couesmagnet

I wasn't trying to be right, but it would be sad if the guy woke up tomorrow morning thinking diff. about this guy he called a friend, and that's all i was trying to say. I'm sure if the guy had lots of money to his name he wouldn't have asked for anything. I've been on more hunts than i can remember for free, and those are usually the most fun type of hunts anyways, but i've also had to say no to other hunts i wanted to go on with friends cause i had to guide others to pay bills. Good luck on your hunt this year!!!

Antlerfreak most if not all guides will charge at least 2500 for their services. If your buddy is trying to make a living from guiding, then in order for him to put food on his plate then he needs to charge something in order to justify being in the field with you and not someone else. What he is basically saying to you is i wish i could go as friends together for free, but in order for him to skip guiding another hunter he needs to charge you a very small fee of 300 dollars to do it. I would completely disagree with everyone that says this guy isnt your friend. If this guy is willing to make next to nothing at 300 dollars, and skip making much much more money guiding someone else,than that would be a sign to me that he is actually a much better friend than you are being told he is on here. Be careful not to let other people who are quick to skin any cat that doesn't fit their liking affect how you look at your friend. You know the guy in a much deeper way than just this post, so go with your gut on that judgement and nothing else. I'm a guide off and on and a lot of my friends are 2, and i wish i could call some of them and ask them if they would skip guiding other people for 400 to 500 dollars a day to come hunt with me for 300 for a week. I would gladly force 300 or more down their pockets for the friendship donation to my hunt along with all the help they would give me also. Having someone with you on the hunt glassing with you is priceless. Pay the 300 dollars to him, and thank him for being willing to sacrifice more money to be able to spend time with his buddy and thats you antlerfreak. Go get um and post some pics of your buck.

Make sure you look around ortega mountain. especially on the east side. Over the years i've seen 2 85 plus inchers right there, and 1 got killed in 1999 or 2000. It went over 86. You can drive to the top and glass all surrounding country . Also if you have a spotter , this is a perfect set up for you. Good luck and have fun.

Craig, i would like to compliment you on your publication, as i enjoy reading it. However i don't know how if numbers of applicants drop for a given high demand hunt , how the draw odds wouldn't get better as a function of the lesser numbers of apps. Most people put a swing for the fence high demand hunt as their 1st choice these days. If on a given year 500 hunters dropped out of the draw for price increase reasons for any given high demand hunt how do the odds get worse in that scenario. I never bought the big argument that we as hunters have been told for eons with regards to the fact that we need to bolster hunter numbers to the sport to somehow defend the heritage itself. There will always be enough hunters around to defend the right of hunting to exist, and with nominal increases over the last 20 years we would have done fine defending that right. Just my opinion, but the whole argument that's been pushed on us for decades that we need to increase new hunter recruitment to save the sport was one big lie told to us for the sole reason of increasing hunter recruitment to sell more hunting related goods and services(ie; cameras, camo clothes, more magazines,more hunting licenses, ect.). Half of the new recruits coming to hunting these days aren't joining the sport for the same reasons we all hunted for in the 80's anyways, but instead join just for the fact of all the new competition and hype surrounding the sport itself. It's the snowball effect. The more people joining the sport more dollars spent, but meanwhile the animals haven't changed in a 100 years. I just feel lucky to have been around before all the crazyness started in the late 90's, and i got to experience what it was like to get drawn all the time, and for what it was like to drop a load in my pants when i saw a spike with a rifle and a tag in my hand. What a rush those 6 inch horns gave me back then.

Also, and it's sad to say but we need less recruits to our sport of hunting. Draw odds don't care about hurt feelings and what is right or wrong, or tag fees. Draw odds are a function of numbers of applicants and nothing more. You guys want better draw odds for yourselves or better yet your children, then we better start figuring out how to lessen the numbers of applicants in the system, and whether you like it or not raising the price will do that to some extent. It's not about getting mad at the game and fish for raising prices cause just like the rancher they see what we are willing to pay to buy cameras and all the gear that goes along with the pursuit of giants instead of what it used to chase, which were 3 point deer and 320 bulls in the 80's. Again we as hunters are to blame for all of theses new changes, and we desperately want to blame everyone but ourselves for what hunting has become. I say all this with respect, cause i'm also guilty in the evolution of hunting into what it has become.

