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My 10 year old daughter drew a unit 9 cow tag for the 8-14 October youth hunt this year. We're excited and a little surprised as her Hunters Ed point hasn’t even been awarded yet so she drew with 0 points. Anyway; first big game tag for her and so far she only has a few rabbits under her belt via the 22. We have a summer of center fire practice ahead of us. My familiarity with unit 9 is nil. I have seen some archery success at Camp Navajo, but that is the extent of my AZ elk experience. I would tend to think that some bugling would still be heard mid-Oct to help us locate herds, but otherwise I would plan to scout and gravitate towards water. It does not appear to me that the unit will lend itself very well to glassing. I also see pretty extensive road coverage such that truck camping with daily backpack hunting can cover most of the unit,no? I don’t have an ATV, standard 4wd pickup only. I have multi-day backcountry backpack hunted MT so I am equipped, but that’s probably a bit much to ask of my daughter on her first big game hunt if not necessary. Any assistance validating or correcting some of my assumptions above or any general guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Hank

Best of luck and success to all the cow elk hunters headed out this week. We'll be up in unit 9 early tomorrow morning doing some last minute scouting. Going to be interesting with the 20+mph winds currently forecasted. Any suggestions for hunting high temps and high winds?

My hunt last week was a grind! From 4:00 AM till dang near midnight, hiking, driving and calling all day, with dang near zero action can start to wear on ya! I covered both sides of my unit, back and forth, checking for tracks and callin with very little to show for my efforts. The tracks were scarce and the gobbles were almost non-existent! I only heard 2 toms gobble during the whole hunt! 1 was on the first morning and he would only gobble once every 15-20 minutes and seemed like he was running as fast as I was! I accidentally ended up right on top of that bird and bumped him out of there. The second gobble I heard was yet again, another bird that I didn't know was there until he shock gobbled at me, basically just lettin' me know the game's over! I finally found a tank that had a few tracks on it and decided I would just set up there and call very sparingly with my decoy out and hope for the best. After about an hour I could hear cluckin' and puttin' from down in the canyon behind the dam of the tank. I hit the box call a few times and could hear them coming faster. Finally I see three birds top out and come in to my decoy! I knew right away that none of them were the long beard gobbler I had dreamed about, but at that point, being burned out and not wanting to spend another night in back of my truck, all I needed was a visible beard and lead was gonna fly! The birds came in and started pecking and posturing around my decoy which was very cool to watch and the biggest one actually did a semi-strut as he was coming in so that got me a little more excited. After getting bored with the decoy, the birds lined out broadside in front of me at 12 yards. The one in the middle had the longest beard, which isn't sayin' much, but it was plenty long enough for me at that point, so, I decided he was going home with me! I had the GoPro camera mounted on the barrel and it slightly obstructs the sights making it difficult to be pin point accurate. I didn't think I'd be shooting this close so didn't worry about it, but now, with a 12 yard moving shot and an extra full choke, I learned very quick that this bird might not be going home with me after all! I missed the first two shots before realizing what was going on so I made the last round count and pounded him on the run. So, all in all i had a blast as usual. It's always a thrill hearing gobbles, even if it's just a couple, and having any turkey up close is always exciting as well. I found some sheds and also snuck up to a bear and got some great video of him on my big camera but I ended up breaking that camera and can't upload the video yet, I'll post it up when I can! Thanks if you read through this, if not, then enjoy the video! JIM> Check out the short video I put together, still trying to figure out the GoPro cam! [media=] [/media]