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Tag number 25 for 3a3c early rifle bull for me and 3a3c general bull for my son.

Early archery unit 27 tag for me and 22 South muzzleloader for my daughter. Chasing bugles baby.

I spent most of December looking for deer up here in my neck of the woods and was quite disappointed with the quality of deer seen. Maybe January will be better. Here are a few pictures, some that I took with my camera, and some through my spotter and phone.

A big group of my hunting buddies and I drove up to the San Carlos Reservation on Friday morning to chase turkeys for the weekend. We got to our campsite around 2:30pm and got the wall tent and kitchen set up. After consulting OnX, we figured out where each group was going and hit the road for a little evening scouting. It was the first weekend of the first season on the San Carlos, so we couldn’t actually hunt until Saturday morning. My hunting partner and I opted for a spot close to camp, hoping to minimize the drive time the next morning. We drove our road from about 4pm until just before sundown, without locating any birds (about 10 miles out-and-back with no gobbles). We had the windows down, heading back towards camp when I thought I heard a gobble. We stopped the car and listened for 5 minutes… nothing. I was sure I heard a tom! My hunting partner climbed back in the rig, probably thinking I was pulling his chain. He shut the door and BOOM - gobbles. Perfect. We had at least two toms roosted and were even able to see one of them roosted halfway up a ponderosa. We dropped a waypoint on OnX and made our way back to camp. After a good night’s sleep, we were up and at ‘em at 4:15am with coffee and premade breakfast burritos on the wood stove. While we were packing the truck, it started to snow (NOT IN THE FORECAST!). We made the short drive to our spot, parking 600 yards from where we had roosted the birds the night before, and heard the gobblers going off! That made it easier to pick a good spot to set up in the dark. The snow was really starting to come down as we made it into our spot and set up our decoys. I only started hunting turkeys in the past few years, so I was unsure how the weather would affect the birds. But I was convinced our toms would just hangout on the roost all day because I sure as heck wanted to be back in the warm truck! We made a few quiet yelps to let the gobblers know where we were and sat back. They gobbled for the next 30 minutes, without us prompting them. We felt like we were in a good position and made another quiet yelp sequence to keep them intrigued. 15 minutes before sunrise we heard some gobbles 100 yards to the north of where our birds were roosted. It was either another set of toms that we hadn’t known about OR our birds had gotten down out of the roost without us hearing them. It ended up being the latter! The next 5 minutes was chaos, with the gobbles getting closer and closer. Each time they gobbled, I could feel it more and more in my chest. I understand the thunder chicken moniker now! I began seeing movement 75 yards out, which was a feat with the snow coming down in droves. I didn’t know it in the moment, but I think the snow covered up our decoys making it harder for the three incoming toms to know where we were. They missed the “X” and were moving to my left. In doing so, they forced me to rotate my sitting position and turn my shotgun towards the birds who were in the open at 25 yards. Aiming at the middle tom, I squeezed the trigger and CLICK. While trying to be quiet at the truck earlier that morning, I guess I hadn’t let the bolt slam all the way closed on my 3.5” shell and had a misfire. Trying to not the let moment pass me up, I cycled the bolt on my shotgun and got another round in the chamber. With all that noise, the turkeys knew something was up. They were confused and fixin to leave, but not before I got a shot off! What a cool morning! I had my first tom on the ground after an exciting hunt and the pictures in the snow will remind of this weekend forever. Side note: we filled my buddies tag in a similar fashion on Sunday morning, after it had warmed up a bunch. I’m hooked - and we will be back in the turkey woods next spring. CHEERS and thanks for reading! -MM

Also doesn’t help that our spineless worm of a governor Doug Ducey jumped on board protecting them.

