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Filled my 2019 tag yesterday. Glassed him up on a hillside in the afternoon following a doe around. Took him at 350 yards with my 270. To date he's the best buck Ive ever taken. Going to get him mounted for sure. Glad I decided to take Friday off rather than go to work.

My mom would have shot a great first buck but apparently in my haste I screwed on the can wrong or something. Can blew off and could not find it. Contacted member Rancilio (Matt from quiet time sports) this morning about warranty info on it if I could find the can. He volunteers to come out and help and brought the big guns, his 5 and 3 year olds to help with the search. After already searching the hill he was on his little 3 year old son yells "I found it!". Including Matt and his boys and the 4 kids I brought the youngest in the group wins the $20 prize and McDonalds sundaes for all!

It's time for my well-used greeting card....And Happy Holiday to those who do them.

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

The problem today with social media is everyone wants to be first. Tony, Christmas is still a few days away.

I'd love it if your opinion included an offer.... You're probably right on a lot of points, I'm definitely not as smart as you when it comes to this. From my standpoint some people like to buy complete and some like to build. I'd rather buy a complete setup for more than build for less based on convenience. I'm negotiable on price, it's just a starting point.

my mother knew of my wanderlust and that after HS graduation i would not be around too much longer. So in that short period of time she told me she wanted to spend some time with me on my pursuits-camping, hunting, fishing, trapping. It was hard for her when at about 16yo I stopped bringing bass home for the freezer. But one night trip to Saguaro when every popper or torpedo was hit-and hit again-as soon as it landed she threw all of her bass back also. One morning I took her out to run my trapline in Bulldog and we walked up on a trap in the dark with a truly giant bobcat in it. All I had on me was my knocker stick and I did not want to tangle with it like that. I went back to the truck for my .22-"keep your eye on it mom". Years later she was still cursing me for leaving her alone in the dark with that cat. She slept in the truck bed at Roosevelt and in tents at Big Lake and Lyman and Chevelon. Breaking camp one afternoon at Big Lake she points-"Over there between those two blue spruce is where your daddy and I made you on the Fourth of July!". Oh Mom! LaVonne Marguerite Elbert 1927-1990 RIP lee ps i saw mom cry only 4 times. my graduation, my wedding, dads passing, and the time i walked in her front door in a surprise visit and butchered a 40lb Cortez halibut in her kitchen sink. she was gone just a few months later. Grandmother Bessie couldn't have cared less about the dogs but she always wanted to see the cats.

Yep went 1:7 22" barrel since im going to put a can on it but shoot without also.....speeds are 2875. 42.7gr 4350

Merry Christmas

Well I don't want to be one of those guys that asks for info and then you never hear from them again. Thanks to all of you who offered up some advice. I had a great hunt and can't wait to go back.

Cool find today.

Ended up getting lucky and found a decent buck. This was my first time ever in the unit other than some Google earth scouting and reading previous posts about the unit. Oh and it's my first coues. Thanks for all the help everyone.

Good times. I am beyond glad we found it and that the can is in relatively good shape. Other than Mom’s first deer opportunity, it will all work out. TBAC will get you fixed up.

Nice!

Awesome. Thanks Guys. I love the Kowa Prominar spotters. I have the 883 and 553. I'm going to do it

Called in our first bobcat today. Shortly after starting our 3rd stand this morning we saw what looked like a light colored tree stump about 90-yards out. We watched this stump for about 6-minutes and it never moved. At that time we saw a fox coming in. The fox was taking his time until he got close to the stump and then he took off. My son brought his AR15 up slowly and dialed the scope up to 6x. He could clearly see the “stump” was a bobcat He put the cross hairs under the cats chin and touched off the round. The 55 grain Vmax hit the bobcat a little below the bottom jaw and a little left of center, exiting behind its right shoulder. Our first bobcat was down

Nice!! Congrats!

I watched as two 80in coues go at it for about 10mins years ago. Live that’s all I’ve ever seen

Great Photo A motley crew there. I prefer the new age; Swaro vision, bipod, tripod, Claw, 6.5x.284 with 20x scope, Kuiu, Samsung 10 with 16 pixel camera, hunting boots, disposable wipes to clean the blood and polish the antlers for "the" photo, a machine mule, a crew of 8-10 instead of a measly 4...Imagine where we will be in another 40 years.

While hiking in unit 1 about 10 years ago I found a leg hold trap up in a tree with a mountain lion foot in it. Apparently the lion got caught and was able to run off and up the tree. Then chewed his own leg off to get rid of the trap.

Great stuff. About 30 years ago I was north of the McDowell mountains , far and removed from anything. Way before Troon. i was walking a trail and dipped over a knoll. Turned into a small depression /valley. After a little while I came across a round, burned circle in the dirt. Perfect circle. Maybe 2 or 2 and a half yards in diameter. I do some looking and I find two more, exactly like the first. I realize they’re in a perfect triangle, about 20 yards apart from each other. No road or real trail nearby. Went back 3 or 4 years later, realized I was in the area and revisited. They were there. Nothing had grown within these circles and they looked pretty much like I had last seen them. Havent been back since. No idea what I came across.

Not strange but odd. Found a very old rifle barrel sticking out of the sand in a wash in 21. Dug it out and there was more than just the barrel. The receiver was attached. Was a level action with side-load chamber. Super heavy, very rusted, no wood. Definitely a rifle from way back but not sure what kind or from when. Hanging in my garage now.

Frankly, too many packs. Trying to sell one and keep the other for my kids. Whichever sells first, I will probably keep the other.

Here is a couple bucks we took last year in 31. My sister-in-law on the first hunt and my daughter on the late hunt (same tag as you bigsky2). Both bucks scored over 100" which was super cool as I haven't killed a WT over 100" in 12 years of hunting them and both of these ladies did it on their first deer! Jeff