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I didn't really want to start my own thread but I haven't seen a meat pole thread all week to add to. I did want to thank the forum for all the help and advice, though. Being from CO originally I had a lot to learn about AZ elk when I moved in 2015. I drew my first AZ elk tag in 2017, a late rifle tag, and it's what pushed me to join the forum (thanks for the recommendation @cpugsie). I didn't fill that tag in 2017 and had to face the fact that I had a lot left to figure out about these elk. Drew the same tag this year, learned from my mistakes, and got it done on a bull I was very happy with. Thanks for all the lessons, guys!

Ernesto C.

Thanks to everyone that gave some guidance on my sons first elk hunt. Was a tough hunt for us as it never got cold enough for the elk to move down and the country is just big. Seen a few good bulls but with no way to close the distance and not wanting to shot a 1000 yrds, we did not have opportunities to shoot the first half the hunt. On Monday morning he was still hopeful of a good bull, he decide to pass on 2 rag horns and a spike that were within 400yrds. Monday night this 5x came within his range as we where glassing cuts that led to water. Cody decided he was the bull as it was only the second one he had ever glasses up. Made a great shot and we were able to find him that night. Got him skinned, guartered out and hung in a tree till the next morning. Pack out was great being the first time we were able to use our two mules on elk. Can’t wait to do it again.

Go Kristi !

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/sportsmans-warehouse-ends-merger-with-great-outdoors-over-ftc-clearance-concerns-2021-12-03/

It’s why I don’t particularly enjoy hunting in general. I glass all the time, it’s the best way to find stuff. I just dont like it. Coues are the best species to sit for. Only ones dumb enough to come in consistently in day light that I’m aware of.

I’ve noticed every year the rain/snow comes the week after thanksgiving-2nd week in December. Never been able to predict it. I’m just hoping it don’t rain during my January rifle coues hunts and my February rifle elk hunt.

I had an opportunity to do my 2nd DIY moose hunt in Alaska this year. I traveled to a remote village with an old friend and we spent 6 days with our friends who live in this village. It is always important to be reminded of what it is like to live in the bush and realize how challenging life can really be. This is a special place. But, sometimes the wrong kind of people are discovering these areas. We see how trophy hunters and a few guides have caused quite a disruption to the way of life up here. It is not uncommon to see hindquarters sitting in the sun on a pallet at the airport. Chunks of meat dirty and rotting away. Some guys go out to areas for the sole purpose of shooting a 60 plus inch moose. The problem is that these big bulls need to be left to breed another season. Not to mention, the meat on big musky bulls has to be hung for at least a week in order to get rid of all the smell from testosterone running through their bodies. Most people don't have this kind of time. So leaving a hunt with a 40 to 50 inch bull is okay with me. It equals great meat and a respectable rack. But, most importantly, respect from the locals........ Day 1 - Rain all day, no live bulls seen. Day 2 - Sunny all day. 13 bulls seen. 5 cows seen. One bigger bull passed up due the difficult of the pack out. Three of us in the boat and we are all over 50 realizing our limitations we decided to look for something closer to the river. We spotted a bull feeding in the shallows of the side channel. As we got closer I decided it was a nice bull. I raised the 375 Ultra mag and shot him in the lungs, between 2 ribs. Bull ran and we saw the pink blood. He turned to go into the willows, so I shot again and hit him low in the front leg. He turned again and ran into the main channel. He is running like he was not hit. I waited for him to exit the river and shot him in the head. The last thing we wanted was for him to travel into the wilderness. But, at the same time, you do not want a bull dead in the river. Well, instead of him dropping on the shore, he flew backwards into the river. Trying to keep the motor out of the rocks, reaching for the bull and hanging on to antlers and not having a workable reverse all turned into a challenging situation really quickly. Two of us grabbed the bull, while our buddy controlled the boat and found a piece of shore a few hundred yards down river. Tied up the boat and used a come along to get the bull on shore. One guy working the come along and two of us pulling the moose and we could barely move it. We laid out some tarps and got to work. If you have never handled a moose, here is the break down into 10 manageable pieces - neck, brisket, rump, 2 sides of ribs, 2 front quarters, 2 hind quarters, head. Put all the meat in game bags and on a clean tarp in the boat and got back to the village at dark. Day 3 - Snowed all day and night. Started butchering that night. Day 4 - Snowed all day. Butchered and wrapped meat all day Day 5 - Finished butchering, wrapping and grinding meat. Day 6 - Flew back to Anchorage with 400 pounds of deboned meat. Stayed with another friend in Anchorage and filled up his spare freezer with the meat for the night. Day 7 - Flew back to Phoenix with the meat in totes lined with foam board. Each tote held 90 pound of meat. All the meat stayed completely frozen. My friend and I each lugged a soft cooler of 40 pounds of meat onto the plane. He gave me grief the whole time! Basic hunt. Nothing fancy. Just good, down to earth people and incredibly good meat.

