NRS

The roads coming in from Marana (Pinal Air Park Rd or Marana Rd to Silverbell) are passable with a passenger car unless there is a summer monsoon cloud burst. The area is part of the Ironwood Forest National Monument and is BLM land. If you need information about it, the phone number for the office is 520-258-7200. Ragged Top usually catches the sun first in the morning and can make for some very dramatic shots at sunrise and can be very photographic if there are low clouds around it. The sheep tend to hang out on Wolcott and on the south side of Ragged Top, but you can sometimes find them on the NE side. I am the Natural Resource Specialist for the monument, so let me know if you need any more information about it.

I thought it was supposed to be "Turn your head to the LEFT and cough" :lol:

You can start by using Google Earth to look at the area, the tanks show up well on it. Most of the back roads lead to a water development of some sort. The trickthese days is to find out which ones have water in them and which ones don't.

nope, it is a sheep in wolfs clothing :lol:

Did you see in the ad next to it that they have "Border Crossing Scent" for $50.00.

+1 Its great for removing cholla!

It looks like a great place to hang those stockings for Christmas too! Although some members might want to use heavier test line to hold those lumps of coal they might be getting in their stockings.

Unburied human waste and TP are also a peeve of mine. The BLM had to shut down the camp ground on the Gila River above Winkleman because the lazy slobs could not walk the 100 feet to the outhouse to do their business. You could not take a step without putting your foot in some poo. They still have not found anybody willing to go in and clean up the area because it is to far from where the people that are willing to do that sort of thing live. Just as a reminder, there will be a clean-up in the 36a,b area on the weekend of December 4-5 which is a good opportunity to show that hunters really do care about the land and resources.

Their hides must be real stretchy and close up over the holes this year. I shot one a month ago with a .45 auto broadside and could not find a hole in either side.

My friend and I had early Nov tags in 36c this year. Due to some health problems his wife has, our time in the field was limited so we drove out in the mornings and could only hunt to early afternoon. Opening day we got to our parking site and got our gear out. That is when I discovered that I had grabbed the wrong box of shells and only had empty cases and no bullets to shoot. Getting to our glassing perch at glassing light, it was a beautiful morning. Just after sunrise, I spot a buck walking into a water hole about 300 yards away. Since I did not have any bullets, my friend had the shot and missed high. The buck turned and walked back into the trees and disappeared before he could shoot again. We decide to go check and make sure it was a clean miss. As we start for the spot, the buck appears again and makes it to the water before we can get set up again. When he comes back from the water he shoots again and the buck jumps and disappears in the trees again. We go over and find that the deer was limping, but only a couple of very small spots of blood. We spent the rest of the day and the next looking for that buck with no luck and no indications from the coyotes or ravens that there was an injured deer in the area. My friend was done hunting due to other obligations, but felt he had a successful hunt because of actually getting his first ever shot at a big game animal, and knowing that his close miss was not serious and the buck would live to be hunted another day. I hunted the area for the next several days, and only saw small bucks, nothing to shoot at yet because it was either too small or too far away before it disappeared into the thickets of trees. With only a couple of days left in the hunt and not having and game meet in the freezer in several years, I decided it was time to put some meat in the freezer. Sitting on a rock perch overlooking a flat with several trails to water, a doe and fawn came down the trail about 8:30 in the morning. A little behind them was another deer that I thought was another doe. As it got closer, I could see 2 little spikes and since the day was already getting hot, I decided to take him home for the freezer. He stopped broadside at 100 yards and the hunt was over and the work began. As Jeff Foxworthy says in the Incomplete Deer Hunter, "That there be some good eaten"

I was on the north end that burned about 3 years ago. The country looked good with lots of grass and other deer foods around, but the waters were drying up real quick.

TH count me in for some more of your brisket and beans.

If you are scoring my buck from this year, you are about 100 Pts to high :lol: :lol:

One time I found a lot of Coues does and fawns up on a grassy mesa where I had not seen them before. When I dropped off the mesa into the wash below, I found a fresh lion kill and tracks of a female and 3 grown cubs. I think the deer just go to where they feel safe and then return to their home range after the lion moves on.

There is a new fire burning in 36C that is in the three peaks area south of what already burned earlier this year. The wind is predicted to blow tomorrow,so some of your favorite hunting areas down there may look a little different for the upcoming hunts.

36C is drying up very quickly. places that had some water 2 weeks ago are now practically dry. The one water hole I was around had a steady, but slow stream of deer all day going in to get drinks. The good news on the north end is that the King ranch is activating one of its pipelines this week so the critters will have some water to drink.

It was south of the main Santa Margarita headquarters.

start walking the canyons and washed in the middle elevations of the state and look for root knots that have been washed loose by the rains. Mountain mahogney is a reddish color, Ash is light yellow, Manzanita is kind of honey color, Juniper red, etc. The root knots tend to have the neat swirls and burls you are looking for. You can also look where someone has bulldozed a path through the chaparral country.

A biologist from our office was down there Saturday. He said that there was a little bit of the area that was burned clean, but most of it was a light burn or it burned in a mosaic pattern with random spots burned. He also saw a good CWT buck on the edge of it and said that there were some good pockets on north slopes that were not even touched inside the burn. maybe everybody with a tag for that unit should hunt down there and leave the rest of the unit to me this weekend. :lol: :lol:

Just about a done deal, the humidity came up last night and put the fire down about midnight. About 5400 acres today and with the frost on the pumpkin tonight, they expect to release the crews in the morning.

The buck looks familier to me too. I killed one just like him in 21 about 30 years ago. :lol: :lol:

Can't really saw from the picture, the only way to tell is look at the tarsal glands on the inside of the back legs. If they are 2 inches long, whitetail. If 4 inches mule deer, and if 3 inches, hybrid. Other than that, the features can be any mixture of the two you can think of.

Happy Birthday Amanda!!! and thank You for this Great Site.

rucker canyon is on the west side of the mountains, Portal is on the east side.

Thanks, and hopefully the rain this morning helped put some water in those dry spots.