Coach

Hey Bob, looks like your prayers were heard. It's been raining here for the last 3 days. The crews have been working hard, but nothing beats steady rain to get a fire under control. Big thanks to everyone keeping a positive tone on this, the guys who are fighting it, and those sending prayers our way. These kinds of situations stir up a lot of emotions and sometimes folks get heated and say dumb things. Hat's off to the cooler heads. We're all in this together.

I'd recommend La Gloria Cubana, Arturo Fuente or Rocky Patel for your first time.

This is a great topic, and lots of really knowledgeable folks here. I certainly don't want to take this in a different direction from the original poster, but I've got a Savage American Classic in .300 WSM, and this gun is an absolute shooter. First off, I love the accu-trigger. It's not quite as crisp as the one on my 25-06 Savage - but really nice. I'm a big fan of the "milder" magnums - anything .WSM vs. the Ultra Mags. Honestly, after years of reloading and experimenting with .300 Wby, .270 STW, my 2 favorite are .300 WSM, and .270 WSM, and given the mild recoil and inherent stability of the .308 round, it's hard even to make a case for the .270 WSM, aside from it just being so fun to shoot. I've never owned a 7mm, but it's reputation is well earned. My .300 wsm savage is by far the best gun I've shot, and it currently has a pretty cheap (Cabela's Alaskan Guide 6-24 x 50mm) scope. It's actually a really nice, clear scope and I can shoot this setup with hand loads at 500 yards with confidence. For a $450 gun and $300 scope, it will definitely outshoot me. I've got some 4-6" groups at 500 yards out of it but I've also got some that wouldn't fit in a basketball - long range shooting takes a lot more than the right gear. There's a lot of practice and technique to make any setup shoot to its full potential. I know this gun and my handloads have the potential to shoot out to 7 - 800 yards. I'm wanting to invest a little more into a really good turret scope, maybe switch over to some bergers and see if I can build a long range platform out of this rifle. I'd love to be able to dial in and hit a balloon at 8 or 9 hundred yards. I know the gun is capable of it, but the skill required will take some time and a lot of practice. With a $4k budget, I'd say it shouldn't be hard at all to achieve what you are looking for. In fact, I think you can get a really accurate setup of under half of that. But I would suggest investing in some reloading equipment so you can get the most out of your rifle. IMO, the rifle is only half of the equation - the loads are the other half, and having full control of the brass, powder, primer, bullet and marrying the right load to a rifle is the only way to get consistent long range performance.

Got a little thunder rolling in tonight. Nothing better than rainy summer nights in the mountains.

It's going to be interesting to see what burned and what didn't. This area is pretty close to home, and I've seen how much thinning has already been done here. Some of my favorite elk, deer and turkey spots are right in the path of this fire. I'm really looking forward to the time when we are allowed back in there to see the impact of this fire.

Here in Lakeside, it's been raining the last few days. I took my family up to the Sunrise shoot today and it was raining pretty much the entire time. I'm wondering if anyone has up-to-date info on how the rains are affecting the San Juan fire in unit 1.

I pulled my card today from a spot I call the "petting zoo" because there's always a ton of activity on this salt lick. I had over 5,000 pictures between April 18 and May 2. Not sure why but the camera just quit and I have nothing from the past 3 weeks. The batteries were good and there was space left on the card. This spot has elk all day, every day so here are some of the non-elk activity. Funny part is, I took my boys here April 18 to set up for turkeys. We didn't get any shots, but if you look at the time stamps, had we just kept hunting this spot, we could have killed toms with a spear, lol. Ended up killing 3 birds for all three boys in a whole different area. This is what comprises most of the pix out of the 5000+ in a couple weeks. Here are some cool turkey highlights. Most of these pix came in the 24 hours after we took down our blind and headed to a different area. Both of these strutting gobblers are less than 10 yards from where our blind was set up. Some deer Nice bear - she's been here for a few years, sometimes with cubs.

Unfortunately, it looks like the petting zoo is now reduced to ashes - a casualty of the San Juan fire. I expect the next time I see it my trail cam will be melted mess of plastic. Bummer, that was a great spot.

Just got back from some fun catfishin' It wasn't super fast action but we ended up with around 15 cats between 3 and 8 pounds. Fish fry tomorrow!

Yeah, the Black is a very special place. I have decades of great memories all over this state and others. Many places I find sacred, but the Black stands out from all of them. There's just something truly amazing about that place that I feel the most at peace when I'm there.

Good ribbin' TJ. I brought my brother-in-law and his girlfriend's son (the young man with glasses). He tried some bass fishing, and there were plenty to be caught but pretty small. I saw a couple really big smallies, but all I brought was catfishing gear. My catfishin' spots and my bassin' spots unfortunately have some distance between them. Here's a taste of the one of the bassin' spots.