I’ve told people this a thousand times but no one wants to hear it. Same people would kill rats or mice or any other nuisance and not think twice but “horses are majestic “. Bunch of hypocrites

You’re missing the point about not crapping in ads. Enjoy the rtic. They are great coolers for the $

F it id be. I have a boat too but also a kid in football. Bush light, naddy light heck even naddy ice

30-30 is all you need

With less than two weeks till we draw a winner I'd like like to thank those that have helped with this project Kent(krp),boreman03 and his son,Mike for the amazing cerakote,Jerry (Johnnybegood),Eli,and Dale for There donation to getting a kid in the woods.If you offered to donate and have not its not to late .I can tell you this project has cost way more than I could have expected with a few trips to gunsmiths and the need to replace the scope for the second time. AGAIN THANKS TO ALL THAT HAVE PARTICIPATED SOME KID WILL HAVE A 😀 FROM EAR TO EAR!!

3B ML for antelope my son got an early archery bull tag is 5BS

I would say something about being able to pull more than you, but that would be a lie. However, I can pull my 72# bow like it's a thong on a strippers but, sliding the dollar in.

23 North Early archery Bull……. I can’t believe it

Mother of God. I hit my Hail Mary. 23 south early rifle bull. Holy #&+#&:@+...

Thank you Kevin, I'll pass that on to my daughter.

Here is the article I was referring to https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiSWh0dHA6Ly93d3cua29sZC5jb20vMjAyMi8wMy8wNS9laWdodC1nb2F0cy1raWxsZWQtYnktYW5pbWFsLXNpZXJyYS12aXN0YS_SAQA?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

Nice mature buck. Honestly looks like a 3x3 with a top fork on the one side and front fork on the other side. His beams look super super short, either broke or just that way. Not a buck to shoot and have expectations of scoring anything but definitely a shooter in OTC archery! I’d say he’ll have a real hard time clearing 140 and is probably in the mid to low 130’s. He’s probably the biggest looking 130-140” muley I’ve ever seen though.

140-150

Spent 3 great days watching Mule Deer. 300 + Deer in that time. Heard looks healthy. A lot of smaller Bucks. A couple around 175 range. Awesome sunsets, sun rises, and Moon sets.

This one.............bang.....................cool photos thanks for sharing.

UPDATE - BLUEBONNET LONGBEARD My brother picked up me in Dallas last Thursday and we got on the road. It took us about 2 hours to get to some private ground we have permission to hunt - we cracked some beers and got ready to roost some birds that evening. We spent the last hour of shooting light trying to locate some longbeards and spent about an hour afterwards owl hooting, hoping to shock gobble a few. No luck. We woke up Friday morning with an uninformed game plan, really just hoping we would get into this hayfield on the property and get lucky. We parked about 1000 yards from the tree line, on the far end of the hayfield, about an hour before legal shooting light. As we closed the distance across the field, we decided to stop and make a set of owl hoots. I couldn't even get the first three notes out and POW. POW. Two gobblers struck up on the left corner of the hayfield. We made a beeline for trees. We set up as close as we could in the pitch black of the early morning, with a jake and hen decoy set out about 15 yards into the field. After 15 minutes of letting things cool down, I let out a soft hen call and immediately - POW, POW. I gave them some time and hit them with a little bit louder and longer hen call - POW, POW. They were keyed in on our location and all we had to do was wait for flydown. 10 minutes after legal shooting light, the gobbles start to move direction slightly. Again, we don't hear them fly down... but we see two dark blobs 100 yards into the hayfield. In the grey light of early dawn, we can barely make them out. But we know one of them is a tom, with the thunder coming from their location. 20 minutes of cat/mouse calling, and we have this jake and tom barreling in our decoys. I'm sitting behind my brother and I give them a soft yelp to get the tom's head up inside the decoy spread. He fired off a round and the big tom cartwheeled in place. Epic morning and a cool experience to get it done with my brother.

Had I been drawn, it's always old school for me. 65 year old Remington Gamemaster in .06, 4X Weaver tube.(below) Previous elk slayer was sporterized 1917 in .300 H.H. If I ever have a crisis, Biglakejake gets first crack at this rifle lol.