CouesWhitetail

WOW!!! Congratulations Andy!! was it spot and stalk or did you set up a blind on the rub line?

This is good information Amanda. Now it looks like John didn't communicate with the rest of the board, and AZSFW basically said to the ADA, we want your money, but we don't care what you think. Time for the ADA to give AZSFW the boot. ADA can rise up out of this to be the leader for wildlife, but they have to take a stand, not hide behind the concept that they too were in the dark and didn't know. I am not sure it's fair to say John didn't communicate with the board, since he did pass on information and did then go back to AZSFW and specifically ask to see the bill before it was dropped (that didn't happen), but I agree with you that AZSFW did not act in a way that honors the relationship the ADA thought we had with AZSFW. It is obvious that AZSFW did not value ADA input for this idea and I know many board members feel that way. We haven't yet had a board meeting to discuss the course of action we will take regarding AZSWF in the future.

Ok, runningbird and others, I tried to track down the answer to your question. Here is the info as I understand it. AZSFW presented the idea to the AZSFWC board. The AZSFWC board is made up of a variety of people from many of the sportsmens groups. John Koleszar is on the AZSFWC board and so after he heard the proposal from the AZSFW he later passed on some information to the ADA board. I wasn't there at the time so I don't have all the details of when and how that was presented. As stated in the post from Mark Bool, the ADA board had serious problems with the plan and said there was no way they could support it at the time. They essentially had no details and asked John to let the AZSFW know that if AZSFW had an idea that they want the ADA to support they needed to present the idea completely with the all the details. The bill was never presented and no one from the AZSFW ever came to the ADA board to present this. As I have posted before, the ADA did not have the details of the proposal and never received the bill before it was dropped.

Allen and everyone, I will post the results when I get a chance....I have to sort the guesses and determine who is closest and get the scoresheet up. hopefully within a few days. I will post here when I get them done.

Awesome!

Thanks for the post. You might want to explain what a D.A.R.T league is and how it works for those that aren't familiar with what you are talking about.

Ok, here is the scoop, as has been said, normally the ADA doesn't hold a board meeting during the month of the banquet because we just have a ton of work and details to get done in a strict timeframe leading up to the banquet. However, due to the obvious concern from the public over this issue, the ADA has scheduled a meeting for Feb 21 and is inviting anyone that wants to come ask questions or voice an opinion about this matter to come to Bass Pro at 6:30 pm. We will devote the first hour of the meeting to listening to comments from those who attend. The meeting will be at the Fine Gun room, which is upstairs (take the righthand staircase and then look to the right as you get to the top to see the gun room). I invite and encourage you all to attend and share your opinion. Tuesday, Feb 21, 6:30 pm Bass Pro Fine Gun Room

Way to go Ernesto!! I am way jealous that you got to go down there and hunt with Temo! Wish I had been there with you all. Outstanding buck and I love all those non-typical points. Congratulations! And glad Orlin and Randy enjoyed their hunt too!

Wow, that's a great looking buck!! thanks for sharing the pic.

I saw some for rent on Craiglist...seemed reasonable too. I can't remember if it was Tucson or PHX craigslist, but do a search for camper rental and you should find them.

Those wires can't be that strong can they????

Great trip report Jim!! I love all the pics and congratulations on the success!

Wow, sorry to hear about your issue with the contest. My guess is it's measurer error. They had a LOT of animals to score in a short time. I am assuming they had multiple measurers there to take care of the load of work. Perhaps they assigned one guy to elk, one to muleys, and one to whitetail.....if so, then at least all the entries withing a category were scored by the same person and all the elk for instance should rank out ok, even if the score isn't what you think it should be...know what I mean? So the ranking might not change even with a different measurer. I will call the manager and speak with him about this.

Love it!! Thanks for sharing your neighbors with us! We have had a bear in our backyard here in globe!

Thank you Stan for handling this difficult issue while I was gone. I know moderating is a bit of a judgement call and I am confident that Stan made a good decision and I appreciate his help with this. It's rather easy to just say he should have edited the few bad posts or something like that, but that doesn't always change the course of the discussion. If a thread has turned into name calling and threats, it has no place here. I will ask again that you all try and keep your debates civil and respectful. Str8shot, I didn't see the questions you posted, but I did talk to Gino last night about this deal and he never saw your questions, so you might want to PM him with any followup questions you have. FYI - I received an email from one of the people orginally involved in the incident on the ground and he said he thought the thread was way out of control and requested that it be pulled. I believe this matter has been dealt with directly between the parties involved.

I believe he is correct. The reason you can't find an animal with a skull that looks like that is because it is not a skull. It's the dorsal/back bone/pelvic bone of a bird, perhaps a turkey as suggested above. The sockets are not eye sockets but sockets for the ball joint of the hip. Birds have very lightweight bones, may of which are hollow. It's possible it's not a turkey, but a raptor of some kind also or a turkey vulture or any number of other birds (duck, heron, etc). It's a little hard to tell size in your pic.

