Has anyone been hunting for mule deer in public hunting land in Utah? my buddy has been to the Sawtooth national forest and stay at clear creek campgrounds. I have hear that the best hunting is south Utah since the majority of population lives in northern Utah, If anyone has any info on these please let me know on Good campground what general area etc.

Send a PM to a member named Blank on this site. He does a lot of western states elk hunting and I'm pretty sure he's hunted Utah. Very friendly helpful guy.

Best hunting will be Henry & Paunsaugunt. Pahvant is coming back....Playing second fiddle will be San Juan/Elk Ridge, Book Cliffs, Vernon/WD. Zion haas a few giant deer Togo along with big sheep. Prob with Utah deer hunting is that for the most part the population is roughly 50% below objective. Makes their published buck:doe ratios very misleading.

The Paunsaugunt consistently produces probably the best bucks as a whole year after year. Lodging and hotels are available in Hatch and a few other small crossroads in the area. It tends to be very difficult to hunt as far as access due to the limited number of roads so a lot hiking and spotting is the norm. Many good articles and publications to read about the area. I've been fortunate enough to draw one tag there out of 12 years of putting in. I was expecting to draw again this year but no luck. Getting drawn tends to be the most difficult part of killing a good buck in Southern Utah!

Utah might have the very best mule deer in the nation on public land, but you need to draw a tag to hunt those areas, and there are not very many tags, and everyone who is into mule deer is applying for those areas. The other areas are hit or miss, it really depends on how far back you can get to avoid the crowds. It can be really bad on public land where there is easy access and lots of tags.

I've been on a few private ranches that where OK. Unfortunately, the ones I've hunted on always seem to get sold the year after I hunted them. I have a feeling that people looking to buy a ranch pay to hunt a place, like it, then make an offer on it that the owner accepts.

Eddie

Hunted in the Ucolo flats in SW Colorado. Across the border in the 4-corners area is mostly Navajo Reservation. I don't know about north of there towards Montecello but there sure were some large bucks in that country 10 years ago. I'm betting that the drought has kicked them back quite a bit. Still, it might be an area to look into.