Coach

On the flip-side, a buddy of mine shot a coues quartering away with a Nosler Partition. The bullet entered behind the ribs and exited the opposite shoulder - niether wound was obious until we skinned the deer. He only went about 30 yards after the hit, but didn't bleed a drop before he fell. From what I can tell, the bullet didn't expand at all. He and I have both been using ballistic tips for coues ever since.

Great Job! Thanks for sharing the story with us.

I agree with the others here - they are fantastic bullets for deer-sized game, but not strong enough for elk. I shoot CT ballistic tips in both my .300 Wby and 25-06.

Looks like he was in the middle of a round of golf when this critter refused to leave the 9th green - had to send for the clubhouse for a bow and a couple arrows.

I've used the Swaro 80mm (non HD) some, and the Leica 77 a lot. I prefer the Leica personally. It just feels more comfortable to me. The optics in both are superb, of course.

For those interested, here's the link to the article about the Greer fish kill in case I exaggerated in my assessment. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=...06184&rfi=6

I got it and it is clearly designed to support their pre-drawn conclusions - that we all want more tags even if it means poor quality. Also on their website is their 6-year "strategic plan" called "Wildlife 2012". If you dig far enough through all the hoopla, the #1 recreation objective (the page labeled as page 12, but actually found on page 16 ofthe PDF document) is: "Increase opportunities for use and enjoyment of wildlife". Yup, and you can probably guess the first two items listed under the strategies to accomplish this goal, but here they are anyway. #1: Identify, assess, develop and promote recreational uses of wildlife in Arizona. #2: Implement efforts to increase hunter and angler recruitment and retention. For those untrained in deciphering G&F lingo, this translates roughly to: "Sell more permits, even if we have to create bogus opportunity". G&F is planning to get public input on their long-range goal. Here's what I suggest we all do. Take a good look at the page labeled Page 2 of the document (page 6 of the PDF file). This is the page that outlines the deparment's Mission, Vision and Principals. Next, take some time to clearly explain how in your own opinion, G&F is failing miserably to live up to their stated mission, vision and principals and how the proposals listed in Wildlife 2012 continue to diverge even further from the ideals set fourth there. Here are a few examples, IMO. The recent change to eliminate 90% of the Dec. coues hunts and replace them with larger numbers of tags coinciding with the November mule deer hunts clearly was made in spite of strong public opposition. (There goes the "responsiveness to customers" principal. It also could be easily argued that packing larger numbers of hunters into a very limited space at the same time directly counters their Mission: "To conserve, enhance, and restore Arizona's diverse wildlife resources and habitats agressive management programs...". Then there's the glaring omission of any strategic plan to improve wildlife habitat to counter the effects of the drought (dig some deeper catchments, etc.) or to make any effort whatsoever to improve the badly diminished mule deer and antelope herds in this state. Hmmm, there's a concept, rather than just issuing more tags to increase opportunity, let's maybe take a shot at increasing our herd strength to numbers similar to those seen in neighboring states. How about the recent effort to kill all non-native trout - yes - intentionally kill all rainbows, browns and brookies from AZ waterways to make room for the Apache trout - that got out of control recently and ended up killing just about every fish from Greer to the Little Colorado? How's that for protecting habitat and wildlife diversity? Or the botched wolf program that drains tons of $$, the rumored Grizzly reintroduction that will undoubtedly cause potenially permanent closures in certain wilderness areas, it just goes on and on. This is definately the time to be heard. I hear almost daily from responsible, ethical, law-abiding hunters how G&F is losing the respect of life-long supporters. It seems the dept has lost its way and really needs to hear that everything's NOT alright in the minds of Arizona's sportsmen and women. Unless you want another 6 years of what we've seen in the past 12 months. If that's the case, sit back and relax.

I had the non-ED version and it was pretty good. Definately not in the Swarovski/Leica class, but I've heard the ED glass makes a big difference.

If you have any questions setting it up, shoot me a PM.

If you're not concerned about resharpening, G5 Montec all the way. They fly great and cut well - just very hard to resharpen to shaving sharp, IMO. This will be my first year shooting Slick Trick but after about 2 years of nothing but praise on the BowSite I figure they are worth trying out. Also, take a look at the ReadHead "BlackOut". It's just a G5 Striker with 1" cutting diameter but you won't believe the sharpness out of the package. (BTY, the G5 Striker is a Wac'Em knock-off but a little better, IMO.) Good luck! J

I made one exactly like those described here - D360-L camera, RSS-232 board, pelican 1060 case. It's a great trail camera. I would not suggest paying extra for the "camo dipped" cases pixcontroller sells. The clear ones make it really easy to get your holes in exactly the right spot, then a little camo spray paint and you're in business. If you don't want the paint smell on it for this year, just get some camo tape (not the shiny camo duct tape, but the good cloth kind). J

Uh, yeah... I accidentally kicked my tackle box over while at full speed... those sure do look familiar... you want my address? JK, great find! I am surprised the lake is going down though. As much rain as we've had up here in Lakeside I would have thought it would be filling up.

