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36A buck I shot on my 51st birthday 2018. Not the best pic but I was solo and the hill was steep. Good luck to all.

That's a dandy! Really hoping to help my wife kill her first deer this summer. Also got s friend that never killed a deer yet I want to help out. Here's mine from January, I gotta wait awhile before I'm allowed to hunt again 😩

I can't wait to start chasing bucks in a few weeks! Let's see everyone's bucks from last year to get us all pumped for the upcoming deer hunts. Heres mine from last year.

A bit north of that actually with their dumb processing fee. Plus galley fees, fish cleaning if you get some and want them to do it, plus tip. Not cheap. Pretty sure its cheaper than buying a boat and spending all that money on fuel though.

I havent seen either bull in person but when I heard about these pictures I knew the A3 bull would be the furthest away from the camera. One thing I do know is that pictures can be deceiving. Case in point my buddy and I both killed almost identical bears. We layed them out on his porch...i did not move either one but took 2 pictures 1 from each side. From their respective sides they both look like they dwarf the other one. I can not comment on the scores since I have no idea, just thought my pictures would show a huge difference due to perspective. I know quite a few people seem to hate A3 but they have a lot of great guides, and good people, sure they have some that may be lacking but what company doesn't????I'm not sure why all the drama.

I’m gonna say 295-305. I think he’s super young with a little face and short beams. I would be surprised if his beams are over 40”. All the sudden his tine length looks long because of it. A 350-370 bull will look exactly like that in shape just 10” longer beams and 3-4” longer tines. I know that sounds like a captain obvious statement but when they have a small head and a small body they look almost the same.

I love the outdoors, but my family (and my friends as I got older) just weren't hunters. My in-laws started showing me how to shoot a while ago, but they didn't hunt, and although really fun it never convinced me I should look at researching my first firearm. Fast forward about 10 years and my new girlfriend introduced me to her dad for the first time out in the field hunting quail.. and after bagging half a dozen that morning, went home and cooked them up - I was addicted. An 870, and a 10/22 later... About 4 years ago my co-worker started talking about his muzzleloader elk and javelina adventures and how his kids preferred his peccary sausage to anything else. He shared some mule deer steak with me a couple of years ago. He grew up hunting, and the outdoors is second nature to him, so our chats were enthralling, it was so different to how I grew up. Last fall, on a black friday deal, I bought a muzzleloader and started reading avidly, and heading to the range to figure out loads and get to know my front end stuffer. Here's the list in almost exact order: The Complete Blackpowder Handbook - Sam Fadal - pretty good general info on inlines that gets repeated over and over again in most muzzleloader books, and quite a bit on roundball (which I don't shoot) The Smoking Gun - Dan Allan - amazing. this was hands down the best get to know your muzzleloader, write clearly and explain reasoning, muzzleloader book I read. It's an eBook on my kindle, and I 100% recommend. DIY Elk Hunting Guide - Dan Allan - I bought because the one above was so great. Equally well written, and although I haven't seen an Elk yet have no idea how the infomation stacks up, it was great to see him break down public land, and areas within public land and offer advice on approaches and things to consider on a DIY hunt. I knew I was going to go after Coues as my first big game animal.. but it was cool to read. Diary of a Muzzleloader Hunter - Dave Sabrowsky - literally the best book that I read on my journey so far. It tipped me over any doubt I had (a) picking a muzzleloader as my first big game firearm and (b) picking deer as my quarry. He hunts whitetail in Michigan which is not a Coues and not Arizona, but the book is literally 10 years of diary entries on his hunt. It's like you are there. The disappointment, the wins, the in jokes, the struggles, the changing of regs, etc. It's a humbling insight into another hunter's mind and I'm grateful he published it. Beyond Fair Chase - Jim Posewitz - ok so in January 2019 I started to get serious. My hunter ed class was February and I had to make sure I wasn't just bumbling into hunting without understanding more about myself and the sport. Fortunately this book really just emphasized being ethical and moral in the way I'd expected. I learned great reasoning, and it reinforced why I wanted to hunt, and how I wanted to do it. A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold - I was told point blank that Ii had to read this, and I'm about 1/2 way through. It's a great book, and tribute to the history of modern conservationism. Do what's right, even if what's wrong is legal. Muzzleloading for Deer and Turkey – Dave Ehrig – great read and again good perspective on finding sign, stalking, and shooting deer. Coues White-tailed Deer - Annotated bibliography - Richard Ockenfels - I'm a scientist by training, and having this book was awesome. I could literally flick to a few pages, read the highlights and add to my growing lists of things to know or wonder about. How to Hunt Coues Deer – Duwane Adams & Tony Mandile – I was so excited this book even existed. I’d been listening to Dwayne on Jay’s podcasts and he just floored me with how much he knew and the depth of his experience. I am hopefully getting a glassing lesson from Duwane before my Oct. 11th hunt, but either way. Happy to have this in my library Hunting Butchering and cooking wild game vol. 2 – Steve Rinella – I really liked this hunting reference and explanation on how to do certain things even though dozens of you tube videos have shown me on repeat what to do The Perfect Shot North America – Craig Boddington – Also great info, and fascinating stuff. My legs when numb a few times as I kept this hand in the WC. Deer of the Southwest – Jim Heffelfinger – Oh man, this one was awesome. Between this book, tony & Duwane’s book, the bibliography and just getting out there I feel pretty good about my academic knowledge at this point on the coues. Now I just have to find the dang things right? Next to my bed that I have started or barely started are the 3 below: The still hunter – Theodore Van Dyke – written in the late 1800s amazing stuff Desert Solitaire – Edward Abbey – recommended haven’t started really. Restoring America’s Wildlife – US Dept. of Interior F&W – History and official reasoning behind the current model that makes our model the best in the world. Long list, but I’ve been reading the archive here. Threads from 2005, 6, and 7 to more recently in the last few years, and there is just a wealth of info. I want to thank everyone who’s shared their thoughts and opinions, and asked questions that have been recorded here. For a new hunter this forum has been amazingly helpful, and shows the importance of me exposing my highschoolers to the outdoors like I’ve been doing, but also taking them with me as I scout and look specifically for deer.

