youngbuck

Great pics, this is about the 10th time Ive looked through them. I would love to do something like that. I always say im gonna try and get out and help the ADA or AES but never find the time. Some hands on animal work would be pretty neat, especially with some giant rams

heres a good link for snow levels. http://www.wunderground.com/StateSnowDepth.asp?state=AZ where the heck is the snowslide canyon? i clicked on the map of it and it apears to be nw of flag, halfway from I40 to the big ditch, neways 62 inches and climbing

I guess ill get in on this. In my liftime (soon to be 24) I have seen muley numbers drop and coues rise by quite a bit, both desert muleys and ones up north. Ive spent alot of time on the rim and have seen fewer and fewer muleys up there. Along with that i have seen more and more WT there. I also spent alot of time in the desert chasin big muleys. When I was younger 10-15 I could always draw a youth muley tag in the same unit. I could always find huge bucks, like 170+ almost every year. I missed my fair share of em, never got one of the big guys. I still hunt these areas for pigs and it is a rarity to see a decent muley. I glassed up a 155ish muley a couple weeks ago and was super excited to see a decent buck. Im sure these cycles happen all the time but ive finally spent enough time around I can see slower transitions. I would also compare a 100 buck to something smaller than a 200" flop ear. Im a diehard WT guy but id take the 200" muley over a WT under 110" inches anyday i think, well id have to think about those 108s and 109s

Once I got a good look at his rack I completely lost it. Buck fever to the max. Arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably. I kept whispering "he is only 90, he is only 90,"trying to calm my nerves. Nothin beats that! I have told 2 people who were shootin at big stuff this year "they arent that big just squeeze slow" while i am shakin im so excited. I wish I had some pics of some of my misses. Congrats on the other buck by the way.

looks like he left the v outa his email adress.

+1, Is flag still forcasted to get hammered with snow Doug? at one time I heard 4'. I hope so ill be there the first weekend of feb to play in the snow at snowbowl.

ouch! Have a good one Doug. Thanks for all the help around here

tips: if you can, have a buddy do all the video, seriously its not easy to do it right. I dont think ive ever done it right or as good as i wanted it to be, it is a lot of extra work. be commited, if you just have a video camera in your pack and think eh if i can, ill get video, you never will. haul atleast 2 tripods. i always have 2 and this year i was still one short to get video of a 109 buck we shot at 330 yds. BE COMITTED AGAIN: for me to get good video I have to have my mind made up im gonna get video instead of wanting to score him through the spotter or spot the shot. practice on small stuff, rabbits, jacks, prarie dogs so you can see when u pan or zoom to fast or see how much you swear or see that you zoom in too much Good luck! share what you get!

That sucks, Ive had plenty of meals and my share of cold drinks in Antlers. I hope it gets rebuilt.

I haul a smith 638 alot of places, my old man hauls a 642. Both go bang all the time. The handle is pretty small, especially for +P loads. The trigger is a hard pull, but softens up w/ time or dryfire. Have her shoot one with some week loads. I also have an XD compact that i conceal on ocasion but its still bigger than I want to haul all the time. I figured 5 rounds of 38 +p in my pocket was better than 10 or 13 round of 45acp at home. If you want an airweght to try out i live almost next door to rio salado and could meet you there.

When I was picking out my "go to gun" I was set on a 7RUM. That is the reason I started to reload. I wanted to be decent at it when i got my 7RUM. Kicked it around a bit and couldnt find any reason not to go 30 cal, my dad already had a 7mag. If you dont shoot it a ton they work great for what i do. I have seen great results from 160 AB outa big 7's; STWs Ultras and WSM. I happen to load 140 AB outa for our 7mag and seen 140AB shot outa 7WSM. They all shoot great.

Justin's 108 5/8

seem like none of em hold up like some of the first AA talkabouts. i usually get the cheap ones that will eventually crap out if i just want some radios. ive had my rino for a lil over a year w/ no complaints, really like it. even better when ur buddies have em

