Redbeard

HOLY MOLY!!! That Andy is good luck eh? Nice job Josh...well I guess even if it took three shots That thing is a freak. I'm so bad at guessing scores as I proved with my buck and you are good at taking pictures but I'm gonna guess 120" Congrats dude!

Josh never does ANYTHING without an antler in his hands. I used to be that way too but kinda got away from it for awhile. Now that I have this buck sitting on top my TV I gotta polish it up for a while every evening.

Does anybody else (besides Josh GRONG) fondle their antlers while watching TV? I sure am enjoying this rack.

Way to go Matt! Great story. That is the kind of work and committment that makes success so sweet.

It is just dumb but seeing as how AZGFD wants to get hunter success as low as possible I would expect it to happen here soon. There is a huge difference between scents and a pile of dead carp or jelly doughnuts. Salt is somewhere in between I think.

Should be pretty easy to tell by comparing the sizes of the skull and teeth. Also Mulies have a much deeper "dent" in the side of the nose in front of the eye. FWIW I compared the skull and tooth/jaw size of the 117" coues I just killed and a 93" I shot a couple years ago and they are identical. They don't grow bigger heads just bigger antlers.

Nice story and pictures. Too bad you couldn't have rewritten the ending.

Doug, I have been saying for years that until I get a big coues buck I'll hunt them with any legal weapon. I would have hunted them with a howitzer if I could have but now it is back to the bow for me. Time to get a good one with a stick. I am all about fair chase and don't use radios, cell phones, or anything like that though. Are you still trad bow hunting? I'm still switching back and forth but now that it is javelina season I'll be using the Morrison Dakota longbow.

Thanks for all the compliments on the buck. I wish I could say I had been hunting this buck for a long time like I have done for my elk but this was just a case of knowing coues deer habitat, doing my scouting by topo and aerial photo, and hunting hard. I got a couple of tips from my friend Lance about some nearby areas as well. I've collected over 200 coues deer sheds over the years and have been trying to get a big one like this for a long time. I feel very fortunate to have finally taken my buck of a lifetime. It kind of feels like it was finally the right time. I have been trying to draw this tag for years because I knew the quality of bucks in the unit and had spent some time hunting it on early hunts in years past. This is just one of those cases where a whole lot of stuff came together....finallly.

Well, I put a careful cable and tape on my buck and it came out to 117 2/8 gross and 114 5/8 net. It keeps getting bigger! We'll see how it holds up in 60 days but I think it will be within an inch of that. I can't believe it is that big but that's what I get and I kinda know what I'm doing since I've been an official measurer for over 10 years now. I just don't see it even when I'm holding the rack but 19 2/8 beams and a 15 7/8 inside spread make a big frame that just throws off my normal perspective. Each antler measures over 50" and if I look at them as single antlers I definitely see that but then again I've seen a lot more 50"+ sheds than 117" racks so that makes sense. Anyhow I'm shocked at how badly I misjudged this buck in the field. Makes me think about the big bucks I thought were 115 + in the past. They must have been 130's! Now I'm headed out for a few days to the desert with the family to go whack a pig, carp deer, quail, ducks, ..... I can hardly wait to get back to boil out the skull though.

I've been gone all day today and headed out tomorrow to set up camp for some javelina and "carp" bowhunting to start the new year but I'll put a more careful tape on him before I go and let you know the numbers.

I hunted friday-monday in unit 33 and did not see a single big buck or any rutting activity. I glassed over 100 does and 20 bucks so I think that is a prety good sample. How about you guys? The biggest buck I saw was 85" 3X3 that I could have killed with a bow. I have a rifle tag and am trying to hold out for something over 100". I fought wind and cold Fri. and Sat. then Monday I broke my scope. Typical Dec. hunt for me. I had major issues just getting out of town too. I'll be out again after Xmas hoping for big time rutting.

Believe me I didn't shoot him for his score. I did not even try to take his rack apart while watching to come up with a score. I just was going by my impression of him. I just knew he was good enough and ought to make 100". Besides it was just time.

You know great minds think alike. While I was stalking my buck it occured to me that we could take pictures of Jessie with it and her bow to fool Devin into thinking she shot it. Andy was thinking the same thing about him and Josh. Josh is always playing jokes like that on other people so this was payback. It was a perfect set up because he knew Andy had already taged a buck this year and there was no way he could have known that we would all run into eachother out there.

Thanks guys. I want to hear some guesses on the score from those that don't already know. I want to see if you guys are as bad at estimating score as I am.

