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So i had the pleasure of hunting with my two older boys for the first time in 7 years. Both were competitive swimmers and missed most hunting seasons due to trips and then college. So after a long absence we hit the southern hills for a coues hunt. Glasses up two shooter bucks first morning and they slipped us on three different stalks the first two days. Great hunting though we were having a blast but starting to think these bucks had us beat. Third morning the wind was howling and everything seemed bedded out of the wind. We flipped to a side of the canyon that we thought would block the wind and just before 10am we caught them moving to beds. After some leap frogging to keep them in the glass and move to a shooting spot. The best we could do was 420yrds and we couldn’t get low enough to get out of the wind that was swirling around the top of the ridge line. My oldest got set up and we waited for a couple hours hoping it would stand up. During the time we went back and forth on the two bucks. One a classic 3x3. Most likely 85-90 so good solid buck. But we could get away from the old 2x2 with him. He was unique with great mass and tall. Big body and we just couldn’t pass on him. Yea the 3x3 would score better and look good but this old deer had to be taken. Finally we said let’s take him in his bed if you fell good. I know my son felt confident with his old 30-06. Not the perfect Coues rifle but he trust it and it shoots great. He didn’t have a BT so we were working out the drop at 420 and one of his reticle hash marks lined up good. So he went hot and let it fly. Deer came busting out. Shot was high. He found it again on the run up the to the top and fired an ill advised shot missing Unlike most coues I’ve hunted this buck granted him one last perfect broadside at the top. Reset he fired and the buck went ten feet into a prickly pear and folded up. Ranged 465. Double lung. Side note. Using new Sierra Gamechanger bullets. Went through and blew half a lung out a hole about the size of a quarter. Minimal internal damage. Nice bullet in the wind for sure. Couldn’t have had a better hunt with my two oldest boys after a long gap in the field. Enjoy the pics

Lee Marvin went on a guided elk hunt back in 1963 on my grandfather's ranch in South Western Colorado. Here is a picture of him and my dad and granddad and the elk that he shot. There is an article, supposedly written by Lee Marvin in Gun World Magazine May of 9164. My grandfather is right behind Lee and my dad, 18 at the time, is sporting the tactical plaid shirt and glasses. Just lost my dad last week, but photos like these keep him alive. https://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2008/08/elk-hunting-with-lee-marvin.html

my friends who are members here spotted this buck saturday night but was too late to go after it. they figured it was about 85." I went back on Tuesday with my Dad to the same spot, not specifically looking for that deer but figured if i did see him id probably try to shoot him. there was a couple guys already there. we moved down the road a ways and started glassing a different area but i could still glass back and see some of the original spot. we saw does but no bucks. at about 8:30am when the sun broke through the clouds I spotted him 2200 yards away. we drove around a little closer, walked out, hiked up on a hill 600 yards away from where we last saw him. he was no where to be found. kept glassing the same small area i thought he was in and 30 minutes later out of nowhere i see him just standing broadside out in the open. i range him 648 yards, took the binos off the tripod and shot off it, missed the first shot. kinda hard to time it right when youre just drifting the crosshairs over him. second shot, i hear the wallop. i get the binoculars up and hes hurt bad. he goes down, gets back up, goes down again. no movement, high fives. then i see slight movement, my heart sinks im afraid i wounded him with a bad shot, blew his foot off or something. i watch a while, no movement then i see his antlers swaying. its been probably 25 minutes since initial hit and i see what appears to be death throws then nothing. we get over there, and he was absolutely smoked with a golf ball hole through the power plant. tough son of a bitch, i still cant make sense of it. Big bodied deer, swollen neck

My son Jake connected on a nice buck this weekend on a jr. hunt. He wanted a 3x3 and luckily we got eyes on this guy once the fog lifted on Friday. The pack out was tough on him (and me) but he hung in there.

Glassed this buck up Friday morning with 25 does, and 4 other bucks. Watched them do their thing for about an hour with no real way to make a move on them. They slowly fed up over a saddle as the sun was starting to hit them pretty solid. We made a 2 mile loop around them to get in the same canyon that they headed into. We glassed that spot for about an hour, but it was noon, hot, and nothing was up. We decided to back out and return in the afternoon. We drove in from a different direction that was actually a further hike, but a much easier hike. We arrived on the only rock pile in the canyon where you could see where we figured the bucks would bed. It took all of 5 min and we had the buck. We set up on him with the sun directly in our eyes and contemplated the shot. My son 19, wanted to shoot, but I talked him into waiting. The sun finally settled behind the Mountain, and things got serious… Go Time! We ranged the shot at 578 yards and 10 degree slope. My son Hunter said, "Dad that stupid ocotillo is right in my way"... I had to crawl down and move it so he could shoot. The buck did not like that at all and bedded down.... We could see antlers, neck, and bush and a small window of vitals. We thought about calling it a day, but my son felt very confident in the shot. One well placed 150 ab/ 300 wsm and it was over... Heart shot/ flop!!! The pack out in the dark was a great learning experience for him.... Great Father Son Time..... My boys have had one heck of a 5 year run. Whitey....

