Coach

Great topic and I agree with you whole heartedly on both issues. I LOVE Arizona, but I am so disappointed with the littering. I don't know what it is about AZ. You go to Colorada, Utah and hardly ever see litter. Here, it's everywhere. And not just the tossing out of beer cans, which is disgusting enough, all along Rim road there are places where people dump couches, refrigerators, truck loads of garbage. It's like we're missing some kind of "state pride" when people are willing to dump trash all over one of the most beautiful places in the country. Please, when you do your clean-up, send me a PM. I'll do my best to be there with my sons to help out. Rim road runs just behind my house, and many times we've talked about organizing a clean-up, but it would take a huge effort including the local boy scouts, maybe some donated roll-offs. There's just so much garbage it's more than a few people could put a dent in. I've also witnessed on more than one occasion people setting up camp, and when they pull out they dump their black tank right where they camped or as they drove out. How classless can you be, to dump your sewage all over? There is NO EXCUSE. There are dump stations at Big Lake, Hon Dah, Lakeside, Show Low, Heber and Payson. At most it costs $5 and in some cases it's free. As to the hunter ethics, I've noticed the same thing. Your story reminds me of my two older sons' first elk hunt in 3C a few years back. That year a new friend offered to help the boys get their elk and I gladly accepted. This guy is pretty wild - I mean the stories he tells of the situations he's been in hunting Mexico, and here in AZ where it has literally been life-and-death type situations. He trained with MMA fighters and to listen to his stories of crazy situations he's been mixed up in, at first I was skeptical and thought they must be exaggerated, but they've been confirmed by other people who know him. Anyway, we showed up to a certain spot well before daylight, with two youth hunters ready to chase elk, listening to the activity and putting together a plan - and exactly as you described, two vehichles drove past us and pulled off less than 100 yards up the road. He just said, "I'll be right back" and walked up the road the two vehicles. I would pay good money to know what he said, because they were out of there so fast - and when he returned all he said was, we won't see them again. And he was right. LOL. Personally, I'm not confrontational. I even felt a little bad that it took this other guy to "set things right". But to your point, you shouldn't have to be. Those guys saw us and were about to jump right in the middle of our set-up. I don't know what the solution is - other than mentoring our kids and other new hunters. Picking up trash along the roadside can go a long way. I always end up with extra trash bags full of someone else's litter. Maybe if we make a concerted effort to clean things up, those slobs will not have an excuse to add to the problem. As for ethics, I'm really encouraged by stories I read here about families hunting together. At the same time there are just as many stories of stolen trail cameras and blinds, fights over water holes. We just have to be good stewards, and if you know someone that steals other people's stuff, speak up. As a side note, I was lucky enough to hunt "the strip", 13B, this year. There was no trash along the roadways, trail cameras were on every water hole with nothing more than a bungee cord. For some reason, the hunters in that area were very respectful of the land and the other hunters. We need to make that the model for all areas in AZ.

