MattMan

Or 260, or 6.5 Creed, or 264 Win Mag, or 7-08, 280, etc... the list goes on and on. A 140 AMAX from a 260 will flatten Coues further than most will ever reliably be able to hit them.

The 257 Roy is unbeat at haulin' tail, and if I had to choose between the two, it'd be the Roy. Muzzle velocity, however, is rather fleeting, and BC is forever. Anything .308 ain't the greatest for BC, and the Ultra case delivers recoil HARD and FAST. I'd go .338 in a heavy braked outfit if I ran an ultra capacity case, and it would say "338 Lapua" on the tube. The .264 and .284 diameters soundly take the lead in the high BC combined with low recoil field... a 140 grain pill with a BC over .600 is hard to beat.

Big, kinda fugly, fun to catch for kids or when nothing else is around, don't taste very good... ringin any bells? They call 'em carp deer cause in this case the shoe just fits...

Just talked to a guy this week that drew a Rocky tag. Killed his desert 3 or 4 years ago. I say good for him.

Two jr antlered deer tags, two oct coues tags, two antelope tags, two jr cow tags... Life simply couldn't get any better... playin' the odds never fails.

So is a college education in materials science... I ain't guessin. Shootin mild steel and AR500 plates regularly from 100-750 yards to compare the vastly different performance as high powered rifle targets ain't a bad place to expand your knowledge base either. Beats the heck outta guessin for sure. I work with guys all the time that have been doing things for 40 years. Problem is, they never got much better, and don't pay much attention or want to learn much of anything new. They know it all already. So they've actually got 1 year of experience 40 times. Doesn't impress me much either. BTDT. Youngbuck - AR500 is available from any steel supplier, but you may have to order a full sheet. Gets kinda cost prohibitive. Lookup the guy over on the classifieds on 24hourcampfire. He'll ship you up to 70lbs in a fixed rate box. $25-30 for one plate shipped ain't a bad deal... you'll spend more than that in gas looking for a scrap hunk. And he's already put the holes in 'em. AR500 has a better ring to it when you nail it too, so you can easily hear your hits from 750.

Actually, you still don't know what you're talking about. STEEL is IRON that has had CARBON added to it. Roughly between 0.5-2.0%... and that's what makes it steel instead of iron. AR500 is a through hardened wear & abrasion resistant steel plate used for SEVERE IMPACT and abrasion. SEVERE IMPACT in this case being projectiles composed of lead and/or copper alloys launched at muzzle velocities of 2600 fps or more. NO EFFECT ON THE TARGET. Go take a class on materials science engineering, pass it with better than an F, then we can talk. AR500 is the friggin bo-diddly bomb for rifle targets, almost like it was made for it... You should try shootin' some... knowin' is easy. Guessin is for fools. Plasma works for holes in AR500 much better than any bit... BTW, trainloads of iron is surely friggin a lot. And to use more in an hour than I'll use in a lifetime is likely true... iron is for woodstoves and engine blocks. So just curious, what's the average copper content and tensile strength of reinforcing steel used for reinforcing concrete structures? Can you weld it? What would be the effect of torch cutting or welding on the hardness and tensile strength? What's the average chromium content of D2 steel? How do you harden it? Is it stainless? Will it rust? What is it good for, other than casual conversation around the campfire? What is the optimum hardness for your chosen application?

Lark, you don't know what you're talking about. 1/2" AR500 doesn't even have more than a grey mark with big 300/338s @ 100. 1/2" mild steel, can be shot clean through in short order, even with 140 Berger VLDs @ 650. Mounting method is same/same, hung loose from a chain... I've had both so I know. An AR500 target is a one time purchase unless someone steals it or you throw it away.

If proof of US citizenship were required to vote he'd never have gotten one term...

If anything, the guy is doing you a favor by normalizing human activity and scent in the area you're hunting. Use it to your advantage.

How are people going to get there at 6 am? Highway 273 won't open till late Friday afternoon and the rest of the forest is still closed.

Nothing needs to be fixed. You want a primo tag, so do 10,000 other applicants. It's called REALITY. AZ's system is the best balance to loyal seasoned hunters as well as attracting those that are fairly new. A wait period is strictly punitive in nature, removing the 70 successful applicants from the pool. Great, so now there's only 9,930 applicants. THAT sure doesn't increase your odds. A preference point system would require you wait just as long as the bonus pass of the current draw, with NO chance of drawing until you build enough points. Doesn't change much, and means my son would have to start applying now and maybe NEVER catch the curve. We don't apply to Colorado for this reason... a preference point system seriously discourages those new to hunting, and doesn't do much to build a future generation of hunters. Then when you DO draw, you start over. So once you get your tag, your next one will be from a wheel chair with an oxygen bottle. NO chance of drawing again until you build the points. IT SUCKS. The bonus system currently in place allows for you to build max points for a primo tag, and eventually be GUARANTEED your first choice in the 20% pass, and still allows you to have a chance of drawing a tag on any given year. No other system combines these two traits. There are more applicants than tags in AZ... PERIOD. Especially for primo hunts... Suck it up and deal with it. If you choose to apply for hunts with 0.1% draw odds, you're not going to get drawn a lot. Read and understand the draw system and use it to your advantage. If you do, you can hunt every year, if you're not dead set on a trophy tag.

