Coach

Can't answer all your questions - but I would say the 300 WSM is a better all around round than the .270 WSM just because you can load it heavier. I have both, and reload for them and really like them both, but if I had to choose one, it would be the 300. It will do just about anything. The .270 WSM is my 2 of my 3 sons' favorite but my oldest and I prefer the .300. At 800 yards, I would definitely side with the .308 over the .270. As sjvcon mentioned, plenty of good charts out there. Retained energy at longer yardage always favors the heavier bullet. I would not shorten the barrel to 20". I think the accuracy would suffer compared to a 26" barrel.

One really cool thing about the Badlands - not sure if the other brands mentioned here have this - they have a hook attached at the bottom you can hang your bow from while you use your binos or range finder, instead of setting your bow down on the ground every time you need your optics.

Sooner or later maybe we'll get p-o'd enough to do more than complain about all the illegal, anti-America, anti-constitutional stuff going on - maybe not. And I'm not exempting myself from that in any way. We citizens shouldn't have to - there's enough Americans out there who have sworn an oath to prevent these kinds of abuses, from police and sheriffs to county commissioners to generals and judges, and of course our.. wonderful...elected officials. We should NEVER even have to entertain the thought of doing ourselves, the one thing we put them there to do.

For some reason the link in the opening post is not working for me.

Nicely done BeardownAZ. Class act for sure.

Welcome to the site. Good folks, lots of info.

Very cool picture!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj9qvBwOeMA Fun watch.

Those mohawks are awesome. Here's my oldest son's first ever "big game" kill with one - this one is 6mm I think. Can't remember - he borrowed it from his grandfather. Dang bullet exploded on impact but luckily we found the pig.

First off, my hat is off to you stepping up helping them out - that's the action of a real man, imo. Secondly, what a scumbag that guy is - makes it hard to focus on the question at hand. I think you should get this young man out shooting your AR. It's probably the easiest gun to learn to shoot on aside from a rimfire. If he can drive tacks with it at the ranges you plan to shoot, it should be OK, but I worry that if the water-hole sitting thing doesn't work out and he has to shoot further, a 55-65 grain bullet isn't optimal for big game to begin with - at longer ranges, it obviously loses a lot of energy. Maybe have him shoot the 30-06 once he's comfortable with the AR to see if he can handle the recoil. If you buy something, .243 is an excellent choice as others have said. Best of luck to you, and thanks for taking the time to step up - really says volumes about your character.

Just glad he's OK.

We got 2 youth deer tags so far. My buddy drew 13B (most likely) or 13A. Looks like a lot of good tags for folks this year - congrats to those that drew!

I started hunting out of a camper a long time ago, so most of my camping is either in a camper or a Montana wall tent. That said, it's almost hard to come by a bad tent these days on any budget. If you want a really good tent, the Kodiak are the bridge between cheap tents and more expensive outfitter-style wall tents. That said, I've spent many nights under cheap tents or nothing at all - and I prefer the latter. A good canvas wall tent, Cabela's Alaknak, and similar are the top of the line tents, but they are pricey. You can get a good nylon tent - coleman, etc whatever Walmart or Target is selling for under $200, and these tents aren't bad - I've spent a week in a Coleman 8-person Nylon tent in freezing conditions with rain, sleet and snow. They are actually better than most of the old cotton tents I grew up in. To me, it's a question of what you want to invest in. If it's a season or two, go cheap and light - nylon, easy to set up. If it's a few years and you really want a quality tent, go Kodiak - much higher quality. If you're really going to spend some time out there a good wall tent is as close to a cabin in the woods as you'll find, short of course to a camper.

Welcome, Scott to the best hunting and shooting forum in AZ. IMO, you've found the best group of friendly, family-oriented hunters on the web. I hope you enjoy your stay here.

The right doesn't even know what scandal to cover, the left addresses none of them. There is nothing short of catching school kids on fire and throwing them off the top of the white house that would get anyone more involved. The sad part is, nothing will be done and no one will be held accountable. The "most transparent" administration has done exactly what they promised. They "fundamentally transformed" America into an autocracy while the world watched and stood by complacently.

Wow - awesome to hear so many of you are getting "hit". Gotta love it. Looks like we're in for some serious hunting stories this fall. Congrats to all of you drawing tags. I hope you make the most of them.

Very cool - love the Molan Labe Kokopelli. I'm thinkin' blaze orange.

Wow, that's really cool - I love the sheds, the rattler, especially the gila monster. Thanks for sharing

Man, that's a smoking deal. The spot hogg and drop-away are worth close to what you're asking. My middle son is due for an upgrade - I'll see if he's willing to drop some money on a bow more his size.

I live up here, and while I'm all for fire restrictions when it's dry and windy, when we get the kinds of rain we've gotten over the last week, I'm glad to see the restrictions scaled back when it's safe to do so.

I'm currently dealing with them on some similar issues with an M80. http://www.coueswhitetail.com/forums/topic/50086-moultrie-not-a-good-experience/ Suffice it to say, I've bought my last Moultrie camera.

That all looks amazing.

Sweet!

I just wanted to put this out here, I've got a lot of trail cams, Bushnell, DLC Coverts, Moultrie. I bought a Moultrie M80 a couple years back, and it was a really good camera. For some reason, it just stopped taking pictures - it would take video but no stills. It was out of warranty, but I sent it in anyway. I was told it couldn't be fixed, so the only option I had was to buy a refurb for $60 or just call it a loss. So I bought the refurb. When it arrived I put a fresh card in and new batteries. It would go into sleep mode and never wake up. It just went into a "trance" that could only be solved by pulling out the battery compartment and re-inserting it. Sent that one back and they sent me another refurbished M80. I put in 8 fresh batteries and tried it out. It stayed on overnight, so I figured everything was ok and turned it off. A couple weeks later I wanted to put it out but the batteries were dead. I thought that was odd since it only ran one night on fresh batteries and had been turned off since. Since this model can run off 8 or 4 batteries, I put in 4 fresh batteries and put it over our compost pile since I knew it would get some action. The display said I had 209 days of battery life. By morning, there were zero pictures and the batteries were dead. I spent almost an hour on the phone with their Customer Service people, and while they were very polite, they insisted it was something I was doing wrong - the wrong brand of batteries, the wrong SD card (All I run are SanDisk - approved cards). So, my $120 camera goes bad, they can't fix it but can replace it for $60 with a refurb that doesn't work. The replacement for the replacement doesn't work, and according to them it's because I'm not using the right batteries, or the card, although reformatted, may have been used in a different brand of camera. Just wanted to put this out there - buy a DLC or Bushnell or anything else but Moultrie. They have really nice customer service folks, but at the end of the day their cameras don't work as well as others for the same money.

Nice, Lee's Ferry used to be an annual trip for my dad and I. I haven't been there in a while so it's nice to see it keeps on producing those fish in their spawning color modes.