A Grand Canyon National Monument cast and blast: Part 1 

The drive to a boat ramp or trailhead to fish or hunt is always filled with hope and a mix of trepidation and excitement. This is particularly true when going to a place for the first time. 

Topo maps, OnX and intel from friends and family only get you so far. At some point, you must get out there and wade a river and hike the backcountry. 

For me, this is the best part of public land fishing and hunting; really getting to know a place by spending weeks and years fishing runs, stalking big game in the dark timber and watching the sun rise and set each day.   

So, on my six-hour drive to a remote patch of public land in the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument (Grand Canyon National Monument), I had time to think.  

I drove to meet friends and colleagues from Trout Unlimited, Arizona Wildlife Federation and Arizona Backcountry Hunters & Anglers to chase chukar and quail. I had my favorite shotgun, prized bird dog and camping gear in tow. Unlike my hunting partners though, I had not spent much time exploring this new national monument and had no experience fishing nor hunting in it.   

On this drive, I reminisced about the decade-long effort to protect fishing and hunting habitat and sporting opportunity on these public lands. The countless meetings, field tours and hours poring over maps. Drawing and then redrawing boundaries to strike the right balance and developing a coalition to advocate to simply keep this place the way it has been for time immemorial. Not a radical idea, but increasingly difficult to do in a time characterized by rapid shifts in technology, work and life.  

Abundant lands for fishing and hunting 

This monument includes land managed by both the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It was designated in 2023 using the Antiquities Act of 1906, a law signed by our greatest sportsman conservationist President, Theodore Roosevelt, which he then used 18 times to protect some of the crown jewels of America’s public lands system.  

It is not well known in some corners of the sporting community, but USFS and BLM national monuments are home to some of the best fishing and hunting in the world. When you boil it down, these monuments protect intact habitat, which is an essential ingredient for good fishing and hunting. The “decisions are made by those who show up” adage worked in favor of anglers and hunters in designating the Grand Canyon National Monument.

Did groups like Trout Unlimited get everything they wanted? No, but as pragmatists, we are willing to support deals that both protect public land access for fishing and hunting as well as multiple use activities like livestock grazing, mining and energy development.    

This state agency also continues to work with the USFS and BLM to manage habitat in the monument and maintain and expand wildlife management structures like water guzzlers, which provide drinking water for wildlife in this arid environment. 

The deal allows the Pinyon Plain uranium mine, located inside the monument, to continue operating and over six hundred existing mining claims throughout the monument were grandfathered in. 

A veritable treasure trove for sportspeople 

So, what does all this mean for my inaugural hunting trip to Grand Canyon National Monument? As required to bird hunt anywhere in Arizona, I bought a small game license, and after leaving the paved road, we drove for over an hour on four-wheel drive roads to reach a remote campsite. We did not encounter any road closures and saw several water guzzlers.  

We chased chukar and quail, harvesting some and missing others. We also saw some dandy mule deer bucks and a beautiful big sky, desert country as far as you could see. And I should not leave out that we did not encounter another soul for three days. In the evenings we had a roaring fire to shake off the cold and sip bourbon around. Last, we kept the grill busy cooking fresh chukar, quail and other wild game from our freezers.  

All said, it was a great first hunt for me in the Grand Canyon National Monument.

I felt like a king for a few days hunting and exploring my public land estate. Next on the list is fishing Lee’s Ferry this spring, one of Arizona’s best blue-ribbon trout fisheries. This trip will provide fodder for the second edition of this blog and round out the fishing part of the monument cast and blast.  

I hope to hunt more of these public lands in this lifetime. Overall, the monument holds over 156,000 acres of winter range habitat and 352,000 acres of migration corridors for trophy elk and mule deer. The famed Paunsaugunt mule deer herd, traveling from southern Utah to northern Arizona each year, uses this corridor. 

All I need now are big games tags, a new set of truck tires and a little free time.