COOSEFAN

PM being sent Shane. Tf1007.......I'll keep my eye out for some 10's for ya! JIM>

I've got a pair of 8.5x42 EL's I may have to part with soon

Jim, thats too close for Ghost Buster to shoot! Of course, it is handicapped in your hands. If you like, send it down to me and I will stretch its legs. Dude, I have a 1000 yarder right around the corner from this new range where the Ghostbuster stretches it's legs. I'm excited about this new range 'cause it'll be really hot when Ghostbuster II arrives this summer......the ammenities at this range will be nice while sighting in my new baby

FREAKIN' AWESOME! Great shot Jakob and great video work dad! Thanks for posting it up for everyone to see! JIM>

WhooHOoo! That's like 10 minutes from my house, I never knew there was a shooting range there! Beats the heck outta driving over an hour to Ben Avery! Thanks for the heads up Bret! JIM>

Alright I'm done. 16,075

Ha ha, how about 12,025! You have to get doubles and don't have to shoot at every deer...I was waiting to get the doubles and that's the trick. There still has to be other tricks...some dudes are getting way higher scores somehow??

Dangit, now I gotta go back and see for myself I WAS proud of myself for only spending 15 mins the first time around.......this could be a long night

Congrats guys and great story! JIM>

Awesome job, the Kauffman boys are whackin' em' again! Congrats, JIM>

WhooHOooo! Awesome job again Jakob! You are on a roll buddy, congrats! Awesome pic's too dad! JIM>

Oh no.......here we go I have shot both and honestly am surprised that some people still like the Hoyt when compared to a Mathews. In shooting and handling both, in several different models, the Mathews has always shot and felt better...TO ME! Thats the thing, it's a personal opinion that you need to decide for yourself. Both bows are the best out there, but each has it's own different feel, just find the one that fits you and is comfortable to shoot. My suggestion is to not get wrapped up in the speed game and don't buy a bow just because somebody tells you it's the best, it is a personal thing IMO. Shoot the DXT before you buy, I've been real impressed with mine! Good luck, JIM>

7475 was my highest, what I don't get is how did those dudes get scores in the 30,000 and 40,000 range on the leader board? There isn't enough hunting or critters to shoot to get that high?

I was just told a great stock market tip! Appearantly the people planning to illegally cross our borders got word that Casey would be on patrol...so there is an expected huge increase in the sale of "Bullet Proof Helmets"! So buy stock in the manufaturers of "Bullet Proof Helmets", all the illegals and smugglers will be wearing them.......they've heard of Casey's reputation! Congrats on gettin' the call and best of luck in the academy. JIM>

That's what I was thinking! Best of luck dude, like Gino said, "stay away from the donuts!"

I had the same problem yesterday while fine tuning my longer yardage pins. For me it was the angle of my sight. I have the Spot Hogg Hunter Hogg-it sight and even though the verticle wire visually appeared to be straight up and down it was off very slightly. This caused me to shoot farther to the right increasingly with the longer distances. I wasn't paying enough attention to the bubble level either, not sure if I would have caught the problem earlier with that or not. The fine tuning adjustments came in very handy and lining it all up fixed my problem. Best of luck, JIM>

Right there is one of the funnest things ever, now that you got the first one out of the way the rest will be easy! Congrats! JIM>

Ooops, I missed it too.......Hope it was a great birthday for ya Keith! JIM>

Happy Birthday Matt! Hope it was a great one for ya! JIM>

A dream buck for sure!!! Huge gongrats to you and thanks for the story and pics! JIM>

We've been buying rolls of it from Gary for a long time now. I have always highly reccomended them and have never had a problem......well, aside from Chrissy stealin' a roll here and there For us it's been a huge savings and has made our job a lot easier and more professional with the meat care on our hunts. Every hunter needs to have a roll of this stuff with them on a hunt! The cloth is very durable and strong and works as good if not better than any high quality product you find in the stores....plus it's cheaper in the long run! Glad to see the product for sale here! JIM>

