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I’m in the west side and it’s far from me. It’s a nice lake that’s easy to read. It’s also slab city.

Tall timber and overcast got me soooooo turned around in unit 8 a few years ago. My wife, 2 kids 4 and 5 years old then and 10 week old puppy went for a 10 minute hike... Both my wife and I thought we were headed back to the truck but an hour and a half later we knew we were lost. We hadn’t really brought anything with us thinking we’d be gone 20 minutes tops. Finally after finding the rim of a canyon and seeing the power line in the distance and using the compass on my phone we were able to triangulate our location. Never had a pit in my stomach like that before it’s one thing when you’re on your own but when kids are involved it really ups the pucker factor. Made it back to the truck about an hour later but my kids still talk about it every time we go in the woods.

Just got my bear back from Southwest Taxidermy, great job as always. the blond streaking still shows up pretty good and he is more brown than the pics look.

Got lucky and drew one of the 22 trophy lion tags in my unit. A friend of mine had the dogs. Hunting in 3 ft of snow made it a real challenge but super fun. Big Tom weighed in at 157 lbs and was 8 ft 5 inches long. Super excited to take a cat like this.

We had a blast, from the begining all the way to the end. Laughing all the time We crossed the border and like always no issues and very easy. We made it to the ranch. Arnie wanted to make sure his rifle was still zeroed in after his airplane flight...to make a long story short, after 7 or 8 shots at the paper plate guess what? A decent buck walks by the target and Arnie takes him can you believe that??!? Target shooting and a nice buck walks by the target! 😫 😊 Arnies with hes nice buck! On a different area of the ranch, Clayton made a great shot on this beautiful buck My buddy Kyle was after a very big buck that he and Clay had glassed about 1000 yards away. He did not know that the ridge where he glassed the buck was the same ridge I was on. I did not know that the buck he was after was only 200 yards from me. After talking to him on the radio I told him and Clay to move and hike the knoll what was infront of them so they can see down and have a better position to shoot the buck. The buck was at the bottom of the ridge or canyon. While I was waiting for them to get to the top of the knoll, I glassed the top of the ridge infront of me (same ridge where the buck they were after was) and OMG!! I saw a giant buck walking from left to right! I felt like if me eyes open wide open! Big main bean long tines I wanted to shoot that buck. I knew right away he was a shooter! I ranged the buck at 530 yards. While the buck was walking I kept saying, please stop, please stop, stop buck the buck keep on walking until he went into a little draw out of sight. I knew Kyle and Clay where going to be in a lot better position than me becuase they were going to be able to glass that draw were the buck desapeared out of my sight. I inmediately called them on the radio and asked them, are you on top of the knoll? We just made yes we are on top of the know they responded. Please I told them glass the top of the ridge infront of you, the ridge that is on the same side where the sun comes up in the mornings. Do you see on the top of the ridge the two tallest trees? The trees that rise above all other trees? Yes they said, -ok, a very big buck just walked 20 steps below those two trees; he was walking from left to right please glass that area and look for that buck it looked really good I told them. Like 30 seconds later they called me on the radio and told me Ernesto, yes we found the buck. Ok I told them if you like it Kyle, shoot him. Kyle and Clay were looking at the buck through the spotting scope and were trying to decide which buck was bigger, the one they were trying to shoot or the buck I just told them where it was. Whyle they were looking at the buck on the phoneskope the buck turned his head and they said at the same time double droptine! double droptine! Kyle inmediate jumped towards his rifle and got in position to shot that buck. Clay call me on the radio and told me, Ernesto, we are going to take that buck, its 350 yards from us, I told them, take it! Here is a picture of Clay and Kyle just moments before taking the shot.. And here is the result of a well placed shot After eveyone got their buck, now it was my turn to get a buck. On the last day of the hunt, around 4 pm or so I got this one What a beautiful hunt with great people, great friends. Waiting for the next January is going to be brutal on my....I can't wait for the next hunt. Stay thirsty my friends! Ernesto C.

Looks like a mature lion from the other day (time stamp is correct). Guess I better get a tag and be prepared. Other pictures are older but from the same camera location, I wonder if it is the same lion. Jeff

Had a couple bites and some updated info to help with the questions. We are in Joseph City which is about an hour East of flag on I40. Pup has been very healthy and loves life. She is 8 weeks old. She is being kennel trained right now. She is doing great on her potty training. Not a single accident in the truck down to havasu and back. You won’t be disappointed with this little girl!

