Hunting in San Rafael Swell

[kansas]

Cause of jobs making everything difficult, I'll be hiking the first week of October. I see that big game hunting opens October 3 in Utah. I'm a Wisconsin deer hunter and the season here is pretty intense, with a lot of hunters in the woods.

I've been to Crack Canyon and the Wedge Overlook, and the only mammals I saw were cows, so I imagine things are different there. Is there much of a hunter presence in the Swell? Thinking of maybe the Muddy Creek area.

 

[Udink]

You'll probably see very few, if any, deer hunters in the Swell, especially in the redrock areas. Pronghorn season is much more likely to bring hunters there, and even then they're usually not in the more popular hiking areas. Cedar Mountain is possibly the one exception where you are likely to see a few deer hunters.

 

[Nick]

Deer hunters are relatively sparse across the entire red rock country in my experience. October is a great time to be out there. The only time it was ever an issue was when we ran into some particularly unfriendly ones climbing out to the Egypt Bench from Neon Canyon in GSENM (Trip Report). In their attempt to make sure we knew we were lowly backpackers, they rolled one of their horses off a cliff and I'm quite sure ended up putting it down. That was a great trip, but an awful end to it.