huntlines

MANDATORTY REPORTAING means you don't have a choice to not report. If an archery hunter refuses to report he will get cited. I agree with Traveler, mandatory reporting for everyone is needed. Rifle hunters don't understand this issue but when they have to report and then their hunts get taken away because of it they will.......

I don't know where you got your information about G&F lifting bans on magazine capacities? The state law makers changed this not G&F. G&F opposed this idea. As for them opening night hunting for varmits, well this was something people fought for a long time. Years ago I remember sitting in a meeting with G&F arguing this very idea and G&F was against it! The reason they were against it was because it put their officers at risk?!? I hope now there will be enough pressure from hunters on state law makers to over ride the baiting law just like they were forced to do with the magazine capacity issue......

While I agree we should be policing ourselves better and this would curb most of what game and fish does I take issue with some of this. First, you have no right to privacy on public lands. To take a trail camera just because you don't like having your picture taken is still theft. A better argument might be that the camera is considered abandoned property but that is still a stretch. One would need to prove the camera was left there for a long period of time without being maintained. If it is still taking pictures then it is being used. Theft is theft no matter how you want to try to make is sound justified..... Second, are we really going to compare baiting to the use of ultra-lights? Really? I have never put out a feeder but for those that do and run the risk of it getting taken by the thief’s that are all over in our ranks then more power to them. Animals may be drawn to them more so and give the hunter an edge but the animal still has to come to the feeder and in daylight hours. The use of ultra-lights is something entirely different and I can't even believe we are comparing the two. I compare baiting to the use of dogs for many reasons. One it is a lot of work, time and money spent to do it right. Two it helps the hunter by giving the hunter time to decide if the animal is one he/she wants to take. IMO this is beneficial to both the hunter and the game because the hunter doesn't rush and shoot an animal he later finds to be the wrong sex. Really how many times do you think a hunter accidently shoots a doe around a bait stand? There are accidents every year where a riffle hunter thinks he is shooting at a buck at a distance and finds out later it was a doe..... I know accidents happen and it is part of hunting as long as people do the right thing and turn themselves in. But really I know people who hunt using bait and these types of things don't happen. How many of you use radios while out hunting? This is something G&F doesn't like either. Again I don't use them but don't have a problem with others doing so. I can make an argument for both sides when it comes to the use of radios. Shakespeare said it best when he said "the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose". All I'm saying is there are many different ways to hunt and we shouldn't be bashing on others for the way they do it.

Persistence = MONSTER first buck for my son Im sure some of you have read My daughters first buck with a bow. Having one of your children harvests a Coues deer with a bow is something you just cant put into words. Now my son has harvested his first Coues with a bow and man what a buck! Sorry if this gets a little long but I must put this into perspective. Yes my son is only seventeen and yes this is his first buck but he has been archery hunting for three years now and has put more hours into it than probably twenty other hunters combined over that time. He has hunted in the early season heat and put countless hours in a hot blind. He has put even more time into hunting December/January freezing his tail off. So little to say my daughter told me in private she felt a little bad for him because she hasnt put in 1% of the time he has and she harvested before he did. I think my son was a little down too even though he would never let his sister know it. During this last week my son was hinting he wanted to ditch school Friday and go hunting. After finding out his limited senior year schedule meant he wasnt going to miss much on a Friday I agreed he should hunt before the holiday weekend. He has been hunting with me long enough to know that Labor Day weekend is crazy and the deer are off their patterns. Then he told me where he wanted to hunt. I knew what he was thinking and why he wanted to make the hour long hike in the dark just to get to this spot. Then he said dad I wont shoot the MONSTER buck and save him for you in January. It is true I was after a buck that eluded me last year but still this comment shocked me. I told him if that buck gives you a shot YOU TAKE IT. I also talked to him about the odds where he was going to have opportunities at smaller bucks and that he shouldnt pass them up just to hold out for the MONSTER. He agreed and reassured me he would shoot the first buck that he got a chance at. My twelve year old found out her brother was ditching school to go hunting and there was no way she was getting left behind. I wish I would have been with him and got it on camera but I couldnt tell my youngest daughter no. I got a text from my son at 7am. I figured he was just checking in, oh no, his text read as follows HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP I JUST SHOT THE MONSTER!!!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP I couldnt catch my breath for a few seconds. My heart was pounding and I felt like I had buck fever! I finally came to my senses and wanted to know details, where was the hit, what kind of penetration and what did he act like when he ran off. When he told me he drilled him behind the shoulder and sunk the arrow nearly to the fletchings I was practically running in his direction. I didnt get to him until almost two hours later. As I walked up to him I just happened to see something that caught my eye, Blood! LOTS of blood and a smile on my son that said it all. I looked at him and then the blood trail and saidson do you know what you just did? My son quickly corrected me and said we had to find him first but with the blood trail I saw there was very little doubt the buck wasnt far. The blood trail was one of those you follow standing straight up and never loosing stride as you follow it. Eighty yards later it just stopped! Then I realized we were standing on a steep slope and looked down. The buck died on a dead run and rolled down the hill before a dead fall stopped him. We were celebrating and taking turns putting this magnificent trophy in our hands. His split eye guard and palmated other eye guard where something you just had to touch. My son is slowly realizing his first buck is one he may spend a lifetime trying to best but he has a long bow hunting life ahead of him.

