Coues79

SWEET BUCK Man!!! Congratulations!!! He's a heck of a bowkill. He's a heck of any kind of kill.

What didn't work out for you? What didn't turn out? Are you needing help skinning the head out, or boiling the skull or what? -I always skin the head from between the ears, going forward to the nose. -A good sharp knife makes it real easy to do. -Once you get to the nose, just start skinning one side all the way down to the jaw. -Then do the other side. -Once you get to the bottom jaw, skin the lower part of the jaw, back towards the neck. -After that, or right at the beginning, (either way is fine) take a knife and skin as close as you can to the base of the antler to the skull. An exacto knife works really well in this thick skinned area. -Once the hide is off, take it to the pot. -Have a good pot that will allow the antlers to rest on the side, with the full skull immersed in water. Try and not to put the antlers in the water for too long. The water can take off some of the natural color that has been rubbed on the antlers. Let it boil for a couple of hours, repleneshing the water once it boils down below the top part of the skull. -Take it out and clean it as much as you can with a knife or some kind of scraper. -Pull the lower jaw off -Refresh the water with clean water -Repeat until you are able to get all of the meat and matter inside of the skull out. I put a little bit of salt inside the brain cavity just to help with the smell. Sometimes I am left with a faint odor a couple days later. -If any bones fall off, keep track of where they came from and you can easily super glue them back together. Hope this helps

Nice buck man. Congratulations.

My wife had the fortune of taking a buck on the 29th. It was the day after the storm. I saw a lot of deer and a lot of rutting activity. 3 nice bucks were tending does, doing the lip curl and the whole nine yards. The weekend before, there was nothing doin' in that same area for whitetail. We did see a nice mule deer with a decent herd of does. It sounds to me like it just must be spotty still.

Man that is awesome to arrow a bobcat. Not too many people can say that they have done that. Way to go!!

What a toad!! Congratulations on that big boy!!

Hope this works. Here goes. After a few days of hard hunting, I was fortunate enough to run onto this buck. He was holding up in some pretty nasty stuff. I had taken off up a finger to a real nice knob that overlooks a whole lot of good country. I sat down and glassed for about 30-45 minutes and didn't glass anything up. This was day 3 of the two weekend hunt. This had pretty much been the way things had been going for the whole hunt. Usually, out of three days worth of hard hunting and glassing, I usually could pick up 12-15 bucks, along with quite a few does. This year it wasn't that way. It just seemed like we weren't seeing the deer that we usually find. Anyways, after glassing and millin' around a little bit on this knob, I decided to go back down a different finger that appeared to be not to bad of a walk. After I started down about 400 yards, I was rudely awaken to thick manzanita patches with cat claw and shin daggers abundant every where. It was hard just to pick my way through this nasty stuff. After about 5 minutes of trying to be quiet, I just said the heck with it and just tried to get out of this crap. I wasn't being quiet whatsoever. All of the sudden, out of a cut that was about 20 yards or so off to my left, maybe about 15-20 feet deep, I could here something take off. I readied myself to where the noise was coming from and up the other side of this cut, came this buck. He appeared at about 50 yards facing the other way. At the top, he stopped and looked back to see what I was. Well, after seeing what he was, I decided "yeah, for a Sunday buck, I think he'll definitely do." I pulled the trigger and the hunt was over. I walked up to him and was pretty stoked. He is the biggest coues I've taken and I really like the litte sticker on his left main beam. It forms a little cup in the beam. It's kinda hard to notice in the pictures, but nonetheless, I'm happy with him. Loads and Loads of fat on this guy. A lot of good feed out there this year. I wish he would have been in a little more favorable place for dragging him back to the quad, but I won't complain too much. He grosses barely over 100 inches. He has a 16 1/2 inch outside spread. The next weekend I was able to be out with my brother who took a 105" buck. He's a beautiful 3 point with some killer brow tines, and a super tall rack. I don't have pictures of it but can tell you he's a goodun. Hope you enjoy the pics. http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/je...a/JeffDeer2.jpg http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/jeff14una/Deer.jpg http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/je...ehindground.jpg

No that was my brother. I wish I had the rights to the buck he took. I was pretty excited to take this one and was hoping it would be the biggest in the family taken this year. It was for about 5 days. Then my other brother had to go and take one bigger. Oh well. Thanks for everyone replying. I'm happy with him.

Real nice buck Bruce! I hope to find one like that for my wife's hunt coming up here in a few days. Same unit. There are some good ones out there. I took a pretty nice one out but the pictures are too big to post. He grossed a little bit over 100". But anyways, congratulations to your wife. I'd be proud of that guy!! He's a great buck.

I scored. Pretty nice buck. I'll try and get some pics up pretty soon. He was buried in the catclaw and manzanita. Jumped him from about 20 yards away.

Sure is nice to see one more predator out of the picture. Those are some really nice bucks your party took there. Congratulations. What unit?

Real nice buck. I would be proud to have taken him. Congratulations.

In the November issue of Rocky Mountain Game and Fish, there is a moon guide as well as a deer feeding chart that claims to be tested and proven. The guy that does these charts is Dan Barnett. The best feeding times according to this man are as goes, I will start on the opening day for the 2 weekend hunt on coues, the 10th of November, 10th- 240-740 pm; best feeding day 11th- 330-830 pm; fair feeding day 12th- 355-855 am; fair feeding day 13th- 440-940 am; good feeding day 14th- 525-1025 am; good feeding day 15th- 610-1110 am; good feeding day 16th- 655-1155 am; poor feeding day 17th- 740am-1240pm; fair feeding day 18th- 825am-125pm; good feeding day 19th- 910am-210pm; best feeding day I would assume that with the feeding cycles being good to best, the glassing would also be good to best. There is quite a length of time that the guy allows for feeding times, but I would be interested to test his claims that these are true.

