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Back bone fire, in fosil creek started be child's power station the other night is now growing fast. Strawberry is on go , Pine on set. Please pray for all the people. No air support yet. Anothere fire just reported closing road from Camp Verde to Payson. Good weekend to stay home. Please be safe and smart. P,ease gives us the room were gonna need

Not to mention the Gold Fire north of Lk Pleasant. Just too many careless morons out there.

A few months ago I sorta teased about needing a taxidermist for a lion. and now the rest of the story..... My brother is relatively new to serious hunting. He does have a few deer under his belt but has not been "serious" about hunting until the last few years. In the last few years he has been fortunate enough to have some pretty good success on the predator trail though. To date he has several doubles both fox and coyotes and even a 1 day Az trifecta (coyote, fox and bobcat all in the same day). Considering he only goes out a couple times a year he is doing pretty well. In March we made a run up to Strawberry to do some work on our cabin. We were hoping to get a day of calling in but with a big weather front coming in and the cabin work taking longer than expected our plans got a little derailed. Regardless of not being done with the work, we set out early(not really) to try to get in a couple stands before the wind got ridiculous. Big winds of 15-25 mph were predicted for most of the day. First stand, big beautiful area that should have produced. Nothing. DRY DRY DRY everywhere so not too high of hopes on seeing critters. Second stand was right next to one of the few water holes that had water. on our approach we kicked out a couple ducks. Made a big racket. They dive-bombed us a couple times showing their displeasure as well. Coolest sound ever. I don;t remember what kind of ducks they were but I have never seen them before. So I get my brother set up and I head around to set up the call and get in position. I turn on the call and start to get.. BAM!!!! 5 friggin seconds in he shoots! I keep calling for another 15 minutes and nothing. I stand up and look over and he gives me the thumbs up. I walk over and dead coyote. I don;t know if that thing was heading to water and just had the worst timing in the world or if he was camped there and jumped up when the call started but whatever, dead coyote. So we gather him up and head for our next stand. Wind is howling by now. We head down into a canyon and set up by a dry waterhole. With the canyon set the way it was and the wind blowing we only had 1 approach for coyotes. They would have to come straight over a mt against the wind. Easy path to circle around us and wind us. Pretty much a dead stand but we tried anyway. about 12 minutes in I gave up and was about to call it when I saw a flash on the hillside. Sure enough a coyote was trotting across the hill and heading to my right to circle us. I quickly adjusted and tried to get a shot. No dice. I thought about jumping up to catch him circling but was really just too lazy to do so. I sat and watched for a few minutes just in case he was stupid enough to take a short cut. He didn't. My brother was to my left and saw me shift and get on the scope so he also shifted and was watching the hill. The call was about 50 yds in front of him in a bush. As we stared at the mt for about 3 minutes we heard a big crash. My first thought was "dang wind just blew the call out of the bush". I look to my left at the call and... WHAT THE HECK???????????? What is that? cat. ITS A CAT!!!! LION!!!!!!!!!!!! Dang lion was on its hind legs stretching up in the bush swatting at the caller! I start my swing left and BAM!!!! My brother shoots. Lion flops and is down. I am on it now. Lion starts to get back up so I shoot to anchor it. "click" Not kidding. I had nothing in the chamber. For those of you who know my history with lions this is REALLY funny. For those of you who don't know, this is pretty much status quo for me and lions. It is truly a comedy of errors so many times. Fortunately my brother is a better student than I am a teacher so he fires again. Dead lion. I started screaming like a little girl "LIOOOOOOOOON!!!!!! We got a Liooooooon"!!!! I really don't know why as it was far from my first. but probably because it was so unexpected. And it was really cool that my brother was threre The best part....we had TWO cameras running. The worst part...BOTH cameras failed. I HATE tacticam. With a violent passion I HAAAATE them. They have let me down more times than I can count. Turns out he didn't need the second shot. Both shots were double lung kill shots. I wish he hadn't taken the 2nd shot because skinning it was a drag. it was like skinning a bag of chunky pudding. So now he pretty much just needs a bear to finish of his Az predator list. Not bad for a "novice". G&F says 5-6yr old female. It was the last lion for the unit before it closed. Overall a good day. Thanks to Adam for help with prepping it for tanning.

