CouesWhitetail

do the reddington road cleanup one day and the ISE another day. The ISE show runs Fri-Sun I think. In addition to the expert panel that Coueshunter mentioned, the ADA will be having a great trophy display with all kinds of animals (not just deer). We are having it in cooperation with Trophy Hunter magazine. It should be a great display. I will be working the booth on Saturday, so if any of you guys wants to say hi, please introduce yourself. Allen, when are you going? Hope to see you there. Amanda

Nice to hear it was so well attended and sounds like you guys did great work! Amanda

here is a link to a previous thread about zeiss conquests http://forums.coueswhitetail.com/forums/in...?showtopic=3542 Amanda

Awesome! and gorgeous looking country too. Amanda

Nice finds Dewey! Amanda

Anyone else interested in going? We need about 6 more to get another CouesWhitetail.com table.... Come on, it's fun and a good cause too! Amanda

Nice to have you back Lark Amanda

Congratulations Matt! Sure looks like a happy boy! Amanda

Arrowslinger, No, you won't have a problem with the Jim White tripod head slipping. It's a very strong tripod head. It's the strongest, lightest panning head I know of and it is great for glassing. Getting that head on a velbon sherpa tripod is a great glassing setup. You can also go with a smaller tripod if you want, but the velbon sherpa is excellent. It's sturdy, strong and you can get the model that is tall enough to glass standing up. http://www.coueswhitetail.com/bookstore/tripods_adaptor.htm Another tripod head option is one that I just purchased that is excellent for video taping and glassing. It's much heavier and bulkier than the JW head, but it's a true fluid head meaning it's amazingly smooth. It's one that was recommended to me by DeadEye Productions and it's very nice. I put that on my sherpa tripod and loved it. here is the name of the tripod head:Bogen / Manfrotto BO701RC2 701RC2 Video Fluid Head and I got it from bhphoto. But again, it's much bulkier and heavier than the JW head. If I wasn't doing videotaping, I wouldn't have messed with it. Amanda

Well, I know it's not coues related but I also know there are several people on the forum who value dogs as I do. So if you don't mind, I would like to tell you about my friend of the last 15+ years. We got her from the dog pound in Maine when I was attending graduate school there. If I remember correctly they said she had been seized from some drug dealers and that is how she ended up in the pound as just a puppy. We decided to take her home...one of the best decisions we have ever made.... Her name is Maura and we named her that because we found out Maura means "dark-faced one" here is my husband holding her: here she is on the beach where I did some shorebird surveys for a few years. Normally her ears would flop down a little, but occassionally we could get her to put them straight-up....like this photo... I did a bunch of bird surveys all over New England for my graduate work and she would get to ride in the canoe sometimes: We did all kinds of camping in Maine. I taught her to forage for wild blueberries with me and she would grab them right off the bushes. She loved them! She has camped with us all over the east coast and then when we moved out here for my job on the rez, we camped all over the San Carlos. I still remember one night when we were camped on the San Carlos rez listening to bugling elk. We had elk bugling and walking very close to the tent and Maura was so scared she was practically sitting on my head in the tent....hehehe... here is a photo of her on a hike on the rez....I think it was sycamore creek? She looks so strong in this photo! It was about 10 years ago I think.... She was such a beautiful and every so graceful, gentle dog. She didn't seem to enjoy normal dog things, but she seemed to consider herself more like a person in a dogs body. That's very different than my other dog, Molly, who is all about being a dog and doing dog things. Here is Maura sitting on a couch with my husband....of course she sits on the couch, only dogs sit on the floor! here is her "don't hate me because I am beautiful" look: She had incredible stamina. My husband used to take her and several other neighborhood dogs along with him as he rode his mountain bike. She had this perfect trot that she could do for miles and miles and miles and never get tired. The other dogs didn't have that same gait and they would tire out. She was definitely a marathoner type.... My husand also took her and Molly on long walks in the Pinal Mtns. Here she is with Molly in the fall foliage: And here is one of the last pictures of her enjoying a hike with the hog mtns in the background. Putting her down was an extremely hard decision to make but I think it was the right thing to do. She had been fighting cancer for years and finally it spread to her lungs and she couldn't breathe well and she pretty much stopped eating a week ago. It's so hard to say goodbye to such a faithful friend who we enjoyed so much. She had a good set of walks in the sun during her last week and an especially good one the day before she died. I loved her as a my friend and it hurts so much to let her go....