This what we call out west a forky.

Little known fact, that is the last pronghorn buck in Arizona

At SW Taxidermy today (great shop) and we were guessing the score most said 80 or so maybe high 70. They taped it and we went, no tape again. And again. 96 7/8 wow would not have guessed that. Thanks for the laughs today and the name of Forkasaures.

Well, our hunting "party" was fortunate to draw 5 tags in the same unit for late bull. Getting two bulls on the ground and taken care of is daunting, five seemed downright crazy. Out of the 5 hunters, 2 of them would be happy to just get bulls on the ground (both guys around 70 years old) and the other 3 were were going to hold out for good bulls. With all the snow on the ground, it made access to some of our spots impossible but it did push a LOT of bulls into some other country that seemed to have basically zero hunting pressure with much more forgiving terrain. The first morning started with spitting snow, fog and wind. My dad called us pretty early and said the two older gentlemen in our party had both knocked down bulls and they needed some help. The rest of the day was spent trying to get two bulls broken down and into the trucks through a blizzard. The storm put down a lot of snow fast. we had to get out of the country soon before the roads were impassible. I didn't take any photos of these bulls because we were in such a hurry to get them taken care of and the amount of snow coming down would have made it tough anyways. One of them was a broken 300" type 6-point, the other was a raghorn 5. Nothing too impressive but they were happy. We woke up to about 8 degrees and around a foot of snow on Saturday. We headed back to the same area the two bulls were taken at the day before and immediately started seeing bulls. We spotted 8 or 10 on a near ridge (500 or so yards away) but nothing too enticing. I swung and started glassing the opposite direction and found a bull that needed a closer look. Just when we were packing up i took another look at the near ridge and suddenly there were a lot more bulls that were standing up. 3 of them would have been shooters. I just got a look at the tops of what i thought was the biggest bull and we decided we need to kill him. He had a 340" type 6-point, and a 350" type BEAUTIFUL, palmated 7x7 with him. I had to talk my brother out of shooting either of them because the one looked to be bigger. It was hard watching those two bulls walk away. The biggest one bedded after all the other bulls left the country and we could just see his tops. We decided to sneak in a little closer and ended up getting to about 410 yards where we'd wait for about an hour for him to stand up. He finally stood and walked through a very narrow shooting lane and my brother was able to knock him down. When we made it up to him, we found out that his eyeguards were extremely short. He probably doesn't score as high as the 7x7 would have but he is an ancient bull with incredible tops and main beams. I've been around a LOT of bulls on the ground and this one was probably the oldest. Hunters throw around the term "past his prime" "he's digressing" or "he wouldn't have made it through winter" FAR too often, but this bull was most likely all of those. He was bony, hips protruding, his spine looked like a razor back and his teeth were in BAD shape. Now that my brother was tagged out, we decided to bring Forest and Heather into the same area the next morning. Right away we found a bunch of bulls including the 7x7 that was running with my brother's bull. they were on the move and Forest had to shoot fast. He hit the bull and it bolted. we figured with the fresh snow it would be easy to locate. 5 miles and just some pin pricks of blood is all we found, until our buddy got on a high knob and was able to glass him up again. He made a giant loop and ended up in the same spot he was when he hit him initially. It looked like he basically just burned him and top of the shoulders, he'll be fine. After relocating him and realizing the wound was extremely superficial, we decided that we needed to get Heather on a bull that we had glassed up while pursuing the wounded one. He was in a great spot. We made our way around to him and got to 475 yards and waited for him to clear the other bulls. Heather made a fantastic shot through the middle of the shoulders. The bull didn't even twitch. He has great main beams, wide and good tine length on everything but his left G-5. Heather was thrilled, as she should have been. We spent the rest of the day taking care of this bull. The next morning we went back at it trying to relocate the 7x7 or find another good one. We glassed up a LOT of bulls again, including the one he killed later that day. We made a move on a 340" type 7x7 but he busted us. On the way back to the truck, I glassed a few bulls that were BIG. There was really no way to get withing shooting distance as they were bedded in a big PJ flat. We decided to try to push them off the thick flat and into the open flats. I made a loop around them so my scent would push into them and they SHOULD have left the country the opposite direction as my scent. Well, they didn't read the script and ran the wrong direction into some country that that would have been impossible to hunt. This was definitely not their first rodeo. There were around 10 bulls in the heard and 5 of them were no-brainers. The biggest at a glance looked to be a 380"ish bull that was busted past his 4th on one side. At this point the day was winding down and we decided to get a better look at a bull that Forest passed earlier that morning. We were able to relocate him and we decided he probably shouldn't have passed him. we worked our way into position and Forest shot, hitting him a little far back. All the bulls in the heard headed north. We looked around for an hour or so and scattered in all directions, not finding any blood or a sign of a hit. The smart old bull button hooked the rest of the heard and headed the opposite direction. Forest glassed him beddded under a rock outcropping about 250 yards away and put him down for good. He had 8-10" busted off his left fourth is why he decided to pass him earlier. This elk hunt was a blast. I've been on a lot of them and i don't think i've ever seen so many good bulls. We probably saw around 150 bulls in four days. Till next time

