mountaingoat

AntlerObsession, I would be so upset with myself if I didn't have take this opportunity to comment on your post. I just have to say that the deer you shot with your girl bow is really tiny and my dad can beat up your dad. Great job on your deer! Sounds like you had a blast. Next time can I go with you?

uuuh...6543 Thanks for the fun holiday game.

Way to go on the bull. And good job for your dad. Keep the ol guys hunting! That is the first time I have seen the "claw". I should have been the one that invented that. Very cool.

hey yall. these are some pics that a someone sent me. I dont know if this is the same buck that everyone is talking about but if you look at the date on the pictures this is a 2006 deer and not an 08. is this the 145" buck everyone has seen. If someone else has some other pictures of this year, post emup.

good job on the buck and good job on that stinkin coati. I have only seen two of those things in my whole life up until about 3 years ago and now it seems like they are everywhere. That is so crazy that it charged you. how exciting!

email sent and a call.

I appreciate the info on the subject. Looking at faces and body size has always helped me judge the age of a deer but looking last at the antlers to confirm the age. Maybe i have it just bass-ackwards. The 8 year old spike is what really confused me.

There are sooo many deer in this unit. I think the trick to getting a buck is getting off the roads. The further the better.

I put some pictures in a new post of our "harvest". I hope this eases your pain or makes it worse. I guess you'll just have to go give em heck on the bow hunt. The picture just before this post, is that pole stuck through that deers chest. What a brilliant idea.

We were stopped on the way off the mountain by a game and fish officer. He did the routine checking of tags and licences. He was a real nice guy. He checked the teeth for the ages of the deer we had taken and told us something that I had not heard of before. As he looked at the teeth he informed us that a little 2x3 was only 1.5 years old, a second larger by 3 times 2x3 was 2.5 years old, a third 2x3 that was about 10 inches smaller than the second was 3.5 years old, and the fourth deer a small 3x3 a little bigger than the first deer was 6 years old. The officer said that he had checked a spike recently that was 8 years old. He said that there is no way to tell the age of coues deer by there horns. After he told us of this we noticed the faces of our deer looked mature according to the years that he had stated. You hear these guys on the hunting videos say that this deer is such and such years old and that one is such and such years old by looking through their binos at the deers horns. Are they full of you know what? or is this ONLY true for coues deer and not neccessarily muleys or eastern white tail? I just thought some of you might not have known this either or can actually shed a little more light on the subject for us....anyone?...

Here are a few pictures of our success this past week. These deer are from unit 33. WThey are not the deer that we had picked out but we all had a blast hunting in there anyway. They are nice and fat and delicious. One of these deer were found in a most peculiar way. I was glassing a hillside that I had seen some good bucks on, waiting for one of them to come out and present themselves to me, when all of a sudden the canyon bottom erupted with movement. There was so much movement that it caught me off guard. Out of the trees and bushes came coatimundi. They started moving across the bottom of the canyon and I counted just over 70! I couldn't believe it. I watched them hoping that they might jump something off the bottom. Sure enough they did. I heard one of the coati get really aggressive with something, then out jumped a little 2x2. It was only 150 yards away, just standing there defeated out of his bed. The deer walked off and found a new bed. The coati continued up the canyon. My brother was on the next finger over from me. He saw the coati and was watching in amazment because of the number of them when they attacked something in the bushes. Out came a 3x3. It stood there as if this encounter was not a new thing. My brother had a 125 yard shot. He made a great shot and it didnt even take a step. So he got his deer with the help of the coatimundi. The other 3 deer did not have near as bizarre of a story. We just glassed them up on the sides of hills. The only thing was packing 4 deer out 5 miles of rough country along with our tents and sleeping bags and gear.

It takes a heck of a man to hold 200 lbs. Try holding three 70lb bags of concrete and see the arch in your back.

That is a great deer for your first. good job.

I am a newbie here on the forum although I have done quite a bit of coues hunting. I have hunted units 27,28,31,32 and 33 for coues deer. I have hunted 32 the most. I have a tag in unit 33 this year. This is the second year for this unit. I have put in quite a bit of time scouting and have found some pretty decent bucks. Has anyone noticed different habbits of the deer from one unit to another? Last year I had the first hunt of the season. I noticed that the deer were staying stowed up under trees when you would walk close to them just like a pheasant will do. They wait until the last second and then flush. I have not noticed this in other units. Is this typical coues deer behavior for unit 33 only or have i just not run into it before? is this a learned protective behavior for these deer because there are a lot of people in the area riding quads and shooting guns all year long from Tucson? Can someone expound or confirm?

great deer!