CouesWhitetail

Marshall, We are currently in need of having an article written about the hunter survey the ADA did. I haven't had time to do it. Do you think you could write something up based on interviews with some of us? Maybe that would be a quick and easy way to get the info for an article? Think you could do that? Or is that a headache... Amanda

Allen, Thanks for making this thread and thanks for all you do for wildlife and hunting. You always have some thoughtful comments and help keep hunters informed on issues. And thanks for your work on the ADA hunter clinics. Stan, glad to hear you are going to keep helping the youth. I will second what everyone else has said that the youth program under your leadership was outstanding and the ADA has huge shoes to fill with a replacement for you. For those of you that want to get more involved, the ADA is holding it's annual members meeting next week. Although we don't get a lot of members showing up for those meetings, it is a good chance to come and talk to board members and find out more about what the ADA needs and what help you might be able to offer. That is how Stan got involved! Meeting details: June 6, 2006 6:30 pm Burch & Crachiolo Law Offices 702 E. Osborn Rd. #20 Phoenix, AZ Northeast corner of 7th St. and Osborn If anyone wants more info on the ADA, you can visit our website www.azdeer.org Or like wetmule said, you can PM or email him or Muley62 or myself. The more people that get involved the better! Amanda

You may be right. That's why I am still planning to move the forum to a site with better SQL support. But it will take awhile. I am doing fieldwork most days this time of year and it's tough getting computer stuff taken care of. I will let you guys know if we move to a new site. It shouldn't affect anyone here with the exception of having a forum that doesn't have so many SQL errors. Amanda

Apparently when tech support told me they "rebuilt" the database they just reloaded the forum from May 24. So we have apparently losts many posts. I doubt we will get them back. I will email tech support about it. So, no you guys aren't going crazy, the forum is..... That rebuild is supposed to eliminate the error messages we have been getting the last week or two. Amanda

Is that the model you were using Bowsniper when you crashed? Amanda

Sorry to hear about the problems. I have been out in the field the last few days. Before I left, tech support assured me they had fixed the problem, but obviously we are still having issues. It seems that after awhile the SQL database gets corrupted easily. I will contact them again to try and get a better fix done on it. And as Stan mentioned, you can contact both of us since he can fix it as well. Amanda

I am posting this email for Pete Cimellaro. To All: It is time to contact your Legislators and ask all of them to support SB1441 (Habitat Enhancement and Restoration Bill). Please, immediately forward this message on to as many sportsmen as possible. We are in the last few weeks of the Legislative session. Everyone is scrambling to keep their requests in the budget. Many requests have already been cut and are off the table. SB 1441 is still hanging in there. However, without a constant and firm reminder from all Arizona sportsmen, we will not get our $5 Million for habitat work in 2006. The Game & Fish Commission has voted unanimously to support SB1441. The Department and Commission have designated five of the seventeen original projects to receive this money. ? Anderson Mesa Grassland Restoration ? Kaibab Winter Range Habitat Improvements ? Yuma Region Water Redevelopments ? Wildlife Water Redevelopments, North of Colorado River ? Pinetop Region Deer Habitat Restoration (e.g. Chitty Creek, Pigeon, and Sheep Wash) I am asking all of you to immediately call you legislators and request the $5 Million for habitat projects, in SB1441, be included in the budget. We need to get this message to all of the 90 House and Senate members. Please take the time to call your House Members and Senator immediately. It is particularly important to let the Legislative leaders know of your request! Senate President, Ken Bennett 602-926-5584 Speaker of the House, Jim Weiers 602-926-4173 House Appropriations Chairman, Russell Pearce 602-926-5760 Senate Appropriations Chairman, Bob Burns 602-926-5993 If you don't want to call them you can send an email; but at this time a phone call will be much more effective. If we respond with a strong voice, we can get this critical wildlife habitat improvement money. If you rely on the other guy to make the calls and send the messages, we will all lose. Please take a few minutes to make a difference for wildlife and sportsmen. Thank you, Pete Cimellaro ATTACHED, are a letter of support from the Game & Fish Commission and all contact information for the Legislators. Don't hesitate, call today!!!! MEMBERS_OFTHE_LEGISLATURE.doc SB1441_Support_Letter.txt

More info on the bill. To All: A Heads Up, just in case! In making your phone calls to the Legislators, you may be told SB 1441 is a Medical related bill not a Wildlife Projects bill. The rest of the story: SB 1441 started out as a medical related piece of legislation in the Senate. When it came over to the Appropriations Committee in the House it was used as a strike everything amendment (changed the content of the bill) by Representative Lucy Mason. The (now) Wildlife bill passed out to the Appropriations Committee on an 11-2 vote and headed for the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee was suspended before the bill could be heard and it never had it's title changed. If your real good in traveling through the Legislature's website you can find out all of this information and see the changed title. I am not that good, but do understand what happened. Rest assured, SB1441 is a Wildlife Habitat and Enhancement Bill that provides $5 Million for projects. If anyone raises this issue you will at least be able to discuss what happened. More importantly, be sure you ask them to include the $5 Million in the budget for Wildlife!!!!!!!! Pete

If you guys know any family that would be interested in learning more about camping, outdoor cooking and lots of other stuff, have them go to this workshop up in Prescott. Kids and parents can come and learn some fun skills. I have attached the PDF flyer about the event. Help spread the word! Amanda Becoming_an_Outdoors_Family_final_Draft.pdf

