Leaderboard

12a east, my favorite

says the guy posting about bigeye tuna on a coues site for a month

Just go to any unit and fire a 6.5cm at a random mountainside. The bullet is guaranteed to only hit a monster buck.

Our G&F regs have a ton of good info on success rate & draw odds for draw tags which can help you nail down what unit to put in for, and the G&F website has great starter points listed unit by unit. Seems like everybody has their own favorite unit, but the truth is there are a ton of units that have great access and excellent trophy potential. Good luck on your deer slam, I only need the two blacktail species to finish mine. https://www.azgfd.com/Hunting/Units/

it is a mistake for me to post here-i know that going in-but i am an idiot. after 20 years on the mountain at 6600ft i have used one, the other or both for over 8 months a year. i now believe a pellet stove is the most efficient, inexpensive and easiest to operate of all heating options. a 40lb bag of pellets makes about a double handful of fine ash that can be vacuumed within a half hour of operation, cost about $5. runs on the energy of 2 60watt lightbulbs even on deep cycle battery/inverter or the smallest generator at harbor freight. i'm on aps in show low and the only power outage of consequence was 5hours after the dec 7 2009 blizzard. you don't even have to leave the house to get pellets-order over the phone from lowes/hd and have a ton delivered to your driveway next day. did i mention i only have to vacuum ash 'bout once every two weeks? downside? well electronic component failure(igniter/fans/modules) can be pricey and field service exorbitant so you will want to buy them online and be your own service tech. i did it YOU CAN TOO! woodstoves...well a cord of oak/alligator goes for $250 on the deuce in show low in january so you will prob need to make your 5 cords during the summer. that will take a month out of fishing and scouting along with about $500 for fuel, permits, sawchains, oil, clothes and tire repair. and don't forget the $$$ keeping yur buds in beer and lunch when they 'help' you out. but you will lose 20lbs and can cancel your gym membership for a summer. you will find out who your real friends are. ash cleanup is filthy and time consuming and dangerous and don't forget having to sweep you chimney 2-3 times a year(a pellet stove you just tap the exhaust lightly with a broom handle every couple of months). a highlight of living on the mountain is seeing a garbage truck going down the hiway with a full load of garbage on fire. got meself in enough trouble, lee ps the forest energy pellet mill in show low that supplys hd and lowes are some of the best pellets in the milky way. going to stay that way-the gm is a good friend of mine.

Hangin out in the woods before the rain came. Spotter shot is from 700

May or June? Have you ever been outside in Arizona in June?

Are you from California?

Great season! Got into a herd having a full blown party, opening morning (a week late in 7w this year for the early muzzy hunt in there) Had some bruisers just out of bow range. Got into big bulls every single day and no shortage of amazing elk hunting! Met some cool hunters in the field, earned some blisters and bruises. Found a good shed, hiked through God's most beautiful country, I had a great time overall. I called in many bulls, saw some of the most jacked up bulls I've ever seen, took a shot and missed at a 3x6 that was so strangely cool.. and an hour after that, I managed to slock this little guy on Monday evening. Ranged him at 86 yards, as I began to punch the trigger I noticed a blade hanging out if the rubber band..... Talk about a dilemma..... I punched the trigger anyway. Bull ran 40 yards and spin-out dead! Had him half quartered up before my fellow archers showed up, 2 trips down the mtn, and we had him bagged and tagged and hanging in the cool air back at camp by 1am. My 4th archery bull and I really really enjoyed the hunt. Just got home to do laundry and work tomorrow, then back up the hill to call in another bull for my buddy.

