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I do not know what other Arizona elk units are like, but Unit 8 was like a friggin KOA for opening weekend. Some of them camps are bigger than some towns I have lived in.

Something I don't understand is why it is ok to leave beer cans and bottles in a campfire ring. For some reason many don't consider that litter.

Representing on my dip tank

Heres my OTC Buck, shot him Monday just after noon, took about 8 or 9 days of spot and stalk/sitting. Have a shed of his and last 4 months of cam pics. This is my biggest coues and my first archery coues...addicted.

Anyone know who had the big camp at 108 and 42 rd. Several wall tents etc. Locals had to clean up ,what was discribed as piles of trash. They took pictures. These guys who took time out of their hunt to clean up the mess ,would like to know who to report, so this crap doesnt happen again.

I was able to get my second archery bull this weekend and biggest to date. Opening morning my dad and uncle called in a 5x5 with split eye guards to 20 yards but I wasn’t ready to fill a tag this soon. Passed on a couple spikes at close range later that day. Saturday was very slow with only a couple bugles early in the morning. Sunday morning a bunch of bulls were bugling around us but not consistently. We saw a good 6x6 following a cow 200 yards away across a meadow. I tried cutting them off and got to 50 yards when a cow I never saw busted me. The bull started trotting off and my dad stopped him with a cow call. I guessed 60 yards and clipped a cedar right in front of him. Clean miss. We never got back into elk that morning and we headed back to camp. Around noon my dad and I decided to walk the ridge above camp hoping to find a bedded bull. My dad spotted a bull raking a tree about 100 yards below us. My dad stayed on top of the ridge cow calling and raking a tree while I snuck down there to 40 yards. I found a small opening to sneak an arrow through the thick timber and connected. He went about 40 yards and piled up in a dead tree. The swhacker went right through the middle of his heart. Always a fun time in the woods in September. Hopefully we will be back next year and will have more time to spend up there. Good luck to the rest of the lucky hunters with an elk tag in their pocket! Sorry about the side ways pictures. I can never figure that out.

Many of you know Mark Boulanger and for those that don't here is a little info about him. Mark (aka, "Bo") has been a firefighter for the last 28 years, both in his community and serving on wildland fire crews. He is an avid hunter, fisherman and donates his time to programs like Wounded Warrier and Make-a-wish foundation. Unfortunately, for the last year and a half, Bo's condition had been misdiagnosed and treated as if it were Valley fever or pnuemonia. But a recent biopsy shows Stage 4 lung cancer, which is a terrible disease to fight. Brandon McDermott set up a Gofundme page for Bo and asked me to post the link here. If you would like to help Bo and his family as they battle this disease, here is the link: https://www.gofundme.com/markbo

So are you a slave driver? Are they sleeping in a tent or an alley? You don't sound like a boss I would work for past the first day. They must be relatives and I hope the money you are saving you are passing it on to them as compensation or stock options. I don't think the labor laws permit that. How do you handle their per diem? McDonalds gift card?

It's funny alot of customers see it and ask what it means

Sale pending!

That's messed up!! Don't understand why people can't pick up there crap & throw it away!! I hate when you hike in miles & find a beer can or other trash. People just don't care anymore!!

Well with no hiking ability right now i needed that 1 goat that didn't mind hanging out near dirt road. Friend of mine bowhunter4life Mike had location and Cliff also from Christian Hunters of America was kind enough to go up Thursday and bed the lovesick buck who hung out in the exact pocket i needed him to be in this morning. My son was able to join us!😀 i know for many this might be a last day buck but for me this was a 6:10 am opening morning buck and i couldn't be happier!!! I saved that poor doe from this guy who was trying to run her to death i believe. After a bunch of 200 yard dashes back and forth they finally stopped for a snack at 311yards... and better late than never doesn't count in this case but here we go anways-OH BY THE WAY GUYS PLUG YOUR EARS... YEP I FORGOT TO WARN THEM. 😯 the 243wssm barked with 1 of SHERMAN's reloads and done deal. Gonna give cape to anyone in need if you lost yours during archery hunt or what not but only keeping a day. I have not skinned the head out. I have a euro skull business, i do not remove skulls from cape nicely but it was caped up to neck properly. 6mm/243 wssm hole on left side shoulder not bad and no exit. if in need of cape and wanna come cape out head let me know asap👍 6024994136 N.Phx