Great photos and Congratulations to you both on your graduations!! For those of you that don't know Andy Knowlton is one of the handful of lion hunters that went to the commission meeting recently and spoke out to convince the commission not to approve the depts plan to ban lion hunting for three months in the summer. The commission listened and voted against that proposal. Thanks Andy! Amanda

The adapters I sell are made by Jim White. He makes a great product, but doesn't have an online store, so I help him sell his stuff here. I sell the adapter for the doctor 15x60's for $28 plus tax and $5 shipping. You can email me at amanda@coueswhitetail.com if you want to discuss it further. Amanda

Definitely some great images and stories here. Just a little advice to make posting the pics easier for you. When you make a post, look at the toolbar just above where you type. Look for the small button that looks like a photo of a tree with blue sky behind it. Click on that button when you have your cursor placed where you want the image to appear. When you click on the button you will be prompted to enter a URL. Paste in the URL where your image is located and it should show up without everyone having to click on a link. Example, if you have your image stored in photobucket like youngbuck did, the URL is http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h225/you...k86/cropelk.jpg Just click on tiny button that looks like a photo of a tree and paste the URL into where it prompts you for it. If you don't have your image uploaded to some place on the net, you can use the "add this attachment" feature below where you type in the message to browse for your file on your harddrive.

Here is one of my favorite trophy photos. I love it because my dog Molly is in it. She is a hunter at heart and loves it when I bring home something. She usually runs to the back of the jeep to sniff for whatever might be inside My husband set up this photo and took it. I got this gobbler on the San Carlos back in 1999. If I remember right it was a very windy day and I had to call VERY loud to even be heard. Amanda

Here is some info on SFW mission from the membership brochure that Pete gave me. Hopefully it will show well enough for you to read it.

Yes, I believe AZ Sportsmen For Wildlife is taking memberships. If anyone is interested, I suggest emailing Pete Cimellaro pcimellaro@cox.net

Those that want a sticker, can email me with what you want and your mailing address.... amanda@coueswhitetail.com Amanda

Yes, black or silver I can do. Black would probably stand out the best. I can do it in any color really, so if you want red or blue, or whatever, just let me know. Here is a pic of Coosefan's toyhauler with a blue sticker on the white background. (And a pic of his friend's excellent Coues deer ) Amanda

Yeah, I love the Christmas lights in with your Bronco! Here is another pic of two CW.com'ers who happened to meet each other in a parking lot.

Wow, can't say I have ever heard of an ungulate breaking open his skull plate fighting. Glad you were there to put him down. What an awful site that must have been. Amanda

Great looking stag there Scottyboy! I assume you got this one before you fell off the cliff and spent all that time in the hospital?

some of you that have been on the forum for several years will remember some of these photos from my dec hunt a couple years ago. We backpacked in the day before opening day and camped out. A rain and snowstorm moved in during the night and it wasn't the most comfortable camp, but I stayed dry in my bivy sack and my husband stayed mostly dry wrapped up in a tube tent. I think my hunting partner on that hunt had a tent with him so he stayed dry. Since that hunt I have bought a nice backpacking tent. I still enjoyed sleeping out in the storm though! The biggest problem was the lack of waterproof boots for the morning hunt. Good thing my hunting partner was good at making a fire out of soggy grass to dry my boots out when it was too foggy to glass anymore! The orange tube tent and my red bivy sack: My husband emerging from his snowy coccoon: My hunting partner, Mark and I enjoying some tea/coffee in the morning. Amanda

Mike, Allen and Chris, I agree that one of the real problems is apathy. How to get more sportsmen motivated to go to meetings and respond to proposals is a problem that needs to be solved. I don't know the answer, but I know more sportsmen need to get actively involved in the political end of this. If you are like me, you would rather be out glassing for Coues deer or spending time with your family, but it's extremely important that everyone get involved. Amanda

Bill, The reason we asked for names and birthdates was so we could crosscheck the names against AGFD databases. It's something the dept wanted as well as the ADA. That way we could make sure the people who responded weren't stuffing the ballot box so to speak. Now, I will say that we didn't go through with that step of crosschecking since it didn't seem necessary. There would have to be about 5,000 respondents disqualified to make a difference in the results. I really doubt there was that much lying going on. It would be interesting to find out though. Also, saying the survey is useless because it wasn't randomly designed is like bashing a pick-up truck for not being a cadillac. The survey wasn't designed to be scientific. It was designed to try and present specifics of the proposal accurately and to reach as many hunters as possible to give their opinions. The wording of the questions comes primarily from AGFD so that it would accurately reflect the proposal. And probably at least half of the respondents come directly from AGFD promoting the survey through their mass emails and website. Seems to me the proponents of the proposal did a good job reaching lots of hunters. The survey was designed to reflect the opinions of respondents with regard to how they felt about the proposal. I think it did a good job of that. 6500 hunters spoke up and gave input on the dept's hunt guidelines. No, it wasn't scientific, but the commission takes non-scientfic input all the time. Just look at how they directed the dept to stop the 3 month ban on lion hunting at the commission meeting. A handful of lion hunters stood up to say "please don't stop lion hunting in the summer as is listed in the depts proposal" and the commission directed the dept not to implement that ban. Those few lion hunters that spoke up certainly weren't randomly selected to represent the views of all lion hunters in the state. Amanda

Congrats Katie!! Amanda

Thanks for sharing your adventures. How many and which sections of the AZ Trail have you done? Amanda