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Big thanks to Eric and Josh and the team at Arizona Desert Outfitters,cant say enough about their help helping me fulfill my dream of harvesting a sheep. Great guys all ! Will post better pics when I have them. 6.5 creed more 143 grain eldx 409 yard shot peak to peak. played in cholla needles for over half an hour waiting for him to get up.Gotta love standing up and having ticks all over your pants and shirt IMG_0040.MOV

Good people of CWT, I have a confession to make.....I love big muley bucks. I hope that doesn’t make me a traitor. With that being said, my brothers & I drew some great permits this year including out of state archery tags & rifle Strip! Yes, the famous 13B. We were absolutely shocked when cards were being hit. Seven bonus points somehow got us in the show. Don’t think you don’t have a chance!!! With the early moisture we knew we were potentially in for an epic year of hunting. When the dust settled (and there was lots of it), it was epic indeed. Honestly, the prep for the hunts is the best part for me. I love everything about it. Shooting my bow is one place where I find peace in a hectic schedule. We made a few scouting trips & set up some cameras in hopes of finding a giant. My brothers & I were texting each other constantly formulating plans to the point where our wives were ready to kick us out! 😂 Finally, game time..... Opening morning just a couple hours into the archery hunt I got a text from Trent saying he had shot a big buck. According to him he glassed up a bachelor herd of bucks & made a mad dash to cut them off. Trent can be a bit of a joker so I was fully expecting to see perhaps a “trophy” deuce point. We hustled up to meet him & my jaw dropped when I saw the buck. NOPE, he smoked a giant! We were on cloud 9. I just absolutely love hunting with my brothers & if I didn’t personally have success on this trip I would have gone home a happy man seeing the smile on his face. Trashy Big bucks always get the VIP treatment Little did we know that was just the beginning. Four days later I spotted my buck. Being familiar with the area from previous scouting trips I knew exactly where he would head to bed which would make him vulnerable. True to form he did what he was supposed to do & headed into the kill zone. I stalked through the forest into 40 yards & waited for him to stand. 45 minutes later, it happened. I gathered my composure & let it loose. All that practice in the 110 degree valley heat came to fruition as my arrow hit its mark perfectly. He takes a few steps, his legs get wobbly, & it’s game over. Big buck #2 hits the dirt. Most stalks do not end in success..... Measuring session Onto The Strip! We’ve never been guided before but reached out to A3 for this one. We wanted to do it right. Hunter Weems & Heston Morrell were our help & were absolutely awesome to hunt with. Exceptional guys. The Strip was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced & is everything people say it is. Total of 4 flat tires.... Insane dust due to the drought.... Vast & beautiful...... Oh, & huge bucks!!! The first couple days we were hunting one of the local legends (along with numerous other people), but decided to get away from the circus & check out other areas. In the new spot, I picked up a buck moving through the sage flat bright & early. I casually said, “Got a buck, but I don’t think he’s a shooter”. In no time Hunter had him in the spotting scope & immediately said, “We need to kill this buck”. We went from 0-100 mph in two seconds!!!”. Little did I know we were looking at a true 200 typical. Whoops, my bad. I learned that the bodies on these deer are huge & their antlers are much bigger than you realize. After traversing the landscape we found a good high point approximately 680 yards from the big typ. We just needed him to stand, & when he did Daryl was ready. Buck #3 goes down. Hunter takes good pics! Pretty cool walking up on this beast. Admiring... It felt good to finally be on the board. We headed into a completely different area that evening riding high from the mornings events. On the Strip you just never know what you might see next & it didn’t take long for luck to be on our side once again. Right at dark we spotted just a beast of a buck. He was a super, super, heavy 4X4. Trent looked him over, put his gun down, brought his gun back up, then dropped him in his tracks! The mass was just to much for him to take. I think he made the right decision. Buck #4 - We call him B.A. Barrackus 😂 Perspective. Elk mass. I feel like I’m always the last one. The hunt is starting to wind down & I’m running out of time. I feel a bit stressed. I mean, I can’t eat my Strip tag!!! We wake up Thursday morning but I feel different, like there is no doubt it’s going to happen today. I’ve felt that feeling before & every.single.time it’s been upheld. The morning is slow & we don’t see much. 10:30 rolls around but I keep glassing hoping for some sort of movement, perhaps a change in bedding spots, anything! Finally, some does get up & there is hope. The rut is starting so we know if there are does, we need to double & triple check for bucks. Hunter gets his spotter out & within a matter of seconds finds an antler barely sticking out from under a tree. This wasn’t his first exceptional spot. The dude has eagle eyes!!! He gets up to follow the does & is BIG but has a busted g-3 on his left side. Hunter asks, “What do you want to do?” I wasn’t about to pass this buck because he was broke. He just had to much character. I knew he could be fixed, so off we went. We found ourselves perched on a knoll above the thick cedar country he was bedded in. We will have to wait him out as long as needed & prepared for potentially a long afternoon. However, after 30 minutes or so we hear the dreaded buck snort & they’re off & running out of nowhere. We look at each other wondering what the heck happened? Wind was good, we were hidden...perhaps a predator? Regardless, with no time to waste we head back to the truck to circle around & hopefully cut them off. Hesston is on a nearby high point watching everything go down. He guides us in on where he saw them last. We’re on a little hill overlooking the area & know they’re close, we just can’t see them. Like quail they flush out right below us & are high tailing it directly away. I grab my bipod & sit down to steady myself for a running shot. I find him in my scope & try to pin him down, it feels like trying to shoot a running coyote! I lead him just a tad & squeeze the trigger...miss. I chamber another shell & fire again but this time he drops like a ton of bricks! Holy crap! It’s over, the brother tri-fecta on the Arizona Strip has been completed. As I walk up to the buck I’m elated, relieved, & humbled beyond measure. What a beautiful creature. Buck #5 A3 has trail cam pics of this buck so I know exactly how he looked before he broke. I was pleasantly surprised to learn he has a split g-3. 😍 Trail cam photo credit-A3 I wonder if we could be so fortunate to maybe do this again. The sun sets on an amazing season. Thank you for reading.

