kidso

I have 300 rounds of NIB Blazer 9mm ammo that I will trade for 280 rounds of NIB brass 5.56 ammo. Will also trade a 50 round box of UMC .223 for a 50 round box of 5.56. Call or text Keith 480-231-4654

I think it was Reed Peterson who told a story about a guy who ran after a bear while barking and bawling at it like a hound dog and actually ended up treeing the bear. Is that what really happened here? I think that you could pull that off!!

What do you have in your spot there? Looks like juniper berries in the dirt?

That bear is almost perfectly upright on his legs...very human-like!

Second bear is probably mamma pushing her cub along.

Going out Monday to check two bear cams I set 7 weeks ago and to try some more calling for spring bear. I'm sure my batteries have been dead for three weeks now, so any pictures on the cam will be outdated for the mini-hunt but will be fun to check! Where are your bear pics James?

I would harvest that bear without hesitation. Don't think it is a true monster in the bear world just yet, though. It is roughly in the same size category as that recently posted by AZSHEDHUNTER05. Great bear! http://www.coueswhitetail.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=55690

Decent bear, short and stubby looking tree-trunk legs. Very compact and sturdy bear. I would take him.

Played with my twins all weekend and put the shotgun project on hold. Might try it tonight after they go to bed. Will take pictures to document my tinkering.

So, it looks like 4 to 5 inches across the front pad? Usually a 6-inch front pad gets me excited, a 7-inch pad makes me hysterical, and an 8-inch pad causes me to change my drawers!

Agreed. Some of the Phoenix dive shops do their certification dives at Roosevelt. Just call around and ask.

No sow pics to go with the cub? Nice variety of animals.

I kind of agree...at least that it is not bear, or a small cub perhaps. Your posted bear tracks are way bigger than the brown fuzzy dot could have made!

I dislike his politics and his demeanor as a man. Twice, I did not vote for him. Nonetheless, I am an ardent patriot and a strong believer in our U.S. Constitution and I respect the office which he holds. So, yes, I would shake his hand if the opportunity arose and discuss our differing opinions if time allowed.

It was a "desert bear" only because it was harvested in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. However, I called it in around the 5,500 foot elevation zone in a mountain canyon covered with oaks and manzanita. It was not a "prickly pear" bear from lower desert elevations. Perhaps your state has fewer black bears that have solid black hair or fur color because New Mexico is closer to the Great Plains than is Arizona, and thus traditionally had more grizzlies, which possibly lead to less early predation of young black bears with lighter hair colors as they looked like grizzlies to their natural predators? This would cause an increase in the survival of black bears possessing the genetic alleles for lighter hair color and is an example of a "survival of the fittest" strategy in nature that relies on a weaker animal mimicking a stronger more successful one. Thus, in New Mexico's breeding black bear popultion, there is likely a greater percentage of color phase alleles than that present in the Arizona black bear population. This makes sense to me, partcularly when applied to "western state" black bear populations versus "eastern state" populations. Interesting co-evolution and adaptation theories...

Beautiful color! Saw a similar colored bear today in "Out of Africa" wildlife park and it got my blood pumping!

Love the photo showing the great butchering job you did to harvest the meat!!

Bass Pro Shop in Mesa has at least one employee who is a measurer, so I would bet that Cabela;s does as well. Did you ever post a picture of your bear along with your hunting story?

I'll try this over the weekend. Thanks.

Great interpretation, except I think the boar is looking for a little action, instead of a meal.

Thanks. Skulls look great! Did you make rugs from the bear pelts?

Three bear skulls? I thought I remembered two from your story last year? Refresh my memory please.

I know very little about shotgun mechanics. I opened op the pump barrel on the fore-end and took out a big long spring, but could not figure out how to take off the wood fore grip. Only a few screws on the metal face near the trigger area, but could not see how it would take apart the gun. I have no idea what a manual slide release is. There is a little tab hlanging down and I used to push that up and could slide the pump back and forth, but that is not working now.

