Flatlander

Man, you guys are going to make me choke up. Thank you.

I nearly wrecked my truck on the way to work when I checked my credit card statement in June. It seemed impossible, but somehow lightning had struck, again, and someone in our family had a bighorn tag for the second year in a row. In 2024 my 15 yo son became the first member of our family to harvest a sheep. And now, just 6 months later, we were starting the adventure all over again. I talked to all my contacts from the previous year. Lined up conversations for advice on the various units we may have drawn and agonized over the thought of how we were going to make the dates work. And, I pondered THE decision. Six members of our family had applied, including my son who had the tag the year before. Everyone except for him had applied for the same two choices, 37B and the Kofa’s. The lucky bum had to apply for Rocky so I was juggling that unlikely scenario in the mix. But of everyone, I was the only one in the family with any significant amount of bonus points. Well below max, but still double what anyone else had. If it was my tag, one thought echoed in my mind. How cool would it be to take a ram with my other son. Two rams, with my two sons, approximately 350 days apart. From the moment the thought occurred to me, there was never any hesitation. It would be his. And we would do it together, his senior year, the last year he could receive a donated tag and before he left for mission and college opportunities. It would be a senior trip for the ages. And so it was. The results came and there next to my name it said DRAWN for the Kofa’s. I made some calls and drove to the unit that weekend. It was absurdly hot. And desolate. And remote. And 180 degrees the opposite direction from all of our other hunts for the year (everyone in the family had a different tag). So I called a few trusted resources and @trphyhntr recommended I speak with Zack Doster. I knew it would take 12+ days of scouting plus the hunt to figure things out and I just couldn’t pull it off this year. So I did something I have never done and hired a guide. Zack was incredible and kept us posted on his monthly trips and sent lots of pictures. Hunter and I focused on staying ready physically and with the gun. By the time we headed out for sheep we had been on 4 other hunts and done 3 pack outs. The week of the hunt we did a final check of the gun and worked on prepping. The weather looked like it was going to take a turn and we were prepped to backpack into the interior if needed. Thursday night Zack sent an Inreach message and said he had located a good ram just before dark. Game on. We arrived at camp after dark and my buddy Ty was waiting for us. We burned some excited energy chatting for a while before settling into cots for a quick sleep. First light we had the bowl the ram from the night before had been in surrounded. From 4 different vantages we searched every crack and crevice. Nada. We disembarked and headed to camp to patch a couple tires and throw our tent up. Hunter ate a sandwich and I made one for later. It wasn’t long before the hum of the compressor stopped indicating it was time to hit plan b. Zack and his guiding partner Bo along with my son Hunter and our buddy Ty all split up to cover a large basin where other sheep had been seen early in the week. It was a quick mile jog out to our first glass post. Zack spotted a ewe on a bare slope in the full sun. It was almost 90 degrees and I was shocked. Another quick jaunt had us posted on a knob with a 360 view. Zack left Hunter and I to cover the sunny basin while he climbed up to a spine ridge to look into the next canyon. Forty five minutes later the radio cracked and Zack was whispering. Three rams had fed out below him and had him pegged behind a lone Palo verde. He told us to work up the canyon to a saddle where he would meet us once they fed out of site. I had to wake Hunter from his afternoon nap, and when I said we had rams he sprung to his feet. We worked our way up to the saddle and met with Zack. Slowly we dropped packs and crept to the edge to relocate the sheep. First a ewe, then a young 5 yr old ram. Zack started to explain they may have fed over, but it was too shady and too lush in that cut. We kept creeping and peering down low into the cut. And then, a big mature sway back climbed out of a creosote. His horns were thick and broomed. His belly was potted and his legs looked short. Definitely a mature ram. With the spotting scope on him and his partner at 180 yds Zack could easily count the rings and he let Hunter take a good look. Hunter said “I would love to shoot either of those rams.” And then hesitated, “but I don’t want it to be over. It just started.” I smiled and said it was his choice, but also reminded him of the reality. This was one of the top 5 rams they had located in 15 days in the unit. It was forecasted to rain 1/2” the next day. And although we could come back a week later, he did have to go back to school on Monday. The bird in the hand proved more than he could argue with. He asked if it was as big as his brothers, I confirmed it was, and also older. And he said “Let’s kill that ram.” The ram kept looking up our way, he knew something was up, but he kept feeding our way. He was getting close enough that now I was nervous. By the time we were done sizing him up and making the decision, he had closed to 130 yds. I laid the rifle on the edge of the bluff and Hunter slid in behind. He was shaking so much he jammed the feed. I crawled up and fixed it. And he leveled the rifle. The old ram looked up from his feeding and stared a hole in us. Hunter had to turn the magnification down on the scope because he couldn’t see what he was aiming at. I saw his hand move from the cat’s tail, down to the grip, his finger moving first to the safety and then inside the trigger guard. At the click of the safety I nodded at Zack. The crack of the suppressed rifle hadn’t even clapped before the thump of the Berger meeting shoulder hit my ears. The ram took a few steps, nearly reuniting with his band mate, before raising up and tipping backwards, resting with his broomed tips pointed up in the very spot he had stood to feed. And there it was. Once in a lifetime. We hugged. We fist bumped. We cheered. We called mom and then grandpa. We thanked God. And as I followed his steps up to his trophy I quickly wiped away tears before he could see them. It wasn’t just a once in a lifetime moment for him. It was the culmination of so many moments. From carrying him on my shoulders when he was still in diapers, and giving him some old bush bell field glasses to practice “glassing”, tying a parachord around his Red Ryder to sling over his shoulder as we wandered wash after wash searching for javelina that were never there. It was a 10 yr old boy who had faced surgery after surgery, first learning to crawl and drag his half body cast, then to walk and then to run first track, then cross country, then a half marathon. It was boy who earned the right to be called a young man. His future still remained uncertain, but he had learned to live for today. For the moments that could never be taken. Tomorrow is promised to no man.