Congratulations and thanks for sharing your hunt!

St. John's Episcopal here in Globe. http://www.stjohnsglobe.org/

I feel for me!!! Thanks for the sympathy. It used to be easy for me to read everything that was posted in the forum, but it's grown so much that I can't hardly do that anymore. Thank goodness I have the help of most everyone here who reads through the posts and reports inappropriate content if they see it! For those that don't know there is a "Report button" in the bottom left corner of every post, so if you see something you think is inappropriate like spam or personal attacks or whatever, you can click on that and it sends a notice to all the moderators. Then we look it over and made a decision on if we agree with the report or not.

Very Cool Pixman!!! I love the muley doe and coues hybrid doe in pic 3! cool shot.

Congratulations Nathan!! Don't forget to enter him in the Coues buck contest....we have categories other than "biggest buck"... http://www.coueswhitetail.com/Coues_Buck_Contest_2011/coues_buck_contest_2011-12.htm

I enjoy these types of videos...here is a link to more that I found from the link that Oak posted http://www.businessinsider.com/wingsuit-videos-2011-10#the-need-4-speed-the-art-of-flight-1

Congratulations on the javelina with the traditional bow! And wow, what a 2-point! that thing is really cool, can't wait to see the trail cam pics!

LOL!! Yes, there are a lot of rules and regulations with scoring and that link is for the Boone and Crockett manual which helps measurers learn the scoring system.

For the last couple years I have been involved in the Hunting and Angling Heritage Work Group. This is a group of sportsmen, conservation groups, outdoor-related businesses and AGFD that have come together to focus on ways to promote hunting and fishing and outdoor activities in Arizona. The hope is to keep the hunting/fishing tradition alive well into the future. This past Saturday and Sunday we had our winter meeting up at the Horseshoe ranch (an AGFD property north of Phx south of Camp Verde). The HAHWG holds meetings twice a year and these two day meetings are designed to help provide the tools needed for outdoor groups to grow and to find ways to reach people that are not yet connected to the outdoors. This is the group that prompted me to create the women's javelina hunting camp that focuses on getting adult women a chance to learn how to hunt. The first day of the meeting was held in an open barn and it was VERY windy and cold!! In fact, I got so cold I had to sit there with my sleeping bag over me to stay warm enough or else I would have had to jog in place just to stay warm (which I did until I remembered my sleeping bag!). You know it's cold when a bunch of outdoorsmen are shivering during the meeting! I felt bad for the presenters who showed up in nice (but not warm) clothes to share their information with the group. But the wind died down about 8 pm and made for a very nice evening around the campfire. The wind was so strong that we had to hold our plates down while enjoying the evening meal after the first day of the meeting. Craig McMullen and Doug Burt of the AGFD have poured a ton of time and passion into making this working group very productive. I encourage anyone who is interested in helping to promote the future of hunting and angling to get involved with this group. Most of the sportsmens groups are members of this working group. During this recent meeting we learned more about marketing and promoting an intangible product such as the amazing experience of getting outside and hunting. Much of our time in the working group is focused on improving the many youth and adult hunting camps that are conducted by the sportsmens groups so that we are maximizing our time and being as effective as we can be with the limited volunteers and financial resources we have. I find these meetings to be encouraging and depressing at the same time. We discuss threats to the future in hunting, the drop in ranks of hunters and yet we also find ways to help encourage participation in the outdoors. There are many fine people involved in this pursuit and I find it uplifting to know that these people are giving of themselves for the future of hunting. Yuma Valley Rod and Gun Club provided all the food for this meeting (with a grant from the WCC license plate tag fund)and WOW was it good!! Tri-tip steak over the grill and some phenomenal deserts (decadent chocolate cake and cheesecake were my favorites) were the highlights. Many thanks to the Yuma guys!!! I just can't say enough about how great the food was. They served a perfect breakfast on Sunday morning with eggs, biscuits and gravy and bacon. Yummy! I didn't take many pictures this weekend, but I hope that others who attended and who frequent this forum will add their pics. Steve Clark was there and I think he took lots of pics, so maybe he will share.... I encourage you all to think about what you are doing to expand the number of hunters/fishers in Arizona. Take a non-hunter hunting or fishing soon! or volunteer to help at the many fine hunting camps that are offered in this state. And think about joining the HAHWG to learn more about what you can do to reach out to non-hunters and as they say at the meeting...make sure those non-hunters are at the very least on the "positive side of neutral" when it comes to hunting issues. If you want to get involved in this group email Doug Burt with AGFD, DBurt@azgfd.gov He will add you to the groups mailing list and let you know the details for our next meeting which will be at the end of June/early July.