Those are all some great pics. Love that turkey and coues in the same photo. Amanda

Jim White has come out with a simple, high-quality optic that will triple the magnification on your binos. This unit simply clamps to the eyepeice of whatever binos you have. It's designed to be a universal tripler, meaning it will work on just about any binoculars out there. I tested it out on my 15x and 10x binos and it worked great. Transmits light a lot better than the swarovski doubler, in my opinion. You can read more about it in the CW.com store: http://www.coueswhitetail.com/bookstore/tripods_adaptor.htm Check it out! Amanda

Congrats to everyone! And thanks Doug for taking the lead on this! Amanda

Congrats Bret! Wish I had a pig tag! Amanda

I think the meat processor just gave you back mule deer meat.....

Congrats to both your kids! Nice to hear they did so well! Amanda

Great article Marshall. You have an amazing family.....thanks for sharing the story. Amanda

here is an article saying AZ is the fastest growing in the US.... PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 1, 2007: We're No. 1! Arizona is the fastest-growing state in the nation. That may not be such cause for celebration. By JIM NINTZEL (the first few lines are captions from photos that didn't copy and paste here) Kathryn Schuessler Arizona could add another 5.6 million people by 2030, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Kathryn Schuessler "We used to think of regional planning at the level of the metropolitan area," says Albert Elias, who heads up planning for the City of Tucson. "One of the things we're learning is that we've got to think about things like the Interstate at a different scale." Arlan Colton's office is something of a disaster area. Colton, who heads up Pima County's planning efforts, has thick stacks of reports, memos and maps on every surface in the room--the desk, the table, the bookshelves, the filing cabinets, even much of the floor. That's not to say Colton doesn't know where everything is--he takes just a couple of minutes to dig up a letter he wants to share--but it's clear that the keeping up with Pima County's development is no easy task. "Historically, every year, I'd go through all this stuff and sort it and clean up," he says. "But things are going so fast and furious that I don't have time to do that." Fast and furious may be an understatement. Pima County's population, set at 843,746 in the 2000 census, recently topped 1 million by official estimates. Population growth is hardly a trend isolated to Pima County. Between 2000 and 2005, the Census Bureau estimated that Arizona's population grew nearly 16 percent, from 5,130,632 to 5,939,292. More recently, the federal agency announced late last year that Arizona, with a growth rate of 3.6 percent, had overtaken Nevada as the nation's fastest-growing state between July 1, 2005 and July 1, 2006, adding more than 213,000 people during that period. The projected population is even more staggering. In 2005, the Census Bureau estimated that by 2030, Arizona would add another 5.6 million, which would nearly double the state's population. Those estimates have both local and state officials talking about growth. Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup announced just last week that developer Westcor is working with the State Land Department to plan 8,000 acres of state trust land on the southeast side, including a new shopping center. GOP lawmakers are talking about accelerating highway construction. And Gov. Janet Napolitano has declared growth management to be at the top of her agenda as she starts her second term. Carolyn Campbell, executive director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, welcomes the conversation, although she says it's long overdue. "There's a recognition that there are huge costs to this kind of growth that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, people weren't realizing," Campbell says. One glance at the hundreds of reports related to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan will tell you that over the last eight years, Pima County officials have undertaken one of the nation's most complex planning efforts. The end result: The county now has an overall blueprint that lays out how sensitive lands should be preserved while development is pushed to more appropriate land--even if there are still disputes, such as the recent complaints from environmentalists such as Campbell that the county isn't doing enough to protect land on the northwest side. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan puts Pima County about a decade ahead of the rest of the state. But even though the county has a plan to manage growth, it still has a lot to of work ahead in figuring out how to pay for it. Huckelberry says there are three basic stages to effective planning. The first, identifying where to build and where to preserve, has already been accomplished through the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. The second stage is figuring out what kind of development you want in the areas where you want to build. Huckelberry says the key to better development involves higher density. He points out that Tucson's density peaked in the 1950s and has been declining ever since. "Everybody wants to live on an acre lot with a large house," Huckelberry says. That drives up the cost of delivering services and providing roads and other infrastructure while chewing up the desert. Huckelberry says current zoning regulations encourage that kind of sprawl. He suggests a change to zoning regs to encourage more mixed-use development that blends retail with residential. "Actually getting some real-world mixed use on the ground is our next challenge," he says. "That's where you begin to take some of the pressure off our No. 1 stressed infrastructure, called transportation." The final stage of planning: figuring out how to pay for all the additional demands created by growth--streets, sewer systems, parks, libraries, schools, police, courts and other government services. The county has been making some steps in that direction; transportation impact fees, enacted in 1996, have raised nearly $75 million, according to a recent report. But with property taxes always on the rise, it's obvious that current residents are footing a growth bill. And some of those costs still aren't clear. In many cases, Huckelberry is still playing catch-up. For example, he's asked Colton's planning department to determine the infrastructure needs in the southwest corridor along Valencia Road and Ajo Way, where growth has exploded in recent years as a result of development restrictions on the northwest side. Some needs are obvious: wider streets and flood-control work to prevent the roads from sinking underwater during heavy rains. "Growth isn't going to go away," Huckelberry says. "We can't stick our heads in the sand of the Rillito River and assume that it's not happening. It is. Good, solid land-use planning includes a recognition that growth is occurring, knowing what to conserve and knowing what to develop, and then figuring out how to pay for it so everyone isn't overburdened by the congestion that comes from growth--which can be as simple as sitting on the Interstate and not being able to travel, or not getting a library book because they're all checked out." Albert Elias, who heads up planning for the city of Tucson, agrees with Huckelberry about the