*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.