I live here so they didn't have to tell me when the chopper landed... Plenty of bears in the woods, and dumpster divers are habitual and a problem waitin' to happen... they've learned bad habits that can't be broken. Kill 'em and reduce the harvest objective for the year if it's a sow. Done deal. Relocation is a joke. A bad one. AZGFD has kinda backed off from that theory since the Mt. Lemon attack a few years ago. He was a problem bear they'd relocated a time or two. Pretty sure they lost their shorts over that one in court. Likely had a written policy they didn't follow. Also know first hand of one they relocated THREE times from Pinetop to Ruidoso. Same bear. THREE times. Clap your hands and yell during the daytime and you're probably good to go... night, startled, sleeping in a tent with the remnants of a ribeye on your breath, likely a different story.

They landed the medi vac around 12:30 at night... thought they were gonna land on our roof. Figured either someone got bit or shot. I gotta wonder what a 61 year old lady was doing walking around at midnight in the dark with a dog. It was a 250-300 lb boar, and she ain't in good shape. When they figure they can tell if they got the right one by the necropsy, that means there was enough of her gone that they know they can find her missing parts in the right bear's belly. We had a bear around here a day or two before she got bit, so he's been in the neighborhood a while... my dumba** neighbor is a retired sheriff from Tucson and always said there was nothing to worry about with black bears, they never hurt anybody and just to walk around them... If a bear gets on you at night, he's gonna eat till something stops him or he's tired of eating... and they just hold you down and eat, they don't even have the common courtesy to kill you first like a lion.

My wife and I both drew unit 10 rifle tags this year with 11 points. I don't personally know anyone else who's drawn a 10 tag since the 90s with less than 20 points...

I prefer the weight savings, simple setup, and quick dry of the Alaknak and have the same tent... don't think for a minute I'd ever go back to canvas. But I've also embraced goretex, synthetic fleece, modern boots, etc. I look at a canvas tent like a wool coat, mink oiled or bees-waxed unlined leather boots, etc... good back in the day but their time has passed. They all served their function and still will, but there are much better options to be had with modern materials.

Best Big Lake pic is EASY, I have kids... and they played "hookey" one spring friday. Best WM pic is a toss up between the two... first elk for each. All that aside, with current politics, policies, and procedures (The other "3P's"), it HAD to burn. And it likely HAD to burn this way.

I'm sure they rounded them up before it go too bad... "Fido! , Felix! , She-She! , come!! Get in your kennel, we got's to go! There's a FIRE!"

I helped a kid on a buffalo hunt, and used a 223... all he could shoot. (Think 12 year old Rain-Man, literally) Buffalo went less than 30 yards and I assure you was VERY dead. Not the bang-flop normally produced on Coues, more like a flinch, a short walk, and then he did the "Curly Shuffle". Shoot a coues where it lives with a 223, and it will do the same. Shoot it poorly and you're gonna lose it. That 64 grain power point causes MORE internal damage than you can imagine... and the price is right so you can practice up with those kids. I haven't seen anything shot with them make it more than 10 yards, and that's the exception. Also easy for kids and adults alike to shoot a 223 accurately... VERY accurately.

64 Grain Power Points Inside 300 these are about as deadly as anything... BC of a paper plate, so 300 limit is real.

If more of the area looked like your fist two pics instead of like dog hair it would've never gotten this bad...

At least not in our lifetime...

It's not just the FS... EVERY action to do something other than leave the forests to ruin are stopped by Sierra Club and others in courts... this particular area is was 'critical habitat' for several T&E species. I have to wonder if the idiots filing these lawsuits to stop anything and everything ever thought that maybe a healthy forest is better than no forest. An apex ecosystem such as old growth conifer is exactly that, apex. It's NOT permanent... one way or the other it changes, whether through responsible thinning and logging, or catastrophic fire. It seems many, even a portion that work there, have forgotten the fact that the Forest Service is part of the Department of AGRICULTURE, not the Department of the Interior. Cattle and Timber production are AGRICULTURE... parks and recreation are NOT.

NOAA 1km Satellite Loop

I meant the 25 north of the black....