A lifelong friend finally drew an Arizona Desert Bighorn tag after over 45 years of applying (never, never miss a BP). He managed to get it done on the second morning after a week of scouting. His son and his GF were with him. I got to spot it and watch. The Stats: RH 36-1/2 LH 38 Bases 15 ½ Green Score 175 (the broken horn cost him over 3” but who cares! G&F score 172-1/4 (pretty dang good for two newbies learning!) 6.5 CM (I hate it) with 127 Barnes LRX going 2960 fps at 488 yards. One heck of a sheep. I couldn’t be happier for him.

Shot this guy on opening morning. Spent a few days scouting before my hunt to find some elk to get into and i found a few. Spent most my time scout for wifes 3a3c tag. Opening mor ing I Come up a small hill to look in a meadow and across it i see this guy chasing a cow all over. One cow call and the cow heard it and came running and the bull was right behind. They came into 20 yards searching and after a few seconds of not seeing anything turned to walk away and I stopped him at 40 yards and shot him. He ran 50 yards and died. Shot him with a rage. I know people give that broadhead a bad review but they have never let me down and always leave huge holes.. been up in 3a3c with the wife ever sense trying to fill her tag. Seen plenty of bulls and have had a opportunity everyday and passed on a ton of bulls. Last night she missed. this morning put an arrow over the back of one. Hope it pans out she is getting discouraged. sorry for the sideways pics from on the phone in the woods. I am happy i could send it.

Description call out 30 Cal. ?

Sorry. East Valley or Phoenix during the week.

Must be why you dont like coues hunting so much. Glassing imo is the funnest part of hunting. I actually find it therapeutic after a shitty day.

Even now with it being 85+ in the desert, deer I had on camera are going 5-7 days before watering again. Last month it was 2-5. Tough to sit water when they aren’t hardly coming in. As for the rut, I always pray the full moon in December will get them going but usually see it turn on more towards mid January. Good thing is, not all does get hot at once so it only takes one or two to get a big buck all twitterpated to allow us to move in. Good luck this archery season 👍🏻

Yeah if it was a northern unit i might say sit. But a southern unit during the rut i would definately be glassing. If you want to sit in the middle of the day when most people are sitting at camp then do that but i say glass all the way.

Might want to leave the cheater thing out of the conversation. Unless buying players isn’t cheating

Throw in a good nap and ponder what you missed seeing. 😴

I might have to pass on this… I haven’t figured out yet which of my kids I like the least to make them jog along side us. Feel free to shoot me a message with what it is if you want though.

And nothing as boring as sitting all day and seeing nothing…double-edged sword.

Great buck! Sucks that all the equipment kept letting you down, but at least you didn’t have to go home empty-handed. Funny that you used the rangefinder to find him haha

Recent? Like sometime within the last 8 years since he made that post?

I posted him up in the Arizona Desert thread. I didn’t make a new topic post about him but here he is.

