huntingfool

Yessir, thanks a bunch!

+1, that's a good lookin' one!

I like how you gave your buddy the rifle you thought was off At least you guys put one down, and sounds like you have a good area!

Well it's been a slow year for predators this year. I had a dry spell January thru March, and hung up the calls until August. I got a bobcat in early August but haven't been out as much as I would have liked to this year. I've seen a bunch of coyotes and put my buddies on a few but today I finally shot one for myself. My wife's family was in town for their annual Christmas party so I took two of my brothers-in-law to try and find some predators. Third stand of the morning about 5 minutes in this guy came running in. We were callin' the thick stuff but he came in so that I had plenty of time to set up and was very ready when he popped out of a ditch at about 15 yards. He was trotting right to me and I let him have a chest/neck/face full of 3" #4 buckshot. HAMMERED him, as you might imagine! I forgot my camera so this was taken from my brother-in-law's phone:

It's fixed!!! Just needed taken apart and a good cleanin'

That's quite the camaraderie you two have! Nice work guys, as always.

Dang, heck of a first time out. It sure is addicting!

Nice, good job!

Elk season FINALLY got here, we wait all year for elk season as a family. We fill our freezers every year with elk, with at least 3 of us putting in (sometimes more) somebody always gets a tag. This year we had 7 tags in camp between 2 hunts. My sister (Gail), my sister-in-law (Melissa), and my brother-in-law(James) had late rifle bull tags in 5B. My brother (Tate), my old man and his hunting buddy Greg and I all drew late antler-less tags in the same unit; bull hunt first, cow second. I was able to take 14 days off of work to help guide my bro-in-law onto a bull and help butcher (we do our own). So Thanksgiving day we ate a quick meal and hit the woods to fill the freezers for a year. Here's a picture of camp (this picture was actually taken about 10 days into the hunt): Bull Hunt: Day 1: James and I hit or usual spot that always has elk in it. We saw 35-40 elk the first day, 6 were spikes. This was his first elk hunt and bull tags are hard to come by so he was holding out for a decent bull until about day 4 or so. This is only because we have a good spot where the elk are numerous and usually it is not a problem to get a shot at a small bull any old day of the hunt. We got back to camp and everybody had seen a bunch of elk, my sister got on a herd with like 8 bulls in it but couldn't make it happen. We heard a lot of shooting and were seeing elk, so we weren't scared. No worries... Day 2: James and I saw like 7 elk, no bulls. Still a lot of fresh sign and lots of shooting going on, we were just unlucky. I believe the rest of the party didn't see much that day either. Day 3: We awoke on Sunday to a windy, cold, snowstorm. James and I had a cow and calf walk right to us, at around 15 yards. Pretty neat, but that's all we saw all day. Still a lot of shooting and a lot of sign. The elk were there, we were just getting unlucky. Day 4: We didn't see a darned elk all day. We cut some tracks and were seeing more bull sign than ever, but no elk in them. We cut a blood trail on the way back to camp with familiar footprints following it...got back and this was hanging in camp: This is my sister's second elk and first bull. Certainly not a big 6x6, but no broken tines and a heck of a first bull. Congrats Gail! Day 5: Well at the end of day 4 I was set to go somewhere completely different but since my sister had shot that bull and seen like 7 other bulls that day right in the same area we'd been hunting and seeing sign, we thought we'd give it another go. Didn't see beans all morning, hit a slightly different spot in the afternoon and glimpsed 2 elk. Not looking good, and the fresh sign was dissipating. Day 6: We hit another close but different spot in the morning, again no elk. Some fresh sign. Another spot in the afternoon and not a single elk again. Panick setting in! My sister-in-law saw jumped a BIG bull this day but couldn't get on it. She and my bro were having similar luck by this point. Day 7: Last day of the hunt. We headed way further out and tried another spot. We found a gutpile from the day before, and a dead 3x4 bull from a few days earlier. We were a day late to that spot I guess. That was the story of the whole bull hunt. We were in the right spot for 4 days, just had bad luck. Then when I got the notion the elk were moving out, my sister came up huge in that exact spot and we stayed a day and a half too late. We heard a LOT of shooting and saw a LOT of sign for 4 days... and adapted too late due to circumstances. So after hunting every day of the bull hunt, James and Melissa didn't fill their tags and we went 1 of 3 for bulls. I still can't believe our only chance at bulls came the first day and they were all spikes. Everybody else was getting into them including my sister, right in the same area. James had a big case of bad luck and that's all it is. I's still a little miffed thinking