I just got back from a couple more days hunting in 33. Sat. I saw 74 does and 4 bucks. The biggest buck was a pretty 80" 2 pt. with no eyeguards. He was bedded by himself. Could have killed him with a bow but I'm still holding out for something bigger. I saw another 30 does and two bucks today. I saw one tiny buck each day chasing does so at least something is getting the urge. I almost popped a lion Sat. evening. There was one doe totally locked on to a juniper stomping her foot for half an hour. Eventually I heard a bunch of snorting and there came a lion right through this group of does. They didn't run away and the lion walked right on by. I ran over to the edge of the hill I was on where I would have had about a 250 yard shot but I never saw him again. I think he was still in the area this morning because a bunch of deer busted out of a nearby drainage all looking over their shoulders. I also saw a B&C coatimundi. Looked like a 40 pounder!

I thought mine was gonna be pretty dumb until I read that coosfan burned his truck to the ground! When I was 14 deer hunting with my Dad in 20C we were walking back to camp when he rememberred we had driven from camp and left the truck about a mile or two away. Being a great dad he said, "Why don't you hike back and get the truck and drive it back to camp." I was only 14 but had learned to drive at 12 so I was pretty psyched to get to drive by myself. I got to the truck opened the door and remembered to unload my rifle before driving. So I laid the .264 mag on the bench seat and clicked off the safety so I can unload the chamber. BOOM! the gun goes off and rips the seat and blows a hole the size of a golf ball through the door. I was of course deaf and in shock and fearing for my life because my Dad was going to kill me. As I drove up to him he was pretty excited 'cause he heard the shot. I couldn't even talk I just pointed at the door when he said, "Did you get one?" He want ballistic (pardon the pun) I tried to explain that it just went off when I clicked the safety. After getting a thorough a$$ chewing he and the other guys in camp decided to test the gun. On about the 20th time it did it again. I was off the hook on that at least but I learned to always unload away from the truck and point the gun in a safe direction. My Dad was a contractor and all the guys we hunted with worked for him and I worked with them too even as a kid so I NEVER heard the end of it. One of them took the door and screwed it to a 4X8 sheet of plywood to mount it for me. When I was working for Game and Fish I was building a mini electroshocking rig to take on a river trip and shock fish in the Grand Canyon. I had some 1/4" steel cable to cut but no cable cutter so my boss said to cut it with a hacksaw. I told him that was a dumb idea but he insisted. He held one end with vice grips while I held the other with my hand and furiously cut with the saw. Well, the saw skipped and cut into my thumb half way through right at the base of my thumbnail. It had this nice blade width groove through the nail. Pretty much cut it off. I took one look at it then grabbed a paper towel and wrapped it up to apply pressure. I had him drive me to the ER in Flag where Dr. Smart A$$ said, "I guess we can't trust you with power tools." So I said, "It was a hacksaw." He looked shocked and said, "How many times did you have to go back and forth to cut it that deep." I just busted up laughing.

I just keep talking to them real friendly like until they get a creepy feeling about me and leave.

Didn't you get any pictures of illegals?

NICE!!! Man that is a great buck. Looks bigger than you say it is and has lots of character. Good work. I know you guys have been busting your butts scouting and deserve a great reward like that. I'll be there in Dec. looking for his brother. Feel free to tie one up for me, I'm not too proud to accept a little help from the masters.

Maybe this is old news but somebody sent me pictures of a HUGE bull killed in UT by Jimmy Ryan. One of the pics had him and 8 Mossback guys in it. There are so many guys it looks like a reform school class photo. Says the bull scores 443 and I totally believe it could gross every bit of that. It is a 6X7 with the 7th being an extra 2nd point on the rt. side. With that point deducted it would still gross score well over 400. Might net close to 415 typical! Nontypical I bet it would net close to 430. You guys know me and what I think about that kind of talk but I know what big bulls look like and I saw these pictures. Why do they need 8 guides to get this bull? <_<

The problem with shooting young bears is that bears don't reproduce at the same rate as deer. Sows usually don't have cubs until age 4-5. They just don't replace the population as fast as deer, elk, and other game animals. It is very difficult to determine the sex of a bear when you are shooting at it with a rifle from 400 yards too so sows get shot at a fairly high rate. This is an argument FOR hunting bears with hounds. You can size them up pretty good if they are in a tree. Let me say that I actually don't like the idea of hunting bears with hounds but it does make sense for management.

Yeah, High 80's. That's what I was guessing. I happen to know that the crazy lookin' dude with the Nice Johns T-shirt is a dwarf.

Dogman got my sheds! That's the buck I was trying to shoot last year! I've been looking for those. I gotta see them. What do they score?

The real danger is if they get out or if they contact wild animals at the fence. That's how the whole CWD problem got started. They had some animals at the vet school in Ft. Collins and somehow the wild ones in the area caught it from them. Too bad about the sheds.