matthewp45

Congrats to you and your clients. Those are some great bulls.

The long awaited opening day for my desert mule deer hunt finally arrived today and I got my hunt over in a hurry. I started scouting a couple of months ago and found a really nice main frame three point that was really tall. I seemed to be able to find him on almost every scouting trip and decided last week he was the one I was going to try and kill. I went on my final scouting trip last weekend and I found him once again and he had rubbed his velvet off. I watched him bedded last weekend for about an hour. He sure did look good. All I had to do now was put a plan together and kill him. I knew where he ate and where he slept so I figured I would try to get in the middle of the two on a point and see if I could get him going to bed opening morning I slipped into my glassing spot about 5:00 AM and had to sit and wait about an hour and a half. As soon as I could start to see I picked him up leaving his feeding area. He was headed straight for me. I watched him as he started to angle slightly away from me and I knew I had to make a move to get in front of him before it was to late. I got up and made my way to another point about a 1/4 mile away. When I got to the point I started glassing for him and he had worked his way a lot closer. He was at 435 yards and about to slip into a big thicket of mesquite so I figured it was now or never. So I ranged him again to make sure and it was right on the nose at 435 yards. I dialed my turret to about 435 yards and slid my gun up on my tripod. I took off the safety and settled my crosshairs on his shoulder. I started to squeeze the trigger and BOOM the old 7MM RUM barked and the buck disapeared. I jacked another round in and put the scope back up to see him laying dead in his tracks. What a great feeling I had at that moment. It is a great feeling when you put in a lot of time in on a single buck and your plan ends up with the buck on your wall. He ended up scoring right at 170" and he is only a main frame 3X3 and he is 24" wide. He has an 18" G2 and 17" G3's. Hope you enjoy the pics. A big thanks to my dad for helping me get him out and being there to help me celebrate.

That is a super buck. Congrats!

I say 116 2/8". I also say that thing is bad a#$

Thank you very much for the kind words guys. Ernesto, my dad was taking the pictures. We hunted Saturday and this morning for his tag. He had a chance at another real nice buck but he got in the middle of some does and would not give him a shot. We will go back out in the evenings this week and see if we can make something happen.

What a pig. Congrats on a gorgeous buck.

Congrats on a great buck. That is the perfect buck to break the ole dry spell.

OMG! That is one heck of a coues. Save your pennies and get afull body mount for that absolute beaut. Congrats to the end of a great adventure.

What an amazing start to this season but I wouldn't expect anything less from the Mullins boys. Huge congrats and hopefully some day I will get to hunt with you guys.

Probably somewhere between 2,850 - 3,000 FPS.

That is a gorgeous mount and deer. I am looking at three coues mounted by Clay in my living room. They are all awesome. My last buck has the same offset turn as yours, I think that looks so cool. Man that buck is an absolute stud. Congrats on a fantastic buck.

Yumabowhunter more like yumagirlscout. Not only can he not pull a 35lb bow, he is trading in his 7MM for a 25-06 because he is scared of the recoil. I think his new name on the forum should be Brownie Leader. Old Brownie leader asked me if I thought a 22 mag would kill a deer because that was as much recoil as he could handle. Seriously though there are a lot of great people around here and it is always great to have good healthy debates, but we need to remember the rules of these debates. No matter how much our opinions differ we need to try and keep it civil and act like grown men and women. This reminds me of the Ron White story about when he joined the debate team and he got kicked off the team because during his first debate after his oponent got done with his side of the argument Ron's response was "well f*$k you then! Now thats funny right there I don't care who you are.

I wanted to say thank you as well. I always need a new CWT shirt.

Freakin great bull! Congrats and welcome to the site.

Man oh man that bull has the ultimate 3rds and 4ths. Unbelievable!

I do agree with the number of hunters being way to high. Three years ago my friend had a late 22N tag. We had scouted some and had a pocket of bulls nailed down in the bottom of this small rim. Opening morning we snuck down in the dark and got into position. As soon as it got light people started shooting straight over us at the bulls below us. We were 300 yards and they had to be shooting at least 700 yards at these elk. They shot over 20 times at these elk right over our heads as we are running for cover. That was one of many close encounters with the crazy amount of people. That year they split the two late hunts as they do now. There was 250 tags in each hunt and it was insane the amount of people. I looked at the regs this year out of curiosity and the first hunt has 400 tags and the second has 470 tags. I will be really surprised if someone does not get shot god forbid. 400 tags in that tiny unit, it is going to be absulutely crazy.

I am going to start calling ypu Christie. I know you wanna have some archery records but I don't think being the first transvestite to kill a p&y bull is the way to go. Just be a man Christie

120" even

You are a bitter old man with out the countries problems !

That was my favorite part about the hunt too. Making two new friends Mark and Troy. We also had the #1 guide with us you can see him in the picture. Ole Manuel (Ernesto's Son), he worked his butt off and kept up with us the whole time.

No I have not got it yet but I will get one tomorow.

Troy you are an awesome hunter buddy (espacially for a 13 year old). You stuck right in there the whole time and even though you missed some you were not getting down on yourself. All of us ran our butts off through those field and you were the one leading the way even when you were tired. It was 10 times better to watch you get your first pheasant than it would have been if I shot it. Any time you need some help or need a huntin buddy you and your dad just let me know. It was a great pleasure meeting you guys and hope we get to hunt together again soon.

Mark, I sent you a PM and I wanted to make sure you got it. Let me know .

I try to keep my dads memory alive and well. I named my son after him Steven Allen Phillips. I still have every single one of his guns all cleaned up and put in the safe waiting for my kids to get old enough. I have afew things that aren't worth much but they mean the world to me like : about 40 or so canadian goose bands from all the geese he use to shoot down here in Yuma when I would go huntin with him. He also had an Indian arrow head collection from my grandparents cabin in Idaho by yellowstone park, there must be at least 25. My favorite though is a 1967 Field and Stream magazine that has an article about him catching the Idaho state record Brook trout at 7 3/4 lbs on his fly rod. I want to keep as much stuff in my memory and in hand so I can show and tell my kids how great of a man there grandpa was.

I got word from Christian today that the Mullin's crew got it done in a huge way last night!