about it, but we can't take it back now. Cow Hunt: Well now it was up to us to put some serious meat away for the year, but with the elk gone I had a sinking feeling. I hadn't my wife and daughter in 7 days and I didn't know where the elk were. Day 1: My old man and Greg decided to hit the old hot-spot again despite my warning that the elk were gone. My bro and I decided to hit a hi point a few miles to the east. You can see a long ways over a lot of country and with more hunters in the woods to stir things up, we figured something would catch our eye. We ended up seeing like 7 elk, I think we pulled a stalk and came up short. My old man saw jumped a cow and calf in the old spot but with no new sign, they were ready to try a new spot as well. Day 2: We saw elk right off the bat from the same hill, and ended up seeing around 30 elk. I was guiding Tate in on a small herd when a cow was shot right out from under him. There was a small bull with the herd, and all Tate could see was the darn bull. Before he could get closer to the cows somebody else got there and we saw them drive out to the cow. After that we pulled sneak on a cow/calf pair and she BARELY got away. Then late I blew a sneak on a herd of cows. Right before dusk Tate saw a herd of 20 elk or so right before dark in a park at least a mile from the hill. At least we knew where to go for day 3. Day 3: We were half way up to our viewpoint when we could see a herd of about 50 elk way out in the park, 1-1.5 miles to the east. They split into two smaller herds and one was heading to our tree line, so we hoofed it the mile over there and started looking for them. We caught up to them (so we thought) and I got onto my shooting sticks. With the angle of the hill all I had was a neck shot kinda thru the grass. I should have not taken this shot but I NEEDED to put a cow down and go see my family. Well I shot and missed. The elk had not seen us and started to circle to us. One cow stopped in front of a tree so I shot her in the neck and down she went. We were expecting a large herd of at least 25 so my brother was waiting (wisely) for one to stop. After 6 or 8 ran by they were gone. It turns out my dad had made his way up to the viewpoint and the large herd was still out there. We had found another, smaller herd. Anyway I didn't get to see how the Barnes TTSX performs on a shoulder, but I was sure glad to get one down. Elbow deep in elk is my favorite way to be!!! Yours Truly: Day 4: I got up early and left with my elk to start butchering. I got a call just as I got back to the pavement. My bro and Dad found a herd from the old viewpoint and double-teamed two cows. Wish I could have been there! Tate: We didn't get one of Dad with his cow directly. Elk hunting to my dad is almost strictly business, and more often than not we get pics after the animals is skinned and hanging in camp. This is a typical picture of our elk hunts, my dad and Greg with the meat: Another typical hunt picture. I swear my old man is never happier than when he has meat hanging in camp. Day 5: Once again, elk were immediately spotted in the morning and by 10am or so Greg had one down. So we did manage to fill the cow tags (as expected), and I had my cow completely butchered by the time they got back on Wednesday. I stayed and helped all day thursday but I had to leave Friday morning and left my dad with 2 elk to butcher. Sorry Dad! So here it is once more, elk season is over and we have to wait another year to go do it again. I got to spend some good time with my brother-in-law and good friend James, and some more with my little brother Tate who I never see anymore. I tell you what, I was missing my wife and daughter but it is always a sad day when I leave elk camp. There's not a thing I love to do more on this earth than get out into the wild and be at the mercy of the terrain and the weather, in the cold and the snow and the wind. It's always good to see the family and elk season was special this year, like it always is. It's too bad we didn't get to put many racks on the wall but to us, hunting is more about the experience and the food. We did find a total of 4 dead bulls though, one whopper from the archery season. You can't eat the horns anyway, a trophy hunter I will likely never fully be. It's great to get a big one, but I'm not gonna risk going elk-less for a year just to shoot a big one or to only draw bull tags. We're gonna end up with like 700 pounds of meat (boneless) between 4 elk and 4 families, and brother that's the way we like it!

Whatever hoss, you know you love me too. Don't be jealous!

I miss you man! But you know that 5 out of 7 could be better in that area. To be honest after we got back into the elk I only saw one more bull, a spike. All's well that ended well, but it could have been better. I really wanted James to smoke a bull on his first elk hunt. It's hard not filling a bull tag, there is just nothing like hunting bulls. The best thing they ever did for Arizona is introduce elk. What an animal, and an outstanding natural resource. But hey, there's always next year right?!

Nice buck man, congrats!

