Red Sparky

That is why when my girls and I go hunting we take time out in the middle of the day and pick up trash in the forest. We filled 3 trash bags las time we went. This sounds like a great program and wish idiots would not leave their trash anywhere they want.

Look for trails you might ambush them on. Here in the Gila I found a trail that went between two pine trees about three feet apart in the bottom of the canyon. Each tree had been rubbed smooth by a bear walking up and down this trail. Lots of bear tracks on trail and hair on stumps and bark. I can also tell you Yes bears do ____ in the woods. This trail went from up high in the scrub oak (food source) to water in the stream. This was during the muzzle loader deer hunts when they still had them in September. This last September during the archery elk hunt I had a bear come to water and blow out the cow elk before I got a shot. So look for ambush places as I could have easily killed the bear at the tank with my bow if I had a tag. I also could have easily set up a blind in that canyon within bow range of those two trees. I am more the spot and stalk kind but sitting can pay off if you can find a good place.

Great write up. My definition of a mentor is some one who helps teach another what they know. You seem to fit the bill, you taught what you knew and learned as you went as well. My feeling is once you quit learning, you are dead. It is a great feeling and made me remember one time I was out hunting and came across a 12 year old with a deer down looking perplexed. He told me he had to go get his Dad as he had never field dressed a deer, this was the first he had ever taken. His Dad and him had never taken a deer while they were hunting together. So I asked "Want some help? I know how to do it." I made him do the field dressing for the most part. We drug the deer out to the road as his Dad was driving by to their pick up spot. The beam on the kids face was more than worth my time as he told his Dad he did the field dressing with a little help. The next year in the same unit, within 1/4 mile of the previous year, I had a deer down. Someone was walking up and I knew it was not someone from my hunting party. Here is the same kid a year older and says " Want some help? I know how to do it." We had a good laugh but I sent him on his way to keep hunting.

See that is where you need to know the laws of your state. Here any animal killing "livestock" is fair game and can be killed by the livestock owner or manager of the land if caught in the act. As an ACO I was authorized to kill any animal attacking livestock or aggressive that we could not catch in my jurisdiction. Poisoning, bear spray, paint balls, whacking with a bat, etc. could bring animal cruelty charges against you. The electric fence will not bring charges against you as they are not "deadly" and only bring temporary discomfort to the dog, nobody can say you are antagonizing the dog. Think of having the police show up at your door with a complaint against you for hurting the neighbors"poor little fluffy". Also if you have any other renters move in you have solved any future conflicts.

Put up an electric fence on top of the wall. I have one that is good for 2 miles around my 3/4 acre, keeps my dogs in and others out. Also make a report to animal control. Document the problem as much as you can. I was an animal control officer here for 4 years and the more documentation you have the better. Before I had my electric fence up on my block wall my neighbors pit bull got in my yard. This depends on the laws of your state and I am not advocating this but I legally shot and killed it. It was on my property attacking my dog and I had documented the problem. Animal control came out and took a report and the body. It sucks an animal has to suffer due to the owners.

Cool video. I really enjoyed watching it.

You all are lucky you can still drop off paper apps. I haven't checked into it here but I think all of our draws are online and pay to play right away. I know when all my draw choices were put in here in NM, money came out of my account that day. I did put in 6 weeks before our deadline so should not have any problems with servers crashing. The problem I have is now my state government has my money for about three months before I find out if my daughters and I get drawn for anything.

I am laughing as this to me is funny. My NM draws are already in place 6 weeks before the deadline here. Just think it could be worse. What if they delayed the draw results by 24 hours, 48 hours or a week? What if the crash took out every bodies application? I expect I could see the mushroom cloud to the southwest from my house. I expect that they have the draw results long before they announce them in case there is a glitch. You all have proved that here in NM that is the case. You may not know what units you drew but know a week in advance if you drew.