need for more mixed-use development. He says the city is now working on new zoning categories that will allow residential and retail development both within the existing city and in future growth areas. Elias says one major challenge for Tucson is balancing the needs of the existing city with the demands of development on the southeast side, where the city has annexed vast acres of mostly vacant land. Much of that property has been identified as the Southlands planning area, which covers 1,083 square miles, including a vacant 868 square miles. Roughly half of the vacant land is state trust land that must ultimately be auctioned for development, with the money going to support education. The Southlands area, which had about 14,200 residents in 1980, is now home to about 55,000 people. While that's a significant jump, there's lots more to come: The Pima Association of Governments estimates that by 2015, more than 118,000 people will live there; by 2030, it could be home to more than a quarter-million--while the city of Tucson itself will have an estimated 910,000 residents and Pima County will be home to more than 1.5 million. The city's Planning Department is trying to guide that development. It's already assembled the Houghton Area Master Plan (HAMP), which is a 4-mile-wide corridor along Houghton Road that covers 16.9 square miles, stretching from Irvington Road on the north to the city limits on the south. About three-fourths of the land belongs to the State Land Department, which is the city's planning partner. Elias says the HAMP is a first step toward planning the entire area, but the city wants to see how well it works before embarking on more planning efforts. The HAMP calls for development based on a "desert village" model, which the plan defines as "a mix of uses within a compact development pattern, which integrates places for people to live, work, shop, play within a cohesive system of Neighborhoods and Village and Town Centers." Elias says planning at a larger scale makes that kind of mixed-use development possible, as well as allowing for desert conservation in the form of parks. Planners can also lay out road and trail systems that accommodate cars, bikes, pedestrians and mass transit. "We want to get away from the just-one-subdivision-at-a-time sort of thing and do a better mixing of land uses and more variety of housing types," Elias says. "And you can best do that at a larger scale." With very little infrastructure in place, however, the cost of building that new Tucson without repeating the mistakes of the past--subdivisions linked by two-lane roads on the northwest side, for example--will be enormous. While the city has impact fees for transportation and parks now in place, it remains to be seen how much money they will provide for an area on the scale of the Southlands. One thing they definitely will not pay for is a wider Interstate 10--which will also be burdened by development further south, in southeastern Pima and Cochise counties. Elias says the city can do some things, such as setting aside right-of-way for the eventual widening of I-10. But he adds that the state needs to step up its planning efforts in concert with the local governments. "Before we used to think of regional planning at the level of our metropolitan area," Elias says. "One of things we're learning is that we've got to think about things like the Interstate on a different scale." When it comes to the really large scale, you turn to people like Virginia Tech professor Robert Lang, who predicts that Arizona will be home to more than 10 million people in "megapolitan area" he calls the Valley of the Sun. Lang foresees the U.S. as having 10 of these megapolitan areas, which he defines as areas that combine at least two major metropolitan areas in a roughly similar physical environment that will have at least 10 million residents by 2040. The Valley of the Sun will be one long corridor stretching from Sierra Vista and Nogales all the way north of Phoenix. Lang's vision for Arizona fits pretty well with most of the growth predictions. Already, developers are eyeing opportunities in neighboring counties--particularly Pinal County to the north and Cochise County to the south. Unfortunately, Pima County residents can't do much to control what happens in either direction, even though the growth will impact our lives. Pinal County, between Pima and Maricopa, will experience rapid growth as both the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas expand. Some planners expect that it will have a larger population than Pima County by 2030, although Huckelberry remains skeptical of the prediction. In any event, the drive to Phoenix is bound to get more congested. The Arizona Legislature set aside $300 million last year to accelerate highway construction. Of that, $109 million has been targeted to widen Interstate 10 to three lanes in each direction all the way to Picacho Peak. In her State of the State speech last month, Napolitano announced she had directed the Arizona Department of Transportation to do a survey of transportation options that included wider highways and even a long-discussed rail service between Tucson and Phoenix. Campbell likes the idea of more mass transit between the metro areas, although she says it could have a significant downside. "I'm not absolutely sure that's not going to get a lot more people who live in Phoenix to move to Tucson," Campbell laughs. "But at least then we'd have the rail option, which people have been talking about for a long time. And if that happened, we'd have to have some kind of transit within the communities that we're connecting, so we don't have to have massive parking lots at each end of the rail system." So far, there's no funding set aside for widening I-10 east of Tucson, even though there's tremendous growth planned for Cochise County. Huckelberry warns that without more lanes, Interstate 10 will come to resemble a "parking lot." "It's a big problem," Huckelberry says. "Someday, we're going to wake up and wonder why it takes us two hours to get to Benson." Still, Huckelberry has confidence in the planning staffs in the neighboring counties. "The smaller counties have got good planning staffs," Huckelberry says. "The boards recognize the challenge that growth presents, so I think there is some real opportunity for a lot of cooperative planning among the counties. It's the first time I've seen a lot of real dialogue that's direct and open." But Campbell worries that even with planning efforts, development won't pay for itself. "When we talk about the financial costs of growth--regardless of the air quality, the water quality, the congestion of the streets and all that--we always seem to be a few steps behind in having money to address the problems," she says. "We're always dealing with it after the fact." Even more important: She wonders where new residents will get their drinking water. "There are a lot of issues about the limited supply of water and both environmental and human needs that haven't been addressed," Campbell says. Besides the concern about water, she warns that rapid growth has plenty of downsides: traffic congestion, pollution, bulldozed desert, higher taxes. "Growth is not all it's cracked up to be," says Campbell. "People are beginning to realize that. Even just a few years ago, political leaders were afraid to talk about controlled growth. At least they're talking about that now."