As a kid, I grew up hunting birds, rabbits, squirrels - all with a pellet gun. I was constantly turning over rocks and logs catching whatever snake I could. My dad grew up hunting too, but for whatever reason, he gave up hunting, art, photography, backpacking about the time I was born, as best I can figure. It's still a mystery to me, why he just lost interest, about the time i was getting the bug. I joined the boy scouts, hunted every creature in the NE Oklahoma woods, learned to sein minnows, fish, bowfish carp and gar - but I always felt I was doing it all on my own. When I wanted to be a pitcher, my dad put up a net in the yard and tied a t-shirt in the middle. "When you can hit the shirt every time, you're a pitcher", he told me. When deer season approached, I would touch every round of reloaded 30/30 ammo. At best I would sit an old treestand. Usually, my contribution to the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner was a few rabbits and squirrels. Maybe a duck. Around college age, my dad bought me my first compound bow. It was an out-dated PSE but it was all I had. I shot that bow every day with a finger tab and Easton 1117 arrows. My first pair of binoculars were Nikon 10x24 pocket binos, again provided by my dad. I hunted and hunted, and did what I thought then was glassing. Every spare moment in between classes at U of A, I was doing everything I could to learn about hunting. I'd sneak off and hunt the hlls around Tucson with my crappy bow, crappy binocs and absolutely no idea what I was doing. One Saturday morning around Redington pass, with papers to write, tests coming up, I find myself on my first real deer hunt. I didn't get anywhere close to them - I still remember the lead doe catching my scent and ushering 4 or 5 other does and a scraggly 3 point deer out of the area. From then, I tried over and over to get within bow range of a javalina or deer. It seems like it took forever but one day I took my first ever javi with my crappy bow. Not long after I took my first coues with my dad's rifle. I can remember vividly turning off the music, really getting serious, driving into my area and started the process of getting into the hunt. I would love to credit my love for hunting to my dad, but I can't. My love of hunting came from my desire to learn on my own. 20 years later, the only hunts I really care about are my sons' huhts. When I have a tag, I am 100% solo unless one of my boys are there wth me. Well, that 's not totally accuate, the last coues buck I got was a hike-in hunt, and had Greg Lewis not been there it would not have happened. Greg spotted ths buck and walked me right to him.

Get the animal on the skyline, keep wet-wipes in your pack and try to avoid the tounge hanging out. Admittedly, I had to photo-shop some bloody tounge pix on my last hunt. The worst possible photo op, is the back of a truck with the tounge hangin out and lots of blood. The best thing you can do is tuck the legs underneath, wipe away any blood and traces of blood, get behind the animal with as much of a skyline as possilble, and put the focus on the animal, not you.

That's aweome, Brian. I talked with Mark quite a while today when you were out hunting. I can't wait to see the buck you got!

Look for fresh sign. Their scat is unmistakeable, and it's all based on vegetation so it breaks down quickly. Get a good vantage point and glass hard, then do some walking. If they are there, you'll find bedding trees with lots of scat. Work washes - they love to move down low. Lots of mesquite and cat claw with grass is their comfort zone. If you're in an area where the pigs are active, you'll see a lot of digging and rocks moved around. Find the biggest cedar trees you can find and look around for scat. If it's white, it's old and they might not be there. If you find fresh scat, they are there. When pressured, they move together to thick cover, but they usually follow trails. Just get your "mountain man" on and look at the dirt - it will tell you where to find the pigs.

Bump

Great job Jake! Way to get it done!

NICE!!! Well done.

Wow - that is a fantastic buck, and very well done mount!

Looks like it has been very well taken care of!

Man, that is one heck of a fish. Everytime I see a tuna like that I can't help thinking about how much good eating will come of it!

Here's Matt when he was 5. He was already a hunter then. Now he's almost 16. Time goes by so fast you won't even believe it. Take pictures, write down stories. Take every second you have with them as if it were a golden grain of sand. At the end of each day, take the time to remember the good and bad, and just think about both.

Bigorange, it will happen so fast you won't even believe it. One day you are trying to teach them some little things, the next, they're wearing your old boots, the next, they're whispering in your ear some of the old advice you may have already forgotten and teaching you some new things.

Whoah, that's a stud buck. Huge congrats!!!

Wow - Huge congrats!!! Nicely done and then some!

Brings to mind the quote and context from Dances with Wolves.... "Good...Trade".

Wow, that is just an awesome story. Matt, thank you so much for your service to our country. It's men like you that give us all the opportunities we sometimes take for granted. I pray for a full recovery from your injuries, and I'm glad you were able to share this awesome time with Jasmine. And a huge thanks to Shawn and Jimmy for your hard work. If you can read this thread without getting a lump in your throat, you might want to check for a pulse, because this thread embodies what is and always has been great about this country and the people who continue to defend and protect the American Dream.

+1. With that many lions in one place, odds are good you could get one in. IMO calling in a lion and killing it has to be one of the ultimate challenges in AZ.

