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Hey Everyone! Please help me welcome HD Trophy Hunts as a new sponsor of CouesWhitetail.com! Mike Harris and his partners Daniel and Rodney Crook provide hunters with some great lion and bear hunts with dogs. Mike has been a forum member here for quite awhile and has been guiding since he was 18. He started HD Trophy Hunts 3 years ago and in that time they have had some great success! Last year they harvested 5 bears over 20 inches! Wow! Last year they harvested bears in nine different units, so they definitely know some great spots. Most of the lion hunts are done in Southern Arizona, but of course they will go wherever needed. They offer fully outfitted or just guided hunts, whichever the clients want. "Our camps usually consist of wall tents and or camp trailers depending on the location of the hunt. All meals are provided on fully outfitted hunts, we provide a “meal survey” for the hunter prior to the hunt, we realize not everyone likes to eat the same food, this seems to make the hunts go smoother. Preparation eliminates surprises." Mike said. When I asked what their success rate has been for clients, here is what Mike said, "We have a VERY high success rate for bear, we do not guarantee a kill, but last season we were 12 for 12 on bear with quite a few clients taking their bear on the first day of the hunt. In the last 3 years we have a 90% success rate on bear hunts. Lion hunts are much more difficult, our lion hunts take place primarily on dry ground, this is one of the toughest hunts out there. The only guarantee we can make is that we will hunt our tails off for each and every hunter. We take pride in the fact that we harvest mostly mature males. Last year we were able to harvest 5 boars over 20”. This is not typical, it was a fantastic year. We sorted through lots of animals and were very picky about what bears we wanted. We did harvest 20” bears in 2010 and 2009 as well. We strive to take large mature males. As you know our bear hunts are ran on quotas and it does not benefit us as outfitters to take sows. We would rather pass on a sow and go try to find a boar for this reason. In my experience Arizona is not the land of the 200lb mountain lion. If you are looking for a 200lb snow cat, you should not book with us. You should contact an outfitter further North. Mature toms here average 100-140lbs. Females are usually 60-80lbs, occasionally bigger. We do get some good skull growth in Arizona and occasionally a 15” tom will be taken but they are few and far between." On average, HD Trophy Hunts has between 12-20 clients each year. Last year they had 18. Right now they only guide in Arizona, but are looking to expand into New Mexico. When I called and spoke with several past clients, I heard raving reviews of HD Trophy Hunts and their service. Comments like "very knowledgeable", "lots of bear", "great houndsman", "great dogs", "lots of fun" came up with just about everyone I talked to. And without exception they all planned to come back as soon as they had the money and time. In fact some of his clients got all excited over the phone just remembering the hunt and realized that they needed to come back sooner rather than later to hunt with Mike. Here is what Mike said when I asked him why someone should hire him rather than another outfitter: "There are lots of good outfitters in Arizona, in my opinion what separates us from the field is the amount of time we dedicate to pursuing lion and bear. We truly LOVE to hunt these species. We are 100% committed and all our efforts are focused on hound hunting. Athletes do not play multiple sports professionally they focus on football, baseball or basketball, we focus on hound hunting. We like to think we put on a good camp, and we realize that there is more to hunting than a “kill.” It is our goal to make the WHOLE hunt enjoyable not just the taking of an animal. Harvesting an animal is just the icing on the cake, the real joy should be in the experience itself. " So check out what HD Trophy Hunts has to offer....here is the link to their website: http://www.hdtrophyhunts.com and here are a few pics of some bears and lions:

Well I am excited to say that we are back from another great opener for this years October bear hunt. As most of you probably know by now the feed this year is plentiful. On this hunt we had 17 year old Mitchell Jones from Phoenix, AZ hunting with us. Mitchell hunted with us for 3 days last year and unfortunately for him, it rained a ton all 3 days that he was available to hunt. His dad Glen brought him back this year on the opener and on opening day Mitchell was able to get his bear. Mitchell did a great job taking this bear with his bow. He was shooting a PSE Bow Madness. Mitchell was excited to get done on the first day he was able to make it back in time to play in a high school hockey game at Jobing.com Arena on Saturday! Thanks for looking! -Mike

Randy had killed a nice black colored boar with us last year, but from the start he had said he would rather have a color phase bear. Preferably red or blonde. We had done our homework and knew there was a big cinnamon/blonde in an area. So after getting Johns bear done and passing on the sow on Monday we went into that area Tuesday looking for the big boy. As luck would have it we cut his tracks. This bear turned out to be nicer than we had thought, he was really a giant. He died in a running creek and the wet hide really does not show his color or size in my opinion. This was a great hunt and could not have turned out any better. Randy is 6' 4" to give you a little perspective.

As some of you who attend the 3D archery shoot in Clints Well may know, for the last couple of years we have donated a 3 day bear hunt to Outdoor Arizona Kids to be raffled off at the memorial day archery shoot. Seventeen year old Lacey Sanderson was the lucky winner this year. Some of you may recognize Lacey and her father Richard, he owns Black Canyon City Archery and Lacey is the current Triple Crown champion. This was an awesome hunt. We got out ran the first day, simply got our butts kicked. The second day we had another split race and we were unsure which dogs to go with. The young dogs got the job done and we were able to get Lacey in to this bear. This was a great first bear. She was calm cool and collected and proved why she is the Arizona Triple Crown Champion, it only took 1 of her gravedigger broadheads to take this bear down. Perfect execution and shot placement out of her PSE X-Force Vendetta. Richard and his daughter Lacey are excellent people and we enjoyed putting this hunt on for them. Thanks for looking! -Mike

The second day of the hunt, we were lucky to have Paul with us. Paul took a bear with us a couple years ago in August and unfortunately the hide slipped. He was back this year for another crack at one. We started this bear under some big monolith bluffs, after the dogs had him jumped the bear ran them right through the bluffs and got a big advantage on the dogs. For whatever reason this bear circled back right towards where we started him and they treed him 70yds off the road and 250 yds from the trucks. It was the easiest pack out I think we have ever had! This was a really good old boar, Paul shot him once with a .500 Smith and the bear came out of the tree alive, the fight was on. The next 10 minutes was pretty intense to say the least. I will get a little of video uploaded when I get a chance. Thanks for looking -Mike

We had told John to be ready to go opening weekend and as soon as we got our first two hunts done we would bring him in. Saturday night John and Randy rolled into camp. Sunday we ran a bear that was sponsored by Nike. The dogs put in over 20 miles, we saw the bear 2 different times in front of the dogs and when he finally did tree, he came out of the tree before we could even get to the tree. Anyone that says that bear hunting with hounds is easy needs to experience a day like that, it was a long rough day. We had similar experience with John on a giant bear last year, I think he was about ready to give up on bear hunting! Monday morning we started a good sized track that immediately took the dogs up into the rough country, the first thing we thought was we had got back on the track star from the day before. The dogs split and we had two races all of the sudden. This bear went up and up and up and treed 1200feet in elevation higher than where we started. John took this gorgeous old bear with his 10mm. After getting Johns bear killed and the skinning started Randy and I went to find the other 3 dogs that had split off, they were also treed 1.5 miles the opposite direction of the truck. We headed up that direction and went through a bunch of nasty country only to find a jumper when we got there. This young sow jumped 3 or 4 times before she finally stopped. Randy looked her over and having already harvested a nice boar last year he passed, I was glad he did, because that was one pack out I did NOT want to make! Thanks for looking! -Mike