You call bowhunter.forever someone that is embarassed to show their true identity but yet you do the same thing. No pictures and no personal information, the pot calling the kettle black? Keyboard tough guy? From your other post I'm gathering you disagree with baiting because of the high harvest ratio? Again I find it ignorant to think it is from baiting? So what will you say when this gets banned and the archery hunters are still more successful? Or is it that you are an archery hunter that just can't harvest deer and feel that everyone else that does must be baiting? Like I said before this was attempted by G&F before and was shot down by the hunting groups whom banded together to fight it. I don't bait(food plots or feeders) but don't think it is right to ban it just because someone feels it is causing a higher success rate. Salt is another issue and I don't see an issue with it. The problem here is salt is being lumped into baiting. Salt and mineral licks were something I learned about over twenty years ago by a G&F warden! He taught me a lot about hunting whitetail. I have many friends whom work in the G&F department and most of them use something during their archery hunting. Again if your using the argument for keeping CWD out of the state then provide the research, if your doing it for high harvest ratios then again provide the proof before just banning it.

123456, You are probably one of the G&F employees who troll this web site and like to throw "facts" around. I will guarantee the harvest number by archery hunters will not go down if this law is passed. For some reason the thinkers in game and fish area believe it is due to baiting but never think it is possibly due to other factors like bow technology, better optics, time in the field and hunters studying the game more than ever before. Why are we not limiting the size/power of optics, feet per second shot by a bow, range finders and scent lures? Or are the game and fish getting ready to look into these issues too? All the studies done on diseases due to baiting have been done in states that have far greater deer/elk populations than Arizona. The harvest numbers you are referring too are in my opinion due to many other factors stated above than to baiting. But I'm sure in five years when the hunt success is still on the rise for archery hunters even after the baiting ban, laws will be put into place or hunting seasons limited for archery hunter to make sure it fits the G&F puzzle. G&F wonders why hunter participation numbers are down, all they have to do is look into the mirror. Stupid laws like this will just make it worse not to mention hurt the hunting revenue generated from the archery hunters. I've been considering moving to another state and this will be a motivator to take my money elsewhere as will many others. I simply stated that lots of arguments on this site seem to be that they want to know #'s. Read Coues n Sheep's post. He actually puts his questions in a bullet style presentation. The answer to 70 % of his questions are present in Hunt Arizona. As far as doing #'s on our present herd vs. other states, this is not a very intelligent statement. You see in order to have research, the problem has to be present. We do not have CWD, they are trying to be proactive, not reactive. If this law makes you move to another state, I would suggest it be one of the other states that allow baiting. When you arrive at your new state, I'm sure you will have stuff to complain about there too. If I were you, I would start packing and looking at real estate outside of AZ. Good luck in your travels. 123456, I find it interesting you do not deny to being a G&F troller. Also I think you are not intelligent when saying there can't be any studies when there isn't any CWD in AZ. This has to be the dumbest statement I've ever heard but doesn't surprise me coming from some pencil pusher or a warden that never gets out of his truck to do any research. One doesn't need CWD to be in AZ in order to study how it spreads. Again there are good arguments to why it isn't here. States that have CWD are primarily states that have high elk populations that are forced into small areas due to hard winters. We have nether and with the high number of tags being issued every year we will never have high populations. Also there is no proof that baiting causes the spread of CWD. Also I don't find it surprising that you are glad to hear a hunter wants to leave the state due to dumb game regulations. This has been a huge problem in G&F that they just don't care. All they care about is selling tags and to heck with the hunters. To prove a point here I point to the fact that G&F is trying to put a lid on high archery harvest numbers. Why doesn't G&F highlight this as a proud point and use it to increase hunter participation. This should be a positive issue and not a negative! But with G&F high harvest numbers is always a negative. I also agree with huntlines that even if you ban the baiting thing the archery harvest will not go down, then what? Ban archery hunting? Reduce archery tags and increase rifle tags(which is what they have been doing by increasing rifle tags). Go troll somewhere else because your ignorance is just proving everything we already know about G&F That statement is not entirely correct. States that have free ranging CWD include, but not limited to: Wisconsin, Illinios, New York, West Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, Nebraska and Kansas. Last I checked...there isn't a large elk population in any of the listed states. Your right Forlorn Hope they don't have large elk populations and bowhunter.forever used a poor example. All those states though do have very high deer populations per square mile and that is more than likely the cause of the spread not baiting. I would like to know if any of the states you mentioned have banned baiting and still have problems with these illnesses. Common sense tells you if you have high populations of any species there will be issues with diseases.

Dallon’s First Bull What a year my son has had! He is seventeen, a senior in High School and has taken a 115 Coues buck with his bow (see Persistence = Monster buck for my Son) and now has taken a 360+ bull! My father has told him he might as well start golfing but he now has the “itch” as I refer to it. He says he now will be after a 120 inch Coues and a 400 bull. I will start out by saying all you archery elk hunters had the best part of the rut. The rifle hunt was during the full moon and the temps started to climb with no rain. The rut appeared to me to be about over. The bugling was light to say the least and only lasted for about 30 minutes after first light. The bulls didn’t start bugling again until well after dark. With these tough conditions I knew we were going to have to be much more aggressive. To make matters worse my son came down with a really bad cold/strep the day before opening morning. Opening morning seemed great, we had several bulls bugling before light and just at first light had a bull at about 100 yards but I told my son “no!” after getting a good look at him through the binos. He was about a 330 bull and a satellite bull for sure. We were able to get onto the herd bull a short time later but he was across a canyon in burned out trees. I never got a real good look at him before he topped out. The bugling abruptly stopped at about 7am and the elk were all in their beds after feeding all night under a full moon. Getting to the successful day, after a few days of tough conditions, we had got in close to the main herd before light but they were already on the move to their bedding areas. We even tried to run and get around them (with the wind right) in order to get a look at the two different herd bulls but just couldn’t do it. My son was hurting from the illness he was fighting and we had just drained what little energy he had. I decided to head back very concerned for my son and in disbelief of the rut. Back at the truck, my dad and I decided to see if we could find a road that might get us behind the area I thought these elk were bedding. As luck would have it we found one and got somewhat close to the possible bedding area. According to the GPS we were a mile or so from a ridge I figured they were bedding. My son was a trooper and after a snack and brief break we decided to hike into what I thought would be the bedding area. When we got close I let out a few soft cow calls and was rewarded with a halfhearted bugle that I figured was a bull letting the cow know where they were bedded for the day. The wind was not perfect so I decided to back track a little and head south to get the wind right. It wasn’t long before we jumped a decent bull that must have heard the soft cow call and was coming to find the wandering cow. Even though the bull busted us I was able to coax him back to seventy yards and get a good look at him. Another satellite bull, so we let him get out of sight before moving into the beds. As we got close I saw a cow in the dark timber stand, I knew we were in the bedroom now so we slowed way down. The two herd bulls were now up and trying to get their cows gathered back up while trying to keep the other bull away. This helped because they were bugling again. A few times I thought my son was going to get a shot but the timber was just too thick. The cows finally figured something was wrong and decided to move, this was great because they were headed for open country. My only fear at this time was my son getting excited and shooting one of several smaller satellite bulls. I kept him close to me and told him not to shoot until I gave him the green light. We made it after a short sprint to the edge of a small meadow just in time to catch one of the two shooter bulls crossing it. He had almost made it to the other side but a soft cow call stopped him and my son made a perfect shot with the 300 short mag. I hesitated a second or two before giving him the green light to shoot but after walking up to this bull I’m glad I didn’t have him pass. This bull was one of a very few that wasn’t broke and after a tape on him determined he will score just over 360. One last interesting thing, this bull was shot during the archery hunt! We found a bulge about 5 inched in diameter and it was swollen up about 2 inches high just about midway down his back and just below the spine. On the opposite side I noticed what appeared to be a two bladed broadhead hole. While skinning it we found about 3 inches of an arrow shaft tipped with a two blade Rage broadhead. Someone ALMOST got this bull during the archery hunt. The arrow was just under the spine and the broadhead was just under the skin on the opposite side. He was healed up enough that he was back to chasing cows and doing battle with another bull his size for the cows in the area. These animals never stop amazing me.