Well I guess this story starts about the same time as last year. I helped my buddy Justin tag out on his very first coues; a buck just over 90" w/ only a 9" inside spread. It was a killer looking buck. As soon as we got done back to town I asked him, "so going back to muleys?" He replied "Not for a while!" Well I'm pretty sure he was hooked. Well the lucky dog drew back to back December tags. This year he said he was holding out for a 100". Fast forward a few months and he wasn’t changing his goals. He was set on a 100" buck. Justin, his dad, and my dad were glassing opening morning, as I was at work. I got a call saying that Justin's dad passed on a 90-95" buck with a busted g-2. I was kind of disappointed. That is a hard buck to pass up. After work on Friday I rushed to camp and hoping to find a stomper at first light. We were about 20 deer into the day with a few bucks when Justin found him. We got the spotting scope out and had a look. I couldn't see brow tines, or tine length, but we saw mass and main beam height. Well the chase was on. He was about a mile off and we had a little to tracker that would take us most of the way their. Justin and I headed off after him and left my dad and Justin's dad as eye in the sky. We get about a third of the way to him, and ran into a problem. There was a giant tree blocking out path. We get out to see what we can do about it, just as we hear the radio in my pocket crackle, "why did you stop?" "We got to get around this tree" we replied. "Lion! Lion jumped him out of his bed!" We ripped my gun out of the scabbard and got set up, as I ranged. 1028. That ended that plan. The lion was never seen again and the king sized whitetail buck disappeared after a non stop run of about a half mile. We slowly got back into the ranger and moped back up to our glassing spot, heartbroken. That was the biggest buck I had seen while hunting. We glassed the rest of the day and Sunday and found an insane amount of deer. One afternoon we were up to about 40 when we stopped counting. Plenty of bucks were seen, pleny of good bucks, just nothing we saw got our attention like the "lion buck" did. Justin and I were able to hunt Monday as well after my dad and Justin's dad left. Well Monday was the day of bucks. We saw 3 bucks around 90, a couple around 80 and a few spikes. Justin held true to his word, "100" this year!" Well our opening weekend of December came to a close with no shots fired, and a lion beating us to the buck we wanted. The second weekend came very quickly. I again, came up Friday after work. Saturday morning we found the buck again that Dave had passed on opening weekend. With work commitments this was his last weekend to hunt. We made our move. We climbed up a hill and topped out in a low spot in some brush. Dave set up for the shot at 440 yards with the deer above us in elevation. I told him to put the 400yard line right on him. The deer held up behind his does for a few minutes. He was going to step out into a small opening before getting into the brush and out of sight. I told Dave I would try to stop him in the opening. The buck took a few steps and I bleated at him. He stopped at looked right at us as Dave squeezed the trigger. Boom!!! "Did I get him?" he asked. "You smoked him! He’s piled up right were he was standing!" After all the high fives and hollering we headed up after him. Perfect high shoulder shot with the 180gr accubond. We saw a .30 entrance whole, exit whole was about the size of a dime, and everything in-between was jelly. I’ve seen this combo produce these results time after time, it still amazes me. Got back to camp with our prize and stretched a tape on him. 90" and change with a broke G-2 that would be good for about 3 inches. If he wants pictures up he will let me know, I'll post them if he does. The rest of that weekend was focused on finding Justin his 100". We kept looking for the lion buck with no success. We tried another spot in the unit with our lack of 100"ers found. Well we failed to find anything he wanted bad enough. We only had one more weekend to close the deal, the pressure was on. After Christmas morning we were on the road. We got to our glassing spot with about an hour and a half of light. We did pretty well. We found about 12 does a few spikes and one buck in the mid 80's. I insisted to Justin his tag did read "any antlered whitetail". He was still wanting to join the 100 club. Well Friday was over fast and we were greeted early by Dave Saturday morning. He found time to help us for a day. Saturday morning was cold, very cold. I was very thankful for my new wool lined henley I received for Christmas. We found plenty of deer at first light, but no good bucks. At about 830 I went out on a Limb and glassed across the canyon for the lion buck. "I got deer; set up that spotter!" I talked Dave into the deer with the spotter. I saw antlers from about a mile away in the 15s. I thought it was too good to be true. I was so excited I shoved Dave off of his own spotting scope. (sorry Dave) "That’s him, the lion buck! Its go-time!" We left Dave to make sure he wasn’t going to follow his half a dozen does out of sight. We headed off just as before, this time with the tree cleared, and hopefully the lion occupied. We got as close as we could and started to hike. We set up on an adjacent ridge that may have offered a shot. It was worth the 20 minute climb to prevent an hour trek for a better shot. It was almost time for the buck to bed down or feed out of sight. Our gamble did not pay off. We descended down the hill and crossed on the mountain below the buck for a better shot. About an hour later, we finally got to a spot where we could shoot; 330 yards extremely uphill. The shooting position was less than ideal. We were on the same hill as the buck, in about 4-6 feet of brush and had a small window to shoot through. My bipod is set up for prone and sitting. Justin had to stand. We set up his tripod for the front of the gun and mine for the butt. The buck was standing broadside with the doe in the same position, blocking everything but the shoulder and swollen neck of the buck. We waited and waited and waited for either to take half a step. With out exaggeration it was bout 10 minutes of waiting for Justin. He was cramping up after hiking all over this mountain, his eyes were failing after looking through a scope. He was rarely looking, but found it hard to take his eye of the buck that already got away from us. We talked about a neck shot. We both knew the gun would do it, and so could Justin; easily. He did not like his set up on the tripods and wasn’t comfortable with the shot. He decided to wait for a step. Well it finally happened, but not the step we were hoping for. He turned away from us and walked straight away. As soon as the buck offered the slightest quartering shot the gun went off. We immediately saw the doe run off without the buck. Shortly after we saw the buck rolling down the cliff/mountain we were on. We were ecstatic; yelling, hoopin’ and hollerin’ and high fivin’. We just smoked the big one, the one that had gotten away. We knew Dave heard us across the gorge that was about a mile off, because we could hear him yelling too. We sat down to get a drink and rest. We were acting like contortionists for the past 10 minutes. After a short break we climbed the 330 yards to the buck. This took us at least 20 minutes. I wish I had a latter. We had never gotten a great look at this buck. Neither of us saw the brow tine length, or really any tine length. We could see height and mass. We knew he would break the century mark but not by how much. We finally got to Justin’s buck. This was the buck he wanted; heavy, tall, long tines, gnarly, bladed everything, Great looking buck. We get to pictures then cleaning and caping. We finally loaded up our pack and headed off the mountain. This was no small task with packs over 60lbs. We had all the meat, half body cape, tons of water, food, tripods, cameras, tripods, gun, and all the normal stuff that has eventually gotten to be a lot. Well we made it off the mountain back to the ranger around 230 and ate. We had not eaten a thing all day yet. That is not the norm for either Justin or I. We are both good for about 3500 calories a day. More when we are hunting. I’ve never had a muffin that tasted so good. We drove back to Dave to show him what we had done. Six and a half hours later we were done. We took a few more pictures and headed back to camp. As soon as we were back to camp we got the meat on ice and I rewarded myself with a calorie rich Blue Moon. I got the tape out and got to stretching. Guesses welcome. Don’t guess if you know.

