hunter4life

7.5 by my count

Ages will be very young, probably <18 months. They don't tend to stick together with their mother very long after that. A mother with juveniles is pretty much the only scenario where you will get 3 hanging around together. I agree with AZBig 10. Young lions will be very good eating. Old toms will get pretty tough and are not even close to as good.

Congratulations, awesome buck!

The only problem I see in your story is him telling you it was at the ruggers, when it was not. Covid shutdowns and supply chain issues have hit taxidermists hard. Tannery turnaround times got longer, form suppliers have nothing in stock and it takes forever to get the order filled, 2-part foam was nearly impossible to get for a while, the cost of foam, glue, eyes etc. has doubled or tripled. Before you guys come for me. No, I am not a taxidermist. However, I am related to one.

The article was pretty much spot on. Most lions are killed with the use of hounds and the sex can usually (not all the time) be determined when they are in the tree. Most females have kittens or dependent cubs even if they are not with her at the time. The male quotas don't really matter. They range much more widely than females and will repopulate an area where all the males have been killed quite quickly. They also will kill each other if there are too many of them. If all the females in an area are killed I have seen it take several years for a new female to move into that particular mountain range. I agree with a lower female quota and think that NM has done a relatively good job with their system.

I had that happen while packing out an aoudad. The fronts came off both boots. All I had was dental floss. Amazingly it held up. Luckily I only had half a mile more to go.

Just to be clear, there is no such thing as "no man's land" underneath the spine. I hear it all the time but it is not anatomically possible. The lungs go up beside the spine on either side. There is no empty space, the projectile is either in the spine or in the lungs (or both). Take a good look at your next deer carcass and look at the chest cavity. All the smooth lining inside the ribcage is the pleural cavity and this space is entirely filled with lung tissue in a living animal. There is no dead space. Now above the spine, where the backstraps sit, there are the spinous processes and a projectile can go through this area without hitting anything vital. The animal can be stunned temporarily and then run off.

Sad state of affairs. Makes me wonder what NM is up to. Usually our government figures out the most fubar way to do things. You hear everywhere about the terrible decrease in hunter numbers and that we need the three R's: recruitment, retaining and reactivation. I don't follow a lot of states but it definitely seems that it gets more difficult to draw tags in CO and NM every year. Hunters are idiots and think that we can win a numbers game against the anti-hunters. As your state population increases if you keep the same %age of hunters then pretty soon you run out of tags and can only hunt every few years. If you can only hunt every few years it will be really hard to recruit kids into hunting. The only chance we have is getting the general population who does not hunt to at least believe that it is science based, good for the environment and that it should not be outlawed. I actually have no interest in the general population hunting because that takes away the opportunity for myself and my kids.

If hunting alone I would not go over 2 miles. With one buddy, maybe 3 miles depending on terrain. I once packed an elk out 9 miles one way on foot. There were 3 of us. I would not want to do that again. After that trip we got some mules and now they go on all the elk hunts. My brother and I killed 2 bulls about 9miles in. With 4 mules we packed both bulls and all of camp in one load without a problem (we walked and led the mules on the way out). I would do that pack out again in a heartbeat.

I am self employed but work at multiple hospitals and my own office. I am knowingly exposed to Covid frequently while caring for patients (while wearing PPE) and also likely unknowingly without the full N95 and other garb. I deal with the elderly frequently and do not want to transmit the virus to them. Hospitals essentially require the flu vaccine yearly with only a few exceptions. Prior to Covid if you claimed a medical or religious exemption to the flu vaccine you would have to wear a mask at all times while in the building during flu season. Under the emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine I believe that an employer cannot mandate you get the vaccine (yet), but they can strongly suggest it and make you take other precautions if you don't.

I work with it nearly every day. Do people die from it? Yes. Mostly they are elderly or have multiple other health problems with diabetes and obesity being some of the worst. Does it warrant the shutting down of the economy, lockdowns, and the destruction of small businesses. No. I will be required to get the vaccine due to my job and am scheduled to get it in 2 weeks. Do I have any worries about getting the vaccine? NO. If you are over 65, or over 40 with comorbidities I would recommend it. The last people in line to get the vaccine should be children and healthy people under 40 years old. They statistically do extremely well with Covid-19.

