Brush Buster

Sent you a PM. I was on the same ranch a week ealrier. Also had a great time!

I along with 5 freinds recently returned from Mexico. We were hunting with Cola Blanca Outfitters. We saw a lot of deer on the ranches we were on. I killed two bucks. We glassed the first one up over a mile away and put a real good stalk on him. I shot him accross a canyon in some thick cat claw. He had 5 long points on his left (including eyeguards) but had broken off his main beam just past the g-2 on his right. He would have been a B&C buck if he was complete. On the last evening after all my friends had killed bucks I found a real cool looking palmated buck. I watched him feed for a while then he bedded down. After looking him over I decided I wanted to try and kill him. One of my buddies kept and eye on him through the spotting scope as I snuck in range. I made it to just over 300 yards, the only shot I had was through a small bush. It was getting dark so I decided to go for it. Luckily the bullet went through the bush and killed him in his bed. The buck was cooler looking than I thought. His main beams were real heavy and palmated and he had an inside spread of 16 1/2 inches. He grosses 106 1/8. None of us killed any b&C bucks but we all saw a lot of deer and had a great time in old mexico.

Jed was our guide. He brought his Ranger and that was really nice getting around the roads down there. No, these bucks came from differnt areas. I did hunt around the pride rock and saw some nice bucks there too.

Here are a couple pictures from yesterday. My dogs and I chased this tom for several miles accross some NM coues country. He tried to give us the slip into some real nasty bluffs. This old tom almost got away from us but the dogs were able to located him in a serries small cave's. I passed on this one for now, to early in the season to use my tag and I was alone. Had a fun time catching him maybe we will cross paths again someday.

Birddog, No this is not the garmin astro, just a regular telemetry collar. I have not used the astro gps collar. I love the idea of them but I think the battery life and range is too short for most western big game hunting?

GilaMan I don't know if he can learn much from me. I realy don't know what the heck I am doing most of the time. Every once in a while I get lucky. Send me A PM on how to contact you and maybe we can get him out. Hey Fatfoot. Well if it was later in the year I probably would have smoked him too, last year I killed a tom in dec. Then I did not have a tag to hunt the rest of the year, luckily I had some good freinds with lion tags that I hunted with. Here is the one I killed in dec. 2007.

Thanks guys, mountian lions are awesome animals and very fun and challenging to hunt in the desert southwest. This was an average tom nothing huge but mature. The blood is from one of my dogs feet, they just get a little sore from running on hard frozen ground nothing a couple days of rest won't cure.

I was going to hunt again today but, I caught the flu from my boys. Those lions will have to wait untill I feel better. Seams to be a healthy number of them around this year for sure. Later

The "no back to back quality tag deal" does not start until 2010-2011 season right? The way I read it is if we drew a quality tag in 2008-2009 we can still apply for a quality tag one more year (2009-2010)? I assume they are refering to a "licene year" April 1-Mar 31? So don't make your plans yet, you may draw those back to back tags yet • Anyone applying for a 2010 Q or HD elk license, may NOT have received a Q or HD public draw elk license in 2009. • Anyone applying for a 2010 Q or HD deer permit may NOT have received a Q or HD public draw deer permit in 2009. • Anyone applying for any pronghorn hunt in 2010, may NOT have drawn a public pronghorn license in 2009.

I shot this bull a couple days ago on my once in a lifetime hunt on the Rhodes Canyon unit. This was my first time to hunt Oryx, it was differnt but worthwhile. I had a good time hunting them. It was very windy with blowing dust, making glassing tough. We ended up hiking a couple miles into the foothills to get out of the wind, that is were we found the majority of the animals. We ended up seeing around 100 head on the hunt. This bull seamed to stand out from anything we saw. He was a little over 36 in.

Thanks, are you talking about Josh Jensen? I think his brothers name is Jordon but I do not know him. Josh is a great taxidermsit and a great person too, I have known him for a few years now. Yes I stoped by his stand for a visit, he watched my camera for me while I was hunting in the "camera free" missle range.

Recently we completed and antelope hunt here in southwest NM. The hunt took place on my ranch as well as a couple neighboring ranches. Foundry Man and Crazyabout coues helped me on the hunt and did a great job! All together we saw over 50 differnt bucks, many of them very nice, we filled 6 out of 7 hunters, all six of the bucks killed grossed over 83 inches, all but one should make B&C after deductions and drying period. Thought some of you would enjoy the pictures. Foundry Man took this pictures a few minutes before his hunter killed this buck. Here is the buck down. He had very good mass and nice prongs. Here is a buck that we have been watching for a couple years. Several hunters wanted to harvest him and we finally were able to make it happen this year. Here is a buck I called Haystack. I had been watching him all summer. Here is another buck we harvested on the hunt. I will post some of the other bucks as soon as I get the pictures from Crazyboutcoues and another hunter.