Wow - what a sweet youth gun! I'm sure it will get jumped on fast.

Congrats on a great buck. I really enjoyed the story! Nice job.

Excellent job!

That is awesome!!! I love Javi's too and would love to see an albino.Thanks for sharing.

Wow Bill, that's gotta be the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time if ever. Not sure I deserve all that , but I sure do appreciate the kind words. I too look forward to the next time we share a campfire. It's been great watching you and Billy grow year-to-year and especially neat to see you guys out there sharing it all together. The father-and-son bond you guys have is just awesome and I love the way you guys keep doubling up on bucks together. Take care, buddy!

What an amazing hunt. I knew up front it would take a lot of preparation and planning. Since it’s a 12 hour drive each way, scouting was going to be difficult. So turned to CWT and leaned on the members here, and some friends who have hunted the area before and anyone willing to give some advice. It’s kind of a long story so I’ll try to sprinkle some pix in here and there to keep it interesting. I can’t even begin to tell the story of this hunt without thanking all the people who helped make it happen. My mom and dad were there all along, willing to help out with the kids since my wife, Carrie was going to have to be doing things solo while I was away. Big Bry and Mark both brought over wall tents with stoves. Other friends provided extra gas cans. My mother-in-law lent me some Yeti coolers (these things are awesome). Kent McClendon, Eric Santanna, Jason Standage all were more than willing to give me some useful advice. Special thanks go out to Ryan Ghan, a member here who spent 22 days up there during the archery hunt, and was willing to share everything he learned up there on his hunt. His advice was central to my approach as a “newbie” to the strip, along with Kent’s advice. But the biggest thanks go to my wife, Carrie. Not only was she willing to hold down the fort while I was gone, she pre-cooked meals for the entire trip and even put together a little care package with a bag to open each day with a note and something funny just to give me a daily smile from home. The journey started way back before the hunt when it’s time to wrap your head around having the tag everyone wants. Lots of reloading, shooting, preparing, map scouting, making calls, sending emails, making sure you’ve thought it all through and are as prepared as possible. Day 0: It’s Tuesday night and I’m at home ready to pull out. I’ve got a place to stay the night in Page (Mark's Camper) and if I leave by 4:30, I’ll be on track. A quick check and the trailer lights aren’t working. Frantic rewiring and new lights, I get out of town around 8:30 PM. I’m In Page at 1:00 AM. Between faulty smoke / O2 detectors beeping all night, I get around 2 hours of sleep, and I'm back on the road. Day 1: I left Page at sunup and headed for the Strip. A little running around in St. George looking for a charger for my laptop since I left mine at home (dumb, dumb, dumb) no luck, fill up my gas cans and head South into the unit. About 50 miles in, I’m on a 10-mile long two track looking for a place to set up camp, and hear “bang, grind”….I know I have a major breakdown but I don’t know yet what just broke. I look around the trailer and find the passenger’s side wheel is broken loose and rubbing on the wheel well. The mount that holds the leaf spring to the frame has broken off. At first, I was really worried about this – how in the world was I ever going to get the trailer out of there to where I could get it welded? Turns out the part that broke is about the only thing on the whole trailer that bolts on – whew! Both sides were pretty banged up so I removed both of them and planned to take them into town to get fixed later on. Luckily I brought a lot of tools and extra jacks. No choice now, this is camp. I set up the wall tent, get as cozy as I can. I finished getting set up right about dark One cool thing about Bryan's wall tent, dubbed "Camp Cantaloupe" (Our buddy, Jay's son thought they were hunting "cantaloupe", on an antelope hunt, and the name stuck), is that wherever it goes, the occupants sign the back wall. Day 2: It’s the day before the hunt starts and I head to a spot Ryan told me about to do some glassing. I turn up nothing and spend the rest of the day learning the area and looking for deer. Mid-day I head over to Whitmore and drop a few trail cameras down there and at Ivanpaugh. The "trick tanks" on Whitmore were a joke - they all had at least 4-5 cameras on them just a couple feet off the water. Here's Whitmore "trick tank 1". That