.270

hey singleshot, if you're ol' man is that crotchety steve bingham character, then you did live across the street from the guy's grandad. and he is in the joint bigger than heck. dang idjut anyway. my cousin now owns his granddads old ranch. how is your ol' man? hope he is well. last time i saw him he measured a lion for me. he was recovering from a broken ankle. said his horse stomped him or some deal. talk about a cool dude. he told us a story about tryin' to finish off a deer that they ran over one night, with an axe that about cracked me up for good. you're a lucky kid to have him for dad. he was by far the best teacher i ever had. hope he is well and tell him howdy for me. Lark.

hey josh, i know zakly what you're sayin'. most lions won't top 100 lbs. but occasionally one does get big. the guy i was with when we got the 220 pounder has caught somewhere between 400-500 lions over the years. he figured that one cat was probably at least 40 pounds heavier than anything else he'd ever caught. we were over 20 miles from any road, deep in the gila wilderness. big cat country. and it was a wierd built cat too. thick like a jag. huge legs. the one my boy and me got was also deep in wild country. and he was a thumper. i'd loved to have taken him several years earlier, when he was in his prime. he'd have been well over 200. i have some photos of him. i'll see if i can scan one an show it to you. i always carry a 10', 1/4" tape with me. he was exactly 9' before i skint him. we carried out all but the guts and we had right at 150 lbs. as far as the stuff my granddad and his brother shot, take it however you want. those 2 were probably the best fur trappers there ever was. might have guys as good, but noone was better. and when they shot the big lion and the really big grizzly (the took several of them when younger) it was 1912 and the country they were in is still wild. both the big lion and the griz had a heck of a story with them. they skinned both and packed the hides out. the lion for the bounty, all they needed was the ears, but it was so big they wanted to keep it awhile anyway. someone bought the griz hide. there is a sonoran in the smithsonian that Ben Lilly killed in willow creek, north of hanagan, in the teens that is estimated at 900-1000 lbs. i was able to pack out an 8'3" tom whole that weighed 183 pounds. sometimes cats are able to get big. but most don't ever see 150. i see em in magazines all the time where they say they're 160 pound and such, and they don't look like they'll weigh 100. but i've seen a few that were real big. i remember one that this ol' guy in safford killed in the 70's that was real close to 200 lbs. i helped a taxidermist friend skin it. it was a real monster cat for sure. there was even photos in the paper, so it musta been big. and believe me, i ain't tryin' to belittle the cat you guys caught. he just looks shriveled up and i'd never seen a cat that old that looked so small. later, Lark.

i'm shocked crb don't know what them little smiley faces mean. i was jokin' dude. crap. in fact, the shoop boys are my cousins. sorta distant, but still relation. i've known bruce my whole life. i mean my whole life, and that's a long time. i think that's a young muley from excellent genes tho. it's sorta shaped like a coues, but no brows and the back forks and the big front forks sure look muleish. whatever it is, it's a neat rack. Lark.

what's all this stuff about reduced recoil? if ya can't take a little kick go bowhuntin'. and, i'm the smartest guy there is and i say the .270 is best. so does my ol' man, so that settles it. if you want to get a kid a good deer gun that won't kick much, get a .243. great cartridge too. 30/'06, now that's funny, i don't care who ya are........Lark.

not bad for a little carp. i know alla them guys. couple of em are cops so they probly poached it. hehehe. Lark.

crap, how many times do i hafta tell you guys to get a .270 and forget the rest o' them guns. Lark.

ain't no tellin' what a guy is gonna find. my great uncle was a gov't trapper from the early 20's until the 60's. he found more stuff in caves than anyone i ever knew. for several years after he retired he guided archeologists from different universities to some of his finds. he knew where there were elevated graves in Az. like the ones common in the movies. in another cave he found what looked like a whole tribe all layed out dead and some of them had eagle feather head dresses and reed breast plates, completely different than typical Az. indians. i think the indians wandered all over heck and back and on occasion, croaked in country foreign to em. too much is speculated and not enough is known. leaving the dead dude alone was the right thing to do. and the country TLH was in is full of unfound ruins. if there was a rifle there, then it was fairly recent. at least in the last 150 years probably. maybe it was an old mountain man who took up indian ways? no tellin'. i have a pal who is an author of some note. he told me that the country between roosevelt lake and young has so many caves that are fulla stuff that it'd amaze a guy. he has a buncha photos of caves he found that are just fulla pots. myself, about all i've ever found in the way o' indian stuff is mostly some arrow heads and pottery and a couple pots that were uncovered by the rain. a few other little doodads. but i can't for the life o' me figger how somebody can dig up another man's grave and sell off the stuff he was buried with.

