Zone B3, California

Steep and rugged on the west side and arid/open on the east side near Stony Gorge Reservoir. Per the GoHunt B-3 profile, elevations span roughly 100 to 7,400 feet, and the unit covers about 1,055 square miles. The zone's eastern edge runs along Interstate 5, and State Highway 162 crosses it east-west.

Zone B3 sits almost entirely within Mendocino National Forest — the only California national forest without a major paved road entering it — and is split between two ranger districts: the Grindstone Ranger District (Stonyford Work Center, (530) 963-3128) on the east side and the Upper Lake Ranger District ((707) 275-2361) on the west. The primary highway gateway from the east is State Route 162 west from Willows (off Interstate 5), which enters the forest as the unpaved Forest Highway 7 corridor toward Elk Creek and Stonyford; from the south-west, Elk Mountain Road (County Road 301) from Upper Lake provides a high-clearance route into the forest's southwest reaches. The main interior forest roads are M10 (Fouts Springs Road) — paved for 13 miles from Stonyford to the Deafy Glade Trailhead at the Snow Mountain Wilderness boundary, then dirt — and M3, which accesses Snow Mountain's west side; campgrounds and OHV staging areas along these corridors (Fouts Springs, Davis Flat, Dixie Glade, Letts Lake, Little Stony, Gray Pine Group) serve as common hunting base camps. The 60,000-acre Snow Mountain Wilderness is non-motorized; foot access is via the Deafy Glade Trailhead (end of pavement on M10), the Bear Wallow Trailhead (Road 18N06), and the Summit Springs Trailhead (further up the M10 dirt segment, high-clearance recommended). A 40-mile designated OHV corridor connects the Stonyford and Upper Lake staging areas east-west across the southern forest. Note that Road M6 has been closed indefinitely since a 2017 landslide between Lake Pillsbury and Alder Springs; M10 has had intermittent construction closures; and most dirt roads become impassable in wet weather or under heavy snow, especially above 4,000 ft. The Sheet Iron Mountain State Game Refuge (north of Snow Mountain Wilderness) is closed to hunting. BLM and USFS Motor Vehicle Use Maps are available free at ranger district offices and are strongly recommended for navigating the extensive back-road network.

Cover ranges from mixed chaparral and oak-woodland to hardwood-conifer and dense conifer habitats (GoHunt). Vegetation can be extremely dense on the rugged west side and more open/arid on the east side. Wildfire is noted as benefiting deer habitat by creating additional edge cover and young sprouts.

The zone supports Columbian black-tailed deer. (General black-tailed/mule deer ecology: blacktails in the northern Coast Ranges are largely resident with relatively short, elevation-driven seasonal movements rather than the long migrations of high-Sierra mule deer; the rut peaks in November, well after the general season.) No B-3-specific migration, rut-timing, or herd-trend figures were found in the sources, so those specifics are not asserted here.