B Zone 2024 "ACCESS DENIED"

As the season in B Zone comes to an end, I am at a loss for words. I am usually a big supporter of California Fish and Wildlife and a huge supporter of Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) but this year I have to be honest; I don’t feel like the hunters are getting a fair shake.

For about 30 years I have been a big believer in B Zone as a backup tag. A second choice tag that usually pays off, but my opinion has changed, and I can no longer support my own argument to apply for a B Zone tag in the future.

I have many reasons to support my feelings and some of my reasons are supported by facts and some are supported by my emotions based in part on my own personal experiences hunting this zone over the past 30 years I have lived here.

In years past all the way up until about 2015 I never had a year in which I did not see a legal buck in B Zone. I used to always see legal bucks and would usually pass on several bucks and eventually kill a forked horn or a three point and be very happy with that. But not anymore, it seems as though a legal buck is hard to find unless you are willing to spend a week in the Trinity Alps or up in the Marbles and for guys my age with my commitments that just doesn’t work.

I am pretty open minded about what I call a “shooter buck”. I have always felt that a legal forked horn during archery season was a good deer to shoot. And when rifle season opened, I only shot three point or better bucks. That was my personal bar, nothing I would think to impose on someone else.

A trophy is in the eye of the beholder, and we should never talk down to another hunter for shooting what we think is a lesser deer. We don’t know what this person has been through or what that deer, no matter how big or small, may mean to them.

That being said, I have lowered my personal bar for a “shooter buck” to be any legal buck and the closer to the road the better.

So please allow me to complain a little and you can agree or disagree but it's just an old guy venting so take it for what it's worth.

Drought

The hot dry summers and lack of fall rain have really hurt California. For the last 15 years we have had some terrible summers. The summers seem to last longer, and the rains are not coming until later in the year. That’s somewhat true but not true as well. We have had some hot years, and the lack of rain has hurt but there has been a terrible mismanagement of water in Northern California.

If we only had a lack of rain, but the water was managed correctly and the reservoirs were not dumped every year we would have had water in reserve, but instead it was wasted, and the water was dumped for different environmental causes whether or not you or I agree or disagree with them. So we have created a water shortage in California which looks like it will last for the rest of our lives and no matter how much it rains, we will always watch it run to the sea and then watch the wildlife die off due to lack of water to drink and lack of ground water for plants and animals.

Growers, Crime and Homeless invading our public lands.

This is something that is just terrible in Northern California. Marijuana growers in Northern California are everywhere and the people that come to these locations to work and make extra cash usually are not what you would call upstanding citizens. I really don’t think that anyone cares about the guy who wants to grow a few plants for himself and maybe sell some and make some money. But no one person needs 600 plants for personal use. My problem with this is the chemicals used for these plants to grow rapidly are also the chemicals used to make other cell growth grow rapidly and for those of you who don’t understand what I’m talking about, Cancer is defined as “Rapid and uncontrolled Cell Growth”

It's simple, the chemicals used to grow these plants, are killing the wildlife and poisoning the drinking water and California Department of Fish and Wildlife are spending all of their budget on enforcing environmental laws and trying to clean up the messes caused by growers.

(This is Post Mountain in Trinity County, all of those little spots are now illegal grows with hundreds of plants. all those chemicals go downstream, look the spot up on Onxmaps you will be shocked)

The criminal element that goes hand in hand with the growers is larger than a person can imagine. It's not just the guy who needs cash that works the grow all summer. It's the several guys who are illegals who come up every year to work the grows and have no knowledge of our laws and really don’t care about our laws. They poach every animal they can because animals eat the plants, this means they are eating money as far as they are concerned so they just shoot the animals and let them lay. Deer love and a mean love the smell of marijuana buds when they are in full bloom. They will jump a fence, and one deer can eat or at least damage thousands of dollars’ worth of Marijuana buds in one night. Now imagine six deer hoping the fence in one night, the next night all six will be dead, because the guys working the grow will shoot them because this could result in thousands of dollars in losses. You don’t really think they are going to just allow the deer to eat the plants and take the loss!!! If you have ever visited an old illegally grow area you will find old sardine cans, empty packages of rat bait and antifreeze bottles. These are items used by growers to poison raccoons, rats, deer, tree squirrels and anything else that comes into the grow. Don’t fool yourselves, these people are bad for growers and until they are gone or regulated the hunting in B Zone will get worse and worse.

I don’t know about you, but I see more homeless people or as I prefer to call them “Feral People” living in the woods and on every turnout and every dirt road in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. People who don’t work, don’t have any declarable income and who pay no taxes or purchase any hunting or fishing license and who camp, dump trash and piss and defecate like the non-human animals they are, all over every place and destroy everything they set their eyes on. Anything of a Native American Heritage, any Historical Landmark, and park bench, picnic table or public restroom destroyed. They don’t live like a wild animal they live like parasites, and they are absolutely destroying our Nation Forests and Public Lands.

