Non-Typical Solutions

I know this topic is on another thread, but thought I would finish this up here on this thread. Cut up the last of the two bulls we took this year, lots of elk steak and jerky meat in the freezer, I cut up all my meat myself....one sure fire way of getting what you want out of the critter. We have already devoured two batches of jerky and a couple of batches of steaks.....gonna have to be careful we don't eat it all before Christmas. Merry Christmas everybody and may your stockings be filled with the hope of a good tag next season. Jeff

Been waiting for this week seems like forever. Gonna do some last minute scouting Wednesday and Turkey day, have some ham and turkey and then go find a Bull for my boy to knock down. Hopefully we can take care of that early opening morning. After that, I am taking my mule out into the thickest mess of cedars in search for the Big Boy that has been haunting the area. Some pretty impressive bulls already posted on this thread, hope I get the bad boy that I am after.........to the hunting gods, all I ask for is one shot.............Amen

I am sure those of you who have been frequenting this site for a few years have already hashed this out but......I have an idea how to take care of all the trash in the washes left behind by illegal activities. As we capture illegals crossing into the country, go ahead and get a days worth of work out of them picking up trash in the washes we caught them in before shipping them back home. It would kind of be like we give them the opportunity to work off the cost of sending them back. Plus....if they knew they were going to have to put in a days work to earn a ticket back home then maybe they would just go ahead and stay home. That wash down in 36B made me mad.......sorry, just gotta vent it.....

About 15 years ago we were living in a house that only had a fireplace for heat.....we were freezing out butts off...so we decided to go to Alpine for Christmas, haven't missed a year since. My dads summer home is nice and cozy and warm. We cut down a real live tree, thread the popcorn and cranberries....put out the manger scene, read from the good book on Christmas eve.....watch The Christmas Story.........oh man, I can hardly wait...........one of the true favorite times of the year with the family.....

Funny this topic should come up, I got this email yesterday.........guess it is Christmas time!!! There will be no Nativity Scene in the United State Congress this year ! The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the United States capital this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason, they simply have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the Nation's capitol. There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.

Talk about feverish....looking at those pics just made the fever even worse...........nice job guys......

Gotta love the wheelbarrow.......doesn't eat much hay......nice buck...and thank the man for a second shot....

I agree with matto......something about packin one of those critters out that is gratifying......nice buck...

3A3C is where we were hunting and I could probably get somebody in the right area if they still needed some help. I would have been really bummed if I did as bad here in my back yard as I did in 36B......I have some pics but I think they are to big to post here.....can't get them to load up. I put in for extra javelina tags for my boys. waiting to hear on those....I can't ever get my crap together to get put in for spring. I retired from coaching wrestling so I am thinking about getting a rez permit to hunt coyotes this year........funnest hunting there is IMO........

Part 2.....it had turned pretty cold by the time we got my bull dressed out so we decided to check out another spot we had scouted out before the sun went down. We bumped into a bull right off the bat and got Wyatt a shot.....3 shots to be exact......he wasn't even close...couldn't get the bull to run.....Wyatt had a serious case of the wobbles. My older boy had built him a shooting stick earlier in the week but we had left it back in the truck. Wyatt needs a shooting stick if you know what I mean. We went home very happy, we had one bull hanging and Wyatt had had an opportunity...... Second day, colder that hail.......wind blowing, I took Wyatt to a spot where I had seen bulls, got him set up to watch a heavily traveled trail. I am sitting there glassing freezing my kester off and look over at Wyatt....he isn't even paying atttention so I told him he was on his own....and I went back to the truck to get warm. I waited about 20 minutes and sent my older boy out to take his turn in the cold.....next thing I know I get a call on the radio.....Wyatt has spotted some elk and there is a rag horn in the group....... I get out of the truck, I have my 10 year old tagging along this time.......the two older boys have already started getting in position to intercept the elk. I find them in my glasses and we get them within 200 yards of about12 cows and the single raghorn....the cows gather around the bull and Wyatt can't get a shot. So we sit and wait.....and wait......and wait....freezing my hands off trying to keep them glassed up.....finally they start to file out and Wyatt gets a walking away shot....misses bad.....forgot the shooting stick again.....dang it he needs that shooting stick..... We run home to pick up mom, go down to another spot we had heard about but not looked at yet. We went walking (I took the shooting stick) through some of the burn area…which by the way is not an easy thing to do…..tons of downed trees. We saw a lot of sign, the sun is headed down and we decide to head in…..and behold…a gift is given to us….two spikes at the top of a ridge….200 yards….broad side….we get Wyatt set up with the shooting stick…..shoots……nothing……shoots again the spike buckles but is still standing……..his brother tells him to put another one in him….he shoots again as the bull starts to turn……..we watch him go over the other ridge. We all go hauling up the hill except mom, she doesn’t want to see blood….50 yards over the edge…bull down….3 bullet holes…7Mag…we get to do the dirty work by flashlight….. Waited months for this hunt…..didn’t get the monster that we had dreamed about, but the experience was priceless………………..and Wyatt dropped his first bull and that was what was really important in the long run…..

