hunter4life

They take the $6.00 application fee for deer when you first put in. A charge for deer will not show up on your credit card, because if you are drawn you have to go to a place that sells licenses and buy a license. You will have to wait until the draw results come out to see if you drew a deer tag.

I was under the impression that in some states back East that went to a similar system, the age class of all bucks harvested basically went up by one year (ie. before x% were 1 1/2 years old and y% were 2 1/2 years old and so on, and after roughly x% were 2 1/2 years old and y% were 3 1/2 years old) and they ended up getting bigger bucks. I seem to remeber reading an article about this, but it was a few years ago and I haven't really followed the issue closely. The argument about younger deer passing on inferior genetics is total hogwash. That 6 1/2 year old 115" coues buck was once a little forkhorn when he was young and he had the same genetics the whole time. You could get more genetically inferior deer doing the breeding if the following were true. If deer that would eventually be bigger at maturity were more likely to start out with their first set of antlers having 3 points on a side than a genetically inferior deer that would be smaller at maturity, then a 3 point restriction would end up killing off more of the genetically superior deer before they could breed. I do not know if there has been a well designed study that has answered this question, maybe Amanda knows of one. A study like this would be hard to do looking at wild deer, as there are a lot of confounding variables such as maternal nutrition, nutrition of the deer during their first year and during the following antler growing season, and other factors.

The thing I love about Arizona is that alot of people move there instead of coming to New Mexico. Although, NM's population is growing pretty fast and I fear it will get pretty crowded in the decades to come.

I have seen a few in the 16's.

This has been a good thread with lots of awesome trophy room pictures. Thanks everyone for posting your pictures. Jim, I asked around and did my homework before choosing a taxidermist for my mountain lion. I think I made the best choice, and I am very happy with the finished product.

Here is my favorite mount. It is of a mountain lion that I got here in NM with the help of a good friends' pack of hounds. The tom weighed in at exactly 125 pounds, and was around 3 years old. He had an ear tag, so I called the G&F and found out that he had been tranquilized in Alamogordo as a young cat because he was right in the middle of town and the G&F moved him down to the Otero Mesa and I shot him 18 months later back up near Ruidoso.

This is probably my best trophy. A coues taken with a muzzleloader that grosses 109 6/8. Imagine if he had been symmetrical. And one of my favorite photos that I took while digiscoping.

Doug, My camps usually look alot like yours. A 2-man tent, a daypack, and a frame pack about 5 or so miles from the closest road.

Nice mount scottyboy!! Those red stags sure look good with all that antler up at the tops. When I was in New Zealand I saw a bunch and my dad shot one, but I only hunted chamois and tahr. I have seen a mule deer with a broken skull and one antler hanging down, and my brother once saw a spike elk that had broken its skull and had one antler hanging down beside its head. He said the elk would walk very slowly and move its head very carefully so it wouldn't shake the antler. The elk looked like it had broken its skull a while ago as it was very skinny and in poor condition.

Muzzleloader -- Knight .45 caliber disc elite topped with a leupold M-8 fixed 4x scope. Binoculars -- Leica Trinovid 8x42 Spotting Scope -- Swarovski ATS 20-60x65

I believe that they tout this system as being stronger and lighter than normal rings. I don't know anyone who has it, so I am sorry I can't help.

With the way NM is set up it ends up being easier for out-of staters to draw than it is for residents in a lot of the elk units that aren't considered prime units because not many out-of state people put in and they get up to 22% of the tags, while there are still a good number of residents that put in because they know the unit or it is close to them.

I like to go backpacking in the off-season and scout out new areas that I think may be good for hunting. I also like to hike to the top of the higher mountains here in NM. I used to do a little bit of climbing, but I was bouldering one day and ruptured a tendon to one of my fingers and have not done much since then. I usually get in one backpack fishing trip during the summer for trout and smallmouth bass.

Coming form the standpoint of a son and grandson, I really enjoyed growing up hunting with my dad and also with my grandpa. My grandpa is 80 now and has hardly slowed down; he has more time to spend in the woods and finds more sheds and gets out hunting more often than I do. My dad also says the training he gave me and my brothers when we were young is really paying off now that we can serve as the pack mules on his hunts. I have also really enjoyed hunting with my brothers. When I have kids, you can bet they will be out in the hills right there with me. My parents started me out before I had learned how to walk, by carrying me along in one of those backpack carriers until I was old enough to walk and then by taking me along without a pack until I was about 6 when i started carrying my own pack with some of my own things along on backpacking trips.