I also have a tag for az unit 32 this year. I chose to apply in this unit because access was an issue. Was hoping I could go into places others would not be willing to. These kind of places usually produce more game than areas with roads and public access everywhere. I plan to use one of the few legal access points to enter the public land. Once on public I will stay on public and travle cross country to wherever I want. There still seams like plenty of ways to get anywhere in the unit to me. It just might have to be on foot or horseback.

Glad to hear you got a sheep tag! I do not know anything about your unit, but I just completed a self guided Rocky Mnt. Sheep hunt a few weeks ago here in NM. All I can say is research and talk to everyone you can about what to except on the hunt. Keep in mind the sheep outfitters are pretty limited with their advice, more so to self guided hunters. I would contact as many of the actual hunters as possible and listen to what they have to offer. I think most will tell you how it is and what to expect. Sounds like you are on the right track with your research. Your research should lead you to likley areas for large rams for your unit. Check out as many of these areas as possible and don't spend to much time in one spot at first. If time is limited, spend your first trips learning the country and how to get around, look for sign, but don't waste a lot of time glassing for sheep. I think it is criticle to have as many backup areas as possible. Google earth is a great tool to go over the areas while you are at home. I think the most important time to find rams is the week before the hunt starts. If at all possible I would take this time off and spend it finding the ram you want. Once you find some shooter keep tabs on them and try to kill on opening morning. Not sure how it is other places, but here in NM most of the big sheep are prescouted and killed on the first couple days of the hunt. Actually, the most important advise I can offer is to enjoy being out in sheep country and relax a little if possible.

That is a nice buck! It sounds like you guys earned him. Once again hard work and a lot of scouting paid off. Awesome!