I say loss of habitat....I hear all the time from older hunters that they used to be able to hunt here and there but no more...and I see the land being gobbled up for houses all the time....I worry about pressure that will come to the govt to sell public lands for development when private land is used up. Amanda

Thanks so much for the sympathy guys...I really appreciate your kind comments. I can't seem to talk about her with people without breaking down into tears so I find this is a good outlet for me since it's just typing... If anyone wants to post some photos of their dogfriend that they lost, feel free. I think it would be nice to see them. Dan, that is a great photo of your old dog. And here a a few more pics of Maura I found when I looked through old photos of her.... It's hard to believe that she stopped eating since eating/begging was almost an obsession with her. She never really gained any weight (unlike my other dog). She wouldn't eat a ton, but she loved to eat whatever I was having. And she even helped me dig up potatoes and carrots in the garden with me back in Maine. She would actually eat the carrots with me. Her real favorite food was venison though and also tuna. She would beg politely from me pretty often. Of course if I didn't give in to her she would have stopped that behavior, but I am not so strong and I gave her little treats often. She didn't beg from my husband who is much tougher. here she is begging from me at one of my first deer hunting camps.... here she is on one of the many trips she took with us whever we went....even Mt Rushmore.... here she is in one of her "dog" moments after romping and playing and swimming with Molly.... And she always liked to sleep with me, but as she got older her legs were too weak to jump up on the bed. But here she is in one of her younger years napping with me. She was so loved and I am glad we had so many years with her. The vet kept telling us for years that she was likely to die soon, but she always fought hard and gave us several extra years.... Please feel free to post any photos of your dogs that you want and tell us what made them special... Amanda

Happy B-day Mike! Amanda

I was impressed with the clarity of the optics, but if you are thinking of using two at a time to make say a 30x bino out of 10s for glassing, I don't know that I would do it. The eyepeice is a little small I think for glassing for long periods of time. Of course you lose some light transmission with that higher magnification and you get better light through something that is larger like a full size spotting scope or a real 30x binocular. Amanda

Jim told me that he asked the manufacturer that question and the manufacturer says they should hold up fine to rain, but maybe not to being submerged in water for a long period of time. Jim suggested that if you keep the tripler in its case unless you are using it, that it should be fine. You can also put that case into a ziplock bag for even more protection. I think it's fair to say the unit is strongly water resistant since all the threads and everything are sealed, but I wouldn't keep it submerged in water. Amanda

Well, as with everything I sell, you can try it out and if you don't like it, you can return it for a refund (excluding shipping cost and assuming the item is still in new condition). If you live in Williams area you can see one at Jim's house. I don't know if Outdoorsmans is carrying them yet or not, but you might be able to see one there. I think it's a really neat unit. To me, it doesn't replace a good spotting scope, but for certain situations, like perhaps a backpack hunt it's a really nice alternative. Or some people that don't even carrying a spotting scope might really enjoy having this to increase their ability to get detail on a buck. It gives you some extra power but barely any extra weight. Amanda

here is a hotlink to their website: http://www.selfguidedhunting.org/ They are a nonprofit and I have them listed in the links page on CouesWhitetail.com. This is a really neat idea and a fairly new organization, you guys should check it out. One of the founders frequents this forum, and goes by the forum name, sgha. Perhaps he will come and answer questions people might have about the organization. Amanda