CayoSonora Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Hello to all Readers and Regulars, I'm new to the forum but have been reading your good stories and seeing great pics for some time now. Here's an account of my experience this last weekend: we started off Friday flying to Hermosillo, from Mexico City, and arriving at the Ranch well past bedtime. This ranch is 70 miles northwest of Hermosillo, with 22,000 acres of desert lowland -chollas, mesquites, buffel grass and paloverdes all around- (choked full of HUGE deer, both Mule and Coues). Two "little" sierras dot the northeast and southwest corners. It has a story of producing marvelously racked Coues for the past 10 years, as evidenced by my friend and owner Alberto's 130-class biggie (that he will surely upload soon). As it has been mentioned in recent posts, predictability went out the window with out-of-season rains that drenched most of Sonora. Deer that were being seen on trail cameras and by ranch vaqueros in waterholes vanished with the first inch of rain. We were doing a combo hunt with Alberto focusing on muleys and my time invested in chasing the "grey ghost". Hunting out of the pick-up and tower, Saturday turned out to be a bit slow with a couple of Muleys and two Coues seen (a small buck almost crashed out car). Sunday was much better, with us hitting the road before light and seeing lots of movement: two nice MD bucks, lots of does and at 8:17am, a mega shooter MD buck that Alberto struck twice with is trusty M70 .270 Win. After that, I was ready for the sierras. I hiked the first peak to set up a glassing port and saw only a doe being frantically trailed by a small buck. By mid day, I had changed locations a couple of times spotting deer long ways from me, and with the heat creeping up, I decided to get down and radio in for a lift to the ranch house. After the car came, we rode the trail around the Northeast sierra, finding lots of deer sign among the ocotillos and paloverdes. At the sudden pull of the cord that connects the tower with the driver, I saw heart-pounding white fluffs bouncing 150 yards away. We quickly spotted a young buck followed by dark, thick rack with large eyeguards. Swinging the Sako Finnlight to the shoulder (.300 WSM), almost by instant reflex, I found nothing on the scope, with the bucks disappearing into the mountainside. After a couple of minutes of planning our attack on the deer fortress above us and riding 200 yards around the mountain, we detected both deer slowly coming back to their original spot. Round in the chamber, I placed the crosshairs on the expected crossing path and after some looooooooong two minutes, catched the small buck passing by, it was just moments for the other one to appear – a quick whistle made the buck stop, so I sent the 180 grainer to meet him there. I'm very happy with my buck, the best one to date, taken on a Ranch full of history and family connections going way back (my great grandfather bought cattle there). Let's see if I can repeat the feat next season with a bigger one!! We unwond monday calling up some coyotes, with Alberto and my brother Luis Manuel anchoring one each. Thanks and Good Hunting! Ricardo. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brian Payne Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Super bucks and story! Sounds like a blast! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CouesWhitetail Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Wow! Excellent write-up and photos! Can't wait to see Alberto's buck! Welcome! Amanda Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coues 'n' Sheep Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Sweet coues buck! The Carp is pretty good too... Welcome. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scoutm Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Great first post...I look forward to future posts. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bonecollector Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Great bucks and nice write up Congrats. Welcome to the site. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pwrguy Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Very nice. I would like to see some pictures of the rig you are hunting out of? Tower????? Sounds a little different than what many of us are used to. Regards and congrats Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cramerhunts Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Welcome and thanks for signing up to share your hunt with us. Congratulations on a couple of great bucks. Great write up and pictures as well. Can't wait to see Alberto's buck! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FlyingW Report post Posted February 5, 2010 Nice bucks and great story !!! Welcome .... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
izquik72 Report post Posted February 5, 2010 sounds like a great hunt Congrats. I would like to see the tower rig also Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Beto Report post Posted February 10, 2010 Hello everyone, here is a picture of the buck Ricardo was talking about, although it was taken a few years back, the area keeps producing great deer… Since we have hunters coming to the ranch every year, every now and then is when I get to hunt the ranch myself, last time I got to hunt it was 5 years ago, this year we did not have any hunters coming in and that is when I asked Ricardo to tag along… The rest of the story as told by Ricardo turned out to be a great weekend; I spent every weekend of the hunting season at the ranch looking, scouting and setting up trail cameras, all the homework paid of at the end. Hope you guys enjoy the pictures, sorry about the quality, they were scanned from the prints, the deer has 13 scorable points, and was scored at 137 1/8 Beto T. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
couesmaniac Report post Posted February 10, 2010 Nice coues congrats! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
WFGinNM Report post Posted February 10, 2010 One of these years.... One of these years I really need to get to Mexico for Coues'. --Bill Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
COOSEFAN Report post Posted February 11, 2010 Congrats on the great bucks and welcome to the site! JIM> Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Browning'sCustomMeat Report post Posted February 11, 2010 Great bucks, congrats to you both. Love the color of the first coues.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites