Non-Typical Solutions

Pack, nothing like hunting with your kids is there. They have a way of never letting you forget the sermons......good story....my boy who was going to gunsmithing school at the time had just blued my.270 for me. Months later as I packed to go to Unit 10 deer hunting, I threw in my .270 and my 22-250 for backup. I had always preached to my boys about pre-season shooting to make sure your gun in good to go, but I was coaching and hadn't taken the time. Opening morning, I pull out the trusty old .270 and realized that my scope had never been completely remounted and sighted in after the blue job......so I shoved it back into it's case and brought out the trusty 22-250. But my boy has never let me forget about "preseason" routine.

I've been packing for two weeks and I ain't even packing in.....I have to go over it a hundred times in my head or I forget the important things....like my gun.........When I was first married, getting ready to go hunting I made a mistake. My wife asked me if I had everything I needed and I turned to her and said, all I need is my gun.....that didn't set right with her......and she reminds me every year when I start packing......two days and counting........

Hunter-Thompson-Romney..........funny thing is....who the heck is Ron Paul.....signs popped up all over rural AZ..and I didn't even know who he was or what the heck he was running for.....my bad

I'm gonna need all kinds of help..... First....my sister in law has a tag, my 22 year old has a tag, (not worried about him) and my wife signed her tag over to my 10 year old.......so yeah, I could use some help........my sister-in-law is afraid of getting robbed, so somebody is going to have to hold her hand the whole time.....I am going to be pulling in about 2am Thursday night, probably sleep in the car or start hiking to my morning glassing spot...............what else could I ask for.....I am stoked to get to go out and help my family try and find the ghost deer......36B here we come.....

That is funny....my son had been down in the valley for about a week....first time living in the big city.....he called me up and told me him and his buddy were going to go down to one of the urban lakes and do some duck hunting with a golf club.....I told him that would be an unacceptablething to do even though it sounds like lots of fun. When I was a kid growing up in souther New Mexico, it was not that unusual to pack my 22-250 under the seat of the car on the way to school just in case a coyote ran across the road. Farmers and Ranchers didn't mind as long as you weren't shooting their critters or tanks and stuff like that. Today it is not even a question, it is still just as rural, but times have changed.......I would get thrown in jail for packing a gun to school, piss off the neighbors for killing the coyote that just ate their pet poodle and make the rancher mad for shooting the protected blacktailed prariedog that dug the hole that just broke his prize horses leg.

Lark......man there are some nice bulls that come down into that Alpine meadow. My dad has a place on the edge of the meadow, south of Judds lake. We go there on the weekend during the rut and listen to them bugle. It is alot of fun and I have often dreamed of the day I could position myself up in the middle of that big ridge to the south...we call it TV mountain, don't really know the name, but some where I could nail one of those buggers. But...every time I have gotten drawn for 27.....I go elsewhere, it is not worth the hassle of fighting that battle. Don't get me wrong, if I catch him up on that ridge and I have a tag, I'm going after him. I would rather fight that battle eslewhere, education of youngsters and keeping the hunting dream alive. The damage control on two latest elk fiascos will take it's toll on hunting. There is alot, and I mean you wouldn't believe how much building is going on in the Pinetop/Show Low area.....right in the middle of prime game habitat......we can either kick against the pricks(literally) or educate and set a standard.

I guess that is what I was trying to say, you just did a better job of it Lark.....

Haven't looked at a map for years of that area but........used to be lots of deer hangin out by the fields right on the NM state line across from the Cotton City/Animas area......haven't tried to access it or hunt it for years....used to be a dang good place to hunt coyotes........maybe there isn't even any farming going on down there anymore.....

I watched the 3TV clip.....and have a couple of observations. One, as hunters we gotta be smarter, can't keep giving the opposition fire power against us by pulling stunts like that, it is a no win situatio for us who love hunting to shoot somebodys pet.... Two....I am pretty sure in the clip, it showed the elk eating from a pile of alfalfa hay???? What is up with that????

It might be too late to check, but I would bet he was missing at least one.............nut..............seriously......

How can we get involved with "AZ Hunters who Care"?

How about donating them to the"Support your Local Illegal Immigrant Foundation" so they can be recycled. Send them back down south, pick them up again in the fall.........

So this is what I get to look forward to on my 36B hunt eh???? Absolutely unacceptable

Very unfortunate, always hate to have something like that happen, and such a bottom of the barrel basic concept. Rotten thing to have happen.....

DANG!!!!!! One heck of a bull, where is his brother at?????

Great way to start off the day....thanks

My brother is a dang good cowboy, spent alot of time clowning rodeos and working up in Montana punching cows. One summer inbetween ranches he was taking tourists on trail rides in Zion National Park in Utah. I stopped off for a visit and he sent me on one of these trail rides to help keep the tourists taken care of. We ended up on this switchback and to be honest with you, going around the corners looking over the edge was not a good idea. We had one lady just freak out on us and start to try and get off of her horse right in the middle of the switchbacks which was the worst thing she could have done. I bailed off my horse and grabber her horse and helped her get off. She walked the rest of the switchbacks and I led her horse for her. It was spooky when it was happening, but one heck of a laugh after the tourist were all gone. That is me on the backend of the line, you can see that I am leaning into the mountain.....what a chicken.