Excellent condition savage model 24 .223 over 20 gauge 3” chamber combo Gun. Gun has 24” barrels has been shot very little. Scope rail included. These are getting harder to find. Asking $550.00 . Located in queen creek.

Wanted to share an opening day buck I took during the October central Az coues Hunt. Enjoy and good luck to all the coues hunters still out there.

That’s a great buck......and a great score. Love the big eye guards! Those of us in Arizona still call it a 2x2 though......nothing wrong with a BIG 2 !!!

my buddies work in the mines up there...they drive the road all the time. will send them a message

my 96 has 390k, when the time comes I'll rebuild and not think twice. I know every issue plus the limited electronics make me very comfortable when I'm in the middle of nowhere.

For what it is worth, I bought the same gun last year for my wife and daughter to hunt with . I had PRC put a little b@st@rd on it and topped it with a LRHS and it shoots. I only shot the 143eldx but grouped well under an 1", it dialed into every range out to 500 that I tried (no groups at distance, but several 2 shot within the diamond hits). I liked it so much (and the fact it is 1/2 the weight as my typical carry) I ended up shooting my deer with it in Oct (you know, just to make sure it was safe for my wife) and then my wife killed her first deer with it in Nov. Since it is a Creedmore, yes, I am attempting to grow a man bun in time for next season - just to not let anyone down. haha. Good luck with the sale

Hats off to Duwane and his guides ! First class all the way! We had a blast and got it done opening morning of the late hunt on 12ae! A big thanks to John Weiler great guy and a great guide. The whole hunt felt like hunting with old friends. Can’t say enough good things if you draw 12ae or 12aw give them a call!

...you throw your camo into the corner and your sock sticks to the wall.

After an all out adventure of getting stuck, hiking miles and I mean miles everyday into the wilderness area, calling in a group of drug smugglers, running face to face into another group of illegals, watching fighter jets dog fight right above us, we came up with a good ram that checked all the boxes, most of all that everyone in the group was able to be involved. Physically brutal hunt but an awesome hunt! He green scored 165 6/8 at AZGFD and they put him at 8 1/2 yrs.

Hope to have the same picture of the boy by the weekend.

101' with an 8' inch droptine

My daughter has a tag. We are going to wait until after Christmas.

It's incredible how they just disappear and reappear. Congrats on a nice buck!

15" wide. idk if thats good or average or what. i came up with a score of 87 2/8. but its probably more like 85

When I first got this buck on camera early in July I knew he had a messed up right side. I really didn’t think he would be much of a buck. Didn’t really give him much thought. Beginning of August he was starting to look better but still not interested in hunting him. By the end of August I decided he was the buck I wanted. Problem was he was in low mesquite county and no real place to glass him up. I knew I would have to sit a blind on water. Opening morning I went to my blind at daylight at 10:15 I was standing up stretching and he walked in 20 yards away. As I sat down and grabbed my bow he winded me and left. 2nd and 3rd day sat all day he never came in . I was burned out sitting in that heat in a blind. I decided to let him sit and check my camera in a few days to see if he returned. He finally returned 7 days after he winded me. I sat day 8-9 with no luck. On Labor Day I decided to hang out with the family and sit the blind the next 2 days. That evening on Labor Day I went in to adjust my seat in my blind. That way everything would be ready for the next 2 days. As I was walking into the blind as soon as I saw the water tank I was shocked he was getting water. A small buck with him heard me and ran a few yards then stopped. I ranged the big buck he was 62 yards. I sat down in the grass and he went back to drinking. I drew back stood up I knew this would probably be my last chance since last time I spooked him he disappeared 7 days. I put my 60 high and let it go. Arrow hit a little high but hit the spine and he dropped. I guessed him to be 115-118 but was very happy once I walked up on him he was bigger than I thought. Hardest part was sitting in a blind daylight tell dark in 105 temperatures.

This is a shot circa 1975 of a long-haired, hippie cowboy in the Colorado high country with his trusty Appaloosa mare, Chiquita.