Flatlander

I have seen flies or worms in the nasal passage of most of my coues. I ate them all, I am a little over weight because of all the mashed taters and gravy I had with them but other than thatthe doc says I am alive and well.

we used to hoof track them on soft ground adjacent to farm pivots that is about as fun as it gets right there

For me it started when I was 16-17 and drew two really good Dec. tags and didnt ever kill a big buck. Coues deer were the challenge that never came easy. During those hunts I learned to glass, saw all kinds of other wildlife and saw some remote country that I swear no one else had ever looked at. The remote country these deer live in, the solitude of crossing canyon after canyon and climbing ridge after ridge, and the way they seem to appear out of nowhere. Its just different than hunting other animals. I have lived up and down the mountain west and hunted all sorts of stuff, these were the little buggers I could never get off my mind.

Very nice late bull. It really just depends on where you hit the bull and what bullets you were using. If you hit bone and the bullet doesn't hold together real well then the bullet doesn't have a lot of KE when it pushes up against the hide on the other side. This happened on my bear this year with my .300 Win Mag. Also if the bull was quartering to him and the bullet traveled the length of the body there are a lot of places for the slug to go. I saw this on a poached cow years ago. I searched through the carcass for hours with game and fish, and even with a metal detector we couldnt find it.

Willy I know you only intended to help someone out and give a plug for a place you know and like but saying things like that and not naming names paints with a broad brush and since Miller's was already mentioned it kind of seems like you are implying that is who you are talking about. I am sure that's not your intent, it just sort of sounds that way. This I will say having worked in Miller's shop and seen their operations first hand, when you take them meat, you get your meat back. Because of the other work they do they have a USDA inspector in-house everyday. They run a great operation and Mike takes first class care of your animal. There is no one I trust more to process the meat I put on my children's plate (myself included). I have never used Von Hansons but if Jeff says they are good they must be. Only trouble is with all the stuff he has been killing they may not have time to cut anyone else's meat.

Sweet. Any tips on where to go?

Auburn is way too smart to fall for his smoke and mirrors. If he cant beat ASU, the Ohio State, or even Pitt how is he ever supposed to beat Alabama?

I can't tell you how many times I have looked at my old hunting albums and thought wow, if I had only cut that tongue off or got him on the skyline etc. Most people have caught on to this by now, but take your pictures before you field dress the animal. You don't want to look like the Son of Sam in the photos.

Those Kansas bucks all seem to have a similar look about them. They remind me of AZ desert bucks.

Steep terrain sounds like the under-statement of the year. That must have been a chore getting him off that face. We killed a WT buck on a slope like that this year and it made things pretty tricky.

Please tell me that photo of tht chaulk antler is "as it lay" the idea of a bull standing on that skyline is awesome.

Stud bull. Story and more pics please.

Blasphemy!

You are right. I don't know why they bother paying WM's. What we ought to do is just have you and your buddies get together at the Red Onion eat some monster burgers and just tell the rest of us ignorant city slickers how many tags there should be. Then everything would be fixed, 400" bulls would abound, everyone could draw a tag, your arteries would be clogged, the elk would be saved from extinction, and there would be peace in the middle east. Problem solved. Packer - You better start looking for a new gig.

I have a bear hide from this year that I will be having made into a rug. What I can't decide on is open mouth vs closed and what color felt to use. Anyone have any opinions, or even better pics they could share?

Great info Packer. Thanks for being willing to clue us in to what goes through a WM's mind as they make recommendations. Good luck on your hunts.

Thats what she said . . . sorry couldn't help it. Go Devils!

