old merrit highway

[bigmuley]

hey guys just wondering if anyone could give me some helpful advice ive hunted north of kamloops all my life and i thought ide try to explore merrit way and old merrit highway i got a pass to hunt on frolicks land not sure if thats any good area? any information would be appreciated

thanks

[doubled]

I knew a frolick from high school - good looking girl, she would be around 35 now.

Should be good muley country as they have alot of range land from what I remember.

[sakofinnlight]

I hunted alot of Frolek's property 2 years ago as a good friends dad was a cowboy on the ranch for many previous years! Umm alot of excellent mule deer hunting, I didnt do any scouting there so once the season opened I had to learn the lay of the land fast. We always saw bucks nearly everytime out and a few bucks were nice 4 points, Never ended up getting a BIG guy but i got a nice 3x3 as did my hunting partner. I suggest parking before first light and just start walking the wide open fields and grazing land and then start doing a "deer push" through every group of trees in the area. Even if it is a small group of trees with only a dozen trees, the mulies find that to be enough cover and we pushed countless numbers of deer out of these little patches of trees! Oh and have lots of ammo as coyotes are very abundant on that ranch!

[bigmuley]

yah we did some scouting today and seemed that they were staying on the tree line only saw 5 does and a massive spike. just got home now 6;45 little early but we saw the main group of does and spike moving then...did you guys hunt stump lake side or before that?

[sakofinnlight]

we were on the kamloops side of stump lake on the opposite side of the highway. Well that is where we did most of our hunting, but we did do some hunting in other areas on froliks as well.

[bigmuley]

nice mainly hunt the fields or upper tree line ridges?

[sakofinnlight]

If you have all day do both, I found if your on foot before the sun comes up and you either just sit and glass the open area and watch the valleys where the deer migrate up to the tree line at first light, or if it seems like your not seeing alot of deer heading up to the trees then go down and start pushing the little groups of trees and look into every thick thashy gulley as that seems to be where they will hold alot of the time. There are so many fields down along the highway where the deer come feed every night, so look for where you see alot of deer at night in the headlights out in the field and then figure out a way to get around them and wait for them to go up into the trees at first light. We did this a few times and saw alot of deer migrate right past us!

[Mack45]

That is all ridge popping in that country just think what the deer need and it will be water a ridge and heavy cover the higher the ridge the bigger the buck. I have not hunted in Merritt for 20 years but the deer are the same and easy to get . I shot the biggest Buck I ever got just in Ashanolla forest district out of Princton towards Merritt. Some of the better hunting I ever did . Now I live in Smithers the hart of Moose country eat a lot of swamp donkeys here . But I am learning and hooked on the elk in the peace region.