afternoon I head back to my primary spot and glass until dark. Right at dark I spot what *might* be a buck bedded, but it’s just too late to tell. That night, the wind was howling - 50+ MPH gusts. I tuck as far as I can tuck inside the sleeping bag, but it still sounds like I’m in a wind tunnel. Day 3: Opening morning: The alarm goes off - It’s time to hunt. The wall tent continues to huff and moan, but I manage a little breakfast, head back to where I thought I might have seen the bedded buck the night before and start glassing, wind in my face, sleet and rain. The “bedded buck” was just a bush. By 1:00 PM with hours of freezing rain in my face, I knew it was time to regroup. I was chilled to the bone and didn’t want to take a chance of getting sick. So I went back to camp, started a fire in wood stove, dried my clothes and caught a nap. That afternoon I saw my first deer of the trip. A little buck was bedded near the road. I wanted him to stand in case there was a big one with him, and he let me get 30 yards from him before he finally got up. I glassed the rest of the evening, but no more deer. Day 4: I decided to glass the same area one more morning, then get more aggressive and start walking it. There are supposed to be a couple really nice bucks in there, but I’ve yet to see them, and there is quite a bit of pressure in there. Glassing turned up nothing so I hiked in and started working the fingers one at a time. I bumped into another guy up on top of this ridge, and he informed me there was another group of 5 guys in there earlier – no wonder I wasn’t seeing anything glassing. At least 8 of us all hunting the same hill. In the afternoon I took the broken/weak parts from the trailer into St. George to get welded. Big thanks to Wade at V.C. Milne & Sons Welding for meeting me on a Saturday when the shop was closed. That was a huge weight off my shoulders to at least know I can get my trailer and gear out, once I bolt it all back together. After getting the parts repaired, I headed back out, but it was getting late so I decided to drive some roads in the North part of the unit around Black Rock & Mustang – no deer. Day 5: With my “Plan A” spot getting a little over-pressured I expanded out to a new area. I got to the far end of a ridge with the wind in my face and just started sneaking into the wind and glassing. About 8:00 AM I see some does up on a little point just a couple hundred yards away. It eventually turns into 8 does and one scraggly little 4x4. It’s a good sign though, looks like the rut is on. I back out and try to circle around them, only to see a doe running down a different ridge. I was only able to see one other doe with her, but eventually a small but heavy 4x4 buck appeared just ahead of me, obviously following the does from a distance. Things are really looking up in the new area! At lunchtime, I re-assembled the trailer with the newly re-welded brackets. Much better. That evening, the wind had changed and was now coming out of the NW so I started at the South end of this long ridgeline and worked my way North. This end was much thicker and very hard to glass. I bumped one doe and then sat and watched a nice valley and a couple hillsides as the sun set. I was about to re-trace my path back to the truck just about dark, but decided to take a peek over the ridge just behind me. As I snuck into the saddle, I immediately see two white patches and realize a deer is right there. Up come the binoculars and I can tell it’s a buck, with a good looking frame, and he’s staring right at me. There’s a Pinion tree between us with a little gap on one side that we’re watching each other through. I don’t dare move my feet because he can obviously hear me from this distance so I have to sort of crouch/squat and lean over to see him through the gap. I’m now shaking and trying to make out more details of his rack, but I just can’t see well enough. Eventually he starts to feed and I try to take a half-step to my left so I can see him better, but immediately he was staring at me again. To make matters worse, daylight is running out FAST. We continue this "cat and mouse" routine right up until the final couple minutes of shooting light and he starts walking across the hill he is on, about to drop off the other side. I knew if he dropped off, I would have no chance at repositioning for a shot before dark but I still hadn’t gotten a really good look at his tine length – mostly just head on. Between low light, bad angles and my shaking hands I just could not make out many details of his rack. As he walked toward the edge, I looked as closely as I could and got a pretty good look at his front right fork. It