123456, You are probably one of the G&F employees who troll this web site and like to throw "facts" around. I will guarantee the harvest number by archery hunters will not go down if this law is passed. For some reason the thinkers in game and fish area believe it is due to baiting but never think it is possibly due to other factors like bow technology, better optics, time in the field and hunters studying the game more than ever before. Why are we not limiting the size/power of optics, feet per second shot by a bow, range finders and scent lures? Or are the game and fish getting ready to look into these issues too? All the studies done on diseases due to baiting have been done in states that have far greater deer/elk populations than Arizona. The harvest numbers you are referring too are in my opinion due to many other factors stated above than to baiting. But I’m sure in five years when the hunt success is still on the rise for archery hunters even after the baiting ban, laws will be put into place or hunting seasons limited for archery hunter to make sure it fits the G&F puzzle. G&F wonders why hunter participation numbers are down, all they have to do is look into the mirror. Stupid laws like this will just make it worse not to mention hurt the hunting revenue generated from the archery hunters. I’ve been considering moving to another state and this will be a motivator to take my money elsewhere as will many others.

The last time G&F tried this it was shot down due to the amount of people and hunting clubs that were against it. This is why we must all get involved and be proactive. Don't just post comments here, use the link provided and say something. Also if your a member of a club have them as a club provide input.

Thanks for all the replies. Dallon is as humble as they come. He went with his sister and I this weekend to help her on her Jr cow hunt. He ran the video camera and helped out a ton. He even put in his 2 cents when I was getting tired and out of ideas. We had a great hunt even though little sister didn't tag out. She is twelve and learning fast, it wont be long before she is showing me how to do things.

Scary is right, but stupid is as stupid does.........

We just got back from my daughters jr cow hunt but we were not able to connect. Weather had the elk hunkered down opening day, but saturday and sunday were great. Seen elk everyday and came very close both days. My daughter just was a second slow getting set before they busted. She never got frustrated and took a bad shot. I'm proud of her for not rushing things and taking a bad shoot even though she had the opportunity. Seen some big bulls and she is now talking about only wanting to bull hunt! If she had a bull tag she would have had several shot opportunities at huge bulls. Lots of fun and memories but no pics. Huge thanks to the two guys in the red truck who stopped and helped us out when we had a flat tire. Hope the advice on the jr deer hunt they had helped.

Luck always helps but it sounds like you knew exacly what you were doing. Congrats on a nice buck!

Way to go! Two down on the same day! You guys had your work cut out for you. Congrats and dont forget to thank your parents for their support.

That is one heck of a first buck! Congrats to Parker and hope to see many more from the young hunter.

Very nuce! Way to go to both of you and thanks for gettting the kids outdoors.

Headed up sometime today. According to the weather it is going to be raining all day friday. Saturday is suppose to be sunny so looks like the first day may be a bust.......

Headed up Thursday with my youngest daughter who has this tag. Will let you know where to go after she kills hers :-)

He came by the cabin after we got him back but no he wasn't with us when we shot him. Wish he would have been though.....

Son got his bull! 360+ bull down, what a great senior year!

Any of you guys returning from unit 27, if you have any advise or maybe areas where you saw big bulls please let me know. My son has his rifle hunt that opens on Friday. Done a little scouting but this weekend has been a little slow. Not much bugling where we have been the last few days. Heard of one spot with a possible 380 bull but other than that not much. Looks like the archery hunters may have had the best of the rut. A little cooler weather this week and a chance of rain so I'm crossing my fingers they will start to fire back up again. Have talked to a few of you already and appreciate the information so far. This is my son's first bull hunt and I want to make the most of it. Thanks,

Great job guys. Two very nice bulls! Hope to see you up there when my son and I are chasin em with a rifle next week.

Great bull! Glad you were able to finally get your bull tag. We met two years ago during my elk hunt. Sounds like you deserve it and put in the hard work.

Very nice bull. Big congrats.

Love to see the LADIES gitten it done with a bow! Congrats