Found skull, with horns

[Nuker]

*EDIT* FYI, I was contacted by AZGFD and they were awesome about the whole thing, I really appreciate the time and explanation given to me by the officer.

A few key points for any of you interested:

1. If you find a bighorn skull this fresh or fresher, please do not move it and call them to see if they need to come check it out before you remove it from the field. They need to investigate any animal that might be a poaching incident or other unlawful circumstance. This would also apply to a deer skull or other dead game animal that you might come across in the same or fresher condition.

2. AZ law does let you keep bighorn skulls after they determine nothing illegal happened, but there are many other states that do not. AZ does not plug or mark natural death skulls the same way they would for an animal taken by permit, so you may get in trouble if you take one to another state with different laws.

3. So after all that, I get to keep my find. Awesome!

*Original Post*:

So my hunt this year in unit 28 was a bust, but I did fine a nice skull. Pretty sure it was a lion kill since a leg was close by also and it was right near a big cliff.

Just a few miles out of San Simon, in the BLM wilderness I found this on Monday afternoon. Kind of made up for the skunked hunting trip around Woods Canyon & Doubtful Canyon. I saw some deer there, but the hunting pressure was high and the only buck I saw Friday morning was gone after a crew of weekend hunters showed up and started hanging out 50 yards from the water sources in the area (I was watching them from 500-750 yards off).

Anyway, getting it cleaned soon to keep in the collection, saw some other bighorn sign in the area so was really surprised. Posting up here since I probably won't hunt there again, but definitely don't hunt anything other than deer.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Nuker
Update

[bonecollector]

Young fella, cool find.

[briant_az]

Better call game and fish. I believe it’s illegal to own unless they have checked it out. They will let you keep it unless they think it was poached. 

[Delw]

cool find for sure.

[Roosevelt Mark]

Right on, that's cool.

 

[Nuker]

21 hours ago, briant_az said:

Better call game and fish. I believe it’s illegal to own unless they have checked it out. They will let you keep it unless they think it was poached. 

OK, thanks for the heads up, I am happy to call them if needed, and I took pictures with my GPS so they are tagged with location, condition, etc. I took some of the skull and later of the leg where it was sitting.

[Nuker]

So I called and got a message, emailed customer service today. Haven't heard back but they are probably busy with the season, I will wait to do anything to that skull until I hear back.

Hope they get back to me soon, looks a little gruesome and is stinky as-is.

[AzRaised08]

That’s awesome you got to keep it! And thanks for posting what to do in those situations—I’m sure it’ll help someone out sometime

[Big Tub]

Did they speculate on cause of death or age or anything else?

 

[Nuker]

13 hours ago, Big Tub said:

Did they speculate on cause of death or age or anything else?

 

They told me it was "young" but didn't expound on that. Also said that the apparently chewed off nose was common in kills by mountain lions, and they also look at other signs of death if more of the animal would have been left.

Estimated date of death was 6-12 months ago. He did say that the bone structure inside the horns was porous and held a lot of moisture so that it was sometimes hard to estimate how long ago it had died.

[briant_az]

1 hour ago, Nuker said:

They told me it was "young" but didn't expound on that. Also said that the apparently chewed off nose was common in kills by mountain lions, and they also look at other signs of death if more of the animal would have been left.

Estimated date of death was 6-12 months ago. He did say that the bone structure inside the horns was porous and held a lot of moisture so that it was sometimes hard to estimate how long ago it had died.

I didn't see your updated post. I was wondering if they ever got in contact with you. This time of year I think those guys are fairly busy. 

Thanks for not raking me over the coals for saying that you should call them. I think a lot of times when people do that, others think they are trying to be negative. That wasn't my intention. Just wanted to keep you from getting in trouble in the future. 

Glad it got checked out and glad that you got to keep it! Make sure you get those horns off and clean all that crap out from under them. I hope to find one someday. That will probably be the only way I ever get to hang one on the wall!

 

[TonyC]

awesome find!  my bro has a nice find here in vegas. ill have to post it up soon