Mulies in the Backyard
Well it is mule deer rifle season. For a week, Eagle Creek is a humming place. We have more traffic in 1 week than we normally get in 3 months. There are hunter’s camps that have more people in one camp than we have residents in miles and miles of Eagle Creek. It is hard to adjust to actually having lots of trucks, campers, and 4 wheelers everywhere. With 900 buck tags in our unit alone, hunters come from near and far looking for that trophy buck- or meat for the freezer. I guess Arizona Game and Fish must believe we do a great job of creating and maintaining habitat for wildlife as part of our conservation practices – 900 tags!
Eagle Creek only has 12 people in thousands of acres. Houses are miles, not blocks, apart. No one can see another house from their porch. Heck, we have 2 houses on the Double Circle alone and they are 7 miles apart on this ranch. Greenlee County population density – or lack thereof – qualifies us as a FRONTIER. I always thought that was neat. Not many frontiers left in the US. You know you live in remote country when you have 12 residents in such a huge area and the sheriff comes and campaigns here before elections! Can you imagine Chicago or New York politicians campaigning where there are only a potential of 12 votes if they had a landslide?
Hunting on the Ranch Increases the Population
But this week we probably have easily 200 people on Eagle Creek. That may not seem like much if you live in a city – but for the Double Circle, it is a crowd.
Funny thing – I rode all day yesterday and didn’t see 1 deer, antelope, elk, bear, or turkey. They know whats up.
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