Here is my story...affectionately called "The Anomaly." Well, let me begin by stating that I love to call in bears using hand predator calls. It is my passion, and I have enjoyed this form of hunting for the past two decades. I have called in some 20 plus bears during this haul, but had NEVER called in an early season spring bear before…until yesterday. I had always assumed that these bears emerging from hibernation were more interested in consuming grasses than chasing down wounded mammals, as my calling experiences had repeatedly attested. However, yesterday’s actions destroyed this predictable pattern. The odyssey began on Friday after work as I raced up to unit 3C to set up a trail camera on a water hole that I had located on Google Earth. I wanted to gather data to determine if this would be a suitable spot to sit water for bears in June after my school let out and the air temperatures rose above 100 degrees in the area. Saturday, before sunrise, I met up with a new hunting buddy to select a location for another trail camera and to cold-call some of the numerous shallow canyons in the unit for bear. Stand one started at sunrise and went longer than an hour with no favorable response. Stand two, was a repeat of stand one, and I began to sense the disappointment in my buddy’s disposition. I explained that calling for bear is a lot like fishing. If your cast your line in the water and don’t receive a strike, you reel in your line, move to another spot, and cast again. It’s a numbers game. The more stands you call, the more likely you are to call in a bear. So we moved again and started stand three, which also was a big zero. Stand four brought in a grey fox who began cursing us with its eerie bark after circling behind us and picking up our human scent. Although this event got us excited, I had to provide a reality check and explained that these canyons had little to no feed for bears and most bears in the area were probably still denned up, due to the freezing night temperatures in the area. Nonetheless, I explained my belief that if a bear hears the call, it will come, at least in the fall, and at least until it smells you or loses interest in the wailing chorus that initially enticed it. Stand five was made around noon. Most predator callers quit around this time and hold off calling again until later on in the afternoon or early evening. But, I’ve never really embraced that afternoon tradition, so we continued to move from canyon to canyon casting our proverbial fishing lines into the waters. Stand six was a goose egg. Stand seven proved no better. Stand eight began around 3:00 in the afternoon. Did I mention that this was probably the hottest time of the day? Stand eight, had little to nothing in its favor, other than the fact that it’s canyon actually had a few oak trees in it which could prove useful later on in a fall bear hunt. Stand eight was also that late-in-the-afternoon-hunt when you question if exercising in an air conditioned gym would be more rewarding than sweating and losing weight on a steep remote hillside. It tries your faith and dedication as a caller. Stand eight found me propped up against a long burned out tree trunk, a left over remnant from the largest wildfire that ever plagued Arizona and even threatened the town of Show Low for a while. I was so nonchalant at this point in the day, that I didn’t even secure my mechanical release to the D-loop on my bowstring before settling in to call. In addition, for the first time in the day, I separated myself from my buddy to the point that we actually had no eye contact with one another. And I began to call. No different than before, just a symphony of sadness that truly is music to the accustomed ears. About 15 minutes into the stand, I looked up to my left and saw this this black bear at 15 yards slinking directly towards me. I didn’t have time to wonder why my buddy hadn’t alerted me to the presence of this bear, since he had been watching it approach for the past 100 yards. Wait a second!! He couldn’t alert me because I had set myself up in a position where it was impossible for him to see me or communicate with me!! (Note to self: read Chapter 6 in Predator Calling for Dummies: Safety Concerns). Time slowed down to a trickle. I tried to secure my release to my bowstring at least four times before it finally grabbed on. During those precious moments, I never looked up towards the bear but continued to blow on my call which was now hanging loosely from my mouth like an over-ripened fruit about to fall from a tree branch. I lifted my bow and drew back to my anchor point in one fluid motion and looked straight at the bear through my peep sight. A blind bear could have seen that movement with nothing between him and I other than a now-meager 10 yards of forest soil. But, that is exactly what I was counting on. The bear saw the movement, which caused him to turn broadside as he prepared to flee the trap. And that is when I softly touched my release, which sent an arrow passing completing through the bear just behind the front leg in he the sweet spot. The hunt was now on!! We heard the bear crashing down the hillside into the canyon bottom and then…it turned and headed south!! I crossed my fingers, hoping it wouldn’t go too far south. We waited a full 20 minutes before deciding that we had to start tracking the bear to see how far south it had traveled. We moved incredibly slow as we tracked the pitifully small blood sign that exuded out from each side of the bear. The bear’s fur was so thick, having recently awoken from its winter nap, that it effectively soaked up nearly all of its leaking blood better than a Super Brawny paper towel! Thus, we had an extremely scarce blood trail to follow. Nonetheless, we were able to track the bear into the canyon bottom and southward from that point. Southward, all the way to the barbed-wire fence marking the boundary of the White Mountain Apache Tribe Reservation. Southward, to safety. Southward, to freedom. Southward, to its final resting spot. Southward, rest in peace, my friend.

I go a few times each year and fish off of the "east beaches" on Playa Morua" I believe. Catch anywhere from 10-60 sea trout (corvina) from the beach per high tide that I fish using live bait (anchovie type minnows) that I catch using a minnow net just off shore. Even when the bait is dead, I catch WAY more fish than with Kastmasters of artificial lures. The squid never came close to the live minnows either where I fish at. It is close to the mouth of an estuary and the rising tides bring in all the fish with it. I will be down there June 21-25 this month, as that is when the greatest tidal changes are, which has always caught me the most fish. I also catch sand bass, pompano, and flouder from the shore too.