Today was my 3rd day hunting, got to the deer stand late this morning at 10:45. Sat all day and didn't see any deer until sunset. Saw lots of other stuff,which broke up the boredom: a bald eagle flying around the meadow, a bluejay, a racoon, a pheasant, a red headed woodpecker and another woodpecker that I didn't know what kind until later, turned out to be a piliated woodpecker- same kind as woody! So, just after sunset, I saw a big buck walking very slowly, kind of in my direction, but it kept looking to its right and was sort of steering that way. I figured it was going toward a side meadow instead of to me, plus I figured I was running out of shooting light, so I made the decision to get out of the deer stand and try to "head it off at the pass". Well I got out there in thick grass and swampy ground about 100 yards from the stand, had a tree line in front of me, the other side of that was the meadow I thought he was headed up. So I stopped to scan the treeline with my 8 power rangefinder, went back and forth a few times to try and find him. On the 4th scan, I see him come to the edge of the trees and stop. OMG, there he is! He came right towards me! I pushed the button on the rangefinder to get the distance, it's 80 yards. I slowly bring up my muzzleloader, it took forever to find him in the scope (didn't even know what power it was set on) but I finally locate him. He's quartering towards me, staring my way. I can't believe this is all coming together! So I shoot and end up with a monster non-typical Minnesota buck! After getting him in the truck in the dark, we got it to the farms shop, cleaned the buck and got him hung in the walk in cooler. Turns out my friends family have been tracking this buck all summer and had him on their trail cams! They named him the crab buck because of the crab claw feature on its right antler. Too cool! My hat's off to Tony for his help in making this happen. Thanks guys, I feel like I'm part of your wonderful family.

I think you hold the record for the most bumps.