Got to my hunting unit on Friday 21st at 6:00 pm. 24 hrs later, Saturday at 6:00 pm, put an arrow in this bull, ran about 100 yards and dropped. I'm very happy! Thanks for looking

Call it an infatuation. Call it an addiction. Call it a passion. Call it an obsession. A waste of energy. A waste of money. A waste of time. Call it a problem, or a sickness. Call it whatever you'd like. If it's a sickness, I have it, and it's incurable. If it's an addiction, an intervention isn't going to stop it. Trust me, I think my wife might have tried that in the beginning. If it's a waste of time, and money, then that explains why I'm so far behind on chores and why i cant afford luxurious vacations. If it's a waste of energy, then that explains why I feel so dang old. It's not going to stop however. The reward is too great. Succesfully spotting and stalking coues bucks with a bow is the ultimate satisfaction, second only to creating and raising a family. Hunting coues deer with my bow has consumed my soul for many years now. It's a high I've continuously yearned for since I felt it for the first time many years ago. This late summer archery season was as productive as any season I can remember. It cost me money, and time, and energy, and sleep, but each day I got to spend in those desert mountains this season was a day that all non-hunting related stresses left my mind. It is unbelievable how healing it is to climb out of the desert floor, glue your eyes to a pair of binoculars on a tripod, and pick the landscape apart. I was able to lay my eyes on many good deer and had some very close calls. Unforeseen events caused me to miss more days than I would have liked during the season, not counting the days I missed because of work but all in all the this August /early September was one to remember. It flew by and before I knew it, I was down to one day of hunting left. My good buddy Randy Landwerlen made the drive down to hunt with me on what would be the last day of the hunt for both of us. I had a pretty good idea where some shooter bucks were living so we made a game plan that included parking trucks in two different spots and hunting from one to the other. This would allow us to cover most of the country that the big bucks had been calling home. We dropped Randy's truck off and then continued on in my truck. As usual, it was a race against the sun and we sucked wind climbing to our first glassing spot of the morning. It was one of the better glassing spots in the area, but it definitely wasn't a great hill to start a stalk from, primarily because of the effort required to make a move in any direction. Randy was the first to spot bucks. They weren't shooters so we kept looking. I was feeling more pressure than normal to find bucks. It was our last day to hunt and I actually had a spotter to aid in a stalk. I primarily archery hunt alone, unless the stars align and I can get out with my hunting partner Cody, so I really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Aside from the bucks Randy glassed up, things were pretty slow for the first bit of the morning. I eventually found a shooter far off on top of a big ridge but he didn't stay visible for long and he wasn't in a spot that wasn't going to take less than 3/4 of a day to relocate. Randy spotted a few more deer and then we elected to glass back behind us. I found a group of bucks and began to direct Randy to them and before I really got finished giving him all the details of their location he says "those are nice bucks." "I dont think they're shooters." I responded. "That deer on the left looks big." He replied. I obviously wasn't looking at the same deer he was. About 100 yards left of the deer I was looking at were a group of bucks and with them was a deer that both of us agreed was a shooter. We watched the bucks for probably half an hour before deciding to cut the distance some. They were two canyons over and one of the canyons was quite large. . .and deep. We crossed through the smaller of the two canyons and thankfully the bucks had not moved. They fed towards the top of the ridge and eventually bedded down. Randy and I went back and forth about who would stalk the deer and how to go about it. You know you're hunting with a top notch guy when the guy is an avid coues hunter but he's adament about letting somebody else go after a deer rather than himself. Randy convinced me to go after the deer and as you can imagine, I didn't need much convincing. The thermals had pretty much settled and the wind had been pretty consistent for about an hour. I chose a path and tried to memorize some landmarks. Crossing the canyon between us and the deer was not going to be fun. It was going to take me some time and I was afraid that the deer were not going to stay put. I made it about 2/3's of the way up the opposite side of the canyon when I hear Randy holler at me. I knew what that meant. It was over. I looked at Randy through my binoculars and he gave me the signal that they had crossed over. Without a spotter I would have wasted the next few hours stalking deer that weren't even there. Ask me how I know. I climbed a little further until I got phone service and called Randy. He told me that the deer ran up and over but he didn't think they were spooked. I decided to climb to the top of the ridge and just walk down it towards where the deer went over and maybe glass off the other side. Before I made it to the top, Randy text me and said that he found them again. What a relief. They bedded again down the ridge about 400 yards from where they were when I originally started my stalk. Talk about catching a break. The wind was steadily blowing on my right side and slightly in my face. The