Here is hopefully my 11 year old daughters second shooting session with her bow she got for Christmas. Distance was 10 yards. Five arrows, hard to see one.

Sounds like one heck of an adventure. The pictures are great and I really appreciated the story. Made me think of the one Miley Cirus song I like .."The Climb".

Well I din't get any photos except some video of coyotes that didn't know I was around. Almost had one come into the blind so I stood up and coughed and he jumped back to about 20 yards. Decided I would take my .22 with me next time instead of taking a $20 arrow to him. Here is how my archery elk hunt went. I started out on the Az. line towards Luna the first day. I was sitting on a waterhole about 30 minutes before legal shooting light. Had a bull to the south coming in and heard cows chirping. Somebody on a four wheeler pulls up on the road about 300 yards away and hits a bugle call. Elk head south without me seeing them. Head east and run into another hunter. Go find a point where I can look into a valley and find a turkey feather. Sitting there looking at GPS to figure out where to go I notice something tan below me on a trail on the other side of a tree 5 yards away. Watch a bobcat go down the trail without knowing I was there. So I moved to a different area after running into 6 other hunters. Day 2 I had moved camp so in the afternoon I was in a saddle north of camp. Elk sign so I pulled up a shady spot to snooze until later in the evening to hopefully ambush elk moving through the saddle. Four wheeler comes by and parks about 200 yards from me. Early enough in the afternoon I walk down the road to find other hunter or what is at the end of the road. Run into other hunter at water tank. Too bad I am bad with names as he was a heck of a nice guy. I know he lives in Cliff,NM and was going on an Az. hunt so he would be pulling out before me. We had to laugh as our cell phones were hitting Az. repeaters and changing our clocks off NM time to Az. time. He told me a spot where elk were seen about a half mile from camp and I told him he could have the tank the whole time he was there. That way we would not be walking over each other hunting. Morning of day 3 I was walking down forest road before daylight when I heard bull bugle. I got off road and waited about 10 minutes. I bugled and cow called. Waited about 5 minutes and bugled again and cow called again. The bull answered but was heading south away from me. I have about 10 minutes until legal shooting light. I am standing where two big pines are growing close together almost making a v and I see a cow elk looking at me about 30 yards away. She has no idea what I am in the darkness and comes to about 20 yards with a big Blue Spruce between us. We play looky-loo for about 15 minutes and just when I feel comfortable for a shot she just walks down the hill. This is my first year bow hunting so I did not have the confidence I should have had. I go south into a pine park, find where trees have fallen and make a blind. I cow call, chirping and mewing, hoping to find the bull. I find a herd of cows where a yearling runs thirty yards from me. Starts getting suspicious close to where I walked in and then yotes start howling to the west. The yearling decides the yotes were to blame and heads back to the herd. I sit for an hour anywhere from 60-100 yards from a herd of cows watching them feed but too open for me to stalk closer. Finally the lead cow calls the herd to bed for a day and they leave. One evening I am sitting about a mile south of camp during the evening hunt. I have a ground blind I set up. I occasionally bugle and cow call hoping to ambush an elk on the way to a dry wallow. It was really dry as far as wallows and waterholes went. I look to the east and see a nice deer. I don't think too much about as I have a muzzle loader tag in a different unit a month later. I see a second buck and start watching them with 6-8 does. It hits me they are not mule deer. Antlers are main beams, tines without forks, ears are small, white around eyes and nose, and then the tail confirms it, COUES! I had them at 30 yards and was turning on the video when a doe behind me and slightly downwind bust me. They are gone burt not excited enough to give me the flag goodbye. I go to the water tank one morning. I am sitting in a ground blind and from the early morning shadows three cows magically appear at the tank. They are skittish with one always having it's head up. They are feeding about 20 yards the other side of the tank 30 yards from me. I watch them waiting for a shot but they blow out. The wind was in my face and I had not moved so no idea why they blew out until about 20 minutes later a bear comes to the water. I watch him for about 15 minutes with a dead camera battery. I go back to the dry wallow for an evening hunt the last night I am out. I am sitting in a ground blind dozing in the afternoon warmth waiting for the sun to go down and the elk to move. I notice something in the tall grass 100 yards south of me. I watch three coyotes jumping and pouncing as they hunt for field mice. They are out there for about an hour roaming and moving closer until the beginning of the story. One got upwind about five yards from the blind. The rangefinder would not tell me how far so I figured it was closer than 6 yards. That is when I stood up and coughed. The last night as I slept under the stars a bull bugled coming from the south wallow to the water tank. Soft and far away at first getting louder as I followed his bugles across the mesa to until he bugled crossing the road about 300 yards from camp and dropping into the canyon where the cows bed. I put in for the draw and this year I hope to draw the same elk hunt but I put in for a Coues tag at the same time. Knowing my luck I will either draw a different elk hunt or just see mule deer. Either way I am going to start hunting them little deer.

