There were 5 in our group, only 4 hunters. A friend bought his son this hunt as a college graduation gift. We Saw lots of bucks, mostly 90-95", some 100" plus and a couple of giants that we caught glimpses of.
Brian shot first, but his gun was off, so he had to sight it in again later. We spotted a nice buck on the next ridge, 500 yards away, so I got as close as I could from the ridge we were on, which closed the gap to 300 yards. We watched them for a couple of hours, either feeding behind shrubs, or they'd bed down in the thick stuff. That gave me time to find the best way to setup for the shot. Ended up using a nice V-notch in an Oak tree. There were two other bucks with the one I was after, so we really had to keep an eye on them. They got up again and started feeding, the bigger buck disappeared behind a large bush. Watched it for about 40 more minutes on and off through my scope.
I could only see the Bush in the scope at 16x, so I radioed Brian, who was still at the top of the ridge, to tell me if he saw it step out. My eye was starting to twitch from looking through the scope so much, lol. After a while more, I looked over my scope and saw a deer behind the Bush walking away. Quickly getting back into the scope, I saw it was my deer, and about to disappear over the top! Figuring it was now 350 yards, I put the second crosshairs on the TDC reticle behind the front shoulder, as it began going behind another bush. After firing I heard the "whack", then I hoped I had a good hit. Wondering what happened to my radio spotter, I took the radio out of my pocket to check. I somehow had turned it off! I turned it back on and was told I dropped him in his tracks.
After climbing up to him, he wasn't as big as I thought, or wanted, but it's a cool looking buck. Hit him right where I aimed, bullet lodged under the Hyde opposite side, in front of that shoulder. Later, I recovered the Nozzler accubond bullet and the yellow polymer tip!
The rest of the hunt went well, everyone got a nice buck, but all under 100 inches, in fact mine turned out to be the biggest at 96 1/8.
Frank the grad also shot a huge female mountain lion! Weird thing, when we looked in its mouth to see the teeth, there was a whole, unchewed eyeball in there! Smaller than our bucks' eyes, could have been a fawns or a javelina.
Nice crested saguaros we saw.
Frank holding the eyeball.
The eye that was in its mouth.
Big paw and claws.
My buck had a white nose.
Oak tree I used for the shot.
My deer was on that far ridge top.