Leaderboard

How do they taste in soup?

i always thought pulling out the tag and slapping it on was pretty convenient. Was it not?

Finally drew my first antelope tag. Drew a archery hunt here close to home in New Mexico. I knew the unit well but knew this unit wasn't easy and it was going to be a grind. Opening morning found my son and I on the very north end of the unit. At first light we pick up what I think is a good 78-80" buck with 3 does. We put the stock on and get to about 130 yards. They peg us and move. We play cat and mouse for over two hours. We would make 40 yards they would move 40 yards. We finally get to the private border and we back out. On the way to some other country we spot small buck but give him the pass. We get to a new area and and glass a herd of does. I move to a small rise and glass a big buck cruising from our left to right. He is moving quick and we have about 800 yards to get to where we can be in range. We take off and get to the point where I think he should be soon. I'm glassing and frantically looking and he is gone. I put my binos down and 150 yards to my left he is staring us down. Luckily we were hunkered down pretty good. I had a heads up decoy attached to my bow. I threw it up and he immediately started to trot our way. He got closer and then something startled him as he came to a screeching halt. He was somewhat quartering towards us and with my son on the range finder he said "he's at 80 dad". I drew back and settled the pin just in front of his shoulder. Right as I was letting it fly the smallest gust of wind came and pulled that decoy a had attached to my bow. I watched the arrow fly like in slow motion to the left and high. The arrow sunk deep into his neck and into his chest cavity. The buck took of and I could see he was bleeding good which calmed me of my botched shot. After a short tracking job we found him piled up in some malpais rock. I knew he was a good buck but walking up I could see he was just a little better than good. I was sad that when the buck crashed that lava rock split open his lower jaw, split his gums and some of his nose. We got the buck taken care of and headed home. I called my good friend who is my taxidermist and is an official p&y scorer. We met up at his place to cape the buck out gave him a quick run with the tape. Last week we did the official scoring and he was better than.I thought. I am blessed to have these opportunities to hunt with my oldest son who's passion for hunting burns as hot as mine. This was a first for me and who better than to get to experience it with than my boy.

Just to close the loop here, in case someone else searches, I found a shop in Phoenix to handle this. https://www.aerpak.com/

I used the E Tag yesterday on a javillina. For horned animals I imagine it would be okay, but for javillina it sucked ( IMO) the "issued tags" worked well putting it through the leg and would stay on - electrical tape not so much. The dang number was hard to read in the sun- you have to complete the harvest study before you get the number- not a big deal. Believe me E tags can be lost - just leave your phone at camp / truck or lose it. I wouldn't say I didn't like it but its not great.

Keep it. If your upper is ever detached from your sbr or you build another upper and they decide to take a stroll to your house. They can’t get you with intent to manufacture by having any other unregistered lower in there.

No lost tags or licenses Immediate reporting of harvest info All licenses and tags on phone in one place No need to carry tag or license in field No waiting for tag in mail …….Are a few benefits I see

No Etag for me thx.

Got a shot last weekend at 35 yds across a draw with a spring in the bottom . Hit the pig as I watched it carry my arrow about 10 feet and then it dropped out the off side . A few hours of searching and all I got was a red arrow and a bunch of briers in my pants from being down in the creek bottom. Seems like more pigs where we hunt and there out moving . Most were early morning 7am-till around noon . I can't hunt late due to work but my buddy hasn't seen one late but he does drag his feet and kick rocks as he walks . Not exactly a quiet stalk kinda person. These two were at 70 after I shot . I ran into another hunter going in the draw I'd just hit my pig in and was trying to put him on pigs but every time we saw the pigs they were on the opposite side of the draw and he couldn't get a shot.

It always was easy, but even easier now. I also like the fact that maybe some more harvest surveys will get filled out. It is a step in the right direction imo. More harvest data = more accurate counts. Mandatory reporting and check in would be ideal, but may be a long way off or never happen. It used to be kind of a pain to have 4 or 5 tags in your pack and have to keep shuffling them around depending on which pack or animals I planned to encounter. Also just had an instance on Thursday where a buddy's paper pig tail got a little wet from the rain and it was an absolute pain to peel off the backing to apply it to the pig. I managed to get enough sticky left on the tag to attach it, but it was close to no bueno.

I saw so many javelina this last week. Honestly more than I've seen in the last 5 years collectively. Not sure if it's the short grass or what but I noticed once the sun hits in the morning they were out. Did see herds on their feet at all times of the day though.