I spend a LOT of days hunting, but I am far from "hard core". In my old age I have grown quite fond of being "comfortable" with my trailer and other modern niceties. The collateral damage to having the comfort is that I "have" to take the kids with me most of the time and I "get" to have the wife go as well. More often than not though she stays at home though. As long as I take one of the kids she doesn't care if I am gone the entire year...... Once I get out in the field I do pride myself on doing things "right". I try to make the hunt enjoyable for everyone. For me, killing an animal is second in importance to enjoying the experience.

Mark passed away last Sunday Night. Prayers go out to his family! https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/valley/chandler-fire-department-grieving-death-of-captain-mark-boulanger/75-595616006

Natchez has the Remington 140gr for you on sale. https://www.natchezss.com/remington-core-lokt-rifle-ammunition-264-win-140-gr-psp-3060-fps-20-box.html

If you only see one shooter, how many do you think Tessa will consider??? Lol

Only when it is very dry. Not when it has been raining.

Alex, What is a flying rat?

I'm a sponsor of the forum and a Swarovski dealer. My site is sportoptics.com. I offer specials to members of this forum.

We have 2 males left (6 weeks old). All puppies are doing very well an receiving their first series of shots this week. Puppies will be ready to go home the weekend of September 29th, at this time the will be 8 weeks old. Please contact us with any questions.