This has always been the case but nice try.

No he died that same day.

https://www.bluecollarreloading.com/collections/hornady-ammunition/products/hornady-6-5-prc-143gr-eld-x 55 available

When I was looking, 2 stood out as better quality: The Savage Rascal and the Henry MiniBolt. ps: the CZ below is even better.

A few thoughts come to mind on this subject. 1: Hunting over water is definitely next. Commissioner's mentioned it in their fair chase prepared statements. 2: Game & Fish has some responsibility in this as they are willing to allow Commissioner Tags to be sold at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those who are affluent enough to purchase those tags will spare no expense to paying guides to find them that trophy animal. 3. As hunters are forced to change their hunting strategies, the quality of your hunt will suffer. How so? Well if i have to scout for my hunt next week and this is the week your hunting, i am sorry but i have to be in the field to be able to locate the game i am after. 4. When defining fair chase by a select few, there personal views and morals play into that decision. We can all argue different points of fair chase, but reality is the North American Wildlife Model is based on science not personal opinions and agendas. 5. As mentioned by others, the Cattleman's Association did not take a stance on this (why would they if you have one of the commissioners on your board and has owned multiple ranches). This commissioner should have excused himself from the vote as he clearly had conflicting interest. 6. Disappointed in some of our wildlife organizations as they supported the ban when the majority of their members were against the ban.

My son has killed a couple mule deer but this year he killed his 1st Coues. Due to his school schedule he wasnt able to scout with me. I scouted 3 different weekends and with it shaping up to be a tough hunt we decided to hunt this buck. I actually figured he was smaller than he is. We were both happy as we walked up to him. We started our hike at 2am and made it to where he was by 6:15. Shot shortly after. Good scouting and a good plan worked out perfectly. Made an absolute perfect shot in front right shoulder/heart at 380yards. Bonus Rams during scouting

https://www.bluecollarreloading.com/collections/hornady-ammunition/products/hornady-6-5-creedmoor-129gr-sst 30 available

0906200623~3.mp4

Look at a Henry Survival AR7. Very light weight. They even say they float in water.

Yes, I usually wear xl in shirts but xxl in Kuiu. The Gila is a little baggier than normal Kuiu xxl

Do you have a 10/22 by chance? You can drop them in the archangel stock for less than $200 and they collapse down for kids.

Pm sent.

I want two.

This was captured via trail cam...

5-0, enough said.

I like seeing posts like this. Nothing like getting our next generation involved in the outdoors. Good job! TJ😁

So cool!!!! Congrats on a great time!!!!

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

Awesome, Im shocked about the puddle in the 1st picture. What lake is that? It don't look familiar.

Excellent

Saw this the other day and didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. You asked for prayers and I’ve definitely been doing that for you. You’ve always been a great friend and resource on here...please reach out if you need anything else even if it’s just to talk. You’re not alone in this and have a big family right here...

Momma sounds like a keeper bro! I have a guy coming down from the valley just to try and help give some pointers and get him in areas i know that hold deer. You are most welcome to join. I live in sierra vista. As already mentioned its all about the tripod, very few people are good enough to not use one, his name is Fred... I recomend new guys hunt southern units, far more deer then the northern units. Once you know you can pick up deer in areas where deer are, it will give you a bit of confidence in new areas. Im unfamiliar with your unit but down here dang near every hill has a deer on it. Just getting behind the glass and spotting some deer will be a moral boost for you. Also we got enough roads to drive and look at deer, even that is great practice for glassing. You learn to look through holes and "learn" shapes. The graceful arc of a deers back or back end. Silohette of a head etc. It helps a bunch. Feel free to come down man.