I think the sport of hunting has become a victim of it's own success. In the 1980's the demand on our animal resources wasn't even close to what it is now. If you think about it there where only a handful of hunting magazines available for hunters to resource, and those where your standard magazines you had to buy at your local grocery store. Now it seems like everybody has a magazine out, all talking about giant animals, how to score game, and where the best places are to hunt giant animals. In the process of hunting morphing from the 80's from a sport involving families and friends in search of a nice 3 point deer and good stories to tell, hunting became more about a competition with all the new attention hunting was receiving from new publication start ups and t.v shows. Everyone wanted to boost hunter recruitment to the sport and in the process overwhelmed the system with new recruits. All of this came from the hunters themselves and usually involved making money off the sport in the process. All this new attention on hunting starting in the early 90's brought lots of people who would have never joined the sport prior to the 80's when hunting was much more pure of a sport. Also with all the new attention being given to hunting thru new publications and the 100's of blogs now out there, hunting started to become more of a competition amongst ourselves. With all the emphasis in the new magazines and t.v shows, on going after giant specimens of each respective species hunting began to morph itself into a competition to see who could do the best at harvesting these giants. In comes the money at this point to fuel the flames of that new competition created by guess what, hunters themselves. This all started when the average jo wanted to start making money of the sport, a luxary given to very few people prior to the late 80's. All this feeds on itself as more and more blogs pop up and magazine start ups continue. If all the hype went away overnight, we would see alot of the unwanted changes we see coming now go away as quick as they came. I remember buying gas for 1.00 for premium down by asu in college in the early 90's, things change. I think that we as hunters should blame ourselves for hunting changing into what it is now, shine a spotlight on anything these days , then throw in everyone trying to make money of anything in this world with the spotlight to boot, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster in the making. How can we blame these big ranches for imposing the new fees. They hear us hunters down the way at the ranch pond fighting over a blind placement, or who gets to sit that waterhole because of the 400 inch bull coming in. They see 10 200 dollar cameras sitting on that old tank on the back 40 acres, and see what we are willing to do now so we can make into the new magazines to recruit new hunters to our new competition. Why wouldn't the ranchers want to capitalize along with all of us hunters trying to capitalize on it monetarily. by the way we hunters started all this, and we want to get mad at the ranchers. They see and hear what the governors tags are selling for and the animals are on their private land. On a positive note our young hunters these days have specific junior hunts available to them now. Theses were not available in the 80's , now there are multiple options for our kids. In my opinion it's become much easier for a kid to get into the sport with all these new hunts available now, not harder.

55 is a draw unit for deer so no leftover deer tags there. If your hunting elk i would try starting east and south in the mountains before you get into crested butte. Be aware of private land in 55.

The area just west of crested butte can be good for elk and deer. We have hunted 54 extensively all the way to crested butte ski area and we've seen lots of nice bucks and some decent bulls of the highway to crested butte. Are you going elk hunting or deer hunting? 55 is on the right side of the road off the highway going to the ski area and 54 is on the left side.

Wow azoutlaw that's pretty harsh. The pics are a little to close to the animals, but big deal, who cares. I used to take pics to close like that , and with me being a little to far from the animal also. I'm still learning how to take good trophy shots myself. Anyways, thanks for posting the pics, i see a couple of bucks in there flirting with the 200 inch mark.

Nice pile of fish. Look like fun!!!

The bulls are looking pretty darn good this year in 23. Looking forward to a couple 380's migrating to phoenix in the back of the truck this year. What a deal!!!

I really like the big arizona black version of the rattlesnakes. That is a beautiful specimen. A friend of mine got one near forest lakes 2 years ago that measured out at a little over 5 feet with several witnesses there.