deer were in their second bed of the day, and they were bedded near the top of the ridge. For once, I felt like I had an advantage. Unsteady wind is my arch nemesis. Finally, today, the wind was steady. I continued down the ridge until I felt like I was getting close to where the bucks were at. I noticed a doe feeding where I thought the bucks should be. I also noticed two cows fifty yards to the right of the doe. The advantage was tipping back into the buck's favor. The best route with the most cover was not available to me now because of the doe and the cattle. The doe laid down, so I crept a little closer and stopped for awhile. Eventually one of the bucks stood up about ten yards past the doe and came and rebedded near her. My goal at this point was to get within shooting distance of the buck that had just rebedded and then sit tight. He wasn't the shooter but I wasn't sure exactly where the shooter buck was and I figured he wasn't too far away. I was 120 yards at this point and the wind was still blowing on my right side. It took me about 20 minutes to crawl to 80. After sitting at 80 for a bit, another buck stood up and fed over to the doe and buck closest to me and bedded. I now had two bucks and a doe at 80. The shooter buck was still out of sight. I could see the head of the second buck which was actually a plus. Now I could move and keep an eye on his ears to know when my noise levels were too high. I crept in to 60 and the buck's ears never perked up once. At this point I could make out the antler tips of the shooter buck. The tree he was under was 74 yards away. I got to 70 when the wind died and I began to run out of cover. I stayed there for a good while waiting for some wind and one of the small clouds in the sky to give me some shade. After being there about ten minutes I felt the breeze against my face. A few minutes later, a cloud provided some shade, so I began to crawl some more. It took me about 15 minutes to cover another 10 yards. I got to 60 and felt like getting any closer was too much of a risk with the two bucks and the doe at only 45 yards from me. My adrenaline levels were beginng to rise and I could feel the fever coming on. I knew I was close to making this happen. Fortunately I had time to gain my composure. In my younger days, this multi-hour stalk would have taken me all of about 30 minutes. Like a grizzly bear, I would have blundered my way in there, hoping this buck tolerated my presence long enough for me to take him down. Today though, I chose to take the form of the Nile crocodile, hiding in the depths of the waste high grass until I got close enough to let the jaws of my BowTech snap, and letting the teeth of my rocket steelhead tear into my quarry's flesh. After sitting at 60 for awhile, the buck stood up and offered a broadside shot. I wasn't completely confident that he was exactly 60 so I tried to verify his range by ranging him rather than the tree above him. I had a hard time with the tall grass, but I finally got a range. He was 60 exactly so I attached my release and raised my bow to draw. He flopped back into his bed before I had a chance to completely draw and the waiting game began again. I wondered if I had wasted my only oppurtunity. It was now afternoon and I was in deep consideration about whether or not to try and crawl closer when out of nowhere, one of the closer bucks jumped up and darted out towards the big buck. Both of the other Bucks jumped and followed. I didn't know what happened. The wind was good. I was motionless. I thought the gig was up so I jumped up and got ready to draw. All three bucks soon realized that their jittery nature had gotten the best of them and they decided to all head back out of the sun into their shady beds. As the big buck approached the tree he had been bedded under, I drew my bow. He got right back to here he had been bedded and stopped, quartering to. I held for about 10 more seconds before he turned broadside. I settled my 60 yard pin at the front of his lungs and applied pressure to the release. As my arrow left the bow, the buck simultaneously began to twist towards me and drop his front end, attempting to drop back down into his bed. My arrow flew true, but unfortunately his vitals were not in the same location they had been when I initially shot. The deer was hit lethally, but it wasn't the perfect double lung shot that I had anticipated. The buck bolted directly towards me and stopped at a mere 15 yards in the tall grass. I couldn't see anything but his head but I took a guess at where his body was in the grass and let another one rip. I heard the impact and the buck bolted off out of sight down the steep, rocky hillside. I immediately called randy to see what happened. He said the deer went down. He was able to watch the entire thing. I was ecstatic. So much work had gone into this. My emotions came to a peak and I let out a schoolgirl yell that echoed through the canyons. I really could not have done this one without Randy and I intend to return the favor someday. Randy made his way over to me and I could see he could appreciate the deer for what is was, which is a rare trait these days. It was refreshing to see somebody view the deer as something more than just a certain amount of inches. We took pictures, deboned the deer, and began our pack out. I'm sure many would wonder why I would bother climbing to the top of this mountain, crawl through the chigger infested weeds and grass, and sit in the baking sun for hours . Maybe I am infatuated. Maybe I am obsessed. Maybe I am addicted. Maybe it is a waste of time, or money, or energy. Maybe it is a problem I have. Or a sickness. Call it what you want. I call it living.