That blows.

Just an update, I found him a couple days ago still alive, but he was in Pretty bad shape.even took video of him. There were lion tracks following his after I hit him, I have no idea how he could’ve shook a lion but he did. Must be the toughest deer in southern az. Was able to get within 100 yards before I lost him in the mesquites.Still can’t see how he can make it very long, but he’s proven me very wrong to this point. Pretty crappy feeling to be responsible for wounding any buck like that, especially a big Old Buck like him, 105”+.All I can do is learn from my mistakes and try not to let this happen again,but I do realize this can be a part of bow hunting. maybe he’ll prove me wrong again and I can try for him next season, but I doubt it.

I've had my fair share of kills with my compound but figured I would try something new this year and now I'm hooked. 45#pse tigershark Goldtip340 traditional arrows 125 grain montec fixed 3 blade

Congrats and a great bear and a beautiful rug.

Awesome, Southwest in Scottsdale or SanTan?

sent you a pm on the 6.5 creedmor brass

same. but i got that seasonal sickness and the only cure is crappie.

One year on a elk hunt my wife and I being in a hurry and being over confident bail out of the truck in the ceders to head towards a ridge overlooking a valley we had scouted for elk with success but after reaching the edge were we glassed before the hunt the elk were way on the other side so after a several miles of trying to get to the elk it was coming night fall and we only had one rifle and one cell phone nothing else, not having the gps location of the truck but a very macho sense of direction I had started back to the truck cross country to save time, about four hours into the night I almost wanted to say I was lost but my wife knew I was lost five hours earlier but trudged along with me, every opening every ceded tree and every malipi rock looked the same in the dim cell phone light, finally about midnight we found a cell signal and had talked my brother in law into the place we had parked and when he got there to flash his lights and honk his horn, in a very humbling set of events we were only half a mile away when he arrived and were able to get home by 2 am.( the next day my wife ordered a Garmin gps )

It works. I have a full set of Weatherguard on my work truck. Cross box and side rail boxes. I work on a LOT of mountaintop sites, with miles and miles of dirt roads. I have never noticed dust on my tools. Even when driving through that moon powder dust for miles.

That's a lot of good information thank you. That's the thing that gets me about ML hunting is the lack of information on the internet, if you want to shoot past 200 yards you have to figure it out on your own or get help from people at places like this.

I'll give you one, its been sitting in the garage for like 15 years its pretty much brand spanking new. in the truck it sat under a tonue cover (sp) its chrome diamond plate if I recall. its under a bunch of shoot right now. I can have kid since he is here for the weekend pull it out. I'll see if I can get a pic of it tomorrow if your interested

Weatherguard hands down

if this is adult fubar the topic can be manageable. kid stuff would be lengthy. i must have changed some at 15. adult stupidity was mostly confined to south-of-the-border lol. capsizeing a tin boat in the sea of cortez, flat tire with a leaked out jack at midnight 'somewhere' between penasco and caborca in '84, incidents involving authorities in ensenada and san quintin in the '90s. once lost power 30 miles out of cholla and mike had to go over the side to fix a fuel problem. for like an hour in the 80f water with h u g e sharks everywhere-i never got on that un-named fiberform again. lee reminded of 'Tough Times in Rough Places' by Carmony.

Why would anyone burn 19 points on a late tag or an early cow. Even at 71 years old, that's just insane.