Just got back from a 1.5 Day trip with Tomahawk Sportfishing out of Fisherman's Landing. Excellent crew, comfortable and roomy fishing platform. Left the dock on Wednesday night, fished all day Thursday and returned on Friday early morning. The trip was sponsored by Accurate Fishing, which was a HUGE bonus! Lots of nice bling on the boat to fish with! They hooked it up! Thanks a lot to David one of the owners, and Justin and the rest of the Accurate crew on board. Incredible generosity to let everyone fish with their stuff, no questions asked. They brought probably 50 rigs on board for everyone to use. They also had T shirts for everyone on board. Now on to the fishing...The decision was made to go way south and fish Yellowtail on kelp patties and if everything went well we would hit the tuna grounds for Bluefin, time permitting. We ended up way offshore of Punta Colonet, maybe even a little further south. It was a LONG run! The weather was windy and the swell was probably 5-6 feet on average with a few huge rollers probably 8 feet or so. Got a little hairy out there at times and made locating kelp patties really hard. The crew was on it though and worked their butts off trying to find the right zone. We hit the first kelp around 9 AM. I got hooked up but didn't get a good hook set and my fish came off. We ran for probably another hour or so and the boat got a few more, probably about 5 or 6 fish for each of the first two stops. It took quite a while before we found the next spot but from there things went pretty wide open. They found kelp after kelp and before long most people had their limit. I probably got bit 7 or 8 times and put 5 on the boat. The best one I got was probably around 10 pounds or so and the rest were of a little smaller grade but still really fun! Pretty good fishing for the yellows unfortunately we ended up way too far south to be able to hit the tuna grounds. It was around 6 PM when we started heading North again for port. Got back to the landing around 7:30 AM or so. All in all I had a great time. Didn't get one of the bigger bluefin that have been around but nobody on the boat did either. One dorado and 117 yellowtail for 27 anglers. The rough conditions beat us up pretty good and there were a lot of guys that were pretty green by the end of the day. Had about half a dozen kooks on board that made things kinda tough. Wouldn't follow their lines, would cast right across you, even with a fish on. Regular rookie stuff for most trips but a few of those dudes just couldn't get with the groove. The rest of the guys were really cool to fish with and met a few pretty hardcore hunters too. Even saw my first wild sea turtle which was way cool! Can't say much more, but if you are ever looking for a boat to fish on out of San Diego, consider the Tomahawk. They have a great operation! https://www.sandiegofishreports.com/fish_reports/151302/tomahawk-1.5-day-trip-wrap-up-(late).php

Lol I had to think for a second but yes I did and no he’s pretty symmetrical

The SEEKER,S --BACK-RD ,WHEELS----. BEST-SMOOTHEST RIDE. This 82 ( yr. old) hunter - is only driver, original tires Works as advertised. never rolled ,scratched , damaged ,or driven off rd or fast. ALWAYS GARAGED. It.s a 650 HI -2 UP -dump bed style. I rode it appx. 1000 mi in AZ,

Thanks guys. With all the new stuff out there sometimes the classics get overlooked. Fun and effective rifle for sure.

Imo they are overrated, what worked better for me was using a tripod with the head flipped up to make a cradle, dropped my beanie in it to rest the front of the gun and a primos trigger stick on the back of the stock also cradled in a thicker beanie. Rock solid set up and way better then the triclawps imo.

Dan and Davie's tape measure or Art and Saxton's if they were killed with bow are the only tape measures that matter. I'm with Adam, Fake News! A bunch of drama over antlers is ridiculous to me, ymmv.