Well said Josh. I used to believe there were tons of lions out in the woods until I started hunting them here in NM and it took 5 days to find a single track in snows that were 24-48 hours old. In the dirt I would see more tracks but alot are not real fresh and are probably just the same lion covering lots of country.

I have found that alot of deer hunters are what I would call lion haters. They blame the lions for the numbers of deer being lower than they think they should be, and thus think that we should try to eradicate all the lions. Really a whole bunch of different things affect the deer like range conditions, drought, water availability, new subdivisions, hunting pressure, and predators. Lions have a bit of an effect on deer numbers, but I think it would be a great loss to eradicate the lions in exchange for more deer. Like bullwidgeon said, they add a bit of "wild" to the hunting experience. Although with that being said, I encourage people to get out and hunt lions because it is alot of fun to see one and killing the few that people glass up or catch with dogs on the dirt are not really going to hurt the lion population. My congratulations go out to Josh and his dad on their success in catching lions this year. They must really put in the hard work to have caught 8 this winter.

I would bet that Arizona has some kind of deal like in NM where you have to get a letter from the registrar at school saying that you are currently enrolled as a student and that you have been at school for one full term. I would call the game and fish department and talk to someone to get the details, however do some research first as sometimes you will end up talking to someone that has no idea what they are talking about and will tell you the wrong things.

I was along as a helper and my mom had the tag. She tagged out on Saturday morning with a 29" cow, which is not bad for her 3rd big game animal. She was out to just get one for the meat and when she had a chance at that one at 160 yards she decided to take it.

I was there at the Rhodes Canyon hunt and we just took our time leaving from the orientation so that we wouldn't have to deal with the rest of the crowd that was peeling out in the parking lot to be first to wherever it was they thought they were headed. We just drove until we found a good high point and then got on top of the toolbox in the pickup and started glassing. From that one location we probably saw around 40 oryx. There was one big bull we guessed would go about 37" but even though he was about 600 yards out he was nervous and didn't stick around long, and ran into the middle of a flat open plain with no cover. He really seemed to know the program and what to do to avoid getting shot. I was pretty amazed how fast the crowds thinned out after the initial races in the morning. I guess a hunt area that is about 700 or so square miles can swallow up 118 hunters pretty quickly. I had also heard that it was getting difficult to find oryx on the Rhodes Canyon hunt, but after being there I would have to say that there are still plenty of oryx to be found if you know how to hunt.

Nice stink pig. Ditto what Shiras said, Skulls Unlimited gives very good results. They clean it with the beetles, degrease it, bleach it and then seal it. We have had 3 bears and a javelina done by them and they are all very good. If you don't care too much about it, you could try and get your own pile started. One year we placed a couple skulls inside a fenced in area so dogs couldn't get at them and then we just let them start to rot. The maggots did some work and then dermestids naturally just came in and cleaned up everything that was left and the skulls came out perfect. We then bleached them with 40 volume hydrogen peroxide (obtained from a beauty salon) and they came out looking very good. We put another skull in the same place the next year and the dermestids came back and cleaned it. The last several years we have tried the same thing, but the dermestids have not come back so the skulls still have a lot of dried on tissue left and we will probably have to just put my brothers javelina from last year into a bucket of water and have it cleaned by the process of maceration.

Congratulations to your brother AZGuide and to scottyboy and vini as well. Aoudads are a really neat animal and are a blast to hunt. I have taken 3 personally in NM, but nothing big. This year the aoudad have really been getting hammered hard on the private ranches, and I hope it doesn't hurt their population for the next few years. bowhunter4life, the permits are over the counter and the season runs for the month of february in the units that actually have a huntable population of aoudad. There is a year-round season for the rest of the state but there are hardly any animals to be found outside of the units that are only open in february.

According to the trophy watch section on the B&C website it is from Washington. http://www.boone-crockett.org/news/trophyW...4D-EE4842DEDA07

Very nice pictures!! I was wondering if you could use pack goats in areas with bighorn sheep? I know that domestic sheep can pass diseases on to the bighorns, and I thought goats also could. How much weight can a full grown goat pack?

My choice between the leica 10x42 ultravid and the Swarovski EL 10x42 would probably be made based on which one I could find for a cheaper price. They are both top of the line and clarity and brightness are pretty much equal. The FOV at 1000 yards is the same and the weight is within 0.5 ounces. I have a pair of leica trinovid 8X42's and my dad has the ultravid 10X42's and we both really like them and they seem to be every bit as good as any swaros I have looked through. I don't really know about Leica's customer service as I have never had to use it. As for resale, I would say this is a once in a lifetime purchase (in my opinion).

I would say that that is the same buck as the other pictures you previously posted. I would guess that it would go 100" or so gross score.