catclaw

Nice!

I guess if you can get them to ship it to you in flat rate postal boxes it wouldn't be too bad. I had a guy ship me some cast iron slugs that weighed 60# and it cost $12 from Chicago. I am just thinking that they can stick this on their normal order and it won't be as pricey as you think. He didn't get back to me with a price today. I will be setting cameras this weekend. Dennis

I have been using the Claw this summer for a variety of shooting endeavors. I first used it for Prairie dogs and while not a bench rest, it made up for some of the deficiency in the ability to pan at will. We made shots out to 300 yds while standing or sitting on a lawn chair. I made shots to 450 by going lower to get out of the wind. I was dialing about 5 moa of wind into my 450 yd shots so they were hard enough anyway. I used it last week for the scouts. They were shooting a gong at 250 yds and most of them had never shot a rifle before. One had never shot anything but a BB gun before he shot his gong! Really is nice for smaller shooter that haven't developed that seek and destroy mentality yet! I took it out this morning with Schmitty and we shot a gong at 500 yds. I hit the gong with my new load and then we painted it up and I tried the same load but with a different primer. Using my 260 Rem mountain rifle and a 2.5-8x scope with a B&C reticle, I shot a <3" group. I had to use my 450 yd hash as the rifle was dialed in for 130 grain Accubonds. This bullet was lighter and must shoot a little flatter at 500. Schmitty shot his 6.5-06 imp with 130 Bergers. It made a deeper divot in the steel for sure! You can see his deeper holes right below and to the right of my lower right shot. Dennis

Glad you had a good time. It was crowded up there and a lot of folks stayed the whole week. We camped just past Mexican Hay lake and had it mostly to ourselves.

Wouldn't we all! That is an unrealistic expectation for any rifle, especially an over-bore factory rifle! In fact, 1" groups out of a factory rifle are BETTER than what Remington will guarantee. You might be able to get them to shoot a little better than that but then again, maybe not. If you are looking for a truly long range load, try your best load at 200, 300 and 500 yds and see what you get. My 260 Remington will barely break an inch @ 100 but when I shot it at 500 last this week, it shot under 3" which is close to 1/2 MOA. If you want to shoot one-hole groups, start with flat base light bullets. I would suggest a 140 grain or lighter. Not what you want for long range, but what it takes to get really small groups at 100 yds. If you want to go really fast, don't complain when your Corvette gets hung up on a rocky dirt road, If you want to go all over rough country, don't complain when your 4x4 can't do 120! Over bore rifles are VERY hard to get to shoot good. Sorry.

Usually if you don't pay for a ticket, they will put out a bench warrant for arrest. You can call the courthouse and find out, or wait until he ever gets pulled over by the cops, when they ask you to step out of the car and place your hands on it You can only get a bench warrant for a CRIMINAL charge. These photo-radar tickets are civil traffic violations; they carry only monetary penalties and the risk of your driving privileges being suspended. IF you don't acknowledge the letter and don't get served in person, there is nothing they can do. I don't know what the current law is on the amount of time the State has to serve you for a civil traffic violation but it is 6 months if you are involved in an accident and I THINK it is 90 days if not. Under Arizona law, ANY adult can be served at your last known address. If someone else is driving your vehicle and they send you the notice, you can fill out the back and tell them it wasn't you and include a photo of your driver's license- do NOT identify the driver, even though they want you too. If you get your license suspended, MVD will mail you a notice of suspension. Make sure the address that MVD has on file for you is a valid mailing address. You can use a PO box but most of the process servers will use Nexus-Lexus or similar data base to find a REAL address for you where they can serve you. If you are really worried about it, wear a mask when you drive like I do. No face, No ID.