Well, we made it back from the hunt a couple days ago. What an adventure it was. A couple freinds and I left on Monday Aug 18th. (5 days before the opening day) Day 1 Aug. Left the house at 4:30 am with all the gear and 5 head of livestock (2 saddle horses and 3 pack mules). We made the 7 1/2 hour drive from southwest NM to the trailhead at the Pecos Wilderness in north central NM. At the trailhead we met up with another friend that had 3 head of addition livestock (1 horse and 2 mules). We packed 5 mule loads of gear, food, and grain and travled about 12 miles into the wilderness. On the way in we saw two small rams. We then set up a base camp near the top of the divide. Went to bed pretty tired around 11:30 pm aftert the camp was complete. Day 2 One friend and I saddled up a couple mules and rode the high counrty, glassing for rams. My other buddy stayed at the base camp at tended to the other livestock and camp chores. We searched all day and ended up seeing about 5 or 6 rams. None were shooters, they were in the 150-160 class range. We returned to base camp and ate some dinner then went to bed. We were a slight bit discuraged becuase the big rams we had scouted prior to the hunt were not found. From my research we kind of half expected this to happen so we did have a couple back up areas. We still had a lot of country to look over so we remained confedent we would find them in the days ahead. Day 3 Saddled up early and travled to the far side of the unit in the roughest most remote country in the area. We could not ride in this area so we tide up the mules and started hoofing the 13,000 ft + peaks. We glassed many nice looking basins but only found ewes and lambs and a few very small rams. We made the long ride back to base camp and did find one ram in the low 160's near our base camp. We went to bed after some dinner. Day 4 Saddled early and went to double check the area we had scouted the big rams a few weeks ealeir. The wind was cold and blowing pretty good and we suffered from pretty bad wind burn on our faces and eyes. It felt a about like a bad sun burn. We were able to glass up two rams that day, we estimated one to be around 159-162 and the other to be around 160-163 class rams, other than them we had not seen any new rams. We decided that we needed to travle to a totally new area since we had not been finding any good rams anywhere. We packed up some food, and a small spike tent and left that eveing to some new country. We rode till dark and set up a spike camp on a remote ridge. We ate some dinner and then went to bed. Day 5 We hiked a tall peak near our spike camp and started glassing. Soon we finally found our first big rams 1-1.5 miles away accross several large canyons. There were three full curl rams and a 3/4 curl ram. We could tell they were good rams but were too far to judge super well. We watched them until they dissapeared into the thick timber down in the bottom of the canyons. We were finally excited that our luck had turned and we were able to locate a few decent rams. At the same time we realized they may be hard to find in bottom of the canyon in the thick trees. We then headed back to spike camp and decided to get some much needed rest. Since the next day was opening morning we needed to conserve our energey to make the trip down to where the big rams were. That evening we found the rams again along with several other full curl rams. We were able to get a pretty good look at the rams this time due to good sunlight shining on them. We were getting pumped for the next morning which was the opener. We decided to move our spike camp in a little better area for glassing and then went to bed after some more Mountain House Dinner. Day 6 (opening day of the hunt) I woke up a about 1:30 am and could not go back to sleep. I tried and treid but finally gave up about 3:30 am. I deceided to start getting ready for the hunt. I hobbled the mules and let them loose to graze in the moonlight and I started rechecking my day pack and cleaning all my gear just to keep busy and kill some time. My buddy was sound asleep and I tried to be quiet but I finally woke him up too. It seamed like it took forever for the sun to come up enough to see. As soon as it did we were searching the thick trees for the big rams. It was not long before we spotted them. They were quite a bit further down and in the thicker trees again. We decided that we better get a move on if we were going to get to them before they left again. We decided to travle horseback around on the main trail and then do a stalk from the main trail. We rode for what seamed like a couple hours and then were just about to the location we wanted to tie up when we spotted three rams feeing in a small clearing about 150 yards away or so. One ram was in the low 160's and I knew he was not what I wanted. The other ram was a decent ram and we thought he would be in the lower 170's. He got me thinking a little bit but I wanted somthing a little better if at all possible. Then we looked at the third ram which looked very heavy at the base and seamed to carry his mass real well. We disscussed the ram for several minutes and we thought he was the heaviest ram we had seen all summer. We estimated him to be in the mid to higher 170's. Since the rams had been hard to find and seamed to be in the timber I thought I better try to kill him. My buddy turned on the video camera and I got ready to shoot. The ram was about 150 yards and was quarteing away heading to the thick timber. I leaned over a log, got a bead on him and shot, he droped right away. I was shooting a 180 grain bullet in my 300 RUM. My buddy and I high fived and talked about the events that led us to this point. After a minute or two we gathered the mules and went over to the ram. I was very happy with him. We put a tag on him and took some pictures and more video, then packed quarted him up and headed for base camp. On the way to base camp we got soaked with a thunder/hail storm. The wind came up and it got pretty chilly. Later that afternoon, I caped the ram out and we put a tight tape on him. He grossed 177 6/8. That night we ate some sheep backstrap and slept the best we had during the whole trip. Day 7 (Packing Out) We slept in a little bit later as we were a little tired still, we ate some nice warm oatmeal then broke camp. We packed the mules with the our gear, leftover grain, food, meat, trash, sheep cape and skull. Then we headed down the mountain made the 12 mile ride out in a few hours and once again got soaked with a thunderstorm while we unloaded at the trucks. We then made the drive back to southwest NM and arrived at the ranch around midnight. I had an awesome Once in a Lifetime experince and would like to thank eveyone who helped me.

Good Job man, there were three guys hunting my ranch during this hunt and none of them killed. They each had a few shots all missses. As you know it was a very tough hunt during these real wet "good" times! Glad you got one. Thanks for posting.

I thought I would share some pictures of a recent scouting trip in northern NM. Yes, I actually did draw my home state (NM) bighorn tag for 2008! I am going self guided with my own livestock. I will have a couple freinds along to help glass and wrangle. Last week a friend and I rode horseback over 70 miles of the Pecos Highcountry. We got a good feel of the land and glassed as much as we could during the five day scouting trip. We were able to find 42 differnt rams with a few decent ones. Hopefully we can find a decent one during the hunt? Time will tell. The sheep were very gentle, but historicly they get very wise and hard to find about a week before the hunt starts. The Pecos Wilderness is awesome! The tops of the highest peaks soar over 13,000 feet and a lot of the terrian is pretty rugged. Clear streams, and lakes are in most every basin. We saw a lot of elk too. Only 1 deer the whole trip? I will post some pictures in about a month, if I am lucky enough to get a ram.