It is fun! Honestly shooting cows isn't quite as fun as shooting bulls, but it is still fun and you get drawn way more often. I don't wait around 15 years to hunt elk, I go every year and am carrying a tag 2 out of 3 years on average. I think this is my 3rd year in a row being drawn (knock on wood). Bull first choice, cow second. Sure I only get a bull tag every 15 years or so, but I'm killing cows at least every other year. Between you and your wife, you'll get to go almost every year and you'll have meat in the freezer. If you care more about getting to go and putting meat down than shooting a huge bull once every 15 years, a cow hunt second choice just makes sense. At least that's my opinion on it.

Well you know it all depends on what you want out of the hunt. I really can't believe we couldn't run onto a spike after the first day. To us, it's just more important to get one down than it is to get a big one. On my bull hunt 2 years ago I shot a small 4x4 on the second morning, I didn't look him over at all and thought he was a little bigger. I was a little disappointed since I had a few more days to hunt, but it was still just as fun to shoot him as it would have been to get a big one. I just have smaller antlers to look at now is all. He fed me and my family for a year, so I can't really complain. I assure you a small 5x5 tastes better than tag soup! You know, we got the pulley from my grampa, he had it laying around his shop. A hardware store may carry one, it's just a heavy-duty pulley with a hook. Chain goes up in tree, hook hangs from chain. Then a heavy duty rope from home depot or Ace goes thru the pulley and attaches to the gambrel. The gambrel is a homemade one out of #5 rebar. I'm trying to get my bro-in-law to make a bunch of them and I'll sell a few. They are great and bigger than anything I've seen in the stores.

Hey nice job man! Sorry to hear about your Grandma, I'm sure she's proud. Wish I could have helped out but I had elk to kill and butcher. I'll post that story in a day or two. Nice buck dude!

Heck of a buck! Nice job.

