Leaderboard

Live free or die. Almost stepped on 5 ft western diamond back the other day that was hiding behind my trash can. There is all kinds of stuff out there that can kill you everyday. heck driving on I-10 is a risk in itself. You can’t be in lockdown and wear masks in perpetuity.

Meopta. Hands down, best bang for your $. The bx5s are good glass wise but imo felt too heavy and i didnt like the ergonomics.

.

Personally I would save for some Swaro HDs.

We got our red heeler pup (Ripley) on here about a year ago. Outstanding part of the family. There are a few people that have puppies on here from time to time but it has been a while. Good luck in your search.

I got one

I have a blue.... she is the best thing that ever happen to me 😄 really though

I got one buddy in SV that got it. His mom gave it to the whole family. Thats the only one i know personally. I dont think that masks are neccesarily effective or unaffective, but what i think they actually do is stop people from touching their face. Most people touch their face more then they think and what i think the mask does is just stop people from doing so.

I agree I’ve seen plenty of that on the web, but it all depends on where you look. If you look at the infection rates in country’s with strict mask mandates vs country’s without the difference is night and day. There’s tons of stuff out there that’ll say that they don’t filter particles small enough to catch aerosols and they are true, but they are finding that it’s more droplets then aerosols that are causing it. Anything over your mouth will catch droplets.

I've killed a few elk with my rifle, one being a nice bull that went on the wall. I've been apart of dozens of other rifle bulls killed, and cows killed. I've been apart of several archery bulls killed, and I've even had an archery bull tag myself about 10 years ago (Scouted 35 days, hunted 14, and went home with tag soup). Hunting elk with a bow is no easy feat. I scouted 15 weekends before my hunt this year. I also spent a full week scouting the week before my hunt. I then hunted hard for 13 days. On day 13 I finally was able to achieve the hardest thing I've ever done hunting........ Kill a bull with my bow. With all the scouting I did, finding elk was never a problem. I had plan A-Z, and then some. I was in elk every day of the hunt. The big problem was me. I was always able to screw it up some how. Lol. I've never been a super patient man. Well with every day that passed, I learned that patience is a very important tool to the elk hunter. I had opportunities every day of the hunt (most of which I blew), and opportunities at bulls much bigger than the one I ultimately killed. I had a standard of a mature 6x6 bull, score not being a factor. On day 6 of the hunt, I was able to make a shot on a very nice 315ish bull. He came in quartered to me, and I fought the urge to take the shot at 30 yards. He knew something was up, turned and started walking away. At the 40 yard mark, he was perfectly quartered away, and I took the shot. I hit exactly where I wanted. He took off like a bat out of heck, ran into a tree, and pulled the arrow. After tracking him for 400 yards, the blood was gone. My heart sunk. We backed out overnight, and began the search the next morning. After crawling on our hands and knees for another 200 yards, we lost all blood. We spent 2 and a half days searching for that bull, and I never found him. My only conclusion is, that I hit him a little too far forward, and only got one lung. I hope with all my heart, that bull made it. I spent the next half a day thinking about calling the hunt, or continuing on with it. I finally decided that I would continue hunting that area in hopes of finding that bull alive, or dead, and that I would only take another shot if it was a for sure thing. Once again I was on elk every day, and had more and more encounters. I had to stop myself from a few nice opportunities, on nice 6x6 bulls. I still wasn't over hitting the first bull. Fast forward to day 13. I get up a little bit late, but get into a spot that was close to camp, and had been abandoned by the rest of the other hunters. I hear 3 bulls going crazy, and I spent 2 hours shadowing the group, keeping the wind right, and the elk close. I finally get to where I can feel the bugles in my chest, and I can see elk feet. I let out a call, and my bull came running in like it was possessed. He ran in so fast, he actually over shot me by 9 yards. He was now quartered away, and only at 9 yards. I figured this was as good as it was going to get. I settled my pin 2 inches low, knowing my arrow would hit high at that distance, and sent one right through his heart. He ran less than 40 yards, got the shaky legs, and went over. 10 seconds later a 330 bull that I'd been after, comes walking right past me at a whopping 12 yards. He stops, he bugles, he pisses, he walks over to my bull, he barks at him a few times, and then he walks off like nothing happened. Every hair on my body was standing up!!! This will go down as one of my absolute favorite hunts!! It will go down as one of the hardest hunts (physically and emotionally) I've been apart of. It is also one of the proudest hunts I've ever been on. While I passed on bigger bulls, and saw much bigger bulls, I'm super pround of the little 5x5 I was able to harvest this year. I feel horrible about the one that got away, but I learned from it. ELk are big targets, but they're tough targets, and you have to be careful about your shot. While the kill zone is big, if you don't hit it right, you're doing yourself and the elk no favors. I could have left that bit out of my story, but it happened, and I wanted to be completely honest about my trip. I have a knew respect for how tough these animals are. Anyways, enough of my jabbering. Sorry for the photos, but I was solo, so I didn't have anyone to take them for me. I even had to do a selfie. Ugggg.

