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Yuma Outdoorsman

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Posts posted by Yuma Outdoorsman

  1. Posted · Report reply

    4 minutes ago, zslayer said:

    You have never heard of people that have a OTC archery tag along with a draw tag then fill their archery tag and get it home without getting checked then just keep it quiet and go kill a deer with their draw tag later in the year?  Giving themselves 2 deer in the same calendar year?  If you E-Tag it’s automatically reported therefore a lot harder to get away with.  Not sure what else to say!

    I think he means they can still shoot an OTC buck and just not E-Tag it and then shoot a rifle buck. It’s the same situation. 

  2. Posted · Report reply

    5 minutes ago, zslayer said:

    Geez!  Not for me whatsoever but some of those guys that are good can make a ton of money off a good wildlife photo.  Must have had some interest for them to come up with this?

    El Chaparral has people paying them and they get advertising out of it. I mean any photographer is likely to post some of their photos to their social media or website and would probably tag El Chaparral in their caption and now El Chaparral gets advertising from somebody who paid $4500 to take photos on their ranch. Makes all the sense in the world. It’s smart if they get people to go. 

  3. Posted · Report reply

    First off, I just want to say I enjoy looking at all the giants people kill with this outfit. They do a great job. I just saw they are doing a new thing where you get to go photograph deer on the ranch before any hunting season opens up. The cost is $4500 per photographer. Is this something people do all the time? This is the first I’ve heard of it. 

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    • Like 1
    • Wow! 1

  6. Posted · Report reply

    23 minutes ago, creed said:

    It looks like opportunity is going to be less under the quota system. Can’t wait to see what the late desert hunts are going to look like. 

    There is one desert unit I know of close to me that does not have any farmland in it's borders and if I do archery hunt, that is where I will be going. It might get some pressure but the hunting is a lot tougher than the rest of the units with farmland. 

     

     

     

     

  7. Posted · Report reply

    6 minutes ago, trphyhntr said:

    Did you just congratulate on poaching a deer? 

    I’m not gonna jump all over him. He didn’t do it maliciously. I respect him turning himself in and I also respect the skill it takes to shoot a desert buck with a bow. If you wanna go after him and rip him a new one then go ahead.  

    • Like 4

  8. Posted · Report reply

    4 hours ago, bonecollector said:

    Let the big guys live and spread their genetics later in the year. 

    You make it seem like the road hunters would be able to shoot something big. There is a reason there are so many spikes shots. This buck laid here at 30 yards back in July. You won’t see a mature buck along a road where anybody can shoot them. Takes some effort. 

     

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  9. Posted · Report reply

    20 minutes ago, gunthenbow said:

    DID I JUST POACH A BUCK THANKS TO GOHUNT??

     

    Well I never thought I’d have to do this but I just got back from manually reporting myself at the AZGFD office. To rewind a little, you all know AZ has started a new system this year with manually reporting when you kill for OTC deer. Well, Friday night, I hopped on Google to check that my unit was open. When I typed it, an article from GOHUNT was one of the top results. It was titled, ‘Changes to Arizona’s OTC deer hunts’. I naturally clicked it since I am a GOHUNT insider and am on their website like every other day e-scouting/looking through their gear shop, etc. Within the article, it had all of the units with which season dates that were open for each particular unit. (See original article PDF below for article) under Unit 42, it showed August 19- Sept. 8th 2022, Dec 9th-31st, 2022 and Jan 1-31st 2023 all open. I promptly got off my phone and started getting my things together because I was going hunting! Fast forward to the next day, my wife spots a cool buck, we bed it and it happens to bed in the perfect location for a stalk. Between perfect wind and lots of luck, I made a solid shot on my first ever mule deer buck and my first ever bow kill AND it was even in velvet! I was on cloud nine, telling all my friends and even got some of them to help me pack it out. Fast forward to the next day, Sunday. It was time to process all the meat so my wife and I spent around 5 hours trimming vac sealing and labeling all the cuts to put into the freezer still high on life wondering how I was so lucky to make a bow kill on a mule deer in the desert in August. Fast forward to the next day. Monday- mandatory reporting day. I hopped on google again to find where I needed to report my harvest and that’s when I found out that the season wasn’t actually open for this time of year in (we will just say, one of the 40’s) and a lot of other units GOHUNT claimed were open. (One of the 40’s) was one of many other units that were incorrect on which seasons are actually open right now and the rest of the year. I guess I’m writing this article to hopefully help anyone else who might make the same mistake I did. Anyways, I loaded up the cooler with the meat neatly wrapped and labeled in vac sealed bags and the head and went on down to the local AZGFD office to report myself because I felt like it was the right thing to do. I also called GOHUNT on the way and they didn’t answer of course. I told the G&F officer what happened and he didn’t seem too upset about it. He said something to the effect of “these kind of things happen and you did the right thing by reporting yourself. However, we will be seizing the head and all the meat but you’ll only receive a written warning.” I know it was lucky to get off with just a written warning but the whole thing turned a magical experience of my first ever bow kill to nothing but feeling sick to my stomach. I NEVER would’ve hunted that unit if I hadn’t thought it was open. GOHUNT let me down and they didn’t do anything to help me out with it.  In the same article, it states, “(details will be published in the 2022-2023 Arizona Hunting Regulations booklet and updated here when available).” I assumed GOHUNT was “up-to-date” like they said they would be. I was wrong and learned my lesson not to trust GOHUNT even though I pay them for that kind of trust.
     