I use to shoot them all the time too, frisbees and birds in the back yard or squirrels in the woods, lots of fun! Funny thing is I was just at Cabela's tonight and saw a batch of em' for sale, made me remember the good ol' days messin' around! JIM>

Great idea to start this thread Gino! Mr. Jonathan, not having seen the actual shot placement I couldn't tell ya if the shot would be fatal or not, but I would guess a pass through on a large part of the body is more than likely fatal...but you never know. I've seen animals that have carried an arrow shaft, broadhead, or even bullet fragments for years before being shot again by another hunter...and only after field dressing it became appearant the animals had been wounded before! So there is hope the animal can recover, but not likely with infection or shut down of vital organs or tissues...but that all depends on the shot location. I'll throw my pride out the window for the sake of sharing honestly in this discussion. I have hunted with a bow ever since I was just out of diapers, I killed my first archery deer at 13 and many critters since. In my younger years i made a lot of mistakes (well, at least more than I do now ) but I was generally lucky in recovering my animals even though a made a few very bad shots. A couple that stand out for me are very similar to the shot you described Mr. Jonathan. I shot a perfectly broadside deer smack dab in the hip, I'd like to say he jumped the string but I honestly don't remember. I was probably pullin' 45 lbs at the time and shooting my trusty ol' Gamegetter II's and Satellite broadheads. The arrow only went in a few inches and the deer ran off with the arrow noticeably stuck in bone. I let the deer go for several hours without pushing it. The deer didn't bleed at all but soon laid down. I ended up finally circling far enough that i bumped into the buck and he couldn't get up becuase of the steepness of the mountain and the broadhead had popped the rear leg out of the socket, I put a lethal arrow in him at that point and he was mine. Tons of luck involved with that one! Another buck, many years ago, I did the same thing. This time I was pulling more weight and shooting a heavier arrow. The shot was probably too far for my setup, but I was accurately confident and took it. The deer did jump the string this time and the arrow went through both rear legs just below the belly line. My arrows were heavy alluminums with 4 blade Muzzy's and it destroyed both back legs and the deer was down going nowhere, but again, I had to put another shot in him. I could plainly see I had no choice but to finish the job and not wait on this one. One last one that is similar to Mr. Jonathan's, this time it's more recent. My archery Antelope seriously jumped the string and my arrow hit the complete opposite side of the animal and again...right in the hip! I stalked that buck several times that day, missed him once and hit him once more in the exact same spot as the first arrow because he was able to still jump the string! I had zero blood to follow and the country was rolling hills with lots of cover....not good! I went an entire 2nd day just walking circles and glassing with my friends and nobody ever seen the buck. The 3rd day we climbed a small knob again and just glassed hoping for crows. My buddy glassed up my buck bedded down and still alive! I made the stalk of my life and made a perfect shot at 50 yards after the buck jumped up and took off running but I was able to stop him for the shot. We later found that one of my "hip" shots had penetrated enough that the anal canal was blocked causing a backup that was sure to be fatal in another day or two. In all cases I felt very bad for my animal and the poor shot placement, the Antelope really made me question the ethics of using archery equipment on them, there is only so much you can do but then your left with whatever the animal does after the arrow is already in the air! These are just a couple scenarios, but it illustrates some similar instances I've had with similar shot placement as Mr. Jonathan described. My guidelines are: -Always wait at least 45 minutes -If you know it's a gut shot, back out quietly and don't return for at least 12 hours! The exception to this is rain, snow or hunter pressure. Like has been said, the animal will go a short way and lay down when it feels safe, if pushed they can go forever! If it looks like it will rain or snow then track the animal but stalk him as though he is still alive...he probably is! I've seen a bull last for over 11 hours gut shot...and we still lost him, even after getting a 2nd arrow in em'! -Never push a wounded animal, always be patient and give em' plenty of time....I'd rather lose a few steaks than the whole animal! -Always mark the last track or blood and look for irregularities in the track or identifiable trademarks such as shape, drag marks, or one side landing heavier than the other. -Never get in a hurry while tracking, never get ahead of the track regardless how good the trail is, and constantly glass ahead incase the animal is alive and can be finished off before spooking. -Pay attention to all your surroundings, observe all the clues present to help you recover the animal!

