elkhunter

Howdy- had my velbron tripod lose 2 legs this oct and the plastic quick snaps have broken off in several locations. Looking to upgrade to carbon fiber tripod- I am getting old and would like to reduce the weight load of my backpack. What are some tripods you use that's carbon and what are the pro's and con's about carbon fiber tripods? Thanks!

Try shooting 400 and 500 yards, you will get better at 300 yards!

Ah that sucks, there are bruisers south of that lake for sure! Hopefully you will have better luck next year

Groupie!

Awesome, most people would not admit to shooting that many rounds, if I was standing next to you I would have had a blast

Look like the person had a snickers bar on him while setting the stand! Great stuff

Thanks for all the info, looks like promaster is 63 inches, my tripod head will add on another 3 inches, binos and adaptor will add on 2 more inches, I will have to crouch down 5 inches to look through binos. One last question, 63 inch is the max height with the legs spreaded out or with all 3 legs touching together like a monopod? Thanks!

No water, no backpack, most likely up to no good bandits or very dumb hunters. You should have sent one of ur buddies down to ask them! Now we will never know

Just keep at it, you learn from mistakes and not success in life, one day you will put one down and after that they follow like dominos. One time I shot at a javelina when I was 10, missed the pig by 2 ft and hit a rock, the javelina fell over and rolled down a hill 10 feet, got up and ran away, zero blood. My sister once shot a javi and it ducked and turned towards her, the broad head hit the pig right above the nose and proceeded to slice the skin all the way up to between the ears with zero broad head penetration. Missed an cow elk with a rifle in highschool bout 80 yards once One time shot a javi with my bow, shot was about 2 inch too low at 20 yards, it broke both of his front legs and I couldn't catch up to it going down hill but once it reached the bottom, he was screwed trying to get uphill with 2 broken front legs, put him down then. We all got these stories, just dream about them and learn from it, what could have been done differently etc. Do you have a bipod for ur rifle? Focus on increasing stability on shots in the future, if you shoot a cow elk in the right spot, they wouldn't run far with a 3006 hole in their lungs and drop quite a bit of blood,

What caliber are you shooting? Might be the set up. Were there steep angles on your shots? Who goes hunting with you? Having someone watch the animal while you shoot greatly increases your chances of knowing where the animal was hit. My pops shot a coues buck above shoulder blade and beneath the spinal cord, the buck did not die, most people would have thought a double lung hit. Buck bedded down in thick stuff and luckily I was watching and was able to get my dad set up on a fatal shot. When u go target shooting again, do about 20 jumping jacks and then shoot ur rifle, this will give you a realistic shooting on big game. Coues and elk r hard to kill, if ur off by an inch they will get away

Awesome news! Rather quick hunt, must be a beautiful buck!

One thing several people overlook is the fact that in oct coues are typically found near water....a majority of the roads in Arizona leads to water, don't be afraid to hunt under a mile from a pond and a road, typically that's where you find higher density of deer. However some people will disagree with hunting near roads, u will typically find smaller bucks and more does. Farther away will produce bigger bucks but a lot less deer unless there's a good flowing spring or a pond with zero road access If you are interested in seeing a great number of deer, try either 36b or 36a, in those units you should expect to see 15 to 30 does a day and bucks varies from 0 to 20 a day. A lot of fun hunting out there if you are into seeing a lot of deer.

