hunter4life

Sorry to hear about that Scottyboy, it is a big tragedy.

Wow, that is an awesome buck!

I shot my 2nd best buck with a muzzleloader last weekend at about 40 yards.

It should make for some good table fare. I was tempted this weekend on a buck about that size, but I let him go.

Nice!

Congrats to your son on a great first buck!

Congrats!! That is the first triple I have heard of.

Congratulations on a whole bunch of awesome bucks!! They sure grew good around your place this year. All of them are bigger than anything I saw around Roswell.

On a big game rifle 1.5" is plenty good. However, I do prefer my guns to shoot 1" or less 3 shot groups at 100 yards. My average distance shot on coues deer has been 146 yards. I prefer to sneak in pretty close because it is more fun and challenging. On a varmint rifle it is not good enough.

Congratulations to Brock on a nice antelope!! That country around Vaughn sure has tons of antelope. That picture of his arm before setting and casting is pretty cool and I bet he has shown it to all his friends by now.

My brother was out helping a friend on an elk hunt last weekend and they came upon these two all tangled up. He said that it looked like the bull snake was winning and the hawk was pretty muck choked down and not long from death. He removed the bull snake and after the hawk recovered for a while he screeched at them and then took off and flew away. It is amazing what you run into when out in the wild.

In high school I ran a lot, but I never did do a full marathon. I did do a couple of 14 mile training runs, but never ran an actual race of the half marathon distance. At the hardest parts of training for cross country I was doing 50-70 miles per week, which actually wasn't bad once one gets used to it. Good luck.

Congrats to both of you on your successful deer hunt!! That first buck is amazing. There are very few bucks that big that come off of public land in Southern NM.

Great pics of an awesome trip!! It must have been amazing to see the leopard. A leopard with hounds is my dream hunt in Africa. Those Vaal Rhebok can be tough to get. When I was working down in the Eastern Cape they were always one of the hardest animals to get and many times required hard work and long shots.

I saw a 320'ish 6x6 with 11 cows last weekend. He was bugling and chasing the cows around. I thought it was a little early for this activity, but obviously that bull didn't think so.

Congrats on a great ram!! He really has good bases for that area. I know my brother really enjoyed helping out and going along on that hunt with you. I wish I would have had the time to help out on the hunt as well.

The gutless method is the only way to go if you have to carry out the meat very far. It is quick and clean and works especially well if a bullet penetrates into the abdominal cavity, because then you don't have to get your hands dirty pulling out the guts that have been punctured. The tenderloins are easy to get once you have seen someone do it. Just cut along the side of the vertebrae starting at the last rib and then you can reach in and use your knife to cut out the tenderloins. If done properly the approach is entirely retroperitoneal and you don't even enter the peritoneal cavity where the guts sit. This is hard to describe, but simple when you see it done. I think that if many of the doubters of this method saw someone do it who knows what they are doing, then they would become believers in the gutless method. I have shown it to lots of people and they have all been impressed with it. I also do not see how gutting an animal is any cleaner because you still have to skin it and quarter it at some point if you have to carry it back to the truck. All gutting does is add an unnecessary step that has the potential to get you dirty if you poke the guts or if a bullet fragment already did.

It should be a good tag with good numbers and the potential for decent size as long as the rains hit that ranch. I just drove through Claunch a few hours ago and it is pretty brown and dry around there, but the rains have just started in that area. I was driving through a good thunderstorm a ways south of there and hit another storm cell around Mountainair. I guided last year on a ranch near there (next to Cedarvale) that usually has a lot of antelope and a few really good ones, but the rains didn't hit the ranch and there were just a few okay bucks. Most of the antelope had moved off to where the rains fell, so it was pretty disappointing.

Nice collection of sheds! I have pretty much started selling all that I can unless there is something unique about the shed. Otherwise they just sit there gathering dust.

I just got back from a weekend backpacking trip that my wife and I (and the dog) went on to climb some peaks and get out of the heat for awhile. The trailhead where we started. It is car accessible, so 38 mpg on the highway in the Corolla was great! The biggest ram we saw on the trip. I digiscoped a few pictures and just used the 4x camera zoom and a little cropping in some. Bighorns are pretty tame at times and this guy just mozeyed up pretty close to us. I wish I had a bigger zoom on the camera for the pictures that are too close for the spotting scope and too far for the camera zoom. Two little guys who were hanging out with the big one. A herd of some younger and medium sized rams. Ewes and lambs. These were the only two lambs we saw, so maybe they are just starting to have them. Elk calf. We saw lots of elk (cows and calves) and I found this little guy stashed for the day. He was lying there very, very still and counting on his camouflage to keep him hidden. Overall it was a good trip and I bagged two more peaks that I had never climbed before, Pecos Baldy at 12,500 and East Pecos Baldy at 12,529. My wife made it up Truchas Peak for her first time, which is the second highest in NM at 13,102. The dog was very well behaved (she was wearing an E-collar) and did not chase anything that I didn't want her to. This time of year with all the newborn lambs and calves around it is essential to have the dog under control at all times.