OK, I'll try to keep this short........but probably not. Opening morning finally arrived, we knew it was going to be tough because the spot we chose always has lots of hunters, but we thought we had done our homework and we were ready for the challenge. Before shooting light, we have already spotted 6 hunters on foot, and 4 vehicles driving through the area below us, but we were patient and finally as the sun came up, we found our bulls headed up a ridge about a mile and a half away. We hop in our rig, jump off the ridge we are on and head over as fast as we can on a two tracker. We get to where we need to be, get out of the truck, just as another truck pulls up. They ask us if we had seen any bulls, and like the honest idiots we are we said yes, and that we were getting ready to put a slow stalk on the ridge below. We say our good byes and start down the ridge...which is a very lazy, slow sloping, not much of a ridge at all, and that SOB drove straight down the ridge, off road, cross country, right there in front of us, right where we had told them we were going. We did not see the bulls again, and our only hope is that we actually saw G&F stop the guy....hopefully he got a big bad fine. Anyway, we of course are pissed off, I realize that this is no longer an elk hunt, but this is WAR. We head off to some thick cedar, I put my two boys up on a good glassing area, and I park about two miles away and start following fresh sign up through the thick cedars, hoping to kick something up that my boys can glass up and get a shot at. I am walking slow, have the wind in my face, lots of good sign, it is probably 11:30 in the morning, I am just happy to be off work and out in the woods when all of the sudden about 200 yards away I see bulls. Three bulls headed in the opposite direction that I was headed, and they are just mosing along.... At this point, you must know that I had plans of hunting all week, looking for the bull of a lifetime.....but my bull fever took over. After watching the circus earlier that morning and knowing that my son still had a tag to fill, I took off to get myself in position to take a shot at one of those bulls. I get the angle, keep the wind in my favor and sure enough, there they are, and in less than......well........a split second I had already pumped a 150gr. .270 round in to one of those bad boys(I thought). He was probably 70 yards away at the most, and he took off over the little ridge he was standing on.(surely I hadn't missed???) I ran up the hill, found serious stumble prints in the dirt, then blood, so I decided to actually look up and.......there he was The shot had hit him right behind the front left shoulder and exited out the other side right behind his right shoulder. Sorry about the blood, but this guy was bled out by the time I got to him. I radioed my boys and they came to my rescue. Obviously not the monster bull of my dreams, but it felt good to have one down…..now all we had left to do was get Wyatt a shot at a bull. Part 2 coming up….. Sorry, I can't get the pics to come up right..........they are bloody anyways....he is a 5X5, nothing special but one heck of a fun time with the boys out hunting.

I am headed out the door...everybody be safe, have a great turkey day.....and an even better late bull hunt. We'll be back in touch after the hunt....and yeah.....gonna need some luck....

That is where it is all at........keep him at it, those 3 1/2 years won't come fast enough.....an then all the sudden.....they are gone doing their own thang.......good job.

