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Scouted for a month ahead of the season. Hunted for 13 days and finally everything came together. Tough hunt. Was hunting unit 8 and it was hot and dry. It was 85 the first 5 days and not much cooler after that. 81 yesterday. My son was supposed to be my helper but melted in the heat. I took him home after 5 days and was alone the rest of the way. Some of you will remember my dad passed away in May. This was the first time I went on a hunt without him. Emotional roller coaster for sure. Had many close calls and got a tip from a guy I met on a little hidden water spot. Sat there a couple days with no results other than antelope, mule deer, coyotes etc.. I did get several bulls on camera at night and it kept me coming back. I chased bugles around in between. After 12 days I was about wore out and decided for good or for bad, I was going to sit that spot until the end. Day 13 found me in the blind before daylight with bulls bugling all around. As luck would have it, part of the herd decided to come down the ravine to the water. The big bull pushed his way through the cows and into the water. 40 yards. He turned to broadside, I calmed myself, settled my pin and let it go. Hit him just a little high which brought on some nervous moments because he bled in his chest instead of leaving a blood trail. But I knew I hit him well and was confident he was dead. Made a circle and found him about halfway back. Not going to lie, I shed some tears. It was a long, physically and emotionally draining hunt for me. Then, I had no help. Did everything on my own. Told my wife, I can say I did it alone now, but I never want to do it again. A common theme with the bulls where I was hunting, was weak backs. Everyone thought it was from the drought. Not sure, but if this bull had backs to go with the ridiculous fronts, I can only imagine what he would have scored. All in all, I had a great hunt and met some good people. Was considering doing euro mount. Anyone have any suggestions of someone in Phoenix that is good, and reasonable? Almost done. Should have my hands on him soon. Can't wait to put a tape on him. Daniel Gradillas of Spot-N-Stalk Skullz holding him.

neighbors' bull-he applied 18 years straight to earn it

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!

Have a November and a late January hunt but I will rent them.

Those are some massive fronts on that bull. Congrats

don't worry about what they say. They drink craft beer.

Sweet Merciful Crap!!!! What a toad. That kid can now retire there is nothing else to live for Congrats

Looks like I get an "F" in baby bird identification. My parents have a large lot that is natural desert. My father and I have a number of trailers and some equipment parked along one side of the lot. There are always a bunch of quail hanging out underneath them enjoying the shade. I don't see many doves around the trailers so I just kind of assumed the baby was a quail. Oops.

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.

If this guy makes it the next couple years he may have some pretty cool looking antlers....... We all know that cows fart, but I have proof..........

Nice bull dude

Stop drooling. LOL

The elk hunt was way tougher than I expected. I was in bulls every day but was looking for something bigger than I had yet taken. I've had 3 bull tags in unit 1 before this one and always ended up with something 330-ish. It took the full two weeks to finally find the bull I wanted to go after but only had two days to try and figure him out. The last morning of the hunt I was finally able to get ahead of him just enough to get a 70 yard shot as he crossed an old logging road - hit a branch I didn't even see and watched him trot off. That night, the last night I was in there bugling, raking trees, pulling out all the stops. But never got in front of him and watched the last minutes of light disappear.

Exactly what I think every time I read a post signed off with ....................BOB! Bob, we get it, you're 62 (you're the only person I've ever heard who talks about 62 like they're 90) and you live in a van down by the river. You have a habit of completely misconstruing topics/posts when you're posting late at night/early in the am (obviously just sleep deprived). BTW, I'm a 11/10, would hunt again. Also not only do I LOVE craft beer, I boof (sp.) the most artisanal ones.

50 pounds over weight

Beautiful bull congrats to you!!! Your pop was looking down on you & was with you the whole time!!

Don't limit yourself to seashell hunting if you're interested in fossils. Seashells do not go through a mineralization metamorphosis like celled organisms do, they remain calcium carbonate and therefore not so rare. Petrified wood is highly collectable, especially if opalized. Keep an eye out for shark teeth Be careful where you step..geods or Dino-dung? Who can name the next specimen?

I'm just messing around, I've heard it's good.

That was a baby dove.

Looks like a dove. A quail is on its feet and running shortly after hatching, not sticking around a nest.

Well this has been along time coming. After 20 years of trying to convince my wife to leave communist California, it is finally going to happen! I got a call on monday from my brother in law, he says he is needing a construction superintendant. I talked to him on the specifics, and told him I would talk to the wife and get back to him. I am a small General Contractor specializing in Kitchen & bath remodels and do most of the work myself. My body is getting torn up & I've had a nagging pain in my hip area for about the last 5 to 6 years. Being self employed & going to the doctor to get checked out doesn't work out to well. I finally asked my wife to make me an appointment so I can find out whats up with my hip. I see the doctor yesterday & he says my hip is bone to bone & I need it replaced. My wife tells me take the job your brother in law offered you & quit doing the physical work. So I made the call today to take the job, money is decent & I won't have to physically tear my body up anymore. So to make a long story I am finally coming back home to Arizona & could not be happier!! I have missed it since the day I moved away even though I hunt there every year. It never ever felt like home in California & I have hated it since the day I moved here. My kids are all out of school & moving on. We are ready to start a new chapter in my old stomping grounds & I can't wait. 30 days & counting down to coming home!!!

My son, Lance, took this bull Sunday night opening weekend. First bow kill, first elk. He is addicted to archery hunting especially screaming bulls! Lance's shoots with 3G Archery JOAD club each week. It was clear these lessons allowed him to remain calm for a clean shot.

Yay! More laws....that people will blatantly break and get away with.

Is it just me or is this new forum layout as annoying to others as it is to myself? Awesome site, great discussions & feedback, etc., and all the rest..., but this new BLAZING WHITE LAYOUT is ANNOYING AS ALL-GET-OUT! Please Please Please go back to what you had... it was "soothing/comforting to the eyes to read, but now we need sunglasses just to log on and read the forums! I'm sure it will also use more battery power on cells with all the white background. It was a great thing, but IMHO, this is not a good move. While CWT can certainly do whatever they want, I dare say that if a vote was taken on this CWT would be surprised on just how much appreciated the old layout was compared to this. Good try, not-so-good result... imho.