SunDevil

nice job - what gauge is that shotgun? looks like a savage with a tinite stock. neat to see those guns still getting some action.

Happy Birthday! All the snow in Flag will be melting tonight when ALL THOSE CANDLES get lit. \"/

looks like a 7x7. nice video!

REDO man, I am on cloud nine I just picked up a 60.00 dollar fleece thong with scent lock for $16.00

wow! 11.5 yards. that is impressive. how long did that take you? nice bucks. congrats.

no complaining here. I looked at the draw odds for the antelope and elk hunts I was putting in for. they were about 2%. personally, I have a hard time justifying spending $27 on a 2% chance of drawing a tag. if I am going to do that, might as well just play the lottery. If I win that I would have enough money to go to MX and hunt deer every year. then the upfront payment just makes it even less attractive. almost $1,100 for those two apps. maybe if NM had bonus points, I could justify shelling the $27 bucks out every year in hopes that in 10 years or so I might draw that tag but no more antelope or elk apps for me. good luck to those who apply.

just because some of us will let smaller bucks walk in hopes that they will grow up does not mean the majority of the hunters will do the same thing. LOTS of 1.5 - 2.5 year old bucks killed every year.

I got spoiled and grew up spending the summers in AK. we stayed mostly in Kenai as my dad figured we could be someplace where the fishing was good within an hour of there. the Russian river was one of our favorite places. In one stretch my Dad, Mom and I took 9 fish a day for 6 days straight out of there. We had to take a day off to do laundry. our favorite hole was about 1.5 miles upstream and the lucky teenager got to haul all those fish out and back to the parking area. can't really eat salmon to this day (except smoked) due to getting it force fed to me year round. other haunts were the Kasilof, the Kenai, Deep Creek and Clam Gultch. lots of places were/are elbow to elbow 'combat' fishing. especially on the weekends. biggest king we ever took was a 52 lbr from the Kasilof shore. Biggest halibut was about 100 lbr. next time I am at my parents I will try to find some old pics and post them up.

you forgot 'Full Fee Up Front' for almost everything. good luck to all the rich guys. between the $27 app fee and the full fee up front I will probably only be putting in for deer.

Allen - try 4 coues hunts.

Sorry Str8Shot but I struggle in understanding how this thread got turned into a pity fest. I could have taken an 80 - 85 inch 3x3 last year and an 85 - 90 inch 3x3 this year but I was not going to shoot a deer just to shoot a deer. I was more interested in harvesting something that I would be more satisfied with. maybe other people are completely satisfied with harvesting small bucks but not me (this does not mean that I think I am right or they are wrong we are just different and that is fine). I would prefer to let those small deer grow up in hopes of tagging one of them in a year or two. My comments on this thread were directed toward my opinions on the reduced quality of the Dec hunt experience overall. Yes the weather was great. Yes it was great to be able to hunt 11 out of 21 days. It was a bummer to run into other hunters every day. It was a bummer to have such a difficult time finding bigger bucks when they were seen earlier in the year. There are many things that contributed to this. Two fires in the unit this year. A drought that dried up about 90% of the water tanks. Increased Dec tags. An additional late Nov hunt. Etc, etc. Additionally, in my opinion, the buck populations are getting hit harder now than ever. Many factors are contributing to this, archers using camo ground blinds, scent elimination, salt, corn, bows that shoot 100 yards, etc. etc. Rifle hunters using 15X binos, rifle stablizing devices, range finders, rifles and turrets that allow accurate shots to 800+ yards, etc. etc. All of these factors are effecting the buck populations throughout the state and something needs to be done about it. Unfortunately the G&F is extremely slow in making changes unless they have an agenda for it (like they did for 'opportunity'). They can't even get an online application process in place for pete sake. There are many things that could be considered such as making one of the hunts a muzzleloader hunt, putting in an antler point restriction (they did this in PA and the avg age of the harvested bucks went up from 1.5 yrs to 3.5 yrs in 5 - 6 years), mandatory reporting, reducing the number of tags, addressing the predator situation, increasing/improving year round water supplies, addressing land access issues, etc. etc. It could be just me but it does not seem these are the things the G&F want to talk about or expend their limited resources on.

in comparison, we had this same tag in 2001. we hunted fewer places and fewer days back then and saw more bucks and more bigger bucks . back then there were only 75 tags for this hunt and only 2 hunts prior to it. there use to be 3 weeks between the nov hunt and the dec hunt. now there is only 1. I am sure a lot of us on this forum would agree that quality has definetly been impacted by opportunity. I have a good friend who between himself, his friends and family have taken numerous 100+ inch bucks out of this unit. he spent 7 days hunting with a friend in Oct and never saw a 3X3. He also spent 7 days hunting with his brother on the early Nov hunt and never saw a 100+ inch buck. needless to say he was very discouraged.

+1 for me.

so are we set for feb 20th then?

holy cow - toads for sure. looking forward to seeing live field pics, kill video and success pics. thx for sharing!

NICE - I am so jealous! I can't wait to take my daughter out on her first hunt. going to be awhile as she is only 4. great story, great pics and great buck. Wow - that is a lot of lead. I think I will go invest some money in ammo manufacturers.

here is a pic of a nice 85 - 90 inch buck we let walk. he lived to see another sunrise. this was sunday evening, around 5:00 and he was at 390 yards.

allen - what ranch area are you hunting? send me a pm if you would rather not post it publicly. we saw your name on one of the southern sign in sheets from Nov from one of your scouting trips. were you in this same area? if so, what did your camp look like? we might have driven right by and not even known it was you to stop in and say hi.

there's a mature post for you. unfortunately, a pretty typical example of a ua fan for you.

hey does anyone know if Willie T is still waitering at Buffalo Wild Wings? stopped by there a few months ago to see if it was true and I can still hear the chants: "BEER DOWN, BEER DOWN, BEER DOWN"

you know what they say - even a blind squirrel (so not exactly a cricket). pretty fortunate to get a win on basically 3 plays, 67 yard td run (untouched, up the middle = blown defense), blocked punt for td and muffed punt to set up game winning fg. all in all it was a pretty brutal game. glad I did not pay money to go see it. ua needed some breaks to go there way this season after rotten luck against UW, Cal and OR. ua and stoops actually are very, very fortunate they got that win, otherwise with that loss and a potential loss against usc they could have ended wth just 6 wins and might not have been invited to a bowl game. I am optimistic for basketball and next years football teams. rumor is the qb that transferred from MI is the real deal. still pretty bummed that Murphy left the baseball program just a few months before the season started. must have been something going on in the background that the public is not aware of.

DUCKS RULE - DUCKS RULE AND YES - THE DUCKS RULE yes my devils lost to UCLA today and yes they are pretty much done for the year but I just got home from the OU game and it was AWESOME. That might have been the most exciting sporting event I have ever been to in person. Almost everyone was wearing red. It was a typical Stoops era game, coulda been, shoulda been. The outcome pretty much made my college season. Seeing the cats get knocked out of the rose bowl (yet again) in person was pretty sweet. Come on AZ CARDINALS.

great picture. as a native desert rat, I love pics of deer with saguaros. I would love to get a deer some day near to a saguaro so that I could have it as a background. hasn't happened yet but I keep hoping.

hopefully the guy that the cops were hauling away in the cuffs was the dirtbag that threw that bottle of water and hit that girl. I was in the SW corner of the stadium where that happened and it took us a long time to get out because of all the commotion that was going on.

share a pic of your buck when you finally get it mounted.