GRONG

I can't believe you guys haven't heard of the North American Shed Hunters Club!!! What the crap is all that about?!?!?!?! www.shedantlers.org is the website and the current (as of 1998) world record set scores 399 3/8" net, that's without a spread!! I measured a set from 9 a few years ago that beat that set with a score of around 406" I think, also without a spread. There is a set from CO from 1899 that scores around 424" w/o a spread that will hold the world record spot when the new book comes out. This set grosses at 499" given a 50" spread!!!!! And you call yourselves shed hunters..............

Here is Dogman in true form

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Thought you all would like to see one less lion in the woods. We guided Jerry Pressley from Ajo on a 5 day hunt over the past weekend. On the 4th day of his hunt we finally connected and caught this HUGE female lion. We all swore it was a tom in the tree until we got it down. We all were in disbelief when we checked it and found out it "wasn't packin". I'd guess this lion to be barely smaller than TAM's lion that he got a month ago with us. She probably weighed real close to 100lbs. Enjoy the pics. Josh

25-06, Hey man don't feel bad, it's easy to misinterpret what someone is saying by reading text. It's hard to tell emotion I understand. My Dad's comments were honestly sincere though. Pretty cool of you to man-up and apologize though, says a lot about you, thanks.

Hey guys thanks for the comments that is really nice, I'll pass it on to Dad too. I'm gonna throw a few thoughts into the mix here that maybe nobody has considered, take it for whatever you want, in no way am I saying that this is the way and I am an expert on the subject. People always talk about "too many lions" when in fact they don't have much to back that up by. I feel all they are doing is repeating what they hear others say out of pure ignorance. Dad and I are in the woods probably 5 days/week hunting lions in some way or another and we don't seem to find all of these dead deer and elk that people talk about and we are going where lions walk, which is usually the nasties places you see out in the field. Maybe we're just to dumb to see all the kills laying everywhere but we can sure find a track in the dirt. A lot of people don't realize how many other animals lions kill. It's rare for us to catch a lion that doesn't stink like a skunk. I feel that lions are opportunistic and eat what's easiest to them. Sure there's been stories of lions that have killed a few deer in a small area "just because", maybe that's just their instinct. They eat a lot of javalina and coyotes as well as domestic dogs and cats. I also feel that this idea of "too many lions" is also related to how many people are in the field with top of the line binoculars. Think about it.... guys now sit behind binos and spotting scopes mounted to tripods for hours on end and they see just about everything that moves out there. 20 years ago that wasn't happening. Dozens and dozens of hunters each year glass up lions out there and they think that if they're seeing one then there must be 20 they aren't. Lions are crafty animals by nature and most people don't realize how much land they might call their home turf. Honestly Dad and I didn't realize how far a lion travels until a guy doing a lion study told us. The new collars put on lions have a GPS deal in them and it updates the coordinates every 7 hours. What they're finding on the few they've collared, with this new system of tracking an animal, is that they cover an ungodly amount of country. It's nothing for a lion to travel from the south rim of the Grand Canyon and end up on the Peaks above Flagstaff in 2-3 days and back again for whatever reason a couple days later. One particular female lion caught and collared on Deadman Mesa in 22 recently was tracked from there down and across the Verde River a couple times, up into the Pine Mountain Wilderness, back down to the river and eventually travelling as far north as Cottonwood. Freakin crazy!! As a lion hunter we hate to hear that kind of stuff when we think we're finally figuring out a particular lion's habbits. Anyway, kind of what I'm getting at here is that if you find a track in the bottom of a wash somewhere and say again the next day 10 miles away walking a road and then again find more tracks going up the bottom of a canyon, it doesn't mean that the hills are alive with lions, it could be the same lion making tracks all over the place. Dad and I have been trying to catch a certain tom since November and he just keeps giving us the slip. The first time we tried catching him we actually got lucky and did but didn't have a hunter with us.... dang! In making circle after circle and watching the roads for tracks and covering up to 30-50sq miles we've only drummed up one other lion and it's a female. To someone that didn't know much about lions, one might think that all the tracks we've found in that area are that of several lions but infact we're pretty darn sure there's only two of them and I got pictures of both of them on my trail camera. Also, with the lion survey that is taking place right now they're trying to determine just how many lions are getting killed after a snow, which is when 99% of all lion hunters, that have dogs, hit the woods. From what little I understand about the study is that it is by the order of our wonderful Governor and if they find out that a majority of the lions killed are done so when it snows they are going to limit the amount of lions harvested. Therefore all the "too many lions" believers will now be enraged that us hound hunters can't do enough to "manage" the populations of lions in this state. Don't quote me on this, maybe my Dad can throw what he knows about it into the discussion here. Anyway, I've typed WAY too much and I'm tired now, gotta git up early and go hunting. Hope I've made a few of you think and maybe it'll get some of you off the lion hating bandwagon. If not then oh well.... I'll keep posting pics of our successes if we are. Glad most of you have enjoyed the stories and pictures so far and hopefully we can bring you many more.

Just so some of you know who this "Dogman" is, this picture might give you a hint. This lion is a young tom, probably less than 2 years old I'd guess, notice the faint stripes. Here's another

Not necessarily Casey. Even from Andy's pic I wouldn't say that lion is well hung by any means. Wait till you see the difference between a male and female laying next to each other. Actually when we get another lion this weekend I'll take a picture of whatever we get to show you.