Day 3 was a long and hard day! We got up around 3:30 to hike further into the canyon we had been in the past few days. Everything we’d observed scouting and what we’ve seen the past few days told us that there should be Coues on one of four different ridges in this canyon. We only had 4 days carved out for this hunt, so on Day 3 we were definitely starting to feel a little bit of pressure. We got about 3 miles in to our glass spot right as the sun was lighting up the canyon. Right as we got set up, my wife glasses two bowls right at the bottom of the ridge and within 3 minutes, they were down into a thick bowl where there really wasn’t a chance for a pursuit. Bummer about missing those deer, but optimistic it was early we all set up and started glassing. We spent just over 2 hours glassing and didn’t spot a thing. It was just a tad later than 9am and our group was beginning to lose hope that we missed the deer walking through the ridges. We’ve seen enough now to know that their nickname of “Grey Ghost” is well deserved, but with 5 different sets of eyes on these ridges I felt it was almost impossible that we missed the deer. I was wrong. My wife spotted a group of deer with at least 2 bucks slowly making their way down a game trail on a ridge 800 yards away. We had likely glassed over them before as they were well within our sight (these deer are SNEAKY). I quickly got eyes on myself but then thought, “What am I doing? I need to make a move!!” After seeing how slow they were moving and knowing we were “only” 800 yards out, I knew I could make a move on these guys. We still weren’t 100% sure they were Coues since no one could see their butts, but the way the antlers came forward and their slightly lighter gray coat made us daily certain they were. Unfortunately, to get a good chance at these dudes, I had to hike on the backside of the ridge to the east and about 400 feet up. My buddy and I separated from the rest of the group and hauled up the ridge. Our goal was to get level with them, slowly pop over the ridge, and find them. If our calculations were correct, we should have been within my target shooting range (300 yards). As we created the ridge, we could not locate the deer. We glassed and glassed and then realized we needed to push forward about 10 more yards to get a better look at the ridge the deer were on. Sure enough, once we creeped forward, my buddy found the deer. We could see a doe and a buck, but we weren’t sure if they were whitetail. The buck went broadside at 272 yards and I was starring at his butt trying to get a 100% confirmation that it was actually a Coues. Again, the coat, the antlers, and the size screamed Coues but I wasn’t going to take that shot without 100% certainty. Then, I spotted a black tip. My heart sunk, was it actually a Mulie?? He stepped behind a tree and disappeared but I never got a complete look at the tail. Still coming down from the adrenaline rush, I played it all back in my head. I was almost certain it was a Coues, but was it actually a Mulie? I had cell service so I contacted my wife and father in law to let them know I lost sight and had doubts it was actually a whitetail. They told me that for sure one of the bucks they had seen was a whitetail and that they thought the deer might have bedded where I saw the buck disappear. I told them I would wait with my buddy on the opposite ridge and would come back if I hadn’t seen any movement in an hour and a half. Today was super windy in that canyon. The wind was swirling all over the place and the direction of the wind was blowing from behind my buddy and I directly at where I had seen the buck disappear. After an hour, I wondered if they winded us on the opposite ridge and walked away without us noticing. My buddy and I hasn’t seen any deer emerge from the tree they disappeared behind but the only movement we could see the past hour was wind moving grass and branches around. After almost two hours, and not observing any signs of actual deee movement (a head popping up, ear flick, etc), I felt almost certainly the grey ghost has vanished without us seeing it. We went back and forth on if they actually could have snuck away because we had eyes on that spot and we should have been able to see if they moved away from that tree. After about another 30 minutes, we made the decision to make some noise to see if we could spook anything. We figured if they were still there, then they might get up out of their bed if they hear noise and if they weren’t there then we could rest easy getting off the ridge and returning to our group. I was fairly certain that they were gone. I was wrong again. My buddy and I started making some loud noises. Nothing. We made some more loud noises. Nothing. Finally, the wind died for a second and I heard my yell echo across the canyon. All of a sudden, three deer popped up from the tree we had been watching for 2 hours. All I could think of was WHAT THE?! I immediately got my scope on a buck, and my buddy confirmed what I was thinking. COUES!! I had ranged out multiple spots on their ridge line and I knew he was about 280 yards out. I took zoomed my scope from a 4x zoom to 12x and had him in my sights. Then jumped down 20 yards. I zoomed back out to reacquire him but couldn’t find him. My buddy told me where he was and I found him again in my scope. He ended up circling back above the tree where he was bedded and stopped. I zoomed my scope back in and was hoping and praying he would give me a broadside shot. At this point, I knew he was about 290 yards out and so I needed him to get broadside before he went further up the ridge and out of my range. My prayers went answered. He turned. My heart was pounding so bad at the past 90 seconds of excitement, that I had to take a second to calm myself even though I had the perfect rock to use as a bench to shoot from. I breathed slowly and squeezed the trigger. I immediately lost the buck due the zoom and recoil and half whispered half shouted at my buddy, “Where is he, is he down??” He half’s whispers and half yells, “He’s down!! He’s in the same spot you shot him. You dropped him.” I quickly found him again in my scope and saw him move a little but he was down. A minute later my phone starts ringing. It’s my father in law. He says, “We saw all the deer jump up and then heard the shot. You get him??” I was super excited to reply, “we got him and we got eyes on him!” We told him where the buck was and made the plan to all meet up at that spot. My buddy and I stayed put watching the buck another 5 minutes but he was completely down. I couldn’t believe it. It was a gnarly, steep, super thick hike over to the ridge he was on. Luckily, we made really good mental notes on where to look for the body. We had no idea, but the ridge he was on was incredibly thick country. It was nearly impossible to squeeze through some of the trees and bushes but we managed to get over there. We almost couldn’t find the body but we did and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. After three long, hard days of hunting we had one down. My first deer ever, on a windy day, at nearly max range. I’ve been blessed to shoot two bull elk the past two years, but this one was special. From my wife glassing it up, to my buddy and I positioning ourselves in the right spot to get the shot, and getting the opportunity to ID the Coues and get him broadside for a shot….what a blessing. I am so excited to try some whitetail and give thanks the the big man upstairs for a wonderful hunt with family and friends. I appreciate all of your well wishes and support! Love being a member of this site and sharing the story with you all. Until next year, John