You must not have talked to many hunters this year who drew a tag in 4B. Most of those big bulls came from 27 and unit 1. Definitely not 3C. 4B had the exception of 1 400 bull. Which hasn't happened in a long time. Our money from the tag increases goes straight to their pockets and they claim to be using it to manage wildlife. The most insane thing to me is what they are doing to unit 4B and 3C. 4B has about a total of about 200 elk in it. You could drive for years out there and not see a living thing. Yet somehow they raised tags by 25 this year to 175. That's just the archery tags. Game and fish only wants us to be successful in the draw so they can get their money. Other than that they don't care if we kill anything. We're kind of going in circles here in this post but I know of many more people in this state that are unhappy with AZGFD than those that are happy. We are fed up with these greedy money hungry people. Whether you're going to agree with me or not start asking around and see what they guys up here in the white mountains think about AZGFD. I promise you're not going to find many happy hunters. Yeah they are still going to hunt and put up with it because that's the only thing we can do if we still want to hunt. I'm not sure why they even have these public input meetings. They don't care what we say. They want the money and they are going to get it. It's been shown in the past when everyone at the meeting disagrees with tag numbers in a unit and then the regs come out with more tags than they recommended anyway. Alright all done. Hope it changes someday! But I fear we're screwed and it's only gonna get worse. BC - You have failed in your half dozen posts to use one single piece of empirical evidence. All I hear is a whole bunch of "Me and my friends", "I never see bulls", "All the elk are gone". I find it laughable that you mention 4B as only producing one 400" bull this year. First of all, how in the world did you find time to go personally score every bull killed in that unit? Second, 4B is not historically known as a trophy unit, hence the very favorable draw odds. AZGFD does not owe us some made up quota of 400" bulls every year. You point out that quality has dropped over the last 5 years, well 5 years ago there were MORE tags than they are recommending for 2013, and A LOT more than there were this year. Just because the people you hunt with can't find elk doesn't mean that every unit in the state is on the brink of losing its elk herd. I share your opinion that unit 3C has declined, but I feel that there are a lot of reasons for that, for instance the popularity the unit gained over the past decade and not necessarily that AZGFD is trying to hunt elk into extinction. Your statement that AZGFD takes our tag and license dollars and puts them in their pockets is a perfect illustration of just how shallow your understanding of the department is. Money from tags and licenses was directed to the state general fund by Janet Napolitano years ago. The department is incapable of putting the $ in their own pocket. So you go ahead and sit around Charlie Clarks moaning with all your buddies about how awful AZGFD is; the rest of us will do research, get the facts and form our own, informed, intelligent opinions. My recommendation for you is to just give up, we're screwed anyways and it's only gonna get worse. So you might as well quit now.

Typical Tempe huh? Guess you Nogales Tech folks must have forgotten about this thread. /http://www.coueswhitetail.com/forums/topic/35274-wow/

Well guess what, it all came down to tonight and look who showed up to play? Where are all the UA fans now? In hiding, just like their head coach.

Classless Rich-Rod wouldn't even come out to shake hands. Typical Tucson.

BALL GAME!!! What now U of A!!! Love it!!!

Yeah It seems the mounts take on the personality of the taxidermist. In this instance, there is some anger and the inability to listen to instruction, but very good natural talent. Thats pretty funny right there.

Whats your digiscope setup? These pics turned out great.

BC this is the product of a department who is trying to limit the amount of funding they accept from the feds. Federal $ comes with a whole bunch of strings attached and I for one prefer not to answer to those bureaucrats if it can be helped. The simple truth is that it takes A LOT of $ to run the kind of department that AZGFD has. In order to achieve the same $ through a tag price increase the price of an elk tag would have to be raised roughly $20. Tag price increases are permanent and require a more difficult process to get approved, so therefore it is easier to simply increase the number of tags offered. My personal feeling is that hunting is already expensive, and I feel for guys who have 2 or 3 kids applying for 3-4 species every year, plus trying to outfit them with gear, fuel for trips, etc. so if a few more tags in units that are meeting objectives prevents raising tag prices, I think its the right move. If we look at tag numbers over the past several years the recommendations this year show a trend towards what the total tag #'s were at the end of the last decade. If these recommendations are accepted we would still be 1500 or so tags shy of the 2008 - 2010 totals, and there have been plenty of big bulls harvested since that time, so to say that AZGFD is a joke is a bit harsh. I grew up here in AZ but as an adult have lived in Utah and Idaho and hunted those states plus MT and WY, I will say this, AZGFD is one of the very best F&G agencies in the West. Look no further than ID, where public land is abundant, habitat is excellent and the state's population is a fraction of AZ's and you will see how bad things can be. There are more B&C bulls harvested in a single year in AZ than in a decade there, despite all the advantages listed above. AZ is a pretty unique place where we can hunt trophy coues units during the rut archery every single year, bear and lion tags are over the counter with liberal seasons, you can kill 2 javelina every year if you want, Spring turkey tags can be drawn every couple of years and archery is over the counter, and the elk hunting is without comparison, period. There are archery bull hunts that can be drawn every single year if that is what you want to do, or there are opportunities to wait it out and experience an elk hunter's paradise after years of applying, and every scenario in-between exists; hunts with tons of tags, hunts with very few tags, hunts in the rut, hunts late in the year, cow hunts, youth hunts, muzzleloader only units, archery only units, units that have tons of road access and wilderness only units. Late rifle bull tags can be drawn every 2-3 years if that's your thing, cow hunts very early in the year and close to the rut typically only take a couple of years to draw if you prefer that. I think the state has done a remarkable job of balancing quality and opportunity and I think we owe them a thanks. We in the state of Arizona have a truly unique opportunity and we are blessed. Am I disappointed about the tag increases? Yes. Do I think the AZGFD is a joke, nope, I find a lot more humor in the unrealistic expectations we as a hunting community continually expect them to meet. I know this opinion is likely to be unpopular, but dog gone-it I think its time someone spoke up and gave AZGFD some credit.