GRONG

Ya it's hard to tell what points are on what beams you know. Just shoot the sucker if you can!!

Well now he is my friend!!! Hurts doesn't it Bret? Southern AZ deer don't have nothin on our Pine Tree livin deer! LOL!!

Congratulations that is freakin awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anytime you can share with your Dad in the woods is just the best! Way to go dude!

You're welcome Brian, you made a reply before I could even get the rest on there. LOL! Here's one more..........

Here's another.......

Anyone find some strange or interesting stuff while hiking the hills over the years? Just this year I found an old steel leg-hold trap and a couple years ago I found this bayonet down in a crack in a pile of rocks in the absolute middle of nowhere in unit 21. I can't pull the bayonet out of the sheath. I wonder if I should soak it in WD-40 or just leave it as is. I was quite pumped to find it. The one side you can barely make out SPECIAL SERVICES. The oppposite side also says something but I've never ben able to make it out.

Boy that is a crap picture. I can tell there's some bone there but not sure how much. Was that taken at the Shell in Camp Verde, the one on the rez?

Dan I have no clue where it came from. I'm guessing AZ but who knows. The GW for 19a sent it to me. I thought that's where it was from but he told me otherwise.

LOL!!!!!!! That was hilarious az4life!!!

Here's another one. The original ones look quite a bit better than these shrunken versions but you get the picture... no pun intended.

I've got the Canon G5 and I think it works pretty dang good for taking pics thru the scope. Here's a couple good ones I got this year thru the HD Shwerbinski. I'm still learning how to perfect it though. Thanks for the tips.

Ditto to all the comments.... GREAT PICS!!! I'd shoot him just for having that cheater on his G2!

That kinda reminds me of this email I got a couple years ago of this muley buck that met his fate by hanging to death by his dang antlers! Some of you may have seen it but for those of you who haven't enjoy. I would LOVE to find something like this!!!!

HA HA HA HA!!! What a cool find!!! Better yet, dang good spot with the binos!!!! Bummer you didn't have a camera that woulda been awesome! Just like my rule of "Don't leave the truck w/o your binos", NEVER leave the truck w/o your camera as well!!!

HOLY SHNIEKEYS!!! Let's just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Holy crap dude! Did you break that in your garage and find them later or find the spot that cow stepped on it in the woods somewhere? NICE!

At the meeting in Flag last night it was quite unanimous that nobody is in favor of splitting the archery elk tags. Same goes for the BS they'd like to do with the Dec wt tags. It was a good mtg I thought. Everyone needs to do those online surveys!!! I guess what I really wanted out of the mtg at the Flag office was to leave with that GIANT elk rack above the door!!! CRAP THAT THING IS HUGE!!!!!!

Way to go Dave and welcome to the site.... finally!

I've seen a couple pictures of the rifle kill from 22, I'll ask if I can post them. It's a pretty cool buck with a killer double beam kinda thing coming off the left antler.

I hear ya Lark, I know some animals get really big, it's kinda like shooting a 130" Coues buck. They don't come around often. I didn't mean to imply that lions can't get that big it's just kinda rare. Boy I'd love to see some of those old pics if you got em. Send em on over PT and I'll get them fixed for you.

Well I was just heading out today to go back up and set up camp and then be in my treestand in the morning but my Dad called me this AM and said he was on a huge lion track. I got out there quick and it was quite the chase. About 3 or so we finally got the lion. You talk about OLD!!! This sucker was tore up bad! Probably from another tom lion, he had serious cuts and tears in him, puncture marks in his back and chest. His right eye was all tweaked and he had a gaping hole in his right thigh. This dude had seen better days thats for sure.

Hey PT send me the picture and I'll get it downsized for you.