Congrats to all involved! Makes me hot too about the light rail story. Who could rough a girl up so bad as to break a collar bone? I cant stand it. Thats a reason why the alum J-frame is never far away. Enough of the rant. Thats one great lookin deer. I like it when the brows are so far apart, always looked cool to me

+1 I use a full moon as an excuse when im havin a tough time on a hunt. I think it effects early elk hunts more than any others. I dont let it change the way I hunt either. Anybody change stuff up for a full moon?

I had an officer tell me I looked familiar while passanger in a truck that got pulled over. I told him that didnt sound so good, then he asked if I post on CW.com. Turns out he posts here too, it worked out. My buddy had a cracked windshield that looked worse from his point of view with the sun. I also had a cop pull me over and see the trophy pics of my coues from last year on the passanger seat. He said "Wow did you kill that elk?"I was polite and played dumb and said yep i sure did. It didnt work. Still got the ticket

Well im diggin this one up hopin to hear some new ideas. I like the zip-tie around the driveshaft. everytime the drive shaft maks a revolution the ziptie hits the frame or whatever (muffler makes the most noise.) Its easy and works great and wont hurt nothin.

I tried to shoot a yote w/ an arrow I has just shot a turkey with. I missed and busted the arrow. I retired my elk arrow cuz I was proud of it. I also retire and all my pig arrows only cuz they might stink up my bow case

He taped out at 108 5/8. Man some of you guys are good. I had my hands all over him and guessed 106-110. I dindnt think he would top the 110 mark.

I guess ive always been a dont ask dont tell guy when it comes to this with people i dont know. If i know ya, i dont have a problem tellin what unit. I guess people askin me what unit never got to me it was the "well where in the unit" that bugged me. I have no prob helpin out a new guy who is actively tryin to find some spots. if i think a guy will actually look for the spots instead of just tellin all his buddies ill help him out. I think alot of it has to do with the internet. I guess its a little different if a guy shakes my hand before he asks and i think hed pull me outa the ditch if i got stuck the next day.

lol is that the new requirement for members? Congrats colton on a great archery buck!

congrats guys on two killer look bucks!

Congrats on a great lookin buck!

thanks for the kind words. you guys are pretty close. The tape does not do this guy justice but still tapes really well. Hes bladed and gnarley everywhere. his brows are bladed out alot and so are both mains. definately one of the neatest bucks and the biggest ive been a part of. this is the buck last year for casey, not the best pic, but its one that you can see the width ans some of the extra points that were tryin to sprout.