So I’ve been off CWT since they switched the format and figured I better get back on here and update everyone on the hunt. It was an absolute grind, and I’m glad it’s over, but it was a really great time!!! I ended up buying a proof research 28 nosler and topping it with a 2.5-25x52 March. It was under 8# all put together. This thing is scary accurate with 195 eol Berger’s sitting on 86.5 gr RL 33. Anyhow, onto the hunt! I was lucky enough to have my 3 brothers along for it as well as my wife and my sister in law. To say I couldn’t have done it without them is an understatement! We picked out and area on google earth that I found based on the biologists suggestion. Her exact words were “it’s reallt hard to get to but you’ll find a lot of goats in there”. We all met for breakfast the day before the hunt opened and headed to the trailhead around 10:00am. The hike in to base was only 5 miles so I was thinking we’d be in easily by mid day. Boy was I wrong. Ran into another tag holder on the way in and he said “you’re going in there? You realize there’s no trail and it’s solid blow downs right?” On the plus side he did say they glassed some goats “way the heck back there” this summer!! We trudged on climbing about 2000 vertical feet in the first two miles. We followed the spine for a mile or so and then it dumped into the basin we picked out. I guess I have to say that I was a little underprepared for it!! On google earth I could see some blow downs, but I didn’t expect this! Literally every 30’ for the entire next 2 miles was a blowdown! We plodded on, finally making camp about 4:00 pm. We got a little glassing in that night and were pumped to find plenty of goats!! We glassed up a lone billy above camp a mile or so. We planned on getting a closer look at him in the am. We had to do all the bear stuff, hanging food, no chapstick etc. I had never dealt with that and it’s sort of a pain but I guess considering there was grizzly crap everywhere we needed to do it! The next morning we awoke to high 20’s and clear sky’s. We hiked up to the billy we had glassed. We found him not far from where we left him the night before. One of the many drawbacks of the blow downs is there was literally no cover to approach the goats with. While he was still way above us, I wasn’t sure how much activity they would put up with. Most of the goats I’ve run into on other hunts have been fairly stupid and just watch you from above within easy rifle distance. Realizing we didn’t have any choice, we just headed at him. At about 1000 yards he just got up and hopped over the ridge out of our lives. This made us realize this might be a little tougher then we expected. I wasn’t too bummed as I had gotten a pretty good look at him and he was the type of billy I knew I probably shouldn’t pass but also wasn’t a giant so I was a little optimistic that we would find a better one. It didn’t take long glassing and my brother glassed up a big group of nannies and kids. I had made a decision that I was only going to shoot a billy so we kept looking. About an hour later my other brother picked up some goats that we had somehow missed. It was two mature animals together. It didn’t take long looking to realize they were both mature billies. One had a Snow White coat and the other a kinda piss yellow one. The yellow one may have been a 1/2” bigger but the white one was much prettier. We decided whichever offered a shot would do. This time we were smarter and found a ridge to hide our approach. We picked a spot that we figured would get us to 500 yards and looped around to it. When we got there we peeked over and ranged them and it was 770 yards. I am capable of the shot with a decent wind read or a calm day, but the wind was literally blowing 3 different directions including straight up!! We pushed on and found a new location that got us what I thought would only be 100 yards on them. When we got there my brother ranged them and said 435!! Bingo. That’ll work! We slid into position, the only visible one was the Snow White billy. He was bedded with his left leg hanging off a cliff looking down on us. The obvious chest shot was actually blocked by his nose as he looked down so I decided to slip a bullet right past it and into his shoulder, hopefully catching some back lung and liver and breaking his close shoulder. With my brothers all locked on him I sent one up. He jumped up at the shot carrying his leg. I assumed it was a lethal shot but slammed another in his opposite shoulder as fast as I could. He dropped at this shot, anchored on the ledge he was bedded on!! Billy down! High fives all around! We didn’t realize that we were just getting to the hard part! It took us around 2 hours of rock climbing to get to him, and these billies were in some of the easier to get to stuff in there!! I was blown away with how gorgeous he was when we got to him. I had a lot of people tell me to wait for later season for better hair, but I’m in love with the dense look of his hair. It’s probably 3” long and dense. My first shot broke his close shoulder but wasn’t lethal due to the steep angle. I was very lucky to get a second one in him. His horns were awesome. I really didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t worried about an inch of horn either way but was really excited to see he was a mature billy. The biologist later measured him at 9” long, 5 1/2” bases and 7.5 years old. A really good billy for this part of Montana. We were able to get some pics on the shelf he was on but had to lower him with paracord to get him somewhere safe to butcher. With packs loaded with meat and a life size cape we slowly picked our way down the mountain and back to spike camp. The next morning we got up and loaded our packs and headed out. We had between 40-60# packs going in with our food and gear for 5 days. There’s a surprising amount of meat on a mtn goat and that combined with the cape (which weighed 40#) we all ended up with 50-70# packs on the way out. It took us 5 hours to go the 5 miles out. I can’t explain how demoralizing those blow downs are!!! I’ve never been so happy to see my truck!! We were all wiped out so we stayed in Cooke city that night. A giant ribeye and a half dozen Coors lights never taste so good!! I’m really lucky to have drawn the tag while I was still fairly young and somewhat fit. When we got home we butchered the meat, which looked and smelled excellent. I had heard so many horror stories about goat meat but I don’t believe what I hear as I’ve heard people say antelope, Sandhill crane, and sharptail grouse are all gross as well and they couldn’t be more wrong. My wife cooked up some tenderloin and backstrap that night and I have to say it was incredible. Similar flavor to antelope but maybe a little tougher. I was really thinking I would have to grind it all I to chorizo or jerky but we instead did all roasts and steaks with it. We got back to ND and turned and burned to the Missouri breaks for an archery elk hunt. Saw 25-30 bulls and had some close calls but no arrows in the air. I had to go back to work for 2 days to make sure the place didn’t burn down and now I’m off to Utah for an elk hunt! I love this time of year!

Desert bull scouting package

Holy shitt. A bighorn with a long bow. That's awesome!

Here are Jim H.'s big unit 9 muzzleloader bull and Phillip B.'s huge Auction tag bull. View the full article

So the deal on this buck was that my wife would get to pick out the pedestal and the decor to go around it. She likes things simple and rustic, so here it is. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Thanks again Clay awesome job!! Finished at the studio, just as my wife wanted. Some of my wife's additions In his new home.