The post I read is in the trail cam section and is from 2006 but it says if you use an off site host such as photo bucket and link your pic. it will automatically resize it. Go to trail cams/videos pics of coues deer/posting pics to the website. It is pinned towards the top.

Newbie here. When I was reading how to post pics, which I haven't yet, it said to preview post to see your pics before you post them.

I only run two cams and have only had them for a year. I try to get them out of the way and hidden but do not lock them. I make a four line tag and adhere it with super strong glue. Here is what the tag says : State of New Mexico : Dept. of G&F: Biology Dept. : SN# 14-XXXXXXX. Wish I had not deleted the photos of a hiker about 2 ft. in front of the camera reading the tag. Don't know if the tag helped or not but I still have the camera.

I have no idea but you gave me a good idea. Imagine if you could log into their video feeds from the drones. Kind of like traffic cameras you can pull up on the computer to see intersections in real time. You could have year round scouting without burning any gas!

This year here in NM, at least the archery hunt I got last year, they combined the hunts. In the unit I went there are two archery hunts Sept 1-14th and Sept 15th-24th so your third choice would have to be a different unit or a different weapon type. Last year the number of tags for the first and second hunt totaled 150 tags or 75 per hunt. The third hunt, more timed for the rut, had 50 tags or 200 tags for all three hunts. Now the first hunt has 125 tags and the second hunt has 75 tags. I think they pretty much did this to all hunts for archery. Still 200 tags but this means all the draw results you can look up online are going to be useless. Also since our legislative session just started, on the committees they are moving wildlife under agriculture. This means that all wildlife issues will not be heard in its own committee. The landowners, who I have nothing against, have a huge lobby here. Think about how many tags will be going to landowners now instead of public land draw. I can just imagine half of the public land tags getting reallocated to private land. I hope that is not the case but I am holding my breath to see what happens.

This is a great topic. When I was growing up my sister never went hunting. I don't know if it was because she did not want to or if she was not invited. My mom would go camping and fishing but never hunting until it was long after I moved out. She would go and camp but never go out with me or my dad. I have invited my wife numerous times but she always responds " I am afraid of wounding an animal". Now my wife has more handguns than I do and carries concealed more than I do. So it is her choice and I hope she will change her mind sometime. Now my girls are a different story. I never went spring turkey hunting until my older daughter passed hunters ed. and told me she wanted to go turkey hunting. So I got her a 20 gauge and we went turkey hunting every spring for the past four years. That is our thing and hunting with the muzzle loaders for deer and elk. She is mad her younger sister is getting ready to pass hunters ed. and go turkey hunting with us. There is four years difference between the two. My younger daughter tells me she wants to go archery elk with me and muzzle loader deer. She got a 20 gauge as well for her birthday in Oct. and this last Christmas I got her a bow. We are practicing and increasing draw weight so she can put in for an elk tag with me in 2016. I am glad they both like hunting and am sure glad more women seem to be entering the sport.