Ok, here's the events in a nutshell of the days that i got to sit on stand. Every buck I did see during my sits I have pictures of from my cameras so that was cool. Day 1, absolutely no deer at all. 9 1/2hrs on stand Day 2, small 2x3, maybe 50" at most, comes into 12 yards and I pass him but I thought I was gonna have a heart attack, buck fever you know. I had to keep saying to myself, "Quit freakin out and calm your sorry butt down, you're not even gonna shoot for crying out loud!". I kinda laughed at myself. There were 2 other bucks on the slope that didn't come close and one was a nice mid 90's 3pt that bedded down at 55 yards only to get up later and walk away. Around 2:30 a mid 70's 3pt was trying to get a couple of does in the mood but they eventually left him. 10 hrs on stand. Day 3, just before sunup I heard a couple bucks sparring less than 100 yards from me but couldn't see them. About 7:30 I spotted behind me what I think was the same to does as the evening before. They went up on the hill where I'd heard the sparring and one of the bucks tried his turn on them but they ditched them again. After about 20min both bucks casually came wandering off the hill in front of my stand. They fed across to my left and came thru an opening around 40 yards. The lead buck was a wide 2pt, approx 70" or so and the other, a 3pt in the mid 70's I'd guess. I drew on them just to see if I could get away with it and held on both of them but knew that I didn't want to shoot at either... yet. They piddled around just sniffing the air, all the while my wind was blowing right at them pretty hard. Anyway, they eventually turned back and eventually bedded at 55-65yds away. No matter how much I rattled or grunted at them they could've cared less. They stayed bedded for an hour and a half and the entire time the wind was at my back. Eventually they got up and wandered off, leaving me all along once again. Can't remember too much more happening that day. 10hrs on stand. Day 4 I had a little change up. My friend Dave Eklund was camped with me, he had a rifle tag. About 1 the day before he jumped a lion off of a brand new kill. He shot and missed and couldn't get a good enough shot to try again. So my dad showed up the next morning with his dogs. All 3 of us walked down to check the kill first (muley spike by the way). Sure enough the lion had been back. We walked back up to the truck and dad sent me back down with 2 dogs just to see if they could get things lined out. After a few minutes of a few barks and some roaming around dad sent another dog down to me. All the dogs went down and across the draw and immediately jumped the lion out of some brush not 50 yards from me and it jumped in a big oak tree. I couldn't believe it. Dad and I were both expecting a typical day long chase up over and thru a few canyons in hopes of getting a glimpse of it. This was our day I guess. Dave popped him with a .357 to get #8 of his big 10. Day 5, I sat in stand till about noon I think w/o seeing a thing so I said to heck with it. I got out of stand and put up 2 digital trail cams over some awesome scrapes I found, hiked back to the truck and drove home for Christmas Eve. The 27th I got a call from a good friend who had shot twice with his rifle right at dark at a huge buck right at dark but didn't touch him. I sacrificed a day in stand to go out with him the next morning to see if we could get him. I glassed up the buck way down the canyon but he was moving across the slope up towards but across from me and away from Dave, who was on the hill next to me about a 1/3 of a mile away. The buck finally walked up on a doe with 2 fawns and the game was on. Dave never had enough time to get from the hill he was on, to mine, in order to shoot in time. The buck eventually walked over a saddle and that ended our search. I'll post pics of him a little later. So Day 6 finds me back in the stand before sunrise, wondering what I missed the day before of course. About 8 I heard a buck pawing in the oak leaves probably freshening a scrape. He finally showed himself off to my right. By this time I had told myself that this late in the season if that ugly 2pt comes near me he's gonna get some carbon flung his way in hopes of filling a tag and ridding him of the gene pool. He was all alone and I grunted at him a time or two. He was about 80yds away but this time he paid me a little more attn when I grunted. He kept trying to walk away but the grunts finally got his interest and he turned around and slowly came my way. He unfortunately was in the thickest crap he could've been in and had to keep going around fallen pine trees so he couldn't just walk right over to me. I stood up and turned to my right incase a shot opp arose. I ranged a clearing where I thought he would come thru at 50 yards. He went behind some trees and I drew. When he hit the clearing I had my 50yd pin on him and made a couple noises to stop him. He stopped broadside and I let her fly! It all happened so dang fast I really am not sure what the crap happened. By the time I let it go, him flinching(I think), the arrow somehow managed to find it's way towards his head. Last I saw the arrow it was deflecting off of his right antler. He jumped and ran maybe 40yds at most, shook his head and went back to feeding as if nothing had happened. My nerves were wrecked and my knees were about to buckle so I had to sit the heck down and relax! Anything with antlers still just rocks me when it comes time to shoot!!! So anyway, he walked off and about 45min later a small 2pt walks across the hill in front of my stand. In mid walk the darn thing plops down and beds at 42yds, facing me. Luckily his head and shoulder were behind a tree so I didn't have to suffer with having a staring contest with a little fella. Anywho, about 30min later he got up and walked off. Around 11:30 I got sicker than crap and had to get the heck out of the stand. I got the heck out of there and did what you have to do when your sick and slowly ambled back to the stand. Since I knew I didn't have the energy to sit anymore I decided to check one of my cameras. Sure as heck the freakin day before, here's 4 pics of the huge eyeguarded 2x4 buck that I've dreamed of getting a chance at, worked the scrape over at 5PM!!!! Who knows if he woulda given me a shot but it woulda been neat as heck to see the sucker in real life for once! That's the way it goes I guess. I took the next day off for sick leave and enjoyed the heck out of my 8 month old son and wife. Day 7, today. I got all clean shaven and pretty (LOL) thinking this is the day it was all gonna happen. I sat for a little over 10 flippin hours and never saw a dang deer! So that's how my season ended. Hopefully I'll get to sit for another 3-4 days this coming week but I got to pay bills too so it's time to start chasing those mountain lions again.

I've seen that truck too. Isn't there a big rainbow sticker on the tailgate as well? HA HA! Just kidding!

Wow speaking of those I know of a whole slope of a ridge in 21 that is covered in geods. Those things are pretty cool. I did haul a pretty nice one out and it's in my yard.