Thanks for the word guys. First off, I never thought I would ever draw a bighorn tag, I think this was only the second or third time applied. I just figured the odds were to tough and it was not worth the application fee every year to apply. Go's to show that someone has to get drawn so you might as well play the game if you want a chance at it. It all started with an email the G&F sent me informing me that I drew. I thought it may have been a mistake or somthing so I did not get to excited. Then I called my CC company and sure enough my card was charged for the correct amount ($153.00). Got me thinking it might have been true? I still did not fully believe it until the next morning when I started getting calls from Outfitters wanting to book me. I later talked with the Bighorn biologist and he confirmed the good news. Anyway it is a very exciting thing that I hope every hunter can experince at some point. It has been really fun talking with other hunters, outfitters, biologst, and sheep experts about Bighorns in general and Bighorns in the Pecos. I never really knew how crazy people got about theses animals until now. I have been enjoying the planning process very much and feel pretty confident on what to expect during the actual hunt. I am glad I decieded to go self guided, I realize I might be better off with an experieced sheep guide, but personally I think the hunt will be a little more rewarding no matter the outcome. Everything seams to be in place for now and I wish the next three weeks would hurry up!! I will take a lot of pictures and post them along with a story when it is all over.

Thanks guys, I don't know much about these animals but they look fun to hunt. I will give you a call Tommy.

I applied for Oryx for the first time this year. Looks like I drew my once in a lifetime hunt Dec, 13 and 14 for Rhodes Canyon. Has anyone hunted in this area before?

Wow, that is intresting about the Liabilitie coveradge with the state. That is a good step if they want this to work better. I did not know about that. If us NM residents want to create more tags for ourselves, the Open Gate thing is not what we should spend your time pushing. It will never work well enough to suite the players invloved. Enough funding is not availble to compensate landowners for their time, and trouble the program will create. Even if they quit the A Pluss Program I think most landowners would just quit the antelope hunts and keep the gates locked, they won't get paid enough to make it worthwhile. -Outfitters won't like it because they won't be able to market organized, guarantee tag hunts -Dept won't like it because they will loose huge amounts of $ from nonresident lisense sales vs. resindent sales -nonresidnet antelope hunters won't like it because they will have to draw a tag instead of spending cash and buying a permit -A lot of residents will still be disapointed with their hunt, becuase they will proabably still be assigned to hunt particular ranches -non hunting bussiness such as motels, resteraunts, stores ect. Won't like it because they will lose that seasonal income in which nonresidents spend a lot of $ at I think we should spend our time working for somthing that would get support from all of the players and actually pass. The open gate thing won't do that. This is why I think they should seperate public from private land hunts. -Landowners will like it because they won't be required to let public hunters hunt thier deeded ground -Outfitters will like it because they won't have to try to aviod the public hunter or woory about him finding the buck they have been watching for years -Do it yourself Non residents will like it becuase they too will get a small increase in tags and be able to hunt areas they know from previos year or help from other via internet like this fourm - Guided nonresidents will still be able to purchase tags from landowners and bypass the draw system - Dept. will still get the needed non resident tag funding to pay for the antelope management - NM residents will get an increase in tags (maybe not as much as we hoped but still an increase) the hunt quality will be much better for the do it yourself hunter because we won't be assigned to a ranch in a strange place and only given two days to scout. From what I am getting this is the diriction the dept is going, just a little differnt options for each qurter of the state. Don't you think that sounds more realistic of passing and providing all the players with some new benifets to the system?

