jdhunter

Got hit for two junior tags and one tag for myself. Nice.

Here are a few pics from my opening day buck. This is my best coues so far, it scored 103 5/8 with it's broke brow tine. I really like how heavy, wide (18"), and dark the antlers are. Unit 22 has been very good to me the last three years as I have killed nice deer opening day each of the last three years. I am getting a pictures together of all three bucks I will post later. I really enjoy this site thanks for all of your stories and pictures.

After killing a very nice 100+ inch coues deer a few days earlier I was fortunate enough to help my brother-in-law kill his biggest deer to date. He hunted for three days with no luck I took him to some of my favorite mule deer honey holes and located tons of hunters no deer so I decided to take him to an old favorite of mine. We located this buck which he was able to kill, after shooting this nice tall deer a huge deer that dwarfed this deer stood up and trotted away slowly. It was such a thick area that we were unable to see the other seven bucks until after the kill shot was made. My brother-in-law didn't care about the bigger deer he was very thrilled with his deer. His third point on the his left side was 18'' and the points were all near ten inches each. A young deer with great genetics. My brother-in-law with his trophy Both of us after a great day

Greg good to hear from you. I posted the pictures on the regular rifle coues posting. It may be a few pages back it is titled 18" wide coues or something similar.

123 lbs.

I will post better pics this week. I had no camera with me on the hunt because I was only hunting for coyotes. The friends who helped me get the bear out had a video camera. I have a pretty cool video explaining the story showing the bear and coyote I will post it as soon as figure out how to do it.

I had a crazy calling evening last Friday. My calling partner and I went out for a normal evening of calling coyotes, what happened was totally unexpected. We set up for about five minutes when I noticed a coyote one ridge over about 200 yrds away. The coyote wouldn't get any closer so I shot the coyote with my 223. When the gun went off a big dark cinammon bear stood up and looked at me about 30 yrds aways in a deep thick ravine. I knew bear season was still open in this unit and each year I have a bear tag that usually goes unfilled. I quickly shot the bear in the head because I had only the 223 and the bear fell. It was absolutely crazy. The bear was over 300 lbs and had a 20 inch skull. 2 hours later after calling a couple other friends to come and help we had the bear to the truck some 500 yrds away. We had one pretty male coyote and one pretty bear that is estimated to be over 15 yrs old. You barely notice the Bears neck it was a big round bear from head to tail. The picture does the bear no justice. Unbelievable

I am a new member to this site but have been visiting this site for a year or so. I am a newley converted coues addict for two years now. It seems that the more time I put into these deer the more I learn and respect them for how they survive in the habitat that they live in. The past two years I have put a lot of time into learning Unit 22 and it payed off very nicely this year for my Dad and I. We were successful last year in harvesting small deer so this year I was hoping we would get a chance at a couple of nice deer. Opening day on Oct. 23 was a very great yet strange day. I usually like to get to our area by mid morning the day before the hunt and hunt the first weekend but this year my business came first and I had to drive from my home in the White Mountains to Mesa for a three hour appointment at 11 am that would mean that I might be able to hunt for an hour or two on my way back home. I figured no big deal I could spend alot of time with my dad as he came with me to Mesa. We figured we would take a look at our area near Payson and hunt Monday and Tuesday. Everything seemed to take a little longer than expected and I began to wonder if I would get to hunt at all opening day. When my dad and I finally arrived to the main area where I like to park and walk from I noticed no one had been near there, this made me feel like I may have a chance to see something on the way into our glassing location. We quickly changed into our hunting gear and headed off down the first ridge. I told my dad to take one side as I would take the other, we planned on meeting at the bottom of the ridge to move on from there. I got to the end of the ridge first. As I was figuring my dad should be there any minute I heard something coming from where he was. I figured it was him. As I looked over it was a really nice buck. I was shocked to see it as it was shocked to me. It quickly turned left into a large ravine with another nice buck following close behind. I had seen these deer on the same ridge before and noticed which trail they used though the thick manzanita to escape. I lifted my rifle and held in an opening I figured they would go through. The first deer appeared in my cross hairs so I pulled the trigger. I noticed that only one deer was still running I knew I had dropped the first deer. My dad about had a heart attack when he heard the first shot because he had no idea he had even flushed the deer towards me. He quickly got to where I was and I pointed out where the next deer was heading. It crested the next rise, my dad put a nice shot on him and he fell. All of a sudden we realized we had been hunting for fifteen minutes and had filled our tags. We could not believe it. We both drug our deer down to a level spot to to clean them when I noticed an old Lion kill of a very nice coues buck. So we had three nice racks in the matter of minutes. What a day. The only thing that could have made it better was if I could have found the missing piece to the antler of the deer I shot. The deer fell hard a couple of times and broke his main beam. I looked for over an hour for the broken piece. It makes me sick that he broke. O well.