    Listen, I know it was wrong of me to rely solely on GOHUNT. However, I was under the impression that I paid these people to give the correct information regarding seasons and stats. I did get a call back from them on my way home AZGFD and I told them the situation and they said those were just “pending dates”. However, nowhere in that article did it say pending and it also said they would be updated when there when available. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being a big baby but I feel like I got screwed over and there’s nothing I can do about it. AGAIN, I DO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY IN USING GOHUNT AND NOT AZGFD DIRECTLY AND WILL NEVER MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN. I am writing this to hear what others think and most importantly, to warn anyone else of this issue before they make the same mistake I did.

    And as for the nicely packaged meat we worked so diligently on- it’s going to the AZGFD animals rescue shelter to feed to the coyotes and other predators after it’s tested. The antlers will be auctioned off in AZGFD yearly auction. The gentlemen who took the meat from me even gave me his business card to send him an email to buy the antlers back from them when the auction happens.

    GOHUNT WRONG SEASON DATES.pdf

    Glad you only got a warning and sad you lose your buck. Sounds like you know going off of GOHUNT is not the wise choice and you learned your lesson the hard way. Congrats on successfully stalking a desert mule deer and making a kill shot with a bow. That is a very challenging task. I wish you success in the near future. 
     

    out of curiosity, did they count that towards your legal buck for the season or are you able to go shoot another? 

    • Like 1

  12. Posted · Report reply

    57 minutes ago, creed said:

    I pretty much got ignored over a javelina problem. They did $25000 in crop damage to an emerging cotton field. G&F could have cared less. I finally raised enough heck they sent a guy out to set up a pen trap.  What a freakin joke!

    That is crazy. That is a joke for sure. 

  13. Posted · Report reply

    36 minutes ago, Sky Island junkie said:

    That sounds like AZG$F. Sometimes they’ve been late to the party with the depredation. More than once a group of farmers or ranchers have petitioned them to conduct a depredation and they drag their feet. By the time they create tags and sell them to the recipients the problem has been taken care of. Nothing for them to shoot. Rumor has it!!

    Oh no, this wasn't one of those cases. This was put together rather quickly and some locals benefited and shot some giant farm deer. There was actually another depredation hunt going on in Gila Valley just a couple years ago but it was anterless and the interest was extremely minimal because of that. 

  14. Posted · Report reply

    1 minute ago, trphyhntr said:

    Wish I would have been there for that smack down. 

    It caused Some drama in Yuma because a lot of locals didn’t know about the hunt but all the farmers were given a heads up so they told their friends and family and bunch of them got drawn and shot some big velvet bucks. That was the other issue, they did the depredations ahead of the general rifle hunt and pissed a ton of people off. 

  15. Posted · Report reply

    1 hour ago, trphyhntr said:

    They had a depredation hunt in the Mohawk valley a few years because there was too many buck eating in the fields. They whacked like 30+ bucks on a depredation hunt. The biggest deer ever killed in the desert was killed a few years ago 

     

    but yes desert mule deer major decline, drought 

     That depredation hunt was due to does in the fields and they should’ve made that an antler less hunt but all the hunters did was shoot bucks. Can’t blame them. It was a glorified trophy hunt. That hunt covered miles upon miles of alfalfa from Hwy 95 to Texas Hill. Also, it had nothing to do with alfalfa fields, it was to keep them away from produce fields due to food safety concerns. Now, the majority of the fields up until about  40E have large fencing blocking animals from getting to the fields. Not all crossings but a lot of them are blocked. 


     

  16. Posted · Report reply

    6 hours ago, trphyhntr said:

    I’m not sure how to address this quote

     

    i mean there’s been plenty of book stuff killed the last 20 years 

     

    and unit 1 is way better than it used to be. 3c as well more deer, 3b more deer. Never been but sounds like 7, 9, 10 are doing really well on deer. Desert units producing giant bucks. A 290 was killed in the desert a few years ago.  There’s been giant bulls killed. 300” strip deer. Some of the biggest coues ever have been killed recently Maybe you’re not looking in the right spots. 

    matter of fact, what unit is worse off now than it was in the late 80s? I can’t think of any. 
     

    edit: aravaipa ram peaked about 1990. 

    I can’t speak for the rest of the state, but numbers wise, the desert I hunt doesn’t have any where close to the number of deer it had even in the 90’s. As a kid, I could remember seeing giant herds of does and young bucks. I’m talking multiple herds of 20-30+ deer and now days if you see a herd of 5-7 deer that’s a big herd and rarely do you see more than one or two herds during a hunt. The difference between now and then is everything is on the internet now so things appear better but that’s not the case across the board, in my opinion. 

    • Like 3

  18. Posted · Report reply

    On 8/15/2022 at 5:07 AM, creed said:

    Harquahala shut down 2 weeks ago. Without ag it won’t take long to change deer patterns in a big chunk of 41

    All those farm hunting road hunters aren't going to know what to do when they have to go find deer in the desert. It's a little different hunting when they aren't coming/leaving on the same trails every morning and evenings. 

    • Like 3

  24. Posted · Report reply

    25 minutes ago, creed said:

    They will shut water off to the farmers if something doesn't change. A corn crop in AZ takes somewhere between 5 and 6 acre feet of water per acre.Takes a bunch of water. Alfalfa and cotton have similar water needs if they use conventional irrigation systems

    I work in the ag industry. The water is getting tight and they are already feeling the wrath. The acreage that people are willing to farm are being cut due to water and farming expenses.  One other interesting thing I heard was that some "business folks" have approached growers about being paid to leave their ground fallow. They were being offered some pretty substantial amounts of money to not grow anything. Tempting for a farmer who would be paid what his normal contract would be from a shipper to grow for them, Only this would be 100% profit and no grower costs (labor, gas, seed, fertilizer, spray, etc.)....This is the first I've ever heard of it in my area but I heard it's been attempted in the past in other places, mainly California. With all the fires across the country at food processing plants, there are some concerning issues between both food and water going on. 

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