I used to do alot of loading with my brothers, I am sold on it but........time has become a serious issue these days and I have used factory over the last couple of years. My 22-250 load was 35 grains of 4064 behind a hornady 60 grain spire point......used it for varmints and deer for years....my 270, I struggled with it a couple of years ago when I was getting ready for elk season....never was really happy with it so I am relying on Remington 150 Corelokt for this coming Friday morning.......I have shot it enough I am sure it will do it's job if I do mine.....man I can't wait for Friday morning....

When you spend so much time with them, it is like losing a kid. Sorry to hear about the loss of a good animal.

I believe it.....I sent pics from our hunt trip to Napolitano, Flake, McCain, Kyle, TV12 and 15 two weeks ago...haven't heard a word from any of them... I suppose I will have to send out hundreds more to get a single response, which response I don't expect to be anything of great significance. My wife was so worried about the retrobution that was going to come to our peaceful home, we both teach school and have kids in school....I told her not to worry, nobody would pay attention to the pictures anyway.........we will just keep ignoring the problem.....the real problem.....

Gotta love the spike.....nothing better eatin.....and a grand slam for a first timer...nice job...

Hats off to the lady......

Back in the early 80's my dad was in the thick of raising alot of pigs, and everything you ate caused cancer is some way or another, the report came out that bacon could in fact cause cancer(in rats). It later went on to explain the amount of bacon that was fed to the rats which in turn caused the cancer to appear in the rats. If you were to go ahead and do a pound for pound comparison, transfering the weight of the bacon fed, to the weight of the rat eating the bacon, a human would in turn have to have eaten approximately 686 pounds of bacon per day, every day for 3 years. dang I say, we ate alot of bacon back in those days, but I am telling you, 686 pounds of bacon in one day by itself would have killed me, forget the cancer. I have no doubt that the testing on this lead business is slanted tremendously in favor of the condor. They ain't getting enough lead from a gutshot animal to kill them.

I would have been in there 15 or so years later I am guessing, it was still a logging hub at that time, at least as far as I could tell. There are alot of good hunting two trackers, that started out as logging roads.....and yeah, those bulls in the rut can be stinkers.....sorry, got way off track.

Not sure if you have seen this one...a buddy sent it to me....thought it might fall under the ouch catagory. Crap.....didn't work.....I'm a computer nut.......

Times long past....must mean we are having fun. One of the old roads we used to travel....not sure if it still exists or just in my memory, I think the place was called Maverik, up there by Reservation lake on the US side of the line, can't remember.....during the monsoons, those roads were wicked.

Sorry about the assumption there.... I just figured they must be putting pavement down as long as it was taking them. I remember when McNary was still a hub, we busted an oilpan on that Big Lake road and was one of the only times I ever heard my dad swear. That is a nice drive, lots of beautiful country, just was worried they were putting the pavement down. It will be fine then, but they better keep some of those camping areas open or it will turn in to down town......I really lost intrest in Roosevelt lake when they went to the developed camp area, haven't been there for years....is it pretty much all developed camping only or can you still pull up next to the lake and camp??

I had pretty much avoided that neck of the woods just because of the construction, but I see it kind of a contradiction in messages. On one hand we a making a freeway back in to Big Lake, and then saying that we are going to cap off the little roads...so a basically run the cows down to the catch pen and expect them to stay right there? I do believe that fingers can be pointed in every direction with regards to barricade busters. People who would bust them with a wheeler, would probably do the same thing in a jeep or gigantuous 4X4 four door truck. What about the barricades all along the burn area on the rim? Convienient excuse to close the roads, but will they ever be reopened again. One more thing....with the population growth that Arizona has experienced over the last 10 years, legal or illegal, and the continued projected growth in population, we can only look forward to more of the same with regards to the management or lack thereof, of our forests, hunts, fishing....outdoors.

Bill, What is your take on the freeway they are building on the backside of you there going through Sunrise, across to Sheeps crossing, etc? You have probably had a chance to check it out first hand, I haven't tried to check it out at all. Is the plan to go all the way to Big Lake with that? Jeff