Grip is MDT vertical grip. That’s for sale too. The only lowers I have are SBRs…

I hunted this unit last year and got skunked. I had never seen it so bad since I started hunting it over 30 years ago. I put in for it again to challenge myself to find a good buck. I did find a 180 plus buck about 7 weeks ago and spent several weekends trying to relocate him, but had no luck. I changed locations and turned up this buck 3 weeks ago. I only got about 45 seconds of footage before he disappeared. I came back the next weekend and couldn’t turn him up. About ten days ago I found him again, and got about 30 seconds of video before he melted away into one of his hiding spots. Opening morning found me and my son looking for another buck I had found for him, but that deer didn’t want to cooperate. We hunted all day and only found several young deer. Saturday I decided to go searching for the big 3, but he never showed himself. On the hike out, I found several lion tracks and figured he had been killed or pushed. Sunday the wind was gusting 20-30 mph and most of the deer I found were bedded, and also 600 yards out with no chance to shoot with the cross winds. The wind blew hard all day and we just couldn’t find much moving. Monday morning started the same with the crazy winds, but we had a plan to relocate another tall 3x3 I had seen several times for my son. On our way to that spot, I said let’s go take a look for the other big 3 and just see if he is up and moving. We were glassing from a spot that didn’t really give me the angle needed to see into his normal feeding area, but I wanted to at least try. I turned up one doe in a small cut feeding away from us. We kept glassing the area over and thought for sure there is no way this buck would be out feeding. I glassed for a while and was getting ready to move on and decided to glass below me. Standing in the open feeding was this buck at only 225 yards. I had just looked over this spot five minutes earlier. He must have been down inside a deep cut where I couldn’t see him before. I put a 168 ELD-M right in the pocket and he spun and dropped about ten feet away. While we were packing him out, we hiked down the same wash that I had used a couple days earlier. There were more lion tracks on top of my boot tracks. We scouted this area for weeks and kept seeing lion tracks in the road, but we were never able to glass him up. Unfortunately we never found a good buck for my son to shoot, but it was a great hunt and had a great time hunting with my son. David

My wife and I got tags together this year for the same hunt for the first time. We were real excited for this hunt, more than usual. Opening day I spotted her buck 2100 yards out and figured he was a mid 80’s buck. We kept an eye on him every 5 minutes to see where he beds down. While keeping tabs on him we saw 10 other bucks but nothing worth chasing after. Once her buck bedded down under a tree, we marked the spot and started the stalk. We snuck into 330 yards and the rest is history. The buck had a bigger body than we thought and scored right at 90. We had a long pack-out back to the ranger and feeling the aches and soreness today. Over the next few days we looked over 30 bucks or so. I was looking for a 4+ year old buck (secretly trying to beat my wifes buck!) I didn’t have any luck. Monday morning came and I spotted a big 2x2 buck that we have seen maybe 8 times and never gave chase to him. He bedded down during grey light and the wife and I took off. We snuck into 380 yards and waited about an hour for him to stand up and the hunt was done. My buddy Christian showed up to help out with the morning Monday hunt, he carried out some weight which was nice! Thanks amigo! Overall deer movement was phenomenal even with the full moon. The freezer is full with our bucks and my sons junior buck. We’ll definitely put in together again next year.

Pros is that you will not loose your tags like I do, always scrambling to find them. This is the only good thing. Cons you have to go to a physical office to buy your OTC tags Pin points your exact location of harvest If you buy a paper tag while you where issued the Etag you are in violation of 2 tags If you buy the paper tag you can not get a E tag from what they told me. Mandatory survey when you activate the tag. If your phone looses power you might get in trouble if you are unable to tag your animal, I'm sure it's up to the discretion of the warden Biggest down fall is that you have to drive to the azgf office to buy the ETag.

I received an email that I had drawn, then had to log onto their website and pay for the tag. I didn't receive a credit card hit from their draw.

9am sunny hillsides, knows the time to get out and walk creek bottoms and look for tracks while its wrt. They will be very fresh. Then head up shady side of ridge and glass back to the sunny side of hill. If you can find green wattles also. But find them tracks. You have better luck if you know where there neighborhood is, and its hard to find moving rocks when your looking everywhere or driving. My take only. Goodluck

Unit 1 is 22 nonresident points Unit 27 in 19 nonresident points 3a/3c is 24 nonresident points All according to gohunt

One beneficial thing about getting out this time of year to learn stalking is deciduous trees are bare so more opportunity to see game. Frost on the ground in the morning will show tracks better too. No snakes, it's cooler so you won't sweat/smell as much and you can drink less water. In the desert there is always something to see to peak their interest, lots of teaching moments. I would put the emphasis on tracking and stalking, minding the wind direction.

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. Cowboys fans are loud and obnoxious all the time, even when they're really bad 😂

Reminds me of my grandpa, always blamed the dog.

When I was in high school, I bought pot off a guy that let his parrot de-seed his Mexican brick weed. Bird seemed fine and I never got bird flu. Win, win.

his dog didnt need shots, but ate up $100 worth of dog treats while it was there with the munchies....

When people say they got that dog in them, this is the dog in me

Sounds like that dog owes them $50