Well another Mexico trip is done and we are all home safe so it can only be called a success! The hunt consisted of DIY mule deer tags on an undeveloped ranch that bordered a well known successful ranch. Pops, Jimmy (bro n' law), and his dad (also named Jim) all had the mule deer tags and we all had the option to shoot a coues for the price of the tag if one presented itself. We had two ranches to hunt and the ranch that "supposedly" had coues was a 2 hour one way nasty road trip, so our focus was for the mulies on the ranch we were staying at. We soon found out that there was only one small section of the ranch that had any deer sign at all. We hunted this section hard for two days and only saw 4 does and 1 buck. The buck had 2 of those 4 does with him and he was big enough for Jimmy! After killing that buck, the neighboring ranch found out we were hunting that section and they forced us to hunt our other ranch! They had high paying clients and the only deer they could find were jumping on to our ranch at this same spot so they wanted us out of there! We felt we had our hands tied as we were all working under the same outfitter, so we started making the long brutal trips to the other ranch in search of any sign of deer. We were finding a few tracks here and there and did a lot of glassing but came up with very little. We were very frustrated to say the least, we knew we could find another deer right behind our ranch house, but kept getting told we had to hunt elsewhere. On one of these trips to the other ranch we did find a few Javies and with one quick motion I grabbed the rifle from Pops and laid the smack down on my first rifle pig at 191 yards runnin'! Jimmy went with me to retrieve the pig and I was able to "woof" a second pig back to us and he hammered that one for the double! We were happy to bring back the meat for the rancher but were worried that our cook would use the meat for our meals.....we still aren't sure if that happened or not, our cook took the meat and it then dissappeared somewhere? I didn't get any good pics of the pigs, it's not like me, but we felt bad we were wasting prime time for the deer so here's the only pics I have. After a few very frustrating days feeling like we were wasting our time we finally had enough info via satellite phone from our outfitter to know that we were being jacked around by the neighboring ranch and we finally felt comfortable enough to hunt our spot again....on our ranch! With all the frustrations we had already gone through, we felt we would probably only have one afternoon and possibly a morning to hunt the good section on our ranch before the neighboring ranch came up with something new to keep us away. We hauled back over to our ranch and had pops on the gun, our mission was to find a good buck and be done so we could head home. It didn't take more than 30 minutes after leaving the ranch house to get to our favorite spot and Pops dropped the hammer on this gorgeous desert buck! All in all it was a successful trip. We knew we were going to be the guinea pigs on this ranch but we also were told we could hunt the two ranches however we liked, and were told we had nothing holding us back besides the ranch borders which were clearly visible. My only regret is that we let the neighboring ranch push us around when we knew we were in the right, we lost several valuable days and possibly could have held out for something bigger, but it's hard to argue when you are in Mexico by yourself! All parties involved with this hunt, on either ranch, are good people and the outfitters on the neighboring ranch were just doing what they could to keep the peace with their clients. I won't mention the outfitters name as they are good guys and very reputable, I just wish we got what we paid for and were able to hunt where we were told we could. Still a good trip, always a great thing to spend time with your family! Thanks, JIM>

If you go to the home page of this site you'll see we have two outfitters who happen to be very successful and hard working Lion guides. Rimrock Outfitters and Nichols Guide Service, just click on either logo and it will take you directly to their sites for contact #'s and info. I personally would highly reccomend contacting Randy at Rimrock Outfitters, personally i don't know of a more respectful, knowledgeable, or experienced Lion houndsman other than Randy. The one thing to be careful of is to not shop around for the cheapest price, make sure you are runnin' behind the best dogs and guide you can afford.....Lion hunting isn't as easy and guaranteed as most think, make the most of your money! Make sure the guides dogs are proven, ask for pic's showing experience and definitely call referances! Best of luck to ya, again you can't go wrong with either outfit that I've mentioned! JIM>