matthewp45

I got mine the same time Christain got his about 3 weeks ago. Only 7 more months to go. It will be here before you know it.

That is awesome. Congrats on a great hunt!

My dad and I got drawn for the unit 1 second turkey hunt this year. I had not had a chance to get up there to scout so I got a hold of my good friend Tom (tomgobbler) on the forum and asked if he wanted to tag along on the hunt. He knows the area alot better than I do and he is a dang good turkey talker as well. My dad, Tom and I got up Friday morning and headed out from our cabin in Springerville. We made our first call about 5:30am. First stop I shock gobbled and heard our first gobble. We went after him and he didn't seem interested. We went about a mile down the road and Tommy got out and let out a hen call. Boom there was another answer except this time he was pretty close. We get set up and Tom starts calling and within about 3 minutes a gobbler pops his head over the hill and boom my turkey tag is filled. With a real nice 9" bearded tom. We were pumped, giving high fives and acting like little kids. We took a bunch of pics and loaded him up and took off to the next spot. Here is a pic with just me, me and Tommy and me and my dad. I had to get a pic with everyone. So we move down about 3 miles and get out to call again. Right off the bat a gobbler sounds off pretty close. Tommy and I used every call we had and the bird would not come across this open area. We tried to get into his comfort zone to get him in and ended up bumping him. We found where he was strutting while we were calling and it looked like he had tore up a 1/4 acre of snow struttin for our calls. On to the next spot. We actually got to the end of our road where the snow had made it impossible to go any further. Tommy jumped out and ran up the road around the corner to call. About a minute goes by and he comes running back telling my dad to get his gun and get up there now. I run up there with my dad and before we could call the gobbler sounded off close. I just sat back and watched as Tommy called the hottest gobbler I have ever seen. It was like watching a hunting show. This bird had a perfect lane to come down the snow covered hill side and he came right down the middle of it. He would strut back and forth and then run and then strut again. It was awesome. He got to 30 yards and I heard a click and I almost fell over. My dads gun misfired, he did have a shell in it but it did not fire. I thought to myself this is the most awesome turkey sequence I have ever seen and my dad is going to loose this bird. Well he jacked another one in and Tommy stopped the bird with a few more calls and boom the bird was down. Tommy and I started screaming and giving high fives with my dad. Tommy earned his forum name that morning for sure. He is definetly the Tomgobbler of calling turkeys. I want to thank Tommy very much for taking time away from his family and work to come out and help us. We could not have done it with out him. Thanks to my dad for a great hunt. Tommy is going to mount both birds for me and my dad to put up at our cabin. He does awesome turkey mounts I can't wait to get them back.

Tommy is the man. I met him on my elk hunt and we became friends almost immediately. He is a great turkey hunter no matter what he says. He got those turkeys going crazy. Thanks again Tommy and hopefully you will be hunting with your own tag on the rez with us next year. You can bet your butt you will be on all my hunting adventures when ever you want you will always have an invitation. I know you $%^& yourself when you heard that gun go click too.

Those are some great finds. It adds so much more to the trip when you can go scouting and bring home some sheds.

That thing turned out awesome. Hopefully you will have a 120" buck for him to mount and put right next to that one after our rez hunt this year. Congrats on a great buck buddy.

No, there are a ton of antelope. You can't drive very much of it but there are areas that are fairly small with huge numbers of antelope. There use to be a good number of B&C bucks but in recent years there seem to be less and less but no shortage of antelope by any means. Good Luck. Your not that far from there why don'y you get up there and check it out for yourself.

Here is the antelope decoys that I would recommend: http://www.paysonoutfitters.com/servlet/th...Buck-Doe/Detail Here are those cow decoys as well. Looks pretty cool but you may look like an idiot carrying a life size cow cut out across the prairie: http://www.paysonoutfitters.com/servlet/th...ow-Decoy/Detail http://www.paysonoutfitters.com/servlet/th...-the-Cow/Detail

I forgot to mention that my archery hunt was in unit 19A. I had a lot of people tell me that those antelope have seen it all and get tons of pressure. So hopefully my unit 1 archery tag that I have this year will yield some dumb antelope that will try and run over my decoy. Hopefully they will have terrible eye sight in unit 1 too.