It all started with the credit card update and then the morning check to see if the cards got any hits.Boom $650 hit on the card and now the waiting game began to see if it was the wife or I that grew the bison tag. Weeks later and I find out I am the one that drew the tag and the homework began. Started watching every video I could find on bison including everything the game and fish had for us.also sent out a few pm messages to catfishkev and idgaf. They both handed out info on the hunt and catfishkev was gracious enough to let me jump on is bandwagon and use his trail cams that he had. politics up there made us come to conclusion it would be best to have our own information. catfishkev made the first trip up to place trail cams. He placed 6 cams on different locations. My turn was next and I headed up with my dad and son to meet up with another hunter that catfishkev new and we checked cams and went over the pics for the start of his hunt which started sept 13th. After viewing the cam pictures we learned that we had a lot of bison coming thru different locations with some at night and some during day. The other hunter took that info and just couldn’t make it happen during his hunt. i also Sent the cards to Kev so he could view them and also see what the bison were doing. Seeing this cam pics made the weeks before my hunt even longer and to top it off I was unable to make it for opening day and weekend for my hunt. From day one of getting drawn and looking at graphs of herd movement and what time of year the herds were moving to different places from there gps collars I had my eyes set on the east side of the unit. All the cameras on the east side said different and that the bison just were not there. I had e mail game and fish to ask about any information I would be missing on the hunter meeting that takes place night before hunt. I got an e mail telling me I didn’t miss much and was told over the last week or so there was some movement on the east side. 5 days into the hunt and I arrive on the plateau worried I would not have a place to hunt. Went to the east side and checked out first spot. Cam didn’t work but there was very fresh sign that wasn’t there 2 weeks before. Decided to sit there for evening sense there was not any other hunters. Sat from 3 to dark and only saw deer. On way out I stoped at another camera location and man had that place changed. For over a week there was bison at that location everyday and nobody was there hunting them. That night I reviewed the cameras and saw there was a guide checking cams too that day and he had placed a ground blind in the location due to what he saw on cam. That morning I get to location and there is nobody there and I had the spot to myself so I thought. Hour into sitting with sun up I hear a truck driving up close. Said to myself no way is somebody going to walk up on me after seeing my truck. Few minutes later I hear foot steps hour after sun up. I look over and see it’s a guy my age and an older man with crutches. Start talking to them and find out that the hunter Dan is a wounded warrior that received the tag a week prior to hunt. He had met up with the Guides up there and they had sent him to this location. After I found out he was a wounded warrior and he had a hard time getting around I decided I was going to leave the area and let them hunt it telling them that there are bison coming in everyday. They turned and looked at me like I was crazy and asked me to stay which at first I was still going to leave still but then decided to stay and hunt with them. Told the wounded warrior to take the first shot if anything comes in and i will see what happens after. 0930 comes around and they are at 90 yards and closing. The heard came In and it was a mad dash to the water then the fight for the first licks of the salt. That’s when the real stress started and had to try and identify a cow bison out of the herd. I can hear the other hunting trying to figure out which one to shoot and I was doing the same. Boom they take a shot and the herd scatters. son jumps out of there blind and says well he shot let’s go look for blood. As he was doing that I decided to Pursue the herd and I went around a clump of aspen and they’re were standing there 80 to 100yards away. I dropped to the prone position and put my crosshairs on the first bison I see. She was starring right at me facing me for what seemed like an eternity. She then turned broadside and one shot dropped her in her tracks. I guess the east side of unit was calling to me because that’s were I made it happen. Turns out the wounded warrior missed his shot and didn’t get a bison down. The wounded warrior and his son stayed with me after my harvest and helped me break down the animal. I couldn’t tell them enough how much I appreciated that and if they were not there I would be having one heck of a time getting it done. I gutted her and flew back to camp to get my saw and my dad to help out. The whole time the other hunters stayed to watch over my bison tell I got back. We finished the bison and his son help me load everything into truck and I was back to camp. Long drive back to gilbert to get meat taken care off and hide and head to taxidermy. all in all I had an amazing time from start to finish and I met some great people along the way that were very helping in every way I could imagine. I am very grateful for being able to harvest a bison and share the memories with others. Catfishkev without your help I am pretty sure it would of never happened and I thank you. hope you all enjoy the long read! And catfishkev and idgaf thank you both again. trail cam pics are location I harvested my bison plus I threw in a nice deer! All cam pics are from catfishkevs cams that I was lucky enough to be able to share with him

i just joined this group. 5 minutes of scrolling and it already gave me cancer.

Nice job Dave. Just so you guys know Dave felt so guilty he got one and the wounded warrior did not. But he was there first and they didnt show up until after sunrise. He also offered to leave And they told him to stay, and when He decided to stay still gave them dibs on first shot opportunity (which could have cost him his shot). They missed, he gave chase and filled his tag. I pretty much told him empathy is a good thing and more people should have it. But he has zero reason to feel guilty. Dave, you are a man of character and you deserve that bison. Congrats dude! I'm super happy for you!