452b264- I weighed five of the bullets and all weighed 125.2 gr on my electronic scale. Using the stoney-point comparator, all had the same base to ogive length. I ended up loading 50 at 0.02 off the lands with a muzzle velocity of 3278 fps for the cow elk hunt. I have not shot them into a media yet. I threw together some test loads with a few of the 127 LRX, 0.05 off the lands, and H1000, and 4 shot groups at 100 yards were 0.46 to 0.88". Measuring four of the 127LRX, the ogive varied 0.02". Three of four weighed 127.2gr, and one weighed 127.0

somebody delete this shoot. lee

Talk about being messed up. I am right handed and right eye dominant but shoot rifles left handed. I don't know why just always shot that way ever since I could pick up a gun. I have tried teaching myself to shoot right handed but just revert back to left handed due to just being more comfortable.

Stop it!! I'm trying to save up money. Great deal for someone with kids.

I love cutting wood with the family. Good time out in the woods. Lot of hard work. If the power goes out, nice to have a wood stove. If you can physically get out and cut, I’d take a wood stove all day. My opinion though.

Death, taxes, and creed killing a big coues with his bow. Outstanding buck and write up.

Call it what you want but i don’t think someone gets lucky every. Single. Year

Most important..... don’t use your current Cabelas Visa for the upcoming draw!!! The Visa will be canceled in October. The new MasterCard will be serviced by capital one.

In more northern states the deer and elk are much more stressed from winter and pressure can be detrimental. Our animals in AZ live a pretty leisurely winter and are able to recover just fine, so pressure isn't that big a deal. Pressure in the fall is way worse with the absurd number of tags given out.

Yay! More laws....that people will blatantly break and get away with.

