r/Californiahunting

So I've never hunted in California before and want to get into it. I already took my hunters education course and was wondering if there's anything I need to know in particular? The zone areas and what is needed per zone still kind of confuses me. Why do I need a different permit for type a & b? Is that tied into zones?

Apologies for any stupid questions but I am fairly new to hunting in California.

Thank you in advance!

What’s up fellas, this year is my first attempt at getting into hunting, I know zero people that hunt, I am not from an area particularly friendly to hunting, but I’ve always wanted to get into it so this year I decided screw it, bought myself a D3-5 tag, did some lookin around on onX, and decided to go checkout a spot in the Momelumne wilderness area I thought looked neat, it went comically bad… the “road” out was basically 5 miles of rock crawling, and the two days worth of backpacking I put in yielded me zero evidence deer even exist in the area I was looking. Any advice on what to look for in the d3-5 region or what altitudes to bother with, or how to figure out if that random forest service road is actually an u undercover extreme 4wd trail would be greatly appreciated. At this point I’m considering just driving up there, pulling over randomly every 15 minutes havin a look around and continuing on my way…

I'm having a hard time on deciding which one to go with mystery ranch sawtooth 45 or metcalf 50. I'm planning to hunt mule deer with 2 day hunts in mind. what are your guys experiences?

When e-scouting an area far from where you live, how do you research water sources? Do you strictly go based on what’s on Google Maps, OnX, etc…or have you found resources like hydrological surveys?

If you know you know. Got up there day after opener, saw one potential buck that disappeared into a scorched brushy hell hole, tried to glass em up, by the time morning was over it was already too hot. First hunt I went home early for so far. Good luck to all you brush apes out there, also shout-out to the guys in white chevy S10s trying to spotlight deer in the middle of goat mountain road last night. Good work fellas. Here's to the B zone opener...

Probably going out to Mohave NP this coming weekend (August 15th) (heat depending) for the quail opener with my recurve bow, I haven't yet gotten a quail this way, but the weather is supposed to cool off over the week, and so I'm planning to make another attempt to harvest a quail with a trad bow, anyone want to join me?

Machete? Katana? Light saber?

I've always got a handgun during rifle, but this is my first season of archery. Just curious what everyone keeps close on hand during archery.

Who else is going for the opener this weekend? First time going and I’m pretty excited. I’m hoping it’s not going to be too busy. Planning on camping right outside of FHL property and starting at hunt area 1. Anyone else camping out?