Come on you tease

Nash is carrying a horseshoe that’s never seen daylight. After having a desert sheep tag last year he drew an antelope tag this year. Scouting was tougher than we expected. Not a ton of goats in the unit and we went out plenty of times and never saw a single lope. It was still fun. During my archery bull hunt we slipped out one midday to look around. We bumped I to a dude who told us where he had seen a few. We ended up finding a few right there. Lots of people shared ideas with us and local friends even went out and glassed a few times for us. It was fun to have a hunt where people were really open and wanted Nash to be successful. Nash had practice opening day, this kid is ridiculously committed to wrestling, so we headed up midday. By that night we had a decent buck spotted but we just couldn’t cut the distance down. These antelope were super spooky and would run for miles at the site of a truck. We pulled out after dark and nearly stepped on a baby prairie rattler walking back. The next AM we slipped right into where we saw him at dark and waited for it to get light. The group was right where we left them, except the big buck. He was somehow 1-1/2 miles away. We ended up walking a 7-1/2 mile loop and lost track of him somewhere in the rollers. Unreal. We tried a new spot real quick before running to town for lunch and had a super close encounter with a bit g cutter buck before he got a wild hair and ran into Colorado. For the evening we hit up one of the spots we had seen a decent buck scouting. Didn’t take long for me to find some a mile or two out. We went to loop around on them and bumped into a different buck before we got there. A little sneaking and Nash had a 325 yd shot with only the top 4” of his back exposed. Thats all he needed. After the shot I said you dumped him, and Nash say “Actually?!?!” Apparently he flinched so hard his eyes were closed when the gun went off. Thank goodness for that 2-1/2 lb trigger! Nash asked if he could do all the quartering himself and did a fine job. I’d say these boys have almost outgrown their old man. The buck wasn’t real big and Nash didn’t care. He has two from Wyoming that are curled and heavier. This time he said he wanted a tall one. This one is almost 16”, so I guess that qualifies. We had time the next morning to go scout for his sister’s cow hunt. They were going good and we saw a good bull to round out the trip. Then he took it home and did his own euro.

Congrats and thanks for coming back to share.

Same. We had one very sleepless night camped about 100 yds from the tracks before an antelope hunt. Hunter was 10 at the time, he slept fine. Everyone else, not a wink.

A lot to unpack here so I will do my best. 1) I assume you are a resident and not an AZ native living somewhere else now. 2) A mid-80's antelope is a monster. 82" is B&C minimum so that is roughly equivalent to a 190" typical mule deer or 375" typ bull. It used to be the case that a firearm pronghorn tag in AZ gave a near guarantee at a buck of that caliber in most units. That is not the case anymore. In most units mid 70's is a really good mark. 3) The hunts you are applying for are fine from a quality perspective. I suspect 80 is possible there, with a lot of effort. But there are very limited tags, only 1 bonus pass tag for each hunt. You may want to consider either hunts with more permits, or less popular units. There are several rifle and muzzleloader units you would have 100% odds for. 4) If your brother actually has 29 bonus points and is a resident, there are only 13 other residents with that many points. He should be able to pick a hunt and go. Unless he sat out last year, he could have drawn any hunt he wanted. Hard to call it bad luck if he is being that level of picky. BTW, where I was, the rut was cooking and there were solid bulls for the early rifle hunts.

Deserved.

Ancient bull. Pretty much the only place that happens in AZ is somewhere adjacent to a park or Rez where they can get away from the pressure.

Especially when you can buy a Gould's tag for like $1500.

Our family has drawn 2 sheep tags and 0 Gould's tags in the same amount of time applying.

I've wondered this too. My understanding, I can't remember where this was explained, it may have been something Mike Chamberlain said, was that turkeys have such a short lifespan and so many winter kill, that fall harvest of hen doesn't change the overall spring population much. If that is true for AZ and our mellow winters, I don't know. It would be worth taking this to a commission meeting or bringing up during a hunt guideline comment period.

We have killed 7 or 8 elk with Berger Hybrids. Rarely get an exit wound. Even on a small mule deer there was no exit. Everything has died in sight. The hybrids leave catastrophic damage at the entrance. It usually looks like motor vehicle trauma, expands in the vitals and ends up in the opposite ribs. Very little blood trail on most of them, but to be fair its usually less than 10 yards. I was stressed after the first few animals when we didn't have exits and even the entrances were usually the diameter of the bullet unless it caught bone on the way in, but its been very consistently effective at stopping them in their tracks.

Congrats, that’s awesome but I am tired just listening to that. Ever thought about quartering them?

Gnarly. Congrats on a sweet bull.