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Hunted there last year. They were bugling pretty good towards the middle of the hunt, but definitely sporadic on most days. How many pts did she have? This is the bull I ended up with. Any decent 6x6 should be a target bull.

Some bucks from 2020 when I had the tag

Love it! Do it in Arizona too!

I’ll take $100 for it as long as I don’t have to put it in my house

Was out chasing mule deer this January and came across this shed! I spent a couple hours looking for the match but no luck.

Conditions sucked but managed to catch one fish...biggest trout of my life so far! Fished the walk in.

This bill introduced and sponsored by the Democrat Party? Interesting to see people that traditionally align with less government and less regulation vouch for a unenforceable disaster like this that doesn’t really do anything other then make it more confusing. It might seem simple on the outside but there’s no way this is gonna be enforced and not just waste a ton of taxpayer money. I have no desire to have 6 paid glassers help me find a critter but I do believe that keeping government small and enforceable is a good policy.

If you have to dry camp for your hunt, carry in and cache as much water as you can on your scouts even if you have to cache it partway in. Just think of it as leg day in the pines. Have a plan for getting an elk out. There's some good packers in the area that can do it for a few hundred bucks provided fuel isn't over $20 a gallon then.

Well this year had two firsts for my boy. He drew his first archery javelina tag and his excitement began. After track practice he would come home and shoot his bow to knock the rust off since he had not been shooting it in a while. When we were able to get out in between track practices and meets, he shot his first javelina at 9am. We ended up stocking into 20 yards and waiting for the two pigs to come out of the brush to try to get a shot. After 10 minutes the pigs ended up feeding towards us. We waited them out and the bigger of the two walk out at 10 yards. Curtis ended up drawing his bow while the javelina was behind the last bush. After 3 long minutes of holding at full draw the boar walked into the gap and boy made a really good shot. We watch the boar go down after about 15 yards. After lots of smiles and a big hug we went and got his first javelina and first kill with a bow. Made a ton of memories that day we will not soon forget. Bonus picture of the last 8 inches of his broken off arrow in inside the ribs.

Oh that 7W will be a blast!

Ahhhhhhh I like it

Kids and I went out and nabbed two browns! Nothing fancy but they were happy and so was I! And as usual can’t rotate the pic 🤦‍♂️

Stud! Good height, width and mass. I'd say 110 conservatively but maybe 115. Absolutely an amazing buck!

Great buck! Congrats to your wife. Looks like it just rubbed his velvet recently?

Nice!!! Congrats to you both and thank you for posting!

Long main beams.

Stud!!!

Tank bro, total tank!

Best guess is it scores "awesome"

Stud buck! Nice work. Congratulations

NEWBIE 19A PRONGHORN SUCCESS This hunt touched all 3 bases and then slid into home plate like a .300RUM! We all know how lucky I was to draw 19A General Pronghorn with only 9 points, so I won’t bore you with testimony to the months of scouting and time invested learning from other hunters. In short, I did the homework & it paid dividends! Some of you had asked for “the story”, so I’ll fast forward to 12hrs before Opening Hour. I had a target list of 4 bucks spanning 3 different areas of State Trusts & National Forest from Prescott Valley to Chino Valley. I had observed each of these bucks just hours earlier—defending their does, breeding their does, and raking desert flora. At one point I was pinned down behind tall Deer Grass just 100yrd away, thinking this chaos was better than any Outdoor Channel show I’ve ever seen. My target list had been established. Then, a curve ball was introduced. My hunting partner for Opening Day suggested I come put eyes on a buck he thought was “pretty good”. We then both glassed “Tall Boy” for over an hour. He chased off 2 other competing bucks to defend his 3 does the entire watching. Often times cresting a hill to provide a silhouette of his tall horns. This sealed the deal: the silhouette of his tall horns. All other negative features became a moot point, as this animal was impressively tall. “Tall Boy” just became the #1 on my target list. 04:00 we left camp to arrive before sunlight in hopes of taking him where we last saw him. As it often turns out, he wasn’t anywhere to be found. We hiked several hours & miles before spotting him on TOP of a rolling hill, some 1200yrd away, again silhouetting his horns. There were no other hunters this deep off the road, so we patiently watched him work those does down the hill, chase off 2 coyotes several times, frequently pass along his genes, and close the distance to around 600yrd. When the opportunity allowed, we used flora to hide our advancement as we belly crawled/boot scooted to a vantage point on a downward slope just 480yrd from his grass grazing on the prairie. 09:20, Boom Boom (hit him twice), .300RUM, 480yrd, smiles from ear to ear on 3 dudes. AZGFD Draw, No paid professional guides, No paid private ranch access, No cheating. Earned it the hard way! Special thank you to Mark B (coueswhitetail.com acquaintance) & Jake M (fellow FF who decided a day of hunting is better than any day at work). Both made my ‘once in a life-time tag’ more memorable than each will ever know, and even documented it (YouTube: Craigs 2021 AZ Antelope Hunt). BTW, I named my trophy “Tall Boy” as a play on words; A “Tall Boy beer” is 16oz… This buck’s beams are over 16”. Conservatively scored 80.25”. This was one for the books… or at least a campfire ring and some beer.