I see you're coming up on the big 6K, Snapshot!

Just finished up the fish fry - it was awesome - sorry no pix, and also sorry I'm not tellin' where

While I love the "crews on the ground", this isn't exactly uncharted territory. From memory, the Wallow fire was around 800 acres the first night, then 2500, then 2.5 million acres, in days. Maybe I'm being over simplistic, but shouldn't the first fire raising smoke get a slurry plane and every dozer in the county on it in the first couple hours? I'd rather see a slurry plane paint a whole campsite orange than another million + acres burned. If this $hit can't be contained, we'll see full forest closure from March unit the monsoons hit.

Bump for a great setup. Nice weld in that pic. Hard to teach that "fish scale".

Man, I don't know where to start on this. I walked out to my driveway to see huge plumes of smoke. Normally, this time of year we start thinking we missed "the big one" after the end of May. I've been through Bear Wallow, Rodeo-Chedeski. Anyone up here knows it's just one fire in the wrong place and we can lose our home. It's a little surreal to see a big fire like that, then hear there's another just miles below us, and the only thing you can think to do is start taking pictures of everything - your house, your tools, your closets. I heard the guys at Whiting Homestead and that "red roof cabin" sic had like 5 minutes to gather everything that is not insured. That's a lot to ask of anyone - grab what you can in 5 minutes. Just hard to grasp. For sure I'll have some melted trail cams up there, but after watching the wallow fire totally transform pretty much every place I used to hike, hunt, put out salt licks, and now seeing the other half of everything I used to know become a moonscape - it's just strange and hard to get a grasp on. I can be very thankful that my home was spared. I can be optimistic that the fire will create new habitat. But ultimately, for the rest of my life, I'm going to have to look at some of my favorite, beautiful places as scarred, blackened burn remnants. That's the hard part for me.

Well folks, here's where we are: IRS illegally targeting conservatives = lost hard drives, yeah that's gonna stick in an IRS audit. Fast and Furious, Tahmooressi Bergdah Benghaz Iraq in chaos, chemical weapons in Syria that didn't exist, Iran's nuclear capacity - and involvement in Syria and Iraq, destroyed borders where we are actively importing illegals and redistributing them across the country the VA - let's not forget the Veterans Administration "death watch". Whew, gotta get a breath in there - Common core shrinking economy death to the coal industry, mining for lead, silver and copper, expanded jurisdiction for the EPA to control water on private property, zero-tolerance for Eagle scouts with a pocket knife in their first-aid kit, kids fined for setting up a lemonade stand... It gets overwhelming.

I'm a little surprised that Zen Ray hasn't gotten more of a following in the US. I've only looked through one set, belonging to a guy I met on an elk hunt a few years back. We all had Swaro and Zeiss, but this guy has some contacts, and had been given some glass to "bring along" by Zen Ray. I was really impressed by the clarity. Looking through them next to the top Euros, they were very impressive. Compared to Vortex, of which I'm a big fan, they were far superior. I haven't bought any yet myself as I wasn't sure if their warranty is what they claim, but the optics are superb, great clarity, comfortable to use. For those of us who have to dish out our own paycheck when buying optics, it's hard to experiment with brands. More often than not, budget glass is just that. I'm really looking forward to seeing serious Western hunters putting these glass to use. We've seen how Vortex came out of nowhere and became a trusted name. It will be interesting to see if Zen can carve out a name for themselves. FWIW, they need to change names. Zen Ray sounds too much like "cheap Chinese".

Muzzle loader buck from a couple years back. Thick and lots of character.

Totally agree, if I saw that buck with a tag in hand, I'd be jacked. Score is in the eye of the beholder.

Well, at least they are good at something - lol.

Best compilation of lion pix I've seen on here yet. The first 4 look like an adolescent male, 5&6 look like a female (in #5, looks like she's pregnant with that hanging belly) 7&8 look like the young tom again.

I was born in NM, raised all over but mostly AZ. I love the way NM manages their water - not as big of fan of how they manage their cattle and ranchers - those guys (select few) are downright crazy. I like hunting NM, but it's a different world. Lots of guys I know who guide in both states have been shot at, threatened at gunpoint, told in the middle of the night that they won't leave NM alive - we call it the Catron County boys complex, but when I hunt NM, I feel like I'm in a whole other country. Property does NOT have to be clearly marked or posted, and if you get on the wrong side of a boundary line, it's on you. It doesn't have to be fenced or signed - it's your responsibility to be sure in all that checker-board land when you are on public or private land. And if you happen to find yourself on private land despite your best efforts, "hostile" is a soft word.

Actually, I like the first two options but I don't think we should be charged for them.