I've been chomping at the bit to go deer hunting since about July, I got a new scope set up on my deer rifle and extended my killing range from 250 yards to about 500 yards. I practiced a lot, shot over 50 rounds of the new load I've worked up and this was my year to shoot a nice buck. Also this was my first year with a tripod, boy what a difference. I don't know how I functioned without one all this time. To top it off I took the whole seven days off and was gonna kill a buck, wasn't gonna shoot a little one (like usual) until Tuesday. Thursday (Nov 4th) was like Christmas eve for me, my Dad and Brother-in-law James were down for the hunt and my buddy Clark was hunting with us too. This was Clark's first hunt and I was determined to find him a buck to shoot... Casey was able to come out with Clark and I first morning and it was just a tough hunt from the get-go. We didn't see beans until about 3:30pm opening day, and we were glassing some great country. We were joking that if this last spot didn't produce deer we would be the worst hunters around having driven the length of Ruby road without glassing a single deer. But we did end up seeing 7 does total, here's the view as I saw it: Also on Day 1 I got a text from James that he had a lion ten yards from him! He was sitting and looked over and there was a "large weener dog lookin' thing" crawling thru the brush next to him. He realized what it was and as he stood up to shoot it, it beat it out of sight. He was on a thick canyon side so there was a lot of cover. Day 2 wasn't much better. We were in a different area that I've seen a bunch of deer and bucks in but still after a whole day of glassing we'd seen only a handful of does when right before dark I glassed up 3 little bucks at around 750 yards. It was a bad situation, the wind was wrong, it was getting dark and there was not much cover between us. We tried and actually almost got one. Busted them at 200 yards, I didn't even expect that much. Here's the view from that spot, although the bucks were out of the picture to the right: Day 3 all we saw were does, except the bucks that got shot about 500 yards under us. I had a tree in my way so I couldn't see the bucks...yet. My old man was pulling a sneak on them and actually had one in the binos when it got clocked. They were headed right down below me and James. I've seen bucks get clocked from that point during previous seasons so I've named it "Clobber Point." later that day we hit an old spot in border muley/coues country and had 7 mulies walk up on us: Day 4 found me and James hiking to Clobber Point before sunup. It's a good lookout in a good area. By 8:30am we had seen only a handful of does when I decided to glass the saddle where we usually sit. Right away I could see an animal that wasn't a deer. Not a deer, not a coyote...then I could make out the face of a lion. He came on thru the saddle and walked broadside for me for about 20 yards. What a sight, first lion I've ever seen, FINALLY glassed one up. Nice big one, only one hill over from where James saw his. We're thinking it was the same one. I got prone to fling some lead at him from 650 yards and he disappeared. The kicker is that the saddle he was in is 200 yards below where we usually sit. We watched for just over an hour and I decided to leave James glassing the saddle and I'd hike around/above and try to blast him. I made the stalk but he wasn't there. As I was standing there where he had been, disappointed but still full of adrenaline I saw movement on the adjacent hillside. Not a lion obviously but I saw a masked face and thought it was a badger. As I got on my sticks I saw a long tail so I knew it wasn't a badger, so I was pretty sure it must be a Coatimundi. I got on him and busted him, mostly out of frustration. I felt pretty bad since I've never seen one before but now that he's skinned I think the pelt and skull will turn out really nice. Good claws and some wicked teeth: Day 5 I only had until around 11am, James had to leave that day and I had to babysit while my wife worked. Clark and I hiked up to a good viewpoint over a big bowl that always holds deer. It was cloudy and cool which was nice. The previous 4 days were really hot. At around 8:15am I glassed up two bucks with what appeared to be a doe and fawn. I think they were at least small 3 points, but the one looked like he may have been a tad bigger. Thought I saw a beam curl and a little mass. Of course they were a good 1000 yards away, we pulled a steep/thick brush stalk and ended up 500 yards from where they had been...but they had moved. I could see one deer's body in a thick mesquite thicket and I think I saw antlers on it the one time I glimpsed the head. He vanished in the thicket and there was no good way to him. We saw 2 more pairs of does right below us and after looking them over it was time to head out. Once again skunked. Here's the view from the spot where I glassed them, they were out behind where the binos are: Day 6 I poked around Ruby again and saw ten does. They were up a lot that day, it was windy and cold but all I could find were does. Ten of them. Day 7 (today) I only had until noon so Clark and I tried to make the most of it. We hiked out into that bowl where I'd seen the previous two bucks to the spot we stalked to. I've seen bucks head to that spot before while scouting and we were there just after sunup. Sure enough there were already deer there, and as we watched more came. All does. We jumped two does on the way back to the truck and one stopped just right in front of some dead branches and it looked like a buck for a second...I had the deer in my scope when Clark said "it's a buck." Since I couldn't see antlers it's a darn good thing I said "are you sure?" and he said "no." Always know for yourself! After 7 days of hunting I was almost ready to take his word for it. It was a doe, when it turned it's head I was sure glad I didn't shoot. The branches did look like antlers but I could tell something wasn't right. Anyway although nobody filled their tags I still had a good time. I glassed my rear end off for 7 days and only saw 6 bucks the whole hunt. I forgot to mention another buck I glassed at like 1000 yards on day 3, little guy and soooo far from the truck. Hunting beats working any way you slice it, and I just love being out in the hills with the deer. I got to see my first lion and my first Coati on the same day, and I get a good pelt out of the deal. Best part is that I get to do it all again in two weeks, I'm taking two weeks off for James's Rifle bull hunt and my cow hunt the next week. We have 6 elk tags in the family and I'll have some elk to butcher! Oops forgot my favorite picture of the whole hunt. I hunted hard guys, I only took two naps the whole season. The best one was at this spot, under an oak tree. Pretty country, can't wait to get back in it:

On my very first coues hunt we had a small buck jump up at like 30 yards and stop and look at my dad and I. I had the tag and it was the first time we had hunted coues and this was like the 6th day of the hunt. It was border muley/coues country up north and the buck was a spike. It didn't look like a muley but we looked and looked for a tail...it had NO TAIL at all! Just a white rump. We were puzzled and that dumb spike stood there gawking at us for seriously a whole minute. We were perplexed until it took off; it had it's whitetail laid flat against its back the whole time! Flagged as it bounded over the hill! DARN! We caught up to it a minute later, it ran across a small canyon and stopped. I emptied my gun at it at like 200 yards, all misses. It stood there most of the time, and I finally hit close enough and it took off. This was before I carried shooting sticks. He tried to let me kill him, I botched it every way I could!

Wow! I want to come play with you guys!

. Amen brother, glad you guys had fun and those are some nice bucks. Good luck during elk season, go do it again!

Awesome! Congrats to BOTH of you guys. Wish I could find a forkie...

Atta kid Cory!!!

Good luck Cory! Also man, manana you have a new hunter too. This is Clark's first deer hunt. He's been great shooting, he gets it. If we can find a buck for him to shoot at I think he'll hit it.

Nice buck, congrats!

This was the only concern I had about it. I just wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, I'm still not sure. But I figured CWT was on top of it the rest of the bill was great so our household voted yes. I did search and couldn't find much about the benefit/harm of it...would it have been good/bad/indifferent?