Lets just say that an adult can shake more than a 10 year old kid while putting crosshairs on a buck. Pops and I did not draw our "wanted" tags so we opted to do a leftover tag in a unit that we really do not like. We usually hunt a unit that we did not like, this was a unit we really did not like but have the time to scout. Once we drew the leftover tags, I pulled out the map and looked for areas that has the least amount of roads, I located just one spot on the map that looked dandy. After our first scouting trip, we found that 90% of the roads on the map did not exist and there were a few roads that was not on the map that we located out there. All the USFS road markers were either not present or missing 2 numbers or more. Which made scouting pretty fun. After more days of scouting, we found there's quite a bit of life in this area, mt lion, bears, coons, javelina and coues deer. We had located 7 bucks prior to the hunt while 2 of them were awesome shooter bucks and were the caliber that you would consider shooting on a december hunt. My pops headed out on Thursday morning prior to the hunt. I opted to stay at work on Friday so that I can hunt Monday and Tuesday after all the road warriors went home. Needless to say out of all the hundreds of tags in our unit, we only ran across one hunter on one day that was hunting a complete different spot that we were hunting. Opening day my pops located 4 bucks, passed them all. Being at his age and retired, he won't settle for anything less than 150 incher on opening day, he really likes to hunt 6 days since he retired. Friday afternoon after work I headed out to camp, I didn't have any firearms in my truck since I am a teacher and firearms are illegal on campus or something. Shoulda left a gun at home and picked it up after work because I ran into 5 bucks while driving to camp. Two groups total, one group had 2 wonderful awesomely large large 2 point bucks 80 yards away while I was taking pics of goulds turkey 15 yards away. The bucks trotted off and I took note of their last position. I drove another 300 yards and hit the canyon right before the campsite, 3 bucks right in the middle of the road eating acorns off the dirt, 1 was a spike and 2 of them were medium 3x3 (all were shooters to me!). They took off running at a pace where I would doubt I'd find them again. I went to camp and glassed, found 2 different herds of javelina and that's all. Dad rolled into camp and we made plans for opening day. Opening day came and I glassed a buck bedded under a nice sized bush, stalked to half the distance, saw that he was an obvious 3x3, got the rifle railz mounted and took a deep breath and fired, buck didnt move, took another deep breath and a shake, fired again and buck got up and walked over the ridge. We were confused and went to check the site, apparently there's about 15 branches in the way of the buck's vitals and lets say I killed the tree. Also lets say I was uber excited. The next few days accounted for finding HUGE bucks, one buck was missed due to the brand spaking new scope, the vortex scopes have a focus knob towards the eye end, the quad can shake that mother all the way out so that when you look in the scope, there's 2 crosshairs! One morning my pops saw a dandy buck walk into some thickets, never lcoated him again. My grandpa rolled into camp a few hours later so we hung out with him and took him into the field with us, 82 year old dude. After glassing the thickets the buck appeared outta no where and pops and i went on our stalk while gramps stayed behind. Pops and I got to 300 yards, my pops settled down in his rifle railz setup and had the shakes pretty good, he had to fist bump me a few times, I told him "smell my eyes man, kill em" when the shot went bang, I saw red allover the buck's lower third. The buck went 10 feet and bedded down, upon watching the buck he was still very active....too active for a shot in the lungs. We opted out and pursue the buck in the morning. In the morning it took us a good ole 2 hours and about 15 different vantage points to lcoate the buck again, bedded down. We moved in to an angle and pops loaded up rifle again, BAM! bullet hit the buck right under the spine slightly above the shoulder blade and the exit was infront of the shoulder blade, the buck rolls down hill and lays flat, yahoo! NOT, the son of a gun decided he wasnt gonna let a 300 wsm kill him. He bedded down again and I noted his spot, I explained to my dad that theres a rock and that's the buck's rear hip, my dad rejected my solid hypotheis. I told him I promise that's his rear end, I told him lets get to an angle where the bullet will hit the last rib and travel out the front of the shoulder. We re arranged our shooting site and got settled.....BAM! He asked if I saw movement, I saw a little twitch in the antlers and thats all. My dad still had not believe me that the rump thing was a buck, he said "well there was no puff of dirt so it couldnt be a rock then." My dad went ahead and moved up the hill to find his awesome massive 96 incher buck laying motinless. It was funny to see my dad pull out his little "illegal immagrant pistol protector 38" on the buck at close range, thank god the buck was dead. No one wants to see a 10 inch hole from a soft point at close range. The second shot my dad made on this buck would have killed most deer, I am assuming this buck was breathing out which caused the lungs to collapse and for the bullet to strike flesh only. My dad's first shot took out the buck's brisket which we could see the heart and lungs through. This was a tough buck that had all desire to live to the rut! This buck had an abnormally long and heavy head on him, the rack was far heavier than we originally thought. He was aged at 5 and half years old and had several kickers that were ready to grow nice and long next year! Overall this buck is a 4x4 with several small kickers. This is one of the bucks we had scouted out the weeks before the hunt, we had found him bout 500 yards from where we originally saw him. After this buck was harvested I ended up passing the rest of the bucks. All in all we saw 23 bucks, killed one, missed a few and passed up a whole lot of bucks. Enjoy the pics, this is my pops largest and not his last! We had a blast on this hunt, it doesnt happen often to see multiple bucks on an oct hunt and get the pleasure of passing up 3x3's. We are already hoping that we do not draw our dec tag next year! Although I did not tag out this year, all the bucks I missed walked away without a scratch, I actually feel like I got my fill out coues hunting and am very satisfied with the result of the hunt, I'm very proud of my pops for sticking it out to harvest a buck that we had put a non-fatal shot on.

Thanks guys!

Looks plenty of a gun there, congrats

Gates for sure, always have to glass for 5 minutes at each gate which means it takes me and hour to where I want to be

How does the promaster compare to aluminum tripods? I am curious about the shaking in the wind or the shaking when you wrap ur arms around the tripod while you are glassing

Most of the time nasty weather means it's easier to know when the deer are going to start feeding and makes it easier to locate bedded bucks. On very windy days, there's a tremendous amount of activity going on at the last 30 minutes of light when the wind starts to die down, it's a hunter's dream.

Just pay the other 28 bucks for a leftover tag, seems like the hassle of calling up the bank is way more difficult than paying 28 bucks for the 2nd tag

Scooter, I did run into a whole ball o mallards and teals along the huachucas bout a week ago

Hey! Clean out your pm box, it's full!

I watched the same show- it wasn't a good moment looking at the dog owner's face! Those jags are much more aggrensive and powerful compared to lions. That jag killed each dog with one swipe or one bite. What makes it even more crazy is they were not hunting the jag, they were just trying to get data from the jag

Maybe u can get a crack at gq!

Glad to hear the positive feedback on info from hunters, no one gives up their spots for oct in 36 b since its an easy draw but when someone gets a once in a lifetime tag everyone is willing to help out, good luck!

seen one and got a pick up head with a droptine- not very common