josh, i can see it has a fair sized head on it, but the body looks all shriveled up. usually when them ol' toms get that old, they are really big. how long was he? did you get a measurement on the skull. i've never seen a tom that old with a head that big and carcass that small. looks like a basset lion. some years back my oldest son and i stumbled into a big tom while coues hunting. by far the oldest lion i ever saw. he was 9' long and weighed around 175 and was poor as heck. he was probably 225 in his prime. he looked a lot like this cat, all rough coated and beat up, but dang he was huge. forearm was bigger than my thigh. i caught a calf killer in new mex with a friend o' mine once. killed 3 of our dogs and hurt several others real bad. we took a game warden back the next day to show him the calf and such. he took some scales. it was only a 7 footer, but weighed 220 pounds. built like a jag. when my grandad was a little kid his dad used to pack him and his older brother into stanley butte and leave em for several months to trap. when it started to warm up he'd come and get em and pack out all the furs. they caught a really big lion in a trap and killed it. didn't have a tape measure so they took a rope and knotted it so they could measure it when they got home. said it was 10' long!!!! he had a heck of story to go with it too. they killed a sonoran grizzly on the same hunt that they figured was near 1000 pounds. and they were 14 an 11 at the time and all they had for firepower was 2 single shot .22's. i guess kids were tougher then. good deal on the lion. shoot more of em. Lark.

were ya huntin' on brokeback mountain? Lark.

alla you midget deer afficionados that think muleys are dumb and easy to hunt, ain't never hunted big ones. spikes are easy to shoot, no matter what species they are. they way i see, little deer, little brains. then that transponds on to the folks that hunt em. them poor little coues just sorta wander around and bump into stuff. i find em all the time dead under cliffs where they just fell off it, because they didn't run into a tree or rock to turn em. and talk about lion bait. if it wern't for them goofy little special ed deer, a lotta lions would starve. you ever see "jackass"? coues are like "weeman" of the deer world. coues deer huntin' might also be sorta like how you always see guys in them big ford super duty diesels, jacked up a couple feet, big ol' mudders on em. and when they get out they ain't as tall as the runnin' board. guess it's just whatever a guys level of competence is. sorta like a duck hunters. all they can outsmart is ducks. anyway, that's the way i see it, and i'm the smartest guy there is. i've told ya that a buncha times. remember, when your huntin' coues, shoot low. , Lark.

it's still a "political" appointment. when was the last time that a real live, no bs outdoorsman was on the commission? how about never. most of the time at least 2 or 3 of the folks on the commission have never even owned a hunting license. look at some of the clowns we've have had in the past 15 or 20 years. i have a couple close personal friends who were on the commission at one time. good people. but had absolutley no outdoors background. never hunted. never fished. never left town. and they were horrible commissioners. went along with whatever they were told to. one guy, and he was a good friend (he croaked a couple years ago or he would still be), had to change his political party from republican to democrat so he could get appointed. so much for the deal of not having more than so many from different parties. he did it too, just for the appointment. he hoped it would lead to other, better appointments by the governor. as long as politics take precedence over biology, we're screwed. Lark.

woo, man that's a ugly lion. was he packin' a paper bag with him? most o' the time when they're old as the hills like that, they're pretty big. that cat looks a little smallish. not trying to run it down or anything. anytime ya get a lion it's a good deal, but it looks like a young cat, bodywise anyway. i can see by it's teeth that it's gotta lotta age on it. anyway, good job. shoot more of em. Lark.

here ya go folks. for alla ya'lls that get unlucky and shoot a pig. hey bullwidgeon, don't go on no diets or nothin' for new years. we can wash ya up a little so's ya don't stink quite so bad and i'm a bettin' that you could take first prize. ain't no way nobody from the gila valley could tell ya from a full blood javaleeny. Lark. http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2005/12/...lifestyle01.txt

whatever you use, make sure it has blanks in it. i'm gonna use a muzzleloader loaded with confetti. Lark.

well, Merry Christmas, everbuddy. an' a Happy New Year, too. Lark.

somethin' tells me that there's gonna be bullwidgeon (whatever that is. is widgeon scandanavian for feces?) bones a bleachin' in the desert somewhere for folks to find. they'll be all together cuz nothin' will feed on it's stinkin' carcas and scatter em around. while we're sorta on the subject, what kinda wierd stuff have folks seen whilst in the wild? i mean other than a bullwidgeon. seems like a guy catches folks in some strange situations sometimes. Lark.

coosfan, it's gotta be the same guy. or one of the couple o' jerks he ran with. one of em is dead and the rest are all makin' license plates. i useta always go to river reservoir in greer when the water was low and get back all o' my rapalas that i broke off and everybody elses junk they lost there too. when i get to thinkin' about it, i've found a lotta stuff, but mostly like knives and boxes o' ammo and stuff. stuff folks left on their bumper and things like that. anything made in the last 40 years ain't too neat. arrow heads, tommyhawks, old guns, old saddles, etc., that's the stuff that's cool to find. a guy i used to work with used to hunt muleys in the praries around bonita. he said on more than one occasion he'd find a really old saddle, maybe a rusty old rifle and if he looked, human bones. he checked into it a little and was told that ol' Texas John Slaughter useta run down horse thiefs, kill em, dump all their tack and belongings on the ground and take the horse and ride away. be sorta creepy, but still be neat i guess. once while i was in college we were on a lab up on mt graham for a botany class. i was leanin' agin' a oak tree that had an old hole in it that was drippin' nasty sap out of it. i probed it a little with my knife and made something shine. dug it out and it was what looked like an old mini ball or maybe a .45/70 slug. had to have been there a long time. there's neat stuff out there. just gotta stumble into it. Lark.