Dude that's a bad butt picture! Casey, male lions don't have external genitals like you'd see on a tom housecat. Males have a black dot where their peter is and you can barely feel their boys under the skin. I've seen people post pictures of tom lions before and they're claiming that the lion was a female and well over 100lbs. That just doesn't happen, at least not in AZ....too often.

OH THAT'S IT!!! I'm gonna have NMelkhunter dude sicked on you! ....or whatever his handle is.

Thanks a lot for the comments guys, we've been seriously busting our tails to catch what we have so far. It's an absolute blast I tell ya! We've seen some awesome country and made some life long friends in the process which is even better! Personally, we would rather hunt on the dry ground over snow. If we sat around and waited for it to snow all of the dogs would be fat and out of shape and we wouldn't have anything to show for it other than dogfood reciepts. We have absolutely no competition out in the woods either. We haven't seen one lion hunter in the woods since Oct. Actually that's not totally true, this past week we saw 2 different guys over in the 17a/b area. Other than that, no one. We've been all over the place hunting too. It's been one of the best winters I've seen for lion hunting. We've caught 8 since Oct and have taken 5 out of the gene pool so far. We're hoping to add one more to the list by the end of the week too. I'll keep you guys posted. Glad you all liked the pics.

HA HA HA HA!! Too funny man. Glad to meet another Josh Epperson. I've searched my name on the net before and there's a couple others too. One is a college football player I think. Nice to meet you and see ya later.

RIGHT ON DUDE!!!!!!

You guys crack me UP!!!!!! Keven that was hilarious! Truth is I only find about one good single or pair about once every 3-5 years. But I'm game. I like the 1st prize of a Dry Lake bull tag about Sept 15th of 2006, sounds good to me.

Here's a picture Brian Marshall asked me to post. I'd love to get my hands on those antlers! Just to look thru them all would be fun as heck.

Gino, I know man, 2 minutes of minimal effort and I would have the set together! I get a little over confident thinking that all those antlers in a pile.... nothing will come out. WRONG!!! I hope it never happens again. Shiras, Ya dude those things were a couple o' biggins!! Maybe the brown set will come in this year. I can dream can't I?

Justin found this head while looking for coues and elk sheds in unit 22. I can't remember the score but it's a heck of a head.

Friggin sweet bro!!!!!!!

I just wish it was cut and dried, no discretionary BS. Here is a partial quote from an email from a strait up game warden to me. "....my personal feeling on the matter is that at least there is a chance that I can keep something that I find. I am an antler nut and have been for some time. I think finding a big coues skull or other dead head is the Holly Grail. To not have any chance at keeping them scares me. I get excited when I see a 10 year old kid on "cloud nine" because he just found a rag horn elk. On the other hand, I get frustrated when I hear that a known poacher somehow found five 350 class bulls in a year. I have accepted the rule and have turned in some nice racks over the years, but I have also been able to keep a few that fell into the directive. There is no solution that I can come up with. As long as AZ keeps producing great big trophy animals, this issue will not go away. After all, there never seems to be any controversy with little pick-ups." That was his $.02 on the deal and I see what he's saying. Law or no law, if I find a spike Coues up to a 150"er, I'm picking the thing up and taking plenty of pictures just in case. Josh

I finally got permission to post these pics. What a killer buck!!! Congrats to the hunter!

When they leave it up to the "discretion of the officer in the field" that's a bunch of horse manure. One guy says he could care less and the other says NO WAY. Leaves room for a whole lot of grey area I'd say.

I hate to admit this but I lost half of a big set one evening on a highway. How would you like to realize that you lost an antler, at night, on about a 15 mile stretch of highway? What would you have done? .......I just kept on truckin. This is the set together. Oh that hurt. They were about a 390 set or so. If they wouldn't have been so chewed up I would've at least tried to look.

Here is the latest on skulls and picking them up. The following was from a recent AZGF newsletter - Ask a wildlife manager By Ron Day, law enforcement branch chief, Arizona Game and Fish Department The legalities of picking up wildlife parts A common question that needs to be addressed is the issue of whether individuals may pick up and keep the head, antlers, or any part of wildlife they find dead in the field. What may appear to be an easy question actually requires a complicated answer. State law requires an individual to have evidence of legality when possessing or transporting wildlife carcasses or their parts. A hunting license and/or big game tag meets this requirement for wildlife lawfully taken during hunting season. However, if an individual in the field finds dead wildlife, or any part of an animal he or she did not legally take during the hunt, then that individual may not automatically possess and /or transport any of it. If an individual wishes to keep such wildlife parts found in the field, he/she must contact the Arizona Game and Fish Department so an officer can determine the cause of death of the animal. If it is determined the animal died from a natural cause, such as predation, disease, fights, falls, drowning, lightning, etc., the wildlife part may be possessed by the individual. If the officer determines the animal died from an unnatural cause, such as wounding loss, illegal activity or vehicle collision, no part of the wildlife may be possessed or transported. If the cause of death cannot be determined and the wildlife part is fresh, meaning bone or tissue moisture is present and the part is not oxidized, possession will not be allowed. This also applies to parts, such as skulls, where the age cannot be determined because the finder has boiled and/or cleaned them. If the cause of death cannot be determined and the part is old (with no moisture and oxidized), possession will be allowed. Clear? Just remember, the key is to contact the Arizona Game and Fish Department prior to picking up the part. There is no way these parts may be lawfully possessed until the department has determined the cause of death.

Wow we must have someone fooled! Just kidding. Thats nice of them to say, do you know where you saw that? I'd like to see it.

I hear ya! A friend of mine just lost his job on the Forest Service for picking up an elk head. He wasn't even on the job when he picked it up either. Unreal!