With Draysen playing his first year of high school football, and miraculously drawing an early archery bull elk tag, we knew it wouldn't leave much early season time to hunt deer. So we threw up a "Hail Merry" and applied his two bonus points towards a late December whitetail hunt. With the year we were blessed with, I really shouldn't have been surprised when he drew it. This past September for his 15th birthday, we bought him his first big game hunting rifle, an upper end Tikka, chambered in 7mm Mag. He saved up his skull cleaning money and topped it with a Vortex Viper HS LR 6-24x50. In short time we had his load dialed in, and he was shooting groupings inside a quarter at 200 yards. I had a funeral to attend on Thursday, so we decided to head down to our unit around 4:00 AM opening morning from the valley. We were towing our Ranger and had to stop for gas, so were a little behind when I had hoped to be to the mountain. I like to be in glassing position well before first light. We just about ran up the mountain cutting our normal hike time to this spot almost in half. I have to admit that I was pretty pleased with myself. Draysen is the athlete these days, but I put a lot of time and work this spring and summer into dropping 50 pounds and getting into my best shape since my early 20s. I got a little pleasure in listening to Draysen suck wind and really have to work to keep up behind me. He says it is because his pack was heavier than mine. Nonsense! 🤣 We reached our spot just as it was about to become light enough to glass. I threw the binos up and on the tripod right at glassable light. In seconds I found a group of about 10 does and fawns 500 yards on an adjacent ridge. I quickly called Draysen's attention to them as I scanned for antlers. While picking through the does, Draysen spotted two bucks coming up behind our herd and shouted in a whisper "There is a shooter!" We did a quick swap, me in his binos and him throwing his rifle and Claw combo on my tripod (it is the bigger more steady tripod). I called out the distance "482 yards, but he is moving away. Dial 13 clicks to 500." Seconds later, BANG!!! His buck flopped and rolled about 15 yards down the steep hill before coming to a stop. I estimate this all went down in about 3 minutes of me first looking into my binos. We have had short hunts before, but nothing like this! He head down and across the canyon while I stayed put to direct him to his deer. There was a rough 4wd road near the base of the opposite side of the hill his deer was on. All we would have to do for the pack out was top out about 20 yards above his deer, and it would be downhill all the way to the Ranger. Once he was within about 100 yards of his deer I started packing up to make the hike back the opposite direction to get the Ranger and drive to the previously mentioned spot. Then my phone rang, Draysen was on the other end frantic! "Dad, a buck just jumped up in front of me and is running away, is that my deer?" Of course, I had cased my binos and put away the tripod. I had watched his deer lay dead in an unnatural position for about 30 minutes, and was sure he had bumped another buck. But Draysen was about to have a meltdown as I relocated his buck. He was dead as ever and hadn't budged. I reassured him and watched him the rest of the way to his deer before heading back to the Ranger. I think the buck Draysen had bumped up was Draysen's buck's buddy we had seen earlier. He had likely bedded by his buddy and we hadn't noticed. Meanwhile, as I headed to get the Ranger Draysen posted a teaser picture on Facebook. A couple of member "friends" from here wanted to know when he would post a real picture. To which he replied, "When my dad gets here" so I could see him first. Of course the JERKS, you know who you are 😉, and Draysen had a great time making jokes on Facebook about my slowness. Of course my punk kid never bothered to tell them that I had gone back for the Ranger, and allowed them to believe he had left me in the dust and gone ahead. Hiking up the backside of the hill to Draysen was nasty. It was much steeper than anticipated, and being the north facing slope, was thick with Mesquite brush and prickly pear. Eventually I made my way to him. About the time I reached him I realized my new cell had fallen out of my bino case somewhere between the deer and where I had left the Ranger. Fortunately, we have a family tracker app on our phones that led us straight to it a few hundred yards back. We got back to the buck, took a few hundred pictures, and I directed Draysen a bit as he capped and processed his buck. It was a challenge on the steep hillside, but we eventually got it done. We eventually made the descent back to the Ranger falling (both of us) many times down the steep rocky thorn filled slope. I had loaded the cooler into the back of the Ranger, so we were quickly able to get everything on ice. As early as it was, we decided to take the Ranger and explore some new country for a bit, and turned up a couple more spots that have huge future hunting potential. While short, it was a pretty great morning with the boy. I titled this post "My Sidekick Closed Out The Year Strong" but the line that defines who is in fact the "Sidekick" is pretty blurred these days. As long as I get to be along for the adventure, I don't really care. From 500 yards across the canyon. We didn't have time for pictures before the shot. Coming out heavy! There was a pretty good debate on the drive home and into the afternoon about whether to do a shoulder mount or euro. A good friend offered a great deal to shoulder mount. But in all the hundreds of deer Draysen has euroed, he has never done one of his own, so that was the scale tipper. He is hard at it this morning.

