couesdiehard

.300 WSM Winchester Stainless or 30-06 Winchester Mod 70 Featherweight. Both firing 150 grain Barnes Coated X-Bullet handloads. couesdiehard

Heads Up! The 2005-2006 Fall Regs and tag applications are available on the G & F site now. I am already picking all my hunts. Check out the "Changes for 2005-2006" on page 2. I need to pull out last years regs and start comparing number of tags issued and draw and success rates. Let the games begin! Good luck. Lee

Hey all; Just wanted to say I really learned a lot about ADA at last night's meeting and I encourage and challenge all on this forum to check this association for yourself, join and find the areas where you can participate. This group is made up of hunters who IMHO seem to have their hearts and heads in the right places. Last night's meeting might have been long but believe me it was far more interesting than most of the long meetings I attend at work! Not everyone may want to be a board member or officer but there are plenty of things to be done from which to choose. Lee p.s. It was great meeting wetmule, stanley, CouesWhitetail, and all the rest of the concerned and motivated sportsmen and women. Hope to meet more of forum members at future meetings.

Is it just me or does CHD sound an awful lot like a guy called Buster that posted a bunch of dung here last year? Lee

TREESTANDMAN; I don't pretend to have the answer either. I believe that generally, they are homebodies and their "sky-island" homes encourage this behavior. When drought or something makes survival tough in their home-range I believe they will seek greener pastures. I think they will move on if a herd is exceeding it's capacity also and coues start to spread out to more nominal areas. I think these moves are more or less to find new home ranges though, not so much wandering or migrating. Let's not forget coues deer are found in decent numbers from just above sea-level in Sonora to over 10,000 feet high in the Pinalenos. They are pretty adaptive. Lee

Wetmule; I agree with you in principle. I am pretty guilty of this myself sometimes. I get pretty busy with the family and work and then volunteer time suffers. However whenever we (me and the family) are out and about we try to do little things to help wildlife, habitats, etc. I believe instilling this in the next generation is vital. I once spent the better part of the day trying to track down the supervisor of rangers at White Tank Regional Park to let him know that people were accessing the northwest side of the park with quads and trucks and tearing the heck out of the terrain. We (hunters) do hundreds of little things in the interest of wildlife and habitat every year. We also pay hundreds of millions into Pittman-Robertson Act and similar programs through all of our hunting/fishing purchases. So I don't agree that most hunters do little to nothing; but I do agree that, what we do isn't enough in this day and age. Just my 2-cents. Lee

FYI, Regs are hitting the stores now. I was able to find some yesterday in the BLM Public Lands Office in downtown Phoenix. Check out the maps! What do you think of the demarcation line at the south end of the state? Lee

TREESTANDMAN, That is too cool! Did you learn some new helpful techniques from the master? Sounds like lots of fun. Hope to see photos of the shed soon and photo of the buck attached new antlers soon after that. Congrats to you both. Lee

Hey all; G&F web site claims the hard-copy regs books have been sent out to stores. Should be showing up in the stores as early as Monday the 16th. Thought you might want to know. As anyone sees them out yet I'd like to know where. Lee

CouesWhitetail, I have looked at the AZDEER.ORG site and I am planning to attend the meeting May 18 at 6:30 pm. Hope to see a lot folks from this forum in attendance. Lee

BASS; Supposedly by Friday May 20 the hard copies should be available in stores. Lee

Amanda; Thanks for your input. I agree that this is the place where different opinions should be heard. There really is no need for personal attacks. It is great to get controversial once in a while because a healthy dialogue is a learning experience. I think G & F does manage for the most hunter opportunities (read: more tag dollars) in the short-term. But if you damage the herd beyond a certain point you won't be able to sell any tags there. That's why it makes more sense to me to charge license fees up front to apply then G & F gets revenue from residents and non-residents whether they are successful in the draw or not. Then you should use these funds to manage for trophy quality which generates more applicants and therefore funds. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss something we all obviously care a lot about. I will check out the AZDEER.ORG site today! Lee

Wetmule; Very well written. Your post is truly eye-opening to someone who has never hunted north of the Colorado but loves the thought of hunting it someday or one of my kids hunting it. I had no idea things were so bad until Josh brought it up in this thread. I must admit, with the way G & F has helped screw up 36B (IMO) I shouldn't be surprized by what they don't know about the Kaibab and Strip country. Wetmule I want to apologize to you and the rest of the ADA members, I too read the thread asking for help. Like most others I felt it was a great cause but I was so busy that I thought I would leave it to somebody else this go around. If you would be kind enough to post info on your meetings, projects, etc. I for one will make the effort to participate and help. Thanks again for the great post. Lee