I'm sorry to hear about anyone's losses. It affects everyone differently. Stats show that 99% of people under the age of 65 are fine. I'm in my mid 40's. I had it, and it was the least sick I've ever been in my life. I was only sick 4 days and took only 1 day off at work. Test results didn't even come back until 19 days later and I wasn't sure whether to believe it so I went and got antibody tests. In fact I climbed Mt. Whitney (22 miles, 6500 feet of elevation gain, in 1 day) and was driving home from Cali when I found out I had a positive test. I was very sick in March with the flu, and thought that was Covid but it came up negative. I had multiple tests b/c work requires me to travel a lot and this sickness was so light on me that the only reason I got tested was b/c another guy at work had tested positive. In fact training for Mt. Whitney I hiked 15 miles the weekend before and 15 miles the weekend after I had covid (all in one week). That said, my Uncle had it. He is 77 with both heart trouble and lung trouble (existing comorbidities). He barely made it in the hospital but he is fine now 3 months later with no fallout. My aunt had it and it barely phased her, maybe sick for a week max. Three other guys at work had it. All 3 are in their 60's. Two were out for a month, mostly b/c they were concerned about spreading the virus. Another guy at work was completely asymptomatic. My wife had it, and was maybe sick for going on 2 weeks, but nothing where a hospital visit was required. My 11 year old son had it and he was totally fine hopping around like any normal kid. A friend of mine also had it who is in his 50's and he was sick for a week but no hospital. All of us are as healthy as we were before. My mom was in the hospital for 11 days for other problems and we were glad she didn't catch it from anyone at the hospital. I've had a couple of friends lose their fathers. They were in the hospital for other conditions when they caught it. In the majority of cases, most people will be fine. Stats show that. Don't live a life full of fear unless you have a reason to be fearful, like an underlying health condition. And in that case the flu should scare also.

Hunter continued his quest to complete his AZ Big 10 last night. We hunted this bull for a couple days. He was a gladiator and kept injuring and running off bigger bulls. We were on him twice before without being able to complete a shot. To his credit he just wouldn’t shoot unless he was perfectly steady. When the moment came just before dark he made it count taking out the bulls front shoulder on the first shot. He went 30 yds and piled up. I have to say what an awesome experience from the great friends who made it possible when I couldn’t be there to start, and some others who came out to help late last night. You only get so many firsts and this one was awesome. Watching Hunter and his brother fist pump and high five was priceless. There are great lessons to be learned in the outdoors about persistence and strength and effort. So proud that he stuck with it and didn’t give up.

Waiting for another to come in

Congrats on your bull! Sounds like you had a great hunt

Not much to the story, but my son drew a unit 8 muzzy cow tag this year. Made 3 scouting trips during the summer to learn the area. Brandon (gunsmith 25-06 on cwt) was very helpful in giving some areas to check out -he lives in 8. When the season came, we came close opening morning, but were messed up by someone out walking their dog!!! The following evening and morning were pretty uneventful. The almost full moon and hot weather ...86 degrees, didn’t help. Saturday evening it all came together when we had 10 cows come through on their way to a trick tank. He picked a fully mature one and dropped her just before dark. We worked till 10:30 skinning, quartering, and hanging to cool. Picked her up next morning and back to camp , got meat on ice . What made this most special is 3 generations were involved-Dad, son, and grandson got to share the experience. Sorry picture a little fuzzy, but darkness was coming fast.

Congratulations again, and great shooting...

Congrats on sticking it out! It’s definitely a shame on that first bull, but you did all you could to recover it. Awesome job getting it done!

Sounds like some great hunt memories were made. Looks like pretty elk country too.

Be right back, using my imagination cuz no pics

If you find any gold I'll trade you for silver

Southern AZ is a magical place. Get a 4x4 and start driving around. Go out to a hillside at dawn and just watch the sun come up. You will feel like you are truly in GODS country. Join the Tucson Chapter Safari Club or Tucson Chapter of Elk Unlimited. 😷

4 for 4. BIL got some sweet redemption after 2 hard years of bad luck and bad mistakes. lost an average bull earlier in the day and was bummed. went out for the evening hunt and absolutely laced the biggest elk to come out of here in many years. not great genetics in here but lots of elk. makes for a fun hunt. now we need to teach him to get down low and long arm so his elk looks bigger......lol dude is 6'5" so everything looks small and they finally fed us a decnt meal. off to coyote hunt in the morning and wrap this trip up

As others have said, glass, glass, and glass, and then just when you can’t stare through those binos for another minute... you glass some more. Some days I would swear that coues aren’t really deer at all but rather gophers with antlers. They seem to tunnel under ground, appear out of no where and then disappear. One day I witnessed a doe pull the disappearing act right in front of me, and fortunately I was close enough (150 yards) that I got to see how she pulled her trick. She literally got down on her belly and crawled up inside a low growing juniper. Had I not known she was there, I probably never would have been able to see her bedded inside that tree. As it was all I could see of her was her nose and ears depending on which way she was facing. I’ve since found several bedded down inside of nasty thick bushes or drainages where you can only see part of their head. You have to learn to look for parts of the deer. I usually see the ears first. They’ll bed down and hide out just about anywhere. You have to look every where. I also like to try to glass from good ambush points, like a knob above a good saddle with some trails in it. I’ve had deer walk out in the open right below me quite a few times while glassing. Also, if you’re changing glassing locations, make sure you glass as thoroughly as you can in front of you as you’re moving. There’s a basin where I’ve killed a couple little bucks by sitting ambushes, that I have a few predetermined glassing spots along the way.

Tracy and I are going camping this weekend with the intent to hunt bear and squirrels. I'll let you know how it goes.

My little brother got it done!