arizonaelk, Finding the "hot cow" is pretty much just watching the herd. Some cows and calves will be indifferent to the bulls. They feed, they bed, they just go along. From what I've observed, there are usually one or two cows that come into estrus at any given time and bulls focus on them. They give off the right smells, certain body language - to let the bulls know they are ready to breed. The cows have their own pecking order, and family groups that hang together. A nursing cow might not come into estrus early in the Fall, whereas one of her younger siblings or other cows she dominates will. When the cows separate, it seems that they do so on "family lines" or "packs" for lack of a better term. A bull will come in with intentions of pulling a single cow that is sending breeding signals. If he suceeds at pulling this cow away, others that are part of her group or "clique" will join her. Again, I'm not an elk expert by any means, but I've seen this sort of splintering of cows many times. The cow in heat gets the attention of a certain bull, he does what he can to separate her from the herd, and based on hierarchy, the cows she controls follow her. Identifying the hot cow is pretty simple - even the young spikes will be approaching her with their tounges out (maybe even other cows) sniffing her back side. When a cow goes in heat, she gives off strong pheromones. This is what triggers rutting activity in the bulls, and fights over a cow ready to breed. Each cow, if they aren't nursing, will usually hit that point and during the Fall and become the object of the bulls' attention. As far as I know, nobody has yet figured out what triggers the release of pheromones. Some say it's temperatures, some hours of daylight, others say the moon. Personally, I'm in the "moon" camp - wtih caveats. I think a combination of shorter days, cooler night-time temperatures, and a new moon kick the cows into breeding time. That's assuming there is good feed and plentiful water - which this year, they definately have. I've watched several herds with lots of cows over the past couple of weeks. There are bulls trying to manage them, but the cows seem mostly disinterested in the bulls. They are still getting their cues from the dominant cows. We are currently at 39% full moon, waning. The next new moon will be Wed or Thurs next week. For the lucky archers out there, this corresponds with opening of the archery hunt. Now, I could be wrong, and this will be a good test, but in my thinking, many of the cows will start their estrus cycle in the middle of next week - corresponding to the new moon. Those that don't will probably go into estrus 4 weeks later, at the next new moon. I would LOVE to hear from those of you hunting opening weekend to see how the rut has progressed. Obviously, I'm not interested in honing in on your "secret spot", i just want to hear how the upcoming new moon affects the bulls and cows in the areas you are hunting. My guess is, Friday, the 10th to Monday the 13th of Sept. are going to be super hot for rut activity. I would really like to hear what you guys and gals see in the field, to test this hypothesis.