Thanks Amanda. Actually, I really like the little ball head now that I'm used to it. Just have to get the tension right and it works great. That panning attachment looks pretty sweet though.

I have 2 bogen tripods - the "Bogen Jr." which is very similar to the one you are looking at, and the 3205G "Tracker". The Jr. fell apart after a couple of years of hard use and the Tracker is just too big and bulky to carry around all the time, IMO. I bought a Slik Sprint Pro after seeing a buddy's and I have to tell you, it's a fantastic tripod. Best of all, it weighs a whopping 1.95 pounds. I use it for my Swaro 15x56 and have no problems with stability whatsoever. You just have to get used to not having a pan head - it's a built-in ball head.

My buddy and I have bought several of the Moultrie cameras from Walmart and had the same results folks posted here. About 1 out of 3 or 4 works really well. Our problem has not been so much with the lapse before it takes a picture but with the sensitivity of the PIR. If you set them to take 3 pictures the first won't trigger unless you are VERY close. Then the others work just fine. There is a thread on the bowsite that talks about a fix, but I tried it and found it didn't help much. We've gone to the stealth-o-cam wild view cameras for this year (around $60). They are only .3 megapixels and don't print the date/time on the pictures. The low resolution is OK with me because it's good enough to see what's coming in. It would be nice to know when though so you can get an idea of the pattern. If you are willing to do a little work and spend a little more, I recommend building your own. I built one using a kit from pixcontroller.com and it works really well. The PIR is adjustable, you can take the camera out and use it separately if you want, etc. It's not very difficult to build either if you use the RS-232 model - you don't have to open the camera and solder wires into it or anything like that. If you are patient and good a good deal on a camera off of ebay, you can build them for around $120 each.

Maybe we should start a petition... oh yeah, we already tried that only to find out exactly what G&F thinks of our opinions.

Turkey - nothing else

I have a pending charge of $11, which means a turkey tag - I sure hope that's my wife's app and they just haven't gotten around to mine

Yeah, I just saw that too. I hope they're just having a little fun at our expense.

I understand the motivation behind this idea, but I really think the chances of drawing back to back are slim. Sure, we all hear of it, but I still think it's rare. Most of us wait years in between. I was lucky enough to draw an archery bull tag last year but it took 10 years of applying. I know my chances are slim now, but I'm happy to have that slim chance of drawing again. It will likely be several years before I draw another archery bull tag, but that's just part of the game. I fully support any efforts G&F would make that increase the odds noticeably for those applicants that have high numbers of bonus points. Personally, I would like to see an even higher percentage than 20% go to max bonus point holders. It's only fair that your odds get much better each year, IMO. With regards to Antelope... where do I start? If you look at this state compared with some of our neighbors to the North (and NM) in terms of antelope carrying capacity, I just can't understand why our herd is so weak. I think it has a lot to do with predation, but if I were "King of G&F" for a day, one of my top priorities would be to rebuild the goat heard. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to "import" a bunch of antelope from the NW states and get our herds to the point that coyote predation would not prevent them from flourishing here. When you have almost 0% recruitment rate from year-to-year, there's just not much future for the herds. That said, I think we could get over that hump by bringing in as many antelope as possible so that predation impact would be reduced and the herd strength could grow from year to year. Just some ramblings, Jason

I don't have one for sale, but I have a Savage 110FP in 25-06. It's a little heavy with that bull barrell, but man is it ever accurate - and I LOVE the accu-trigger. Lot's of gun for the $$ in my opinion. I'll post a pic later - I'm proud of my "custom camo" job

I wonder if I can just direct-deposit my paycheck.

Maybe someone can clear this up for me, but I'm confused. New Mexico clearly spells out its laws WRT picking up any horns attached to a skull. I've NEVER seen any mention of this in the AZ regs. Is it or is it not against the law to pick up and keep a skull with horns attached in AZ?

Here come a couple.... another a couple more bull

I got a lot of those last year too. I think the flash and the blinking lights on the trail camera get them curious. I'll try to post some of the pix later - they're pretty interesting.