looked good and deep, so I assumed that’s a pretty good indicator of the top forks as well, which would make him really good. I make the decision to go ahead and shoot. As I squeezed the trigger….nothing….I still don’t know what on earth happened. I’m guessing the safety was in between safety and fire, but try as I might, I still can’t get that gun to do that again. So I rack in another round, check the safety, extend the bipod since he’s getting further away now and just about to disappear over the edge into the next drainage. I get on him quickly, but the gun is leaning. I grab the closest rock and stuff it under the left leg of the bipod. I get him back in the crosshairs just as he's breaking the ridge and fire. Boom – WHACK! I just love that sound. I see the buck spin and tumble sideways. I know my hunt is over, now I just have to see if he is as big as I am hoping he is. As I get over to him, I realize the first hit was back – not a surprise given that he was on his way over the ridge and out of sight when I shot, so I had to finish him off. At this point there was very little light left and I did my best to get a tripod and camera set up before it got totally dark. Wouldn’t you know it, the darn remote to my camera didn’t work so I had to use the timer to click a pic, then run behind the buck and pose, so the pix aren’t the very best in the world, but here they are. Of course I left my big pack and field dressing stuff at camp so I had to go get it, hike back in and quarter him in the dark. I got back to him around 9:00 pm with a lantern, tarp, headlamps, game bags, pack and skinning knives. It was around 20 degrees and dropping fast. Finally around midnight I was making my last trip out and back to camp. At 1:00 AM I was done. It was around 14 degrees. One thing that blew me away was the body size of this deer. He was HUGE! I’ve quartered cow elk that weren’t as big. I tried to take some pix to give some perspective of his size. The shooting stick is almost 6 feet long, and the knife in the pix is the standard Buck 119, around a foot long. I was a little disappointed in his tops, especially on his left side. He’s a really nice buck, by far my biggest mule deer to date and I feel fortunate to have taken him, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit a part of me wondered if I didn’t get a little too caught up in the action. It was only the third day of the hunt, so chances of finding a bigger one were pretty good, especially up there. But given the situation, I had to make a snap decision and that’s how it goes. He’s not the 200+ incher I dreamed of, but I can’t complain about him or the hunt at all. It was an amazing time and just beautiful country. The Strip is an amazing place. The minute you set camp and look upon it, you know you are in a special place. As I was driving out, I was already looking forward to the next time I’m lucky enough to be there. By the way here’s a look at that front right fork that suckered me in. lol. And here are some more pictures. Got to add my signature to "Camp Cantaloupe" A really cool "collage" that Carrie put together so I could dress up the tent. Some trail cam pix off of the Ivanpaugh trick tank including a crazy non-typical buck. The view off Whitmore... A lion off of Whitmore trick tank 3: I hope you enjoyed the story and pictures. Best wishes to all of you CWT members out there.

Wow, Pinedonkey. I'm right there with you buddy. It would be great to meet you and introduce our kids. It sounds like I'm a couple years behind you, as I'm about to watch all three go through High School. So much of our lives have revolved around their sports, it's easy to see what you mean about filling that hole later. To be honest, that still feels so far away with my oldest as a freshman, my youngest in 5th grade... But I can remember when I my middle son, Nick couldn't catch a football, baseball or wadded up socks if tossed to him underhand. I used to joke to my wife how he had better be smart because sports weren't going to be his thing. Now he's as tall as me, can catch anything I throw at him and outpass me all day long. And he's one heck of a 1st baseman and lead his league on homeruns last year. Then played QB in football, still getting all A's in school and getting into wresting - somthing I wasn't tough enough for. And his little brother is following him every step. It's going to be a journey for sure. They're all cursed with the "Jones" genetics. All tall and very thin. We don't have that typical "mountain boy" cowboy build. But I'm shoving the calories down 'em and trying to work out with them, lol. It's just a good time to be a dad and watch them grow.