You don’t dare park a vehicle within a mile of them, as soon as you leave your truck, they will be over there checking things out and looking to take anything not locked down. They creep around like the walking dead and have no fear of going to jail or suffering any consequences at all for their actions. If we could bring back the laws of the 1800s when you could hang someone for stealing your horse, I would hand out free ropes and I can guarantee you the crime rate would drop almost overnight.

Okay enough talk about hanging the homeless, I apologize to any homeless person who is sitting in their free tent, in their free sleeping bag, they carried in their free backpack they got from the shelter, staring at their free Obama iPhone, reading my blog.

But in all honesty, until I see a decrease in the homeless population living in the Nation Forests in California especially B Zone, I will not purchase a tag there. This is a simple enforcement issue, that could be cleared up with tickets and tow trucks, if California Department of Fish and Game and the US Forest Service can't do their job with the budget they have, then I’m not going to purchase a tag in that zone and waste my money and support them in any way.

Fire Danger Closure or Anti-Hunting Movement you decide.

Back a few years ago in 2018 during the Carr fire, Sierra Pacific Industries also known as SPI decided to close all of their forest land to public entry. This was a good idea at the time. It was proven to be a good idea when in November of the same year the Camp Fire busted loose and burned up all Paradise California and made a run towards Chico. They had run out of firefighting personnel and the ones they had were exhausted from the Carr Fire. Another fire would have been overwhelming.

But if you go back in time and read my blogs after these decisions were made by SPI, I said that I was afraid that SPI, and other private timber companies and the US Forest Service would start to use “Fire Danger” as an excuse to close off property so that hunters would not be allowed to hunt. Not because there truly was a fire danger, there is a fire danger every year, this is California it's always a “Fire Danger” every summer.

There are a lot of Non-Hunters and Anti-Hunters in the private timber industries and there are even more in the California Department of Fisha and Wildlife. Any excuse for them to delay or deny or make difficult your ability to hunt and fish, they will take advantage of that excuse.

Just like the Lead ban, it has nothing to do with banning Lead, lead is a naturally occurring substance. It's about restricting your right to hunt and to “Keep and Bear Arms” Just like the law requiring you to have a background check to purchase ammo, it's not about saving the children from firearms accidents, it's about restricting your right to have ammo so you can exercise your right to “Keep and Bear Arms”

Closing private timber land by companies like SPI and others is an “Anti-Hunting Movement” and nothing more. Remember something, timber companies get huge tax breaks for allowing public access to their lands. Very huge so if they are restricting access for 3 months out of the year, are they paying their fair share of taxes on the timber harvested on their land during that same period of time when it's too hot, windy and dangerous to discharge a firearm but it's apparently safe for private timber companies to operate chainsaws, bulldozers, skidders, loaders and other logging operation equipment!!!! They haven’t shutdown their logging operations during this time that the Sierra Pacific property was closed to hunters!

Difficult Decisions

It’s difficult to say this because I have had many fond memories in B Zone. Big bucks, little bucks and bucks that got away. Family memories of camps when the weather was so hot you just couldn’t stand it and camps where the snow ran us off the mountain. But things have changed, lack of access, too many tags and criminal enterprises have ruined the zone and if we all don’t stand up and tell our stories and let California Fish and Wildlife know how dissatisfied we are, it's just going to get worse. So I can no longer recommend B Zone as a second tag because it truly boils down to lack of access to private timber land and criminal activities within the national forest.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was still able to hunt B Zone this year. My good friend Ben and I hunted Trinity Center, and the Trinity Shasta County Divide, we hunted our usual secret spots, we also hunted west of Mt Shasta, around all the lakes especially Shasta and Trinity Lakes and a few in between. We hunted hard and we hunted smart. But we ran into locked gates and Closed Land signs around every corner and up every mountain road. Now don’t get me wrong, I know I could have probably gone ahead and went in there hunting, and no one would know, and I could have possibly got a nice buck. But the truth is, it's illegal, and I have to stay above the law. But I think Ben summed it up pretty well when he said if there’s a way to describe this hunting season it's “Lack of Access”. And I think he’s spot on right. No access, no place to hunt, and if that area is closed and you are in there when a fire starts up, even if you had nothing to do with it, if you’re a hunter they would love to pin it on you and put your name in all the papers and say look a hunter started this fire that’s why we need to close it down.

Now on a positive note:

My hunting buddy Ben is a wonderful cook. So we had some campground meals to die for this year. So we really weren’t taking to too hard because after all there is more to hunting than just killing an animal.

Staying up late, eating good food, drinking too much and then rallying for an early morning hunt is really what hunting camps are about. Telling stories, having a family reunion of sorts and reconnecting again and in some instances for the last time, because we never know from year to year what life will throw at us and who will be able to come back and who will pass on. It's all part of that special feeling and longing we all have to do it again.

Keep hunting, don’t give up if you had a bad year, shake it off and start working on next year’s big game plan now so you have something to ponder all winter. Sight your rifle is, load some bullets and go to the range.

In Closing I will leave you some photos of some campground meals prepared by my friend Ben, he is Hispanic and so this year’s theme was Mexican food for a week. It took me three weeks to recover but man was it good!