Jason, I truley understand your concerns and see where you are coming from and respect your desire to improve hunting oppurtunity for the NM residents. Luckily out west there is millions of acres for the public to recreate on so we should consider ourselves lucky and spend our time on keeping those lands free and improved. If we don't eventually we will lose those lands to hunting. Then all hunitng if any will become a true richmans sport on private reserves or ranches much like other counties such as South Africa, and even our southern neighbor Old Mexico. How many avaerage residents get to "legally" hunt in thoses countries? I do agree with some of your thoughts. You are right, there is a lot of public land that is not being rifle hunted for antelope because the ranchers do not sign up. I think that is wrong! Why should the rancher controll antelope hunting on legally accessable public land? I agree not fair. I think it should be just like the Archery antelope hunt, if you draw you can hunt any accessable public land in the unit. That being said, the Dept should probably create antelope sub units so that certain area's in a unit don't get shot out. If they did this hundreads of tags would be created for the public in which 78% would go to residents. Hunters could then plan their hunt better, scout longer, arrange for better camping or lodging. This way the hunter will have an idea of what to expect come hunting season instead of being assigend to some private ranch somwhere in a random lottery process and only given 2 days to scout. I don't think the open gate thing will ever work for big game hunting. Maybe waterfowl, small game, and varmit hunters. Maybe for the smaller peices of private that provide access to larger areas of public. In these cases it might work but not in a big way. The funding needed is not there for big game or big ranches. One other HUGE factor is the liablity issue. As you know there are so many stupid lawsuites these days. If someone was to get hurt, or damadge their vehicle or somthing they could sue the landowner for some sort of neggliance. This happens all the time even when someone illegally tresspasses. Wavors are not worth the paper they are written on and insurance is very costly. Currently the ranchers can choose who they allow to hunt their private ground, make you feel a lot more comfortable about who you let in. The fact is most ranchers don't want the public on there private property just as you would not want the public in your "private" house. As you know there is a lot of whack jobs out there. I hunt public land a little and I know I don't want my ranch looking like some of the public land does. Shot up fences, water tanks, windmills, coke and bear cans littered all over, rutted out roads, shot gun shells all over. A selcet few will always mess things up for the rest of us. As far letting coyote hunters in to help controll the population, that is a whole differnt topic. Let me first say that I have a lot of respect for preadators, coyotes really help controll the rabbit and rodent population and they are more important than most people think. I really don't mind coyotes. However they will kill a lot of healthy little fawns both deer and pronghorn during the fawning season. For this reason I think it is good to manage them during this time of year. On occasion they will kill baby calves (cattle) during the year round calving season luckily over the years we have had very very few problems with coyote depredation on cattle. We primarily like to target coyotes in July and Augsut which is this part of the states fawning season for deer and pronghorn. We have found that yes you can temporially reduce the coyote popualtion say during the winter months, but by the time fawning season rolls around the population is right back up due to new coyotes moving in. Although not sporting, arial hunts and the use of m44's (explosive poisen devices) are very productive to bring down the populaion for short periods of time. The government trapper is involded on these deals but the there are fees involed. I think the helicopter is like $400.00 an hour now. Killing 40-60 coyotes a day is not unreal with the chopper. The m44's are safer than traps, cheap per coyote killed, and require little maintance. So these methods are way more prodcuive than the sport of calling, which is a ton of fun. Anyway, that is my 2 cents probably not worth much but I thought I would speak for myself as a NM rancher. We do need to all stick together as ranchers and sportmen to fight the real threat to our traditions and way of life. Hope everyone get drawns and kills some nice stuff this year!

I am a rancher here in southwest NM and love wildlife, as many other ranchers do. My family has been ranching in Grant County since 1876 and I am the sixth generation to ranch here hopefully my two boys will the the 7th. Over the years our family has seen antelope populations go from nearly nothing to over 200 head on our place. I am blessed to be out with the antelope nearly everyday and have names for a lot of the bucks and doe's too. We get landowner tags every year and sell them to non residents simply becuase residents don't want to buy them for the same price nonresidents do. Yes, like most things in life $ has a major factor in things and always will to think otherwise is not realistic. 90% of our ranch is deeded yet 20% of the antelope killed on our private property are by public hunters the state assigns to our ranch. I am NOT complaining, but it does show that the public is getting somthing out of the antelope populations on our private property. If there was not a landowener tag system for us to partisipate in the public would not be allowed to hunt any of our private property. Just as most citizens would not allow the public to camp, hunt, or do anything else in your private owed house, or yard. In my OPINION Landowner tags are a must in NM. To many antelope on private land that would never get hunted without landowner tags. The HUGE increase of NM's antelope numbers in the last 100 years is mostly due to the landowners constructing water sources in areas that have good feed but no nateral water sourses. Wild water in NM antelope country is very very limited if any. Most of these man made waters are on private land. If you could see our bills for upkeeping windmills, solar pumps, cleaning out dirt tanks, upkeeping and paying the power bills on submersable pumps you would realize that water just does't appear. Sure it is mainly for the cattle but not always. I have built several water tanks away from corals so that the wildlife would be more comfortable approching and drinking where there is more open space. We always leave the water turned on in cattle vaccant empty pastures so the wildlife will still drink. We pay for and conduct a limited amount of coyote controll which I think helps the fawn survival rate in late July mid August. Yes, the state does own the game, but I think it is to the wildlife's benifet to compinsate the landowners by allowing them to choose who they want to sell "tresspassing rights" to. A LOT of landowners have completly changed their attitude torward the huge increase in antelope population since the landonwer tag system has been in affect. They see $ connected with wildlife and want to protect them and increase their numbers even more. If you were to cut out the landowner system or alter it majorly the antelope populations would start to suffer, slowly but surely. I think the current system dose need an overhaul. Simply put, Public hunters should hunt legally accessable public land and private hunters should hunt private similaur to the other systems in the state such as deer. It looks like the Department is on the right track for once about fixing this problem. I like most of what they are propsing and think it is fair to the public hunters, the landowners and most important our antelope herds.

I sent you a PM.