I would call luke thompson for sure, he is a very nice guy and a great example of what our game and fish officers should all be like

Well put becker and your explanation is exactly why we don't enter our animals. The record books are for a general history of big animals harvested, and having a number next to an animal doesn't necessarily represent that specific animals place in line because of the many animals not entered, but instead a representation of that animals place in line in general. I'm not saying anything negative about entering an animal at all, that's a personal choice made by the hunter. I always thought it would be cool to have something in the book, but i'm to lazy to get them entered anyways.

It would be a fun tag to have for sure, but in the 25 years i've spent in 23, looking everywhere and anywhere i have only seen 1 buck that would go over 190, and maybe 2 or 3 that would go over 180. The late hunt is a good bet for a 155 type deer or so though. Good luck and have fun on your hunts in 23.

I would say that at least a third of the boone and crockett entries in the last 5 years or so involved radio usage. Everyone out there has radios and several people looking for or with them. We don't enter our animals and never have, besides if you have a certain number in line in the book so to speak, there are several bigger that weren't entered anyways. For instance if your buck is number 15 , there are probably 20 other bucks sitting in garages that are bigger but just weren't entered.

Excellent advice kaibab hunter. I had 13b archery in 2011. I did it myself and went up 14 days early and hunted the whole hunt, 34 days or so in a row. I easily spent enough money to get a scouting package from arizona strip bucks if not more. When you factor all the wear and tear on your vehicle and gear its quit expensive in the long run to do it yourself. If i ever draw the tag again i will def. do it differently. Plus by getting the scouting package you save yourself the wear down effect of being up there to long before the hunt even starts, which makes it a lot harder to stay focused for the 21 day hunt once it begins. This is probably the most important thing the guides help with more than anything which is mental fatigue from being there to long. A scouting package will allow you to go up 3 or 4 days before the hunt instead of 10, and by the time you get half way thru the hunt it will make a diff. in your ability to stay in the blind for longer.

When the strip has a dry year antler growth wise like last year and like this year, i think getting a guide is a good call. There are far less big bucks to find on the dry years and a whole bunch of country to look at. When it's a wet year there are good bucks scattered everywhere , and finding one isn't super hard. I would say this is a dry year up there and you will have to look twice as hard to find a good deer. It would be a good call to get the guide this year, and arizona strip bucks guide service is who i would call for sure. Good luck and have fun.

Congrats to everyone who has a hit on their card, i'm looking forward to seeing some cool pics and reading some fun stories this year from your hunts. I hope their still hitting though.

Congrats on the tags so far guys. I would be curious to know if the guys that r getting hits are guys that had max points for the respective hunts they got hits for, or were any of the hits so far for any average hunts so to speak.

Nice 90 incher there, if you let him walk he might hit a 100 next year. Good luck on whether you decide to draw on him or not.

77 to 79 inches. Nice buck.

Very very nice bucks fellas, I'm excited to see one of you guys get one of those bucks.Thanks for posting the pics for some early excitement.

Lance I saw the pics of that awesome bull you guys got early on the spring hunt up there along with that awesome bull by the raymond herd. It must have been quite an honor to have been involved with all those great bulls.

Lance i'm not pretending to know the first thing about buffalo, as this was my first hunt i have ever been on. It seemed like they all left after you guys got yours on that specific salt, but maybe they were just on a diff cycle or something. I sat there the next 2 days or so , and even the deer would walk up near the carcus and bolt, probably just coincidence though. No big deal dude. Anyways congrats to you and your hunter for doing such a great job . I didnt know of one buffalo shot up on the kaibab this year that wasn't off one of those salt licks in the spring hunt. Do you know of even one that wasn't shot off a lick out of the 14 tags, and who was it if there was, just very curious? I wasn't into buff hunting , but after going for the first time, i am now. I heard corky started all those licks years and years ago, it's to bad everyone knows where they all are now and there's kind of a line to sit them so to speak. Can't wait to see the video of that buffalo you guys nailed ,what a great job!!