hunter4life

I have the digital camera adapter for my swarovski ATS 65 spotting scope that screws onto the filter threads of the lens on my camera, a Nikon Coolpix 990. I set the camera to auto focus, but on the spot focus setting so that I can choose where in the picture to focus. I always make sure the scope is focused beforehand while i am wearing my glasses, it works better than if the scope is focused for my eyes with my glasses off. The camera lens should be zoomed in far enough to get rid of any vignetting (which is the outer black circle effect). The next thing i do is set the automatic timer and then hit the button and remove my hands from the camera so that any shake I caused by pushing the button is gone by the time the picture is taken. I have found that the crispest pictures are taken at 20X-30X on the spotting scope and the quality goes down as the magnification goes up. Another thing that will mess with the autofocus on the camera is mirage. On hotter days where there is mirage the autofocus cannot choose a good focus and keeps adjusting, so you have to manually set the focus. I can get the whole setup out of my pack and have taken a picture in about 2 minutes. Your best pictures will probably come at 20X at distances of less than 300 yards, at least that is what I have experienced. Here are some samples of pics I have taken in the past year here in NM. An aoudad picture from 440 yards away. An elk picture taken from 200 yards. The pictures have lost some quality when i shrunk them to post them. In the original picture I can zoom in on the elk and see a fly that is sitting on his nose.

Those two other deer must be ghosts. It looks like I can see the grass that is behind them right through their bodies. Especially when looking at the ears on the one above the big bucks back, it looks as if they are semi-transparent and some of the thicker strands of grass can be seen right through her ears.

Nice buck, and great pictures!! That buck looks to have a real big body for a coues. I have learned that one of the first things to do to judge a coues is look at the body to see if I can tell if it has a big body or a small one. I learned this after judging a buck last year 15" smaller than he turned out to be because he had a huge body, and another buck 15" larger than he was because he had a little tiny body.

When describing coues bucks with other members of my family, we pretty much use SunDevil's definitions because in our experience those definitions fit the deer that we see. Quite a few deer will go over 80", but once you get towards 100" they are starting to get quite scarce. However, I also agree with Recurveman in that it is all relative to your experience and the area you are hunting. Around where I grew up, a 150" mule deer was considered to be very nice and you would never pass one up. If I had grown up hunting the Colorado high country my definition of a big muley would probably be a bit different. Same thing with elk in different hunt units. Some units a 300" bull is nice and others you would pass it up looking for something 350" or bigger.

A run in with a cow on the drive in to my hunt area, resulting in a wrecked truck only left me with one afternoon and one morning to hunt. I saw 4 coues bucks worth shooting, but never could get within range (225 yards for me) with my muzzleloader. With a little more time I think I would have been successful.

Congratulations, that is a really nice buck!! I like the bit of character that his antlers have.

Congratulations on getting an awesome buck!!

That is one heck of a buck!! My congratulations go out to the hunter. I am going to guess 115" gross score. It looks like there is a short tine between the G-2 and G-3 on the left side which would make this buck a 5x5 (counting eyeguards). My NM muzzleloader coues hunt was a disaster. While driving in Friday evening a cow ran across the road right in front of us and wrecked our truck as well as herself. My brother and I were both fine and uninjured. At that point we were 5 miles from our destination on a 5 1/2 hour drive. We were in an area with no cell phone service, which is always the case when you actually need the stupid thing. Nine hours later another vehicle finally came by and we eventually got everything worked out with the rancher, and had the state police do an accident report. The truck was no longer in working condition so it was towed, and my brother and I called our parents so that they could pick us up. Once they were on their way, we figured we might as well go hunting. One of the ranch hands was nice enough to give us a ride to where we were planning on parking, so we set up camp and hunted from there. We had planned to hike in about 3-4miles and camp, and planned to hunt for 3 1/2 days but my dad had to work on Monday so we would only have Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to go hunting. We did see some pretty decent bucks, but they were in spots that we couldn't close the distance to closer than 275-300 yards so we had to sit there wishing we had a rifle with us. Once we got closer we ended up on the same hillside as the deer, which was really thick and nasty and we never could get in on them. I would like to thank the Border Patrol officer that was the first to find us, for using his radio to help us contact people. I would also like to thank the ranch employees for letting us use their phone and for taking us to where we could camp. Congratulations again to the hunter on his awesome buck, I took a real nice coues with a muzzleloader last year and know the difficulties involved in getting one with a smokepole.