Tim, mine is just 1018 CR steel. It won't stand up to a 300 at close range but will last quite a while at 500. Bill at Prescott Welding is supposed to call me back tomorrow with a price on AR plate- it is far better for standing up to bullets but is almost impossible to weld. I just welded rebar to the side of mine and I can hang it on a barb wire fence about anywhere I go. The smaller one I have is 9 1/4" round. A 223 at 130 yds is a lot harder on it than a 6.5-06@ 500! I spent all day fabricating stuff today. Bill has a new 50 ton break and can handle up to 1/4" steel. I made a bear box for one of my trail cams and fixed my gong set up. Going out tomorrow for the weekend. Dennis

Well- you never gave us a follow-up. Where did you camp? Fish? Dennis

I did one there 10 years ago and had 40 boys. I rode a horse for the first 25 of that one for logistic reasons. After the first 25. most of them wanted to call it good. Only 5 of them wanted to finish up. I took those 5 and hiked into the Blue from the highway! All I can say is DON'T do a 25 mile hike in cowboy boots! I should have taken the horse again! I won't be forgetting either of them myself!

I have been using 3 different ones. In the photo it is a bogen aluminum tripod (I can't remember the number) and the head is the take-off from my Velbon El Carmange. I have used my Bogen ball head and the Bogen 701HDV. The only way to go is with the 701; it has a much better plate system and in my mind, makes the whole system. I think the little flimsy tripods like the Bogen 190 are too light duty for a rifle rest. With a good tripod, the 701 head and setting it up low- prone height- I can feel as steady as a prone Harris bi-pod but can pan so much easier. It is amazing how much of the recoil it takes out too!

It is going to depend on what powder you can get. Most in the good burning ranges for 30-06 are in short supply. I have had great luck using Ramshot Hunter and Ramshot Big game in 30-06. Two other great powders are H414 and H4350. You will be able to find 414 but I doubt you will find 4350. If you already have those, all the better. The 150 Accubond is a good bullet as is the 150 Partition if you want to stay in those ranges. If you like the 165s and I do, I can recommend the 165 Hornady flat base spitzer as a do-it-all bullet. I have killed elk, deer and coyotes with this bullet and got great accuracy. The Accubond has an edge in shots longer than 400 yds but closer in than that, it's just sexy looking and costs a lot more. If you can decide on a powder, I can give you some combinations that have worked well for me.

I got back from a week with the scouts and told my son to go pull the card on the camera. He came running in and said it was full. We had only been gone a week. I told him there was no way it could be full. He handed me the card and it was a 32 meg card How did that get in there?? I told him to look at the photos and then throw it away!!! I got one lousy coyote and the rest were birds. Sure easy to fill up one of those old, tiny cards! Anyone ever done that?

This is the first cat that I have captured a photo of in my back yard. Mostly I get coyotes and pigs. Maybe there is a new king on the block!

Yep- found a couple of chalks. Also found a really nice horn from a cow. We were too tired to carry any of them out. Didn't get off the trails much in most areas due to time constraints. A couple of the boys took all the photos and made DVD slide show and a few movie clips yesterday. They brought my copy over and we watched it last night. It was awesome. I think there are going to be some shocked parents when they see it.

We started Monday about noon and finished Friday about 11 am. We stayed Friday night so we could do the fun stuff that afternoon and Saturday morning. When we started shooting the gong, an antelope ran out of the draw behind the target berm- I am sure we ruined his nap! We had two really tough days due to dismal trail conditions and the rest was not too difficult. I took saws and we cleared trails where feasible. We obviously couldn't tackle the big ones but anything under about 9" was fair game to the saws. This is a really good experience for boys- especially city boys. They learned you can start a fire using just natural stuff- in about two minutes, you can find water along the way and make it safe to drink, that bears are usually more scared of us that we should be of them and that you can actually survive without your cell phones, Ipods and gameboys! Here is a typical trail

I visited a friend on Friday and he showed me a mare of his that was attacked by a lion the week before. She was clawed up pretty good but nothing that required any sewing. Not sure if she kicked the lion off or someone spooked it. While looking at what she had gotten into, this guy found a dead wolf on his place! The injuries on the horse were NOT from a wolf. Horse probably will have bad dreams or nightmares for a while (pun intended)

Sorry, I have been camping all week with my scouts- This occurred in Eagar, right alone 260 near the rodeo grounds.