I just soiled my pants. Holy crap that thing is a monster.

http://www.coueswhitetail.com/hunt_stories/mace_cochran.htm Here is the link. It was in the story section. I appologize for that. It is one of the lower stories on the list. I hope I can take one somewhat close to this in my lifetime. I better start prayin' now.

The buck is on this website in the photo section and on the video Amanda made. It all started right here on this site. He's pretty stoked that it made Trophy Hunter magazine too.

Man it's hard to say what the best day really was. The times out hunting in my younger days with my old man were pretty good. He taught me a lot. I'd have to say the same about my two brothers, cousin bo, uncles, friends, heck they've all been good. Some of the more successful days that I've had have been when I go solo. Fortunately have had good success this way. For instance, one of the days that stick out the most, the first bear I ever did take. I had never hunted bears before in my life. As a matter of fact, I had probably only seen two bears in the wild that I can even remember. Well one day a few years ago, I decided to go get a bear tag and go out huntin'. I got a late start that day, had been out to late the night before. Didn't even start til the afternoon. I headed down to 29 and started doing a little hikin' and glassin' four a couple hours. It was hot, sticky and the clouds were starting to build up. I was feelin' like crap from the night before too. Basically, I was gettin' ready to call it a day. Before I did, I sat down for about 15 minutes to do some glassing. After about 15 minutes of seeing nothing, I put my tripod and glasses away and just sat there for a minute taking in the country before heading back out to the truck. About 5 minutes passed, and all of the sudden, I heard some branches break. I looked in that direction and about 300 yards away, I could see something moving some trees around. I pulled up my 10's and looked right into the face of a frickin' bear. He appeared to be chompin' on some juniper berries, and lovin' every minute of it. He had drool comin' off of his face, chomping like a cow. I just sat there for a minute and watched him. He started to make his way into a pretty generous flat opening only about 150 yards away. Down below him, there was a stock tank full of water. I would later find all of his crap down this trail, so he pretty much lived in this area for a while. Anyways, I waited a while to shoot just to make sure it wasn't a sow with a little squirt cub running behind her somewhere. I eventually ended up seeing his jewels as he was walking and as soon as I saw them, the game was on. I already had my bipod down and just easily squeezed the trigger. BOOM, he humped up a little bit and took off running about 40 yards, tried to tree himself, and just fell to the ground. That was it. First day bear huntin', within 3 hours of huntin' the afternoon, and I had me a big ol' bear. I was pretty stoked. He was pretty big. He measured out at 20 7/8. 1/8 away from the all time book. He was 13 years old from the cross section of his pre-molar. Beautiful cinnamon bear. I wish I had a digital picture to post. All I have are pictures and can't shrink the size to get it to post. Anyways, that was a pretty good day for me. Hope to have many, many more of them. Cochranj

Nice work Amanda. Some great photos in there. Some killer bucks were taken. Hope this year brings the same results. Thanks for putting the time and effort into that. CochranJ

Looks like a toad!! Those are some great pics. Up close and personal with that bad boy. Good luck gettin' him.

That is great. I love to see photo's like this. I give the man a pat on the back. Sometimes I take for granted that I am able to walk up a mountain and set down to glass. Even get mad at myself for getting too far into the country. Then I see this man, doing what he loves to do and he is in a wheelchair. I really like those pictures and even more, love to hear of folks like him taking advantage of our privelages to harvest animals. Thanks for posting these pictures. heck of couple of big mature animals.

Congratulations. Very nice buck! Cochran

Thats one nasty lookin critter I was thinkin' the same thing. He's lookin pretty rough. Probably don't smell too good neither.

I'm heading out this weekend. I cannot wait to get out of the city and sit up in the hills ALONE!! Man that outta be a good feeling. Heck, I'm even gettin' my wife out with me. I feel my feet gettin' cold. heck must be icing up; real close to freezin' over. j/k. We want to check our endurance in the hills, set out some salt, and enjoy the beautiful greenery. I went out two weekends ago and absolutely could not believe how much water and grass were in the vicinity. Even had to take out a couple jackrabbits and rattlers. Don't particularly care for the rattlers. Anyway's, huntin' seasons gettin' pretty close. I can feel it in my bones. Good luck to anyone goin' out with a bow. Jeff

You won't find anyone that will do a better job than Rex. He does awesome work and is a great guy. His trophy room is quite amazing too. I did a half mount with a bear I took a few years back. I butchered up the hide pretty good trying to get him out. Rex did an awesome job patching things up and making it look good. At the time, a rug was I believe around 800. The half mount was 1200. I'm glad I spent the money to get it done. If you do choose Rex, feel confident in his work. He does awesome whitetail too. Jeff

To help me get into shape, I like to get a backpack on and put a couple gallons of water in the pack. This is just a normal pack so the gallons can get a little akward especially on the back. I have found that putting a good sized phone book in the compartment closest to the pack will give it a nice flat part to rest on the back. Then after all this, I'll go and hit a stairstepper on the highest setting it will go, for between 30-45 minutes. Really gets the legs burnin'. Then on the weekends, I like to go and run around a track to help with the cardiovascular endurance. Usually about 3 miles (12 laps) gets the lungs feelin' pretty good. Hope it helps out this season.