California

The Tule elk is the smallest and rarest subspecies of North American elk, found naturally nowhere else on earth but California. Once reduced to just two surviving individuals in the late 1800s, heroic conservation restored wild herds across the coastal hills and Central Valley.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) allocates limited lottery tags for premier herds including Point Reyes National Seashore, Owens Valley, Fort Hunter Liggett, and Grizzly Island. Mature Tule bulls possess compact, heavy-beamed antler racks with distinct webbed palmation.

In the temperate coastal rainforests of Humboldt, Del Norte, and Siskiyou counties, California manages massive Roosevelt elk roaming beneath towering coastal redwoods.

CDFW distributes coveted draw tags for coastal and wilderness units. Hunters glass rugged coastal river mouths and dense spruce timber where 1,000-pound bulls bugle during the early autumn rut.

California is the primary destination for Columbia blacktail deer hunting, featuring an early July/August A-Zone rifle opener (the earliest general rifle deer opener in the nation).

Hunters face blistering summer temperatures in coastal oak foothills and chaparral brush, glassing shady canyon pockets at dawn. B-Zone and C-Zone hunts in the northern Klamath and Trinity mountains offer classic mountain hunting in cooler autumn weather.

The eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin sage country of Modoc and Lassen counties host California's prized "X-Zone" mule deer hunts.

CDFW allocates X-Zone tags strictly via preference point draw. High-elevation backpack hunts in August target velvet bucks above tree line, while late-season hunts allow hunters to glass migrating bucks descending into sage winter ranges.

California offers once-in-a-lifetime draw hunts for Desert Bighorn Sheep across the rugged, waterless volcanic mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert (San Gorgonio, Old Dad, and Marble Mountains).

Hunters spend weeks scouting desert water guzzlers and glassing vertical basalt crags for heavy, full-curl rams in harsh desert conditions.

California supports an abundant feral pig population across the Central Coast oak woodlands (Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties). Hogs may be hunted year-round with CDFW pig tags and non-lead ammunition.