Our governor is crazy. We are pretty much in lockdown again and her new requirements to get out of lockdown are nearly impossible to meet, so it won't be changing any time soon. Kids have been at home doing Zoom school since this started, which is also completely ridiculous. I guess she never read the Danish masking study, which is the only randomized controlled trial on masking and did not show a benefit. Don't blame the businesses, they are just trying to stay open and not get shut down or fined. So yes, NM is pretty screwed up but it keeps the crowds away. Every time I visit my in laws in Arizona and see all the urban sprawl, people everywhere and horrible traffic I say " F Arizona, this place is too crowded".

Some wisdom right there. I am a MD and work in the hospitals nearly every day. I have seen more bad outcomes and deaths from delaying care than I have from Covid.

You get alot more for your money with Ford/Dodge/Chevy. I like Toyotas (I own a 2019 4runner) but you get a lot more truck for your money with a Ford F-150 (I own a 2004 that is still going strong).

I have recently been using RL25 and 160 grain Barnes TSX. In my rifle it is very accurate with good velocity.

Congrats, nice lion. He is a tank! Not too many cats will go over 150 on a scale. The reason he looks heavier than that is that all the other cats you see in pictures that are supposedly 150 pounds are actually 120.

I have noticed the same thing. In one area we hunt you generally see about 10 bucks per day. You have to look at a lot of bucks to see one that will break 100". In another area you see 1 or sometimes less bucks per day, but about 1 out of 3 will be over 100" and the potential of seeing a 110"+ is much higher as well.

Just ran across this. Sounds perfectly safe to me. Sarc https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-when-sober-frequent-marijuana-users-are-worse-drivers-report-n1115681

So whats next after legalizing Marijuana? Most of the same arguments can be made about heroin, meth, cocaine, etc. These drugs destroy peoples lives and their families lives as well. Colorado used to be a beautiful state with low crime and you could tell a big difference as soon as you crossed the NM border. Now I go up to visit family there and it looks like my home state of NM, which is not a good thing. Beat up, junky cars with smoke rolling out the windows. Speak to any long time resident there and they will tell you about the effects of marijuana legalization.

Looks like a bobcat to me. Did she see whether it had a long tail? To me it looks like a standard bobcat tail, but the perspective is very bad with the tail coming at the camera which could easily distort the length.

Congrats desertsheep on an awesome buck! Some people need to go back to grade school and learn once again that "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Unless you were personally wronged, I don't think anyone cares what you have to say.

In NM your vehicle is considered an extension of your home. As far as I know there is no problem with having a loaded, concealed weapon inside your vehicle.

Your dad's oncologist is an idiot if he actually believes that. There are no peer reviewed studies showing a link. A jury in California awarded a person money who claimed that RoundUp caused their lymphoma. This does not mean there is any real evidence that it actually does. Kind of like the breast implants and all the supposed cancers and maladies that they caused back in the 90's. The studies eventually showed no correlation at all, but the lawyers and their clients never had to pay the money back that they were awarded by idiot juries who have no idea how to read a scientific paper. And people wonder why healthcare and medical devices cost so much. As to killing the yard. Hit it with a heavy dose of glyphosphate in the fall. Hit it again in late spring. This should take care of most of the grass. Do not use plastic. I had to tear out a bunch of it when I bought my house 6 years ago. It pokes up through the rocks or mulch and looks like heck. A "soil" will eventually form on top of it with blown in dust and the weeds will just grow on top of it. Chemical warfare is the way to go. Pre-emergents are your friend to keep weeds from growing.

I never really believed the less rain = bigger antelope theory until this year. In my area of SE NM we have had a super dry year. My brother is a taxidermist and has taken in over 20 antelope so far this year and on average they are definitely the biggest I have ever seen. Multiple 80"+ goats this year and generally this is a low to mid 70s area. I have a lot of antelope that water on my property on the edge of town and they max out horn growth at 3-4 years old and really drop off after that from what I have seen.

I have not done the hunt myself, so take this with a grain of salt. I was told this information while hunting with a Russian outfitter in Azerbaijan for Tur, so it is straight from the source who has been on many of these hunts. I asked him about the Kamchatka Moose and Bear hunts. He said the moose are spotted by helicopter, the client is flown in and then they go and kill the moose. Bears are either hunted from snowmobiles and run down on them, or spotted from a helicopter pretty much the same way as the moose. Success rates are good, but it doesn't sound like "hunting" in my book. I was amazed he didn't try and sugar coat it at least a little bit. I lost any desire to do these hunts in Russia after hearing this. If it were me, I would look into Alaska. The snow sheep hunts all sounded like real hunts that are similar to dall sheep hunting in Canada or Alaska.