing from. Shortly after that a buddy showed up at the cabin which we could see from our vantage point, we got on the radio with him and told him where we were and he hiked up and joined us a few hours later. Mean while we went to another vantage point and found a couple of bucks battling each other so we moved to a place where we could watch them. One buck was a small 3×3 and the other was a 4×4 tall but not very wide. For the next several hours we watched them bed down and we settled in for the day in hopes that others would appear out of the brush. The day went on and dusk was upon us with no signs of others showing so we went back to camp and eat dinner and caught some much needed shut eye.

The next day we decided to head west about 3 miles down the Rebel Creek side of the range. Right off we ran into deer, so we spent the day glassing and sneaking to various vantage points. I did come across one buck that I was very interested in and I put a stalk on him. However, I waited to long to start and by the time I arrived he was gone into the trees and the day was almost over. We decided to head down the mountain and do some exploring of the other side of the range the next day. After arriving at the cabin in the dark we eat and got some sleep.

The next day we explored the outside perimeters of the property in hopes that something might be down low but had no luck. We then loaded up the truck and headed north to Hinkey summit and over to Buckskin Mountain. We did not see any deer but we did see a small covey of Sage Hen up high. Since the day was ending, we head down to Orvada and cut up and across to Rebel Creek and put in a quick hike to get a better lay of the land from the other side. We discovered what we already knew this was not going to be an easy hunt. After the hike we went back to cabin and eat and got some sleep.

The next day we loaded up the truck and headed back to town, we decided that we would take a different route home and run through Chimney Reservoir and then head down to Galconda. Just before getting to town we saw a bunch of turkeys and does in the fields. Further down the road we saw a few more does and a huge mine for Newmont Mining. The mine was 3-4 miles long and probable 2-3 mile wide, it was really amazing how much dirt they have moved out there.

Anyway, the trip was so good I could not resist and had to make a post to tell some of the storey behind the latest pictures. No deer and no more posting to the blog for me.