As usual, great advice from Jim. I watched a herd early this morning of 60+ elk, mostly cows and fawns with a couple scrubby bulls and 4-5 spikes and other yearling bulls. The herdbull, as it now stands, is a maybe 330ish 6x6. It was encouraging to see the primary bull bugling and chasing off smaller bulls, but these are the kinds of herds that can produce really well later on. The current "herd bull" is way too over-zealous and has more cows than he can possibly contain. In the next couple of weeks, that huge heard will be broken up into several smaller herds, each with its own "herd bull". Now, I'm no elk expert, but I do get out there and watch them when I can, maybe grab some video, or learn something about their behavior. From what I've seen in the past, a herd like this will get broken into groups based on which cows go into heat - and which cows *she* controls. Some will splinter off without a fight, others will be "won" and then splintered off. The bulls that take off groups will not necessarily be big. The herd-bull of one group is usually fighting for a single hot cow, maybe two. Where the really big bulls come into play is kind of away from the main herds. You might see them one day pushing a big herd, and the next day, the same herd is being controlled by a much smaller bull. I think of the bigger bulls as nomads. They don't really stick to any one herd, so much as bounce from group-to-group. It's kind of like they are too old to deal with wrangling cows - they know they can drop in when they want and breed, pretty much unchallenged - so they don't tie themselves to any one group of cows. This is where mid-day hunting comes into focus. The bigger "mid-sized" bulls spend the night and early mornings defending their herd and trying to force them into a pocket that they can control. The really big bulls stick tighter to cover, usually solo, probing the smaller herds for a chance to come in and breed, then move on. As the "herd bulls" go off to wallow or scrape, the nomads slip in and breed, usually without much vocalization, and continue on to the next bedding area. Point being, don't focus as much on "herd bulls" as on hot cows. Don't try to call the biggest in, because they're too smart to key in on a single cow. They are really smart, and will use your calls against you, just to keep tabs on where you are. They're more likely to get duped by their nose than by their ears. They've heard every call and can tell a human from the real thing. If in doubt, they stay away - that's how they get big. Find and play the hot cows. Let them do the talking, and be a ghost to get in between them and the big boys. Just some opintions from a non-expert. I hope something in here will help you on your hunt. Jason

I almost always start with north facing slopes if you have any, but they can and do bed anywhere. It all depends on the layout of the area, the weather and if there's areas they might get pressure from poeple. I sometimes hunt wide open antelope country for elk and they'll be just fine layin' out in the hot sun sometimes. Typically though, north facing slopes are the traditional bed areas primarily because it's got the shade and being a slope it should provide some type of vantage or visibility for the elk to watch for danger which makes them more comfortable and they like to be in that top 1/3 of the slope usually. One thing to keep in mind is, regardless where they are bedded, they will try to bed in a spot where the wind is at their back and they can face away from it. That way their eyes and ears are covering what they can't smell and their nose takes care of everything behind them. JIM>

PM sent back Ryan! You definitely can utilize your glassin' skills in that unit during mid-day! Glassing has no impact on the bulls and gives you a better idea where to intercept or sneak into the herd later in the day when they get up to move again and haven't been bothered. Also, if the rut is slow and there are no bugles, the glassability of that country is a huge help. If you find a really big bull and you can glass him, I would try spot n' stalking him instead of trying to call him in. Those bulls can get call shy in a hurry in that unit, especially to cow calls. Trick Treein', or raking trees with an antler or branch, is usually very effective after you've snuck into the comfort zone of a bull with cows, it usually makes him run in to chase you off, but you have to be in his comfort zone so he feels threatened! If you aren't close enough he may just grab his cows and move off. We've killed 4 bulls that were over 400" on regular season hunts such as yours, and we tried calling all of them in, but only 1 was actually called in when killed and it was mainly because he had no cows and the timing was just right. Any of those older herd bulls, 350"+ class or better, are more likely to move off with their cows rather than move in if you try calling them, especially in your unit, but you'll know after the first try what he's gonna do. The trick is to stop trying it if you know he's packing up his cows and moving off! A lot of people (i've learned this the hard way myself) usually continue chasing and calling and before you know it you've just pushed that bull miles out of his normal routine and made him very call shy. This sometimes happens by other hunters to a bull you've been working but it's just part of the game and is why plan B, C, and D are all great things to have! So, if you are on a big herd bull that keeps packin' up his cows and movin' off when called to, try gettin ahead of him quietly or sneakin in on em and rub an antler or a branch on a tree. You can even throw in a small sounding bugle with the trick treein' as well and sometimes gets the bull runnin' in to put himself between you and his cows, but you have to be in his comfort zone first before making any noises. If he still continues to move off, I would continue getting less pushy and definitely would stop calling or only throw out soft cow calls very sparingly just to cover up my foot steps (only if my steps are audible), or I would back out and try later. Sorry for the long winded rant, I just get all worked up thinking about chasing bugling bulls! Hope my experiences or thoughts help ya out! JIM>