So I’ve been off CWT since they switched the format and figured I better get back on here and update everyone on the hunt. It was an absolute grind, and I’m glad it’s over, but it was a really great time!!! I ended up buying a proof research 28 nosler and topping it with a 2.5-25x52 March. It was under 8# all put together. This thing is scary accurate with 195 eol Berger’s sitting on 86.5 gr RL 33. Anyhow, onto the hunt! I was lucky enough to have my 3 brothers along for it as well as my wife and my sister in law. To say I couldn’t have done it without them is an understatement! We picked out and area on google earth that I found based on the biologists suggestion. Her exact words were “it’s reallt hard to get to but you’ll find a lot of goats in there”. We all met for breakfast the day before the hunt opened and headed to the trailhead around 10:00am. The hike in to base was only 5 miles so I was thinking we’d be in easily by mid day. Boy was I wrong. Ran into another tag holder on the way in and he said “you’re going in there? You realize there’s no trail and it’s solid blow downs right?” On the plus side he did say they glassed some goats “way the heck back there” this summer!! We trudged on climbing about 2000 vertical feet in the first two miles. We followed the spine for a mile or so and then it dumped into the basin we picked out. I guess I have to say that I was a little underprepared for it!! On google earth I could see some blow downs, but I didn’t expect this! Literally every 30’ for the entire next 2 miles was a blowdown! We plodded on, finally making camp about 4:00 pm. We got a little glassing in that night and were pumped to find plenty of goats!! We glassed up a lone billy above camp a mile or so. We planned on getting a closer look at him in the am. We had to do all the bear stuff, hanging food, no chapstick etc. I had never dealt with that and it’s sort of a pain but I guess considering there was grizzly crap everywhere we needed to do it! The next morning we awoke to high 20’s and clear sky’s. We hiked up to the billy we had glassed. We found him not far from where we left him the night before. One of the many drawbacks of the blow downs is there was literally no cover to approach the goats with. While he was still way above us, I wasn’t sure how much activity they would put up with. Most of the goats I’ve run into on other hunts have been fairly stupid and just watch you from above within easy rifle distance. Realizing we didn’t have any choice, we just headed at him. At about 1000 yards he just got up and hopped over the ridge out of our lives. This made us realize this might be a little tougher then we expected. I wasn’t too bummed as I had gotten a pretty good look at him and he was the type of billy I knew I probably shouldn’t pass but also wasn’t a giant so I was a little optimistic that we would find a better one. It didn’t take long glassing and my brother glassed up a big group of nannies and kids. I had made a decision that I was only going to shoot a billy so we kept looking. About an hour later my other brother picked up some goats that we had somehow missed. It was two mature animals together. It didn’t take long looking to realize they were both mature billies. One had a Snow White coat and the other a kinda piss yellow one. The yellow one may have been a 1/2” bigger but the white one was much prettier. We decided whichever offered a shot would do. This time we were smarter and found a ridge to hide our approach. We picked a spot that we figured would get us to 500 yards and looped around to it. When we got there we peeked over and ranged them and it was 770 yards. I am capable of the shot with a decent wind read or a calm day, but the wind was literally blowing 3 different directions including straight up!! We pushed on and found a new location that got us what I thought would only be 100 yards on them. When we got there my brother ranged them and said 435!! Bingo. That’ll work! We slid into position, the only visible one was the Snow White billy. He was bedded with his left leg hanging off a cliff looking down on us. The obvious chest shot was actually blocked by his nose as he looked down so I decided to slip a bullet right past it and into his shoulder, hopefully catching some back lung and liver and breaking his close shoulder. With my brothers all locked on him I sent one up. He jumped up at the shot carrying his leg. I assumed it was a lethal shot but slammed another in his opposite shoulder as fast as I could. He dropped at this shot, anchored on the ledge he was bedded on!! Billy down! High fives all around! We didn’t realize that we were just getting to the hard part! It took us around 2 hours of rock climbing to get to him, and these billies were in some of the easier to get to stuff in there!! I was blown away with how gorgeous he was when we got to him. I had a lot of people tell me to wait for later season for better hair, but I’m in love with the dense look of his hair. It’s probably 3” long and dense. My first shot broke his close shoulder but wasn’t lethal due to the steep angle. I was very lucky to get a second one in him. His horns were awesome. I really didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t worried about an inch of horn either way but was really excited to see he was a mature billy. The biologist later measured him at 9” long, 5 1/2” bases and 7.5 years old. A really good billy for this part of Montana. We were able to get some pics on the shelf he was on but had to lower him with paracord to get him somewhere safe to butcher. With packs loaded with meat and a life size cape we slowly picked our way down the mountain and back to spike camp. The next morning we got up and loaded our packs and headed out. We had between 40-60# packs going in with our food and gear for 5 days. There’s a surprising amount of meat on a mtn goat and that combined with the cape (which weighed 40#) we all ended up with 50-70# packs on the way out. It took us 5 hours to go the 5 miles out. I can’t explain how demoralizing those blow downs are!!! I’ve never been so happy to see my truck!! We were all wiped out so we stayed in Cooke city that night. A giant ribeye and a half dozen Coors lights never taste so good!! I’m really lucky to have drawn the tag while I was still fairly young and somewhat fit. When we got home we butchered the meat, which looked and smelled excellent. I had heard so many horror stories about goat meat but I don’t believe what I hear as I’ve heard people say antelope, Sandhill crane, and sharptail grouse are all gross as well and they couldn’t be more wrong. My wife cooked up some tenderloin and backstrap that night and I have to say it was incredible. Similar flavor to antelope but maybe a little tougher. I was really thinking I would have to grind it all I to chorizo or jerky but we instead did all roasts and steaks with it. We got back to ND and turned and burned to the Missouri breaks for an archery elk hunt. Saw 25-30 bulls and had some close calls but no arrows in the air. I had to go back to work for 2 days to make sure the place didn’t burn down and now I’m off to Utah for an elk hunt! I love this time of year!

Dances with Wolves....."Why don't he write?"

terminator t3 simply awesome john hiller