Re: Living in the city - how do you do it?
As someone who grew up in Onterrible, I can assure you hunting in BC is an entirely different ball game compared to out east. Once you understand and accept that reality, it will be much easier to not get down on yourself for not being very successful (especially when you're just learning new areas).
I live in the lower wasteland and cannot take weeks at a time off because I own 3 businesses and operate 1.5 of them; so my hunting time is only on weekends. It sucks and it makes it a hell of a lot harder to be successful when you basically have less than 2 days to make it happen. Quite often it takes me most of the Saturday to find the animals (as they often change locations from the previous weekend) and then only have half a Sunday (sometimes longer if I'm on hot sign and force myself to stay out longer) to make it happen before its time to drive home.
Sometimes I'm able to finish work fairly early on Fridays and in those instances when I have more time to drive, I will almost always drive as far as I can away from the lower wasteland (usually to region 5), as the farther you go from here (north or east) the more animals there are. But much of the time, I can't get off work early and will simply drive to one of my spots in Region 3. Every 2nd Saturday I have to work for a few hours first thing in the morning, so that means I can't drive very far at all and in those instances I will usually only drive to my region 2 hunting spots and focus on blacktails and bears.
That's basically how I do it. I do have success every year, but rarely am I able to put in the time (or have the luck) to harvest record book animals, but for now I'm ok with that as I am planning to escape this place in the next few years and move somewhere where I can hunt from my own property and spend way more time searching for mashers.
Try to dial in a spot or two that are really far away (for when you have the time to drive far away), and then some spots that are a medium drive, and then some spots in Reg 2 that are close by for when you don't have much time to drive. Also just an FYI, due to the steep, rocky, rugged jungle (devils club, vine maple, salal oregon grape etc.) in many parts of Reg 2 (fraser valley and beyond), it might be the hardest or one of the hardest areas to hunt in all of BC. The terrain can be intimidating. But also keep in mind that there are way less Blacktail deer in BC than there are Mule Deer and Whitetail deer. Furthermore, I would say blacktails are as elusive and on edge as whitetails, but the terrain they live in make them even harder to hunt. So you're dealing with a much smaller population of animals, and arguably to hardest species of deer to hunt, in some of the most difficult terrain; and on top of that they do migrate in and out of areas - so they might be in one drainage one weekend, but then nowhere to be found the following weekend. On the flip side, if you're able to figure out how to be consistently successful at hunting blacktails in Reg 2, I think it will make learning how to hunt the other deer species in other MU's that much easier.
Good luck and stay positive. There's tons of other folks like you and me who are stuck in the rat race and can only hunt weekends. Just make the best of it until you can make your escape.
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