I was along with my dad on his elk hunt and it was turning out to be a pretty tough hunt. We had only seen one bull right before sunset that was too far off to get in on for a shot. Elk sign was pretty scarce, but there was a little bit of bear sign that we had been seeing. My dad has been buying a bear tag every year for the past several years, just in case he runs into a good bear while hunting elk or deer. In the morning we had been glassing a large set of canyons, but nothing turned up and it turned quite cold and some low clouds moved in cutting visibility. We decided to hike into some new country and had only been hiking for about 20 minutes when I spotted a big black looking blob on the hillside. I threw up my binoculars and confirmed what I was thinking, which was that it was a bear. I told my dad that it was a bear and that it was a very big one. He handed me the rangefinders and I ranged the bear at 275 yards as he was sitting down and getting situated for a shot. The bear was quartering slightly away when my dad shot and it turned after the shot and ran into some thicker brush. It never reemerged and we found it right where the pictures that my brother (NMTcoueshunter) posted. This was one of the fattest bears I have seen. The hindquarters were covered in 4 inches of fat, and they came off the bear looking huge but when all the fat was cut off they shrunk down quite a bit. The bear had been eating juniper berries and some other seeds, judging from his scat. Like my brother said the hide with the head and four paws still left inside weighed nearly 90 pounds in the frame pack, which means it probably weighed about 80 pounds without the pack weight. The circumference of the bears' neck was 33 inches. I have always found it difficult to estimate weight because I always debone animals before carrying them out and have never weighed whole carcasses, but I would guess this bear at around 450 pounds. My brother shot a bear two years ago that was 7'1" and had a skull that was 20 12/16, and I think that this bear might have a slightly larger head. We will find out in a few months after we get it back from the skull cleaning place that uses dermestid beetles.

I would personally go with the .17 HMR. My brother has a Ruger 77/17 and with the Hornady V-max cartridges it will shoot right around 1/2 inch 3 shot groups at 100 yards. We shot 4 consecutive 3 shot groups with it that were all less than 1/2 inch at 100 yards off a benchrest with sandbags, using a 3-9 variable scope set to 9 power. We shoot 20 ounce plastic coke bottles filled with water at 200 yards and once you find what the wind drift is, those bottles don't last long. The gun does not shoot the CCI cartridges as well and shoots 3 shot groups with those that are 1 1/4 inches at 100 yards. As for performance on game, we have only used it to shoot rabbits, skunks, and foxes and it performs well on all of them. It easily shoots well enough to head shoot rabbits, as long as the shooter has a steady rest. I have not noticed it being a problem blowing up the opposite side on game, although inside the chest cavity is another story. I have found that on 75 yard or greater shots the bullet just enters a jackrabbit, fragments on the inside and never exits. Sometimes you get to the rabbit and can't even tell where it was hit, as there is only a tiny entrance hole in it.

You've got me convinced to try hunting rocky mountain muleys. I have only hunted desert muleys and coues deer so far, but I once saw two giant typical muleys in northern NM and have wanted to get one ever since. That is kind of like my low-key camps, except there is usually a 2-man tent and there is a frame pack next to it with the truck parked several miles away.

If what was stated earlier is correct about the Indians being able to apply for hunts in Arizona as residents and at the resident fees, then why can they then claim they are a sovereign nation and get all of those advantages also. It sounds to me like they should be applying as non-residents and paying the non-resident fees if they want to hunt on land that is not part of the reservation.