Congrats! Lee

coueshunter; I am glad to hear someone shed some more light on the Kaibab management question. I for one have never had the opportunity to hunt the Kaibab and don't know that I ever will but I am glad to know that I have a chance to hunt in such a potentially awesome hunt. I had never heard this survey information before and I think it's criminal. I am not familiar with the other surveys you refer to either but I am very interested. Lee

az4life and Josh; You can bring up any members page and look at their posts and topics and click to "ignore user". I am not going to do it in this case because I want to know when he ticks everyone off and what it's about. Besides when so many of your posts are antagonistic it doesn't take reasonable folks long to figure out not to pay them too much heed. I will say if you want to lol read some of CHD's posts from March-Aug 2004. He clearly states on at least a couple of occassions that he will stop using this site and even asks Amanda to remove him from membership. Anyway thought you would want to know. Lee

az4life; The draw and success numbers for 2004 deer, elk, pronghorn are posted online in the last few pages of the regs. 30A is the place to be this year! Lee

Josh and runningbird; I hear both of you. Josh you are right saying 50 bucks sure got my attention! I would love to see Wetmule's stats if he would be willing to post them. I think runningbird has it absolutely right. Unfortunately the folks who are the most dedicated and willing to get off their butts are not always the best at speaking in public. I don't want to discourage anyone from attending or speaking but it would be better if all the concerns or ideas were presented by a few well-spoken individuals. Lee

AZ4Life; I agree with you on several points. I know little to nothing about the area north of the Colorado. I would love to see stats on how bad off that herd is today. 50 bucks in any of the 12 units sounds unbelievably low. If there is science to back that up I agree we all need to speak up! It also blows my mind that the way I read it, they are willing to sell all those deer hunters buffalo tags to reduce that herd also. I understand that House Rock buff hunt is one of the toughest but then again they don't usually have hundreds of hunters beating the countryside for them either. What if the conditions are right and folks really bang the buffalo during the deer season. It could take generations for that heard to recover. I can understand wanting to clear the elk out because they have never wanted any elk in there to compete with the deer herd and historically, I don't believe elk occupied that country. Just my 2 cents. Lee

firstcoueswas80; Does that mean you are planning to put in for the same hunt in 36B? I really like that area and I would not mind one bit if my friends would be convinced to go back in there and try it again. As you probably recall I was in 36B last Nov. but the rest of my deer party got drawn in 29. They loved it and I am trying to get an idea of what hunts they are all putting on their apps. Every evening I have been pouring over the regs trying to find just the right picks for me, my wife and my son. I love it! Lee

Stanley; Reading the rest of that thread there is more talk directly about units 23 & 21 that I found real interesting too. Obviously 23 has had an Oct hunt added but it sounds like 21 might be getting the same treatment in the near future. I think we may have developed too big of a following for coues deer. G & F appears to think there is more demand out there to hunt them whether folks are successful or not. For unit 23 giving up higher success percentage tags (Dec) to have more lower success percentage tags(Oct) on the surface sounds good because you would have less people out there pounding the brush in Dec. But now you will have just as many hunting for 4 days in Oct. plus a one week junior "any antlered deer" Oct 21-27 with a hundred tags. I think that if you drew one of the remaining December tags you would have an awesome hunt. I just hope they didn't underestimate how successful the Oct whitetail hunters will be. I want to watch and see what happens with these hunts. Lee

creed az 88; I would generally take a 85 plus 3-pointer on opening day. Although if I see that nice of a buck on opening I start wondering if I will see something better tomorrow. It is true that you can't shoot a 110 pointer if you shoot the smaller ones first. I have gone home empty-handed after passing forkies and small 3-pointers and it's not the end of the world. Although I sure do miss not having any of that great venison when I burn a tag.

Stanley; I remembered that thread also. I found this in a thread in Hunting In Arizona (topic) good news! It was an interesting thread.

Younghunter; The tsi tsi flies are bothersome but far more problematic are the Chupacabras. They have eaten all the deer, the cattle and more than a few humans have been devoured now. I am not telling you not to hunt in the 36's but do so at your own risk! Lee

25-06; At G&F's home page there is a picture of the 2005-2006 regs (it has a bull elk on the cover this year). Click there and if you need to update your Adobe Acrobat reader it will ask if you want to upgrade. I think the latest is Acrobat 7.0. Give her a try. Lee