Coach

Thank you all for your kind words - I really appreciate it.

Nice bull! Congrats!

It obviously wouldn't be an essay contest, as only one of you knows how to use punctuation. :lol:

Fantastic job tracking and staying with that bull! Actions like that mean a lot for all of us bowhunters - not everyone would have been so persistent. Thank you - sincerely.

Great job Josh, one incredible bull. It couldn't happen to a more deserving hunter. I'm sure glad you were able to get in on him and make it happen.

Truly awesome! What a great buck and a very well written story to go along with it! Nicely done!

Nice bull!!!! Way to go, Colton.

Grong, you're looking good as always. I'd recommend some Propecia for that back and shoulder hair if you want it to rival your goatee.

Started this spot a few weeks back and it's proven to be a good location. In the past 10 days I got over 970 pictures. Mostly it's the same 10 or so cow/calf/spike elk but I've gotten some good pictures of the local bears. I knew I had one "strange" colored bear on there but didn't have any good pix of him. He's got a cinnimon body and a very black face. Finally, I got pix of his mom, so I know where he gets it. Enjoy...Here's the young bear. Now, his mom, with 2 new charcoal black cubs...one is right under the camera. Getting cozy on the salt - the indention holds water so they like to lay in it... Here's a sequence I really like. Check out the time stamps on the photos...

Awesome Jed, you sure have a knack for getting right on top of them. Thanks for posting that - it's getting my blood all pumped up. Just a few more days!

Nice spot - lots of great deer, bear and elk. Gotta love that.

Unit 1 heading up this week. I'm very exited, but things have been so crazy with coaching football and major house renovations...I'm weeks behind where I would like to be, but come Friday morning all that will fade into the background - just chasing bugles, and looking for the big guy.

Nice job! I think antelope with a bow is one of the hardest challenges out there, especially spot and stalk - nicely done.

I am so far behind - just a couple of days left and I haven't prepped the trailer, cooked all my food - nada...At this point I'm wishing the hunt started a week later.

I'm backpacking into that area at the end of October for a ML coues hunt. Shoot me a PM. The access is limited, but available, you just have to be ready to do a backpack trip. It's only a few miles into Skeleton canyon but when you get back in there, you know you're in the "wild west". There's not a lot of water, plenty of illegals and even the hardened "mules". I did it a couple years back solo and by the second night I decided I would take the first 3x I saw just because I was so on-edge the whole time I was there. I just wanted to come home to my family, but not burn my tag. Shot a decent 3x4, knowing there were much bigger bucks in there. I can tell you this, when you get back in that area, all alone, with no cell coverage, a hunt takes on a whole different perspective. The country is pretty open and when you've got a bivy pack and a full moon, you feel very isolated. I was 15 yards or so from a major trail and had coatis in my camp all night. I literally slept with a 9MM Beretta in my hand all night wishing it was a pump 12 guage. My "camp" was a lightly sheltered draw several miles from the closest road. One-two-three days draw on forever out there if you are alone and it can get flat-out creepy. That said, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. There might be no better coues hunting anywhere. If you can handle the danger, the isolation, the lack of water and communication with the "outside world", it's an amazing place to hunt. Luckily, this time I am going in with a good friend who knows the area and has hunted it multiple times and taken a couple bucks over 100 inches and has seen some well over the 'twenties' even some 130+ class bucks. I think it will be a lot different this time, not being completely alone. Just having that second person along makes it so different in your whole mental attitude. Here's hoping this time I won't settle for a 90's buck when there are so many in there in the upper teens and beyond. I hope you find one like that too. For sure, send a PM, there is public land that leads to where you are tyring to get. I'll show you the maps to get in there.

Just the three. I've got quite a few pics of that group and she's got just the two cubs. The other bear in the area is clearly hers from last year - cinnamon body with a black head. On Thursday when I pulled the card and replaced it with a new one there was no salt left at all, so today my oldest son, Matt and I refreshed it with 80 lbs of salt and 40 lbs of corn. The new addition in the past 2 days is a group of turkey (8, young birds from this Spring). Still had some elk, but they were discouraged by the lack of salt and resorted to licking my camera. The young boar was also there 1/2 hour before we replenished the salt and corn. I tried out my new backpack (Lowe Alpine Saracen) carrying 2 40 pound bags of salt, and it was great - looking forward to my NM coues backpack trip. Got a new bull in there, but he's just a 5x5. Hopefully the big boys will be coming in this week. I've heard that the bigger bulls are starting to show up in 3C, so I'm thinking they won't be far behind here. I did hear my first bugles on Thursday night so it's definitely starting.

How many seatbelts in the back? Any idea how many hours are on it?

Looking for hillsides full of prickly pears is where you start, but you have to find the dense drainages that lead into those areas. Bears love thick stuff, so look at your area from their perspective. They want to warm up in the sun-lit hills and gourge on whatever is around, but they need a place they can bound into if confronted. They like deep, oak covered, steep stuff. They'll venture out for food but always want to have that "safe place" to retreat into.

I hunted antelope in NM a couple weeks back and, all I can say for a guy who never had an antelope tag in his pocket, it was incredible. It's an all-day, every-day kind of hunt. Many good stalks, many good opportunities that seem impossible...Just getting out there and trying to get close to big goats several times a day is what bowhunting is all about.

With the rampant theft of trail cameras, I think the only way to truly "secure" a camera is to bolt it to a tree. Maybe it's against regulations, but anything I leave in the woods worth over $100 is going to require a chainsaw and a grinder with a cutting wheel to extract. If you steal my camera, you're going to work at least half as hard as I did to keep it from getting stolen.

Nice job Clay! Congratultions!

Wow...I'm almost speachless...those are some freaking amazing bucks! I hope your dad gets to arrow any one of those awesome bucks. Keep it up, keep his spirits up, hunt hard and show us one of those big boys on the ground. Best of luck to you.

Wow, this is giong to be strange...The FS has opened a number of roads, along with logging permits, but areas South of 260 will remain largely accessible, even on roads not marked for general travel or firewood cutting for big game tag holders. Meanwhile, most of the area is closed off to the public unless marked by a "ground-level" white arrow, and access is limited to retrieval of game, unless any danger of soil damage is predicted. As a guy with a tag in hand, I've seen the maps, I've heard the rhetoric. Overall, I'm glad so much of the unit will be open to huting, even more than I expected open to vehicular traffic. It's going to be very confusing in there when it comes to who can drive where, and what they can do while there, etc. Overall, I'm really happy about the latest turn of events, because anyone with a unit 1 elk tag has access to pretty much the whole unit, minus 3-4 totally closed out areas.

That was awesome.

I used to fish Lee's Ferry a lot. I had the best luck with 3" rebels that look like baby brown trout. Sometimes, you need a weight 2-3 feet up above a swivel to get 'em down to 6-8' feet. If you went more than 3 casts without a fish, your depth was wrong. Good luck and tell us what works.