OK Tony, here are a couple of pics, sacraficial to keep you baited into posting pics. Here is the hunt story. I think the year is 1982 not all that old, but I was going to college and came home for the big hunt. I have to kind of set the story up first. We didn't know about scope covers, if they existed at the time so we would take an old inner tube off of a tire, cut it into a strip, like a big fat rubber band, and then slip that over the scope to keep it from getting dusty, etc. So, I am hunting just on the New Mexico side of the AZ line, just north west of Luna. Doing a still hunt with a lazy snowfall in the process of coming down so naturally, I have my handy little scope cover on to keep the moisture off of my scope. I am moving very slow down this ridge, loving the little bit of snowfall, when all of the sudden, there he was, at the most, 60 yards away, looking right at me. That rack seemed so huge to me, of course I went into a panic. That %$#@ innertube scope cover would not come off my scope, between the cold and a small case of buck fever I was definitely feverish. I finally got the cover off and put that buck in the crosshairs of my Redfield wide angle 3-9 power scope and let the lead fly. After the first shot, the buck was still standing there looking right at me as if nothing really had happened, much to my shagrin, so I jacked another shell into my gun. This activity startled the buck and he turned around and bolted straight away from me. There was no way in the world I could have missed that shot (ha), in a last chance effort I put the crosshairs on the buck as he was about to disappear and I pulled the trigger. At the time I thought I had hit the buck, but definitely could not see him. I ran over to the last spot I had seen him, and there he lay in a heap. I had hit that poor old boy right in the back of the head. Truly the luckiest shot I have ever put on a deer. This is the first decent buck I had ever shot. Not big by some of you'alls standards but it was definitely a trophy in my books. I was using the gun of my dreams at the time, bought with my own hard earned pig money. Remington Model 700 BDL 22-250, Custom loaded 60 grain Hornady spire point with 35 grains of 4064. My folks let me use some of my "savings" when I turned 16 to buy the gun and my older brothers helped me pick it and the scope out. It of course was purchased with the intent of hunting Wyle Coyote. Still the gun of my dreams and I still shoot the same load, although I have since then purchased a little bit bigger caliber for my deer hunting.

I'm still looking for my photos that I know I put where I would be sure and remember them

.270, I have watched that elk story unravel in the local newspaper up here. That incident has sure shed alot of bad light on hunting. I work with a guy who guides and from his explaination, the elk was taken withing 1/4 mile of housing, I wasn't there so it is still just somebody else's work. That alone throws it into the illegal catagory thus falling into the unethical side of things. I agree with you on the ethics issue, just passing on some info.

You gotta love those pictures and yes the unbelievable camo that we all worry so much about today. That .264 had some credibility in its day, does it still hold it's own? I also love the vintage trucks, classic hunting rigs......NICE!!!

Can't believe I have been missing out on this one......ethical??? Sleeping with the neighbors wife, is that ethical, illegal or otherwise? I'll tell you what is unethical those $%#%%@&@% photo cams on loop 101 thats what..not only do they keep track of how often I come to the big city, but it keeps track of how dang fast I was going too....just kidding. It is all in the eye of the beholder...........

There is nothing like adding a little bit of spice to your hunting trip like adding mules/horses to it. There are very few of those critters that will let you shoot over the top of them, much less throw up a rifle in front of them, and the things that they all of the sudden get particular about is interesting at best. My brother is the real mule man, I just take advantage of being able to use his mules on occasion, I sure enjoy the heck out of them except when that rope is tight and my hands are on the last knot of the lead rope. Good stories, fun to laugh at now that the dust has settled.

I wanna see that pic!!!

Please don't tell me that you don't have a thing to do with that operation anymore???? That must have been some times there packing boyscouts. Here is my packing story. My brother had just gotten serious about breaking and packing mules. He was also my scout leader and decided to use us scouts as a practice dummie for a week. He packed us back into the Gila Wilderness, I believe the destination was McKenna Peak. The very first day, a borrowed mule took off with all of our groceries and proceeded to break all but one dozen of the eggs we had packed. I think there were about 18 of us on horses total. Since the eggs were basically gone, we had to ration when we used the eggs to get the most mileage out of them. We basically lived off of the fish we caught along the way, spent a couple of nights in a meadow which was way up on top, we had hobbled all of our critters for the first night. Sitting around eating and telling stories when all of the sudden Fire flies were everywhere. None of us desert boys had ever seen fireflies. In the mean time all of our horses had wandered off out of the meadow into the trees and we spent about an hour rounding them up. Later that night, we wake up to this horrible sound, which turned out to be one of our horses choking to death because his owner hadn't tied a bowline around his neck. My brother jumped out of his bed, pulled out a knife and cut the rope to free the horse. At the time I thought I could have probably lived up there all of my born days and been just fine.......