A couple of more photos

Has anyone seen the fee increases that are supposed to be levied on us next year? $3200 for an elk tag (non-resident), $150 for a deer tag, $30 for a javelina tag. On top of that, increases for all professional licenses- a guide's license is $500. I didn't think that the cap voted on by the legislature was anywhere near this high! I don't have the paper in front of me so I don't know all the fees, but they all went up A BUNCH. Elk res- $350 Antelope- $90 Bear- $30 Pig- $30 Turkey- $25 Lion- $19 Sheep- $335/ $3000 App fee- $10 A new structure for deer and elk with "A" tags and "B" tags- whatever these are. This is the list sent out on G&F letterhead. Sounds like the legislature approved it. I don't have the letter in front of me so I can read it verbatim. Let's see what shakes out this coming week.

I have had 15 bull tags since 1983. I didn't use my tag in 2007 and 2008. I passed bulls in 07 and a LOT of bulls in 08. It's all about the hunt. I don't really have a place to put anymore horns so my goal last year was a very SMALL 5x5 that wasn't broken or a 380 class bull. I saw NO 5x5s that weren't broken or big and I missed my one shot at a 380 bull. Not a single complaint from me. I even took a couple of days off from my unit 10 hunt and helped a guy kill a bull in 9. Elk are a lot of work when they hit the ground, I am not so inclined to kill one just to kill one any more. I have killed all my bulls during Nov rifle hunts. If you draw the right unit, they can be fantastic hunts. In 1994 I guided two guys from Mesa. We glassed up 55 bulls opening day that were 5x5s or better. Both killed 6x6s the first day and were tickled to death. Horses and mules got a good work-out. It is really fun seeing all those bulls together. Not the same as calling them in, but very gratifying to me to find a big ole bull in his brushy lair and snake him out. A November rifle hunt would be a lot tougher to pass anything up! Have fun

I agree with you on the NR- status. As it stands now, the NR have a very minimal impact on the residents draw success. The dollars are welcome. The animals are mostly on Federal public lands. There has to be some give and take. Many of us hunt in other states too- it would be very short-sighted to look at this any other way.

There are quite a few, some are more user friendly than others. I used Art Pejsa software for quite a while and I now use Exbal. Using something like Exbal or Patagonia is more accurate for the real long shots that any table you can print. With these mentioned, you can take your Palm Pilot with you. Once your quarry is spotted, you can range it, and then input the distance, azimuth, cosine angle, altitude, barometric pressure, temperature and wind speed/direction. You should have it previously set up for your bullet and velocity but can you modified in the field. It makes first shot hits possible out to 1200 yds! Fun stuff.

I just spoke to a buddy last night and he picked up the Kowas with the ED glass. He is waiting for his 50X eyepieces to come in. He said he could see some astronaut taking a leak on the moon! I told him that they should be illegal! Man, I would like a set of those.

The letters are Dated May 5, 2009. The legislature sets the caps for the fees. The commission approves the fee increases within the cap set by law. The current guide's license fee is $300. The letter doesn't answer any questions- basically it just says that they passed a new law that lets them revoke the guides that file their reports late- which many, many guides do as the dates required aren't realistic. They just have to re-take the stupid test each year. Now they will probably hold their feet to the fire with this new law. The rest is just a generic update of all the changes with no explanations accompanying. I don't know what the A and B tier are other than the A tags cannot exceed 5% of the B tags?? Non-resident elk for a B tag goes up to $775. Buffalo was NOT addressed at all so I assume it remains unchanged.

I have seen a live on at the last house (a mile away) twice, but this is the first I have of this one. I have found his scat in my raspberry bushes but until now, has been elusive!