Scottyboy, we saw dozens of marmots. As soon as you get close to treeline in the Pecos or by Wheeler you start hearing the marmots whistling their alarm calls. The one small alpine mammal we did not see was a pika, which is unusual because I have usually seen them in past trips. That Mt. Orizaba climb sounds like it should be fun. It is always neat to see how your body will respond to that kind of altitude. Hiking up at 13K and 14K feet I usually feel pretty good. On Kili I really noticed the elevation once we got to 16,000ft.

I live 10 minutes from those mountains and can pretty much guarantee it wasn't a wolf. The Sandia mountains have bear, lion, bobcat, and coyote. The closest wolves are quite a ways South and West of here. Supposedly some hair was collected from the child's clothes, so hopefully that will provide the answer. My bet is it was either a young bear or a young mountain lion.

tjhunt2, I liked your example of an illegally ethical situation about running across a wounded animal on the side of the road. I have read something along the lines before that an ethical action is "doing the right thing, even when the wrong thing is legal." There are a few situations such as what you describe where the ethical action is doing the right thing even when the right thing is illegal. One has to be prepared to face the legal consequences when acting ethically in this situation, but hopefully the game warden or the judge will understand. As far as the distance debate goes, the ethical maximum distance is different for each individual shooter and changes with conditions and experience. I like to keep the range under 400 yards with a rifle, and under 200 yards with a scoped muzzleloader. Those are my maximum ranges under good environmental conditions and I make every effort to get closer when it is possible. In consistent conditions it is not that hard to shoot good groups at 600 yards, but I would never think of shooting an animal at that range. An ethical shot is when you are reasonably sure that the first shot will strike where you want it. A better test of whether one should be shooting at 600 yards would be to go to the range every day and fire one shot at 600 yards. The conditions will likely be a little (or a lot) different each day. If that shot consistently falls within the size of the vitals of a coues deer then go right ahead and take that shot when you are hunting. Most people will probably find that they only hit the vital sized area when the conditions are absolutely perfect with no wind whatsoever and minimal mirage effects. At very long range a slight breeze can easily carry the first shot out of the vital zone on a coues deer and if you are lucky it will miss entirely and the worst case is a wounded deer. Before the only bowhunt I have ever done, I practiced throughout the summer and could keep my groups under 5 inches at 60 yards. On the hunt I got a shot at a standing broadside cow at 45 yards. I lined up, released the arrow, and while the arrow was in flight the elk took one step forward and what would have been a perfect shot turned into a gut shot. I trailed her as far as I could, and after I lost the trail my brother and I walked a bunch of drainages trying to either find her or kick her up so that we could start trailing again. We never did find her. This experience really turned me off of bowhunting because the range was well within my comfort zone, the shot was well executed, and yet I wounded and lost the animal because it took a step after the arrow was in flight. This just doesn't happen with a rifle at the ranges I shoot and if it did, it is easier to make a follow-up shot.

I think that both internal and external frame packs have different things that they are better at doing. I have both, but I use the external frame more often. If you are hiking into a base camp and then hunting from there, I would go with an external frame pack and pack a separate day pack. I find that external frames carry bigger, bulkier loads better than internal frame packs and in the heat the air circulates onto your back better to let your sweat help cool you off. I also find that they are more comfortable when carrying really heavy loads like a whole deer plus a whole camp, or two elk quarters at once. If you plan on hunting with your camp on your back the whole day, then I would go with an internal frame pack. These packs are narrower, so it is easier to carry a gun or bow with you and somewhat easier to go through thick brush more quietly. If you do plan on carrying camp with you while you hunt, I would recommend going with more of an ultralight oriented gear list (however, the ultralight gear tends to be ultra expensive). Here is my external frame pack from this year loaded with all of camp for a 4 day hunt, plus a whole deer boned out. I even carried a tripod and spotting scope on this hunt. I used a medium sized 44L internal frame pack for my daypack on this hunt so I could easily carry out the deer from where I shot it back to my camp. I just load the internal frame pack with gear and then slide it into the frame pack when packing in and out.

Congratulations on bagging some nice gobblers!! It has been a tough year in NM for calling them in. All the turkeys my family has gotten have been spot and stalk this year because we have found that they just haven't been coming in and they are mostly silent as soon as they leave the roost in the mornings.