If the moon is in line with the sun and mars is in the right orbit it might work. On my last archery AZ antelope hunt I used a montana buck antelope decoy a lot and I did not have any bucks come running over to me but it seemed in some situations to relax them and let me stalk in closer. Other times it seemed to make the does nervous and take off along with the bucks. The whole hunt I was watching the dominant bucks chase other bucks off like crazy but they never wanted to chase my decoy off. I have seen on TV and heard of people being successful having bucks charge their decoy and getting shots but I think thngs have to be just right and the bucks better not have been pressured to much. They also make some cow decoys now that you can hide behind to use to sneak in on antelope. They sale them at paysonoutfitters.com. Check them out too. There are probably some guys on here that have had better success than I have hopefully they will share some of their experiences with you.

Man that don't look good buddy. I am sure you will have it all healed up by the turkey hunt. If not I guess I will have to do all the box calling and the slate calling !

Here is my favorite wall in the house. Boy it is hard to say which is my favorite because they all have great stories and memories behind them. My biggest buck My favorite Turkey Mount My favorite predator mount My favorite and only little elk mount

Congrats Daniel on your first turkey buddy! That is awesome. Your dad sent me the picture Friday morning and I couldn't believe you had already taken a giant bird!

Got back last Sunday from our annual San Carlos turkey hunt. We had a total of 12 tags in camp and we got 10 of them filled. There were quite a few gobblers that were with hens already but there were also a ton of flocks of just pure gobblers. We saw one group that had 15 mature gobblers in it with out a hen or a jake to be found. The coolest part by far was that it was my daughters first time going on a turkey hunt and she downed her first turkey. To make it even better her first turkey had a 10" beard on it. It was awesome to watch how excited she was with her first bird ever. I think I have her hooked for life now. We were driving along with the windows down and heard a gobbler off in the distance so we got out and made a loop around the hill. We caught the gobbler trying to sneak away from my brother in law and she laid the hammer down on him with a little help from daddy. Now I have to get her a full strut turkey mount for her room. She is really proud of her bird. I had "Tomgobbler" from the forum send us some pictures of the different birds he has mounted and she picked out the mount she wanted for her room. Thanks again Tommy for sending all the pics and agreeing to mount her bird. She is pumped to get it mounted. The picture is from my camera on my phone and it cut off the dang head and beard. We had the beard sticking out perfectly for the pic but it just cut it off for some reason. I will try and get a picture of the beard on here too.

And for those of you thinking of getting a tatoo here is another awesome commercial that may make you think twice about it.

Here is the worst commercial ever. Unless you need some good seafood. There are some different birds in this world.

Thanks again Amanda for always keeping us practiced up for our field judging. Congrats to all the winners.

That is a great lookin mount, congrats!

That sure is a purty buck. Congrats!

We live down here in Yuma and man it rocked us pretty dang good. It was the worst earthquake I have ever felt by far. Stuff got knocked off shelves and a few friends had damage done to their homes. We felt it for a good 30 seconds or so and had probably 10 after shocks after that. The after shocks were stronger than any quake I have felt in a long time. Pretty scary when it was going on. I grabbed the kids and ran out side. I know thats not what you are suppose to do but we got out there before the bad part hit. I could definetly go with out another one of those for a long time. That sucked.

108 1/8".

I got unit 1 archery antelope!

I can't believe it but I got drawn for archery antelope again. This is the second tag in four years and this year I drew unit 1. I am pumped up to say the least. My wife also drew the unit 1 east December cow tag. We have a cabin in Springerville and we plan on spending all of our vacation time up there scouting this summer. I am pumped up I can't wait. Christain told me I needed to change my handle from matthewp45 to lucky ba$&^rd. Whatever you wanna call me I am just ready to stick an arrow in a big ole buck.

Happy Birthday buddy. Hope you have a good one.

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