When I found out I drew a late rifle mule deer tag I knew it was an opportunity to shoot a good buck but I decided I would rather watch my son give it a whirl, so I donated the tag to him. We made a few scouting trips and were real familiar with the area from multiple pig hunts over the years. Last week we saw multiple does but no rutting action or bucks in the area, but we knew they would come as they always do with time. Seems like the hunt was here in no time and we were loading up for a quick day hunt with a plan to spend most of our time hunting after Christmas. We headed out opening morning and the full moon had the deer bedded early. We found a couple does and three herds of pigs. The rest of the day was slow until the sun started to set. As the sun was setting we found two sets of does but no buck. We made one more move to a place bucks had been in the past and we quickly found a rutting buck with two does. His neck was swoll up and he was tearing up the trees. Once I saw the front view and how wide he was I knew it was game time. My son took one look at the buck and said “let’s shoot him.” We closed the distance to 340 yards and he put him down. There was no shrinkage when we walked up to him and he was bigger than I thought he was going to be from the quick view I had. I couldn’t be happier or prouder of my son for staying calm when it counts and willing to work hard to get it done. My younger son was there as well without a complaint and he can’t wait for his turn. Big thanks as always to my buddy Brian for all he does for me and my boys. We have had a lot of success together and can’t wait until the next one. Next year he said he wants a coues after shooting two nice mule deer. See how the next chapter goes.

We were unbelievably blessed to harvest 3 beautiful Coues bucks this last week.We got quite a bit of footage of the 4 days we hunted to tell the story. We had our share of ups and downs with some bad weather and missed shots but gratefully filled our freezers. I think we learned from our mistakes and experience and will be better hunters because of it. Enjoy the videos! Day 1: https://youtu.be/IJKpsNoV6_U Day 2: https://youtu.be/WRmRH8ZyINI Day 3 and 4: Coming Soon!

My Grandson took his first deer on an Oct left over tag. No new fangle Creed...No Super Scope...No TriClamp "Old School", Spot & Get Closer.. .308 Win. VX 3x10 350 yds. Standing, Resting on Tripod, Safari stile. One Proud GrandPa. I love hunting with this guy.

I did the Williams to Phoenix ride about 10 years ago with the BWM. Learned packing from a couple of their members. .

Eric has a great group off guys, wish we had him a little longer.. awesome ram , congratulations

What an old warrior! CONGRATS!!

Congrats on a great ram! Eric and Josh are good people!

You mean someone actually thinks getting closer to an animal is part of the hunt And experience vs pulling the trigger after dad dials everything in? And taking an ethical shot at some distance that wind and movement and heart rate isn't as big of factor? Wow, I thought I was the only one left! Congratulations to him and you and one heck of a buck especially for left over.

Congrat's on a nice Buck.

Congrats👍they sure grow fast. Memories that last a lifetime!!!

Beautiful deer👍congrats!!

Draysen found something interesting while cleaning it. He appears to have broken his nasal bones and healed up at some point in the past.

Congrats on the nice Bull.

Congrats on a great bull. I had the same hunt. I heard of some nice bulls being taken but for the most part it was tough because of the roads. And I don't think we saw a mature bull that wasn't broke up. Some of them missing entire main beams. We weren't able to get into our "A" spot until Tuesday because of the high stream flows. We ended up taking a couple bulls late in the hunt to fill the freezers.

That is a fantastic bull! Congratulations on your first! I shot my first the day after, on 12/1, in Unit 27. Absolutely have Bull elk fever

Very nice bull

Great Bull ! great hunting and shooting!

Shout out to Vortex for standing by their VIP warranty claim. I was flinging some arrows in my backyard last month and accidentally left my rangefinder in the yard. Came outside the next morning to find that my dog had mistaken it for a chew toy and did some real work on it. Photo below... I sent what was left of my rangefinder in to Vortex in a Ziplock and 2 weeks later I received a brand new rangefinder-- no questions asked. They even threw in a chew toy for my dog. Nice touch! All around positive experience. Wanted to take the time to recognize a company that keeps their word (w/ a side of humor).

Here is the final video, hope you guys enjoy! Day 3/4:

Very nice

Congratulations, they do grow up fast.

something sounds fishy.....