hey Josh, whoever told ya them krag rounds were from the 1840's or 1860's is really off. the .30/40 didn't even come about until the 1890's. it was a real popular military round. saw a lot of action in cuba and the phillipines during the spanish American war. in both krag rifles and model 1895 winchesters. that bear trap is something else. musta been left there by a gov't trapper. i've actually helped set a couple o' them things over the years. the things you find when in wild places are really cool. i've never found anything of any value, but sure enjoy it when i find anything at all. found several dozen arrow heads here and there. found a sardine can in a cave in the gila wilderness that ben lilly used to camp in. found some blue glass and stuff in the same area where geronimo used to hide out at times. my kids found an old goat bell a couple years ago in a place that hadn't had angoras for nearly 70 years. i think i probably know the guy that bought the truck for cash. if it's the same one, he's in the joint right now for various things. found some old mule shoes and oxe shoes over the years. lotsa pottery. a couple o' pots. seen a lotta petroglyphs and paintings in caves. when we was kids we found a bighorn skull in a cave. put there by indians a long time ago. lotsa matates and manos. a couple o' tommyhawk heads. my ol' man told me a story about a buck he shot with his ol' .348 winchester years ago. some years later i was in the same canyon and found 2, .348 brass laying together. had to sit there and ponder that one for minute. tryin' to visualize the ol' codger as a young man shootin' and then punkin' that buck outta there. Lark.

i used to know a guy we called mr. ed because he was so butt ugly. huge teeth, long john kerry lookin' face, big ears. you don't think.......naw, my bad for even thinkin' it. Lark.

Amanda, i have a suggestion that will make a lot of folks happy and will dramatically improve everything concerning wildlife in Az. immediately. shroufe retires and the commission all resign. our illustrious governess appoint a commission of folks with no politcal ties and who really give a dang about Az. and they go find us a good commissioner. anything that happens after that will be an improvement. Lark.

a .270. Lark.

big moose horns work the best for coues deer. . really tho, does rattlin' work for midget deer? Lark.

ya just don't get it do ya, patrick? i guess if i'm going under the speed limit and you don't like it then i'm really speeding. right? or if i got a building permit, i really didn't get one, if you don't like what i'm building. right? or any other rule or regulation that you don't like? cowboys are ruled and regulated to death. if they don't follow the rules, regulations and laws, then they forfeit their lease. if you don't like cows, fine. but don't go slingin' accusations around that ain't so. anything that a cowboy does on public is regulated. getting on here and accusing a bunch of folks of doing evil things, when they ain't, is sorta irresponsible, in my humble opinion. with guys like you out there, no wonder you're always running into locked gates. it's joint use land. read up on the meaning. if you don't like it then get the laws changed. don't bash folks for working inside o' the system. Lark.

awhile back a guy i know was complain' about a guy that rode into his camp, made a samwich, drank a couple sody waters, left the tent open, shot a hole in their water can, stoled a couple jugs o' whiskey, tossed a head o' cabbage and lettuce in the air and shot em with his shotgun, peed in some empty beer bottles and put lids back on em and put em in the cooler. guess there was just a whole buncha vandalism took place. i told him i was sorry, but he was still mad at me. Lark.

Amanda was the only one that caught on to what i was saying. per what the gov't considers overgrazing, you can't overgraze on public land unless you break the law. if i'm a rancher, i'm gonna run every head they'll let me. don't badmouth a group of people because of a perception. especially if it's a perception about something that is probably perfectly legal and acceptable per the grazing rules and laws. just because you think that something is overgrazed, don't make it so. there are lotsa cops that their only job is to monitor cowboys. lots of em. don't lecture me on grazing laws. i'm fairly experienced with it. if a rancher is locking up public land, it's against the law. even the state land that has the "no trespassing, state land" signs on it. read what the sign says in small print. but if they are locking private land that has a road that goes onto public, that's their perogative. i.e. the tapia woman on aravaipa. too bad it happens, but it does. i've never been wealthy or fortunate enough to own private land that led onto public land, so i don't know what i'd do if i was ever in that predicament. i'd like to think that it'd be open to sportsman. but after a windmill gear case or two got shot and after i had to round up a pasture for the 15th time because some jerk left a gate open and i got tired of picking up beer cans and other assorted trash that just happens to pop up after a season, etc., etc., even a caring sportsman like myself might get mad and hang a lock. and don't think that ranchers who run cattle on public land aren't policed. they put up with more than any of us do. because of the perception and high profile, they are always scrutinized a lot closer than you can even imagine. are cattle good for the land. yes and no. depends a lot on your opinion i guess. i personally don't know any "bad" ranchers. and i know a lot of em. and if you think that nothing ever happens to folks that won't obey the rules, read this. it's in the paper today. and it isn't about overgrazing. it's about a guy that doesn't want to obey the rules. http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2005/12/...news/news02.txt