Anytime you use a WA lens and have something closer to the camera, it will appear much larger than a similar item farther away. I'll try not to get too technical, but it's commonly known as perspective shift or perspective distortion. The three things that can affect it are the focal length of the lens, the distance from the subject or the angle you shoot it. As an object gets closer to a lens, the image will appear distorted because of how the angles of light enter the lens. The closer you get to something, the difference of the angle increases between stuff at the center of the frame and the edges. This sort of perspective shift is often seen in pix where the hunter sits three feet behind his trophy or where an angler holds his fish at arms in length in front. Again, in tech talk, it's called a forced perspective, i.e. wanting to get that exact effect. It's an age-old photographic technique that has seen wide-spread use. 😉 A "normal" lens is generally 50-55mm, and it's called that because of how everything appears as close as you can get to what the human eye would see. Anything less, and you're getting into more of a wider angle. Focal lengths that are longer tend to compress objects more. For example, if you shoot a bunch of telephone poles with a 300mm lens in an almost direct line, they will appear to be only a few feet apart in the final image. Now, in this thread, the only images that appear more toward normal are the ones where one rack is sitting inside the other. Both are on the same plane from the lens, so less chance for perspective distortion. Same for Houston's front-on bear rugs shot. His other are skewed because of the angle he took them from with a somewhat WA lens.

OMG 😱 What a scandal!!!

Ha I can picture you hoofing it dragging all your kiddos out too!!

If you have any questions about anything in the one above, just ask. Some of the info in it is dated, so don't bet the farm on anything. 😉 And good luck on your future adventures. You're certainly going about it the right way. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.

I should be able to let you know in a couple weeks, when Taylor smokes a pronghorn with them....

My dad has one in Winchester model 43. Few whitetails in deadman fell to it in the mid 60's. He thought it was the " cats meow " for coues after several one shot kills. A center shoulder shot and an all day track job sent him back to the 6.5x55. Seems like he was shooting 45 grain Sierra round nose bullets. Not many options for handloaders at the time.

Not to derail the thread here... but I was seriously considering the Show Low area, but I think I've decided on Tennessee. I look at life kind of like 20 year chapters of which barring tragedy we are allotted 4. 🙂 I plan on spending the last chapter hunting your beautiful state at least once or twice a year.

I think you are a ways off. Very young bull with short main beams. He has great character, but i dont think he is even a 300 bull yet. His 5ths might push him close to 300, but id put him in the 290 range.

The story about Fred Hamblin , my Great Grandfather is not totally true, He never fully recovered from his wounds, he was crippled for the rest of his life.

Mark's Southwest Taxidermy in Queen Creek.

That sounds like my anchor. I’m shooting an old Ben person 50#@28 540g black eagle vintage 100g brass insert 150g rms single bevel cut throat. Eagle flight 4 arrow quiver.

Tony: One "almost" Marco Polo argali hunt doesn't cut it in the rarified air of international big game hunting that some of this planet's wealthiest hunters move about in today. A guy I ghostwrote a book for, a land developer whose family owns a tractor-manufacturing company, hunts Marco Polo argali four or five times a year, and has been doing so for at least fifteen or sixteen years. He isn't ready to quit until he has broken the all-time Marco Polo argali record set in the 19th century. He's collected the North American 29 a couple of times, along with nearly everything that walks or crawls in Africa, Europe, South America and the South Pacific. By the time he got going in Asia, he was hung up on mountain game and proceeded to take every type of argali, urial, bharal, markhor, mouflon, wild sheep, wild goat, chamois, ibex. and high-altitude deer, bear and cat at least twice. You have to pity that guy. He has no other goal left in life except to collect a ram with 73-inch horns, which probably is unattainable. His trophy "room" was built by connecting three industrial-type steel buildings (it must be about 42 feet wide and 300 feet long) and paneling the inside walls. If I had to guess, he has more than 400 mounted animals in it, including a herd of big Marco Polo rams cavorting on their own mountain. Another mountain has nothing except Asian ibex and markhors. I've written books for or about eleven international hunters and, with one exception, all were great guys anyone would be proud to have in their camp. If you didn't know them, you wouldn't know they were richer than King Midas. That exception was the late Prince Abdorreza, crown prince of Iran, brother of its last shah, and hunting buddy of Jay Mellon, Jack O'Connor, Elgin Gates, C.J. McElroy and other 20th-century big-time hunters. All I'll say is that I had to address Prince Abdorreza Pahlavi as "your highness," even though I had spent nearly 100 hours interviewing him in the two trips I made to his winter home in Florida for the book I wrote about him. The interesting thing about the guys who have hired me is that the only gun nut among them was that prince. All could afford the best equipment, but only the prince had ever hunted with anything other than a factory-built rifle. C.J. McElroy, for example, went to Africa for the first time with a Remington pump-action .30-06, then bought a .300 Weatherby and used it until the recoil got to him, then traded it for a 7 mm Rem Mag. His "big" rifle was a .458 Win Mag made by Sako. He successfully hunted more than 300 different types of animals all over the world with just those three rifles. I don't think he ever cleaned or oiled them, and each looked as if he had used them to dig holes and drive nails. The guy could shoot though. In Zambia, after I shot the lion in my avatar, he borrowed my 7 mm Rem Mag and hit a running waterbuck three out of five times at distances past 200 yards. If I remember correctly, he was 81 years old then. Bill Quimby