hunter4life

Bryson, The most time off would be either an ER doc or a hospitalist. This is mostly shift work and tends to have lots of days off. You can also do these jobs in more rural areas. Not what I went into because I never really had much interest in those fields.

I have not bowhunted much, but when I drew this northern NM tag 2 years ago I used FOB's. As you can see they worked well.

Your passions change when you have kids. I hunt much less than I used to, but it is worth it to spend time with the family.

I see we have a lot of BMI deniers coming out of the woodwork, or just a bunch of big framed guys with hulking muscles. The original poster has it correct, there are a few narrow exceptions, but most people are just plain overweight and making excuses.

Insurance will probably pay 60% of that and the rest will be written off. The hospital has to increase the price due to all of the people that don't pay their bills at all, so the poor guy who has some money but no insurance really gets screwed. You also have to have such a high bill to be able to support all the layers of adminstrators, HIPPA compliance officers, billers, coders, etc. that are needed to just get the money out of the insurance company. None of these people actually do anything productive and are just part of the giant "system" that healthcare has become. There are so many middle men making a buck in healthcare that it is crazy. The actual amount going to the doctors and nurses that took care of your son is just a tiny fraction of that bill. The surgeons fee is probably only about $600.00

Very cool video. My brother saw a similar encounter a few years ago and wrote it up for presentation to a journal. http://evogentas.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wenner_2012_rtbs.pdf

Panasonic Lumix FZ100, Macro setting.

Red Velvet Mite Here is one I got a photo of a few weeks ago.

Flatlander, SWDesertRat had a bunch of good suggestions. I preferred the Los Cuates on Lomas for food. Their salsa is different than usual and takes a little getting used to, and their food is great. I never was a fan of Sadie's, but I am from SE NM and our version of New Mexican food is slightly different than Albuquerque's. The Albuquerque Zoo, aquarium and botanical gardens are all very nice and my kids loved going to them when I lived up there. It is really hard to beat Albuquerque's weather. It gets pretty hot, but nothing like Tucson or Phoenix and it cools off at night. I spent a lot of time hiking in the Sandia's and if you stick to some trails on the East side of the mountains you won't even see too many other people.

Better food and a whole lot less people.

I think it is unlikely that they came over from NM. I have never heard of them being seen West of the Rio Grande in the Southern half of NM. As far as I know they come the closest to AZ up in the NW quadrant of NM where they are around Mt. Taylor.

NO

It is not only Tony's generation that thinks a lot of the things he mentioned lead to the "perversion" of hunting. So Curtis, If my "idea of hunting" is that I should have a year round season good for the entire state with any weapon, bait allowed, drones allowed, offroad ATV use allowed, and no bag limit then you would be okay with this? It is my idea and what kind of perverse person are you to say it is not right. You have to draw the line somewhere and set up laws because there are always people that will use new technologies to turn this hobby that we all enjoy into less of a hunt and more of an assured kill. As we (hunters as a group) become more successful, there will be fewer and fewer tags available because more animals will be killed per given number of tags. I would prefer to have some restrictive laws that lower success rate, thus giving more tags and allowing me to hunt more often. This is preferable than getting tags less frequently, but for an assured kill.

Very sorry to hear this. I only interacted with Jim a few times by telephone and email in regards to fixing one of his tripod heads that I had dropped. From those few short conversations I could tell he was a passionate hunter and trustworthy businessman. My condolences to his family. He was a great loss because the world needs more people like him.

My dad and I just returned from a successful hunt to Azerbaijan for Tur. We had a great time and killed 2 good rams. The local people were all very nice and we really never felt uncomfortable anywhere in the country. It was an awesome experience. Riding horses on the way in. View of camp. My Tur. Initially we saw the herd at 520 yards and luckily some fog moved in allowing us to move in closer. The clouds then cleared and the herd was moving towards us. One of my guides spoke English quite well and we picked out the best one and he ranged him for me. I shot at 282 yards and the ram immediately dropped and then took a 400+ yard tumble down the mountainside before finally coming to a stop. Females with kids across the canyon from camp. A herd of rams about 1.5-2 miles away in a canyon that was too steep to even think of entering. Views from camp. There were numerous kinds of wildflowers everywhere. Camp was at around 9500ft elevation. There was a ton of area you could see and glass right from camp. Horses in the fog. Every afternoon the clouds would build and we would be in intermittent fog. Tur rams. Dad's Tur. I was off hunting a different set of drainages at the time. The herd was moving towards him at 275 yards but not all were visible, so he was waiting to choose the biggest. Unfortunately the wind shifted and they started running off. All the guides with him were screaming to shoot (none of them spoke much English at all) The herd paused and he picked out one that was clear of the group that looked good. He did not know the exact range as nobody was manning the range finder, but figured they were now around 380-400yards. He shot and thought he held good but nobody saw one fall. They checked and found a good blood trail which they followed until it crossed some dangerous canyons where they could not walk. The next day was essentially a bust because it was cloudy and foggy all day except for the first hour. The next day we split up with dad and I going one way with some guides and the other guides splitting up to look at different areas. We saw no eagles or vultures settling on anything. Right on dark one of the other guides in a different canyon saw the wounded tur and moved in to 50 yards to finish it off. Unfortunately it was nearly dark and it would have taken about 2 hours to get where he was, so they skinned it out and we met them back at camp. We were happy that our persistence paid off and we were able to find his tur. Both together. They do get growth rings similar to bighorn sheep and as best we could tell dad's was 8 years old and mine was 11. His was just over 29" long and mine went 35" with 15.5"bases.

All that it takes to make the trip happen is money and a sense of adventure. There are lots of people who have the first of those, but not many that have the second. It is cheaper than a lot of hunts in Canada or Alaska. Hunt $9,400 each. Airfare $1,850 each. I was impressed with Turkish Airlines. They did a good job and were not a hassle with the firearms. We carried the capes and horns back in our luggage, so no packing or freight costs. Coppersmiths' helped with the import paperwork and had customs and wildlife inspectors ready and waiting for us when we got back to the US. We actually got in our own line at customs and went through quicker than most everybody else who didn't have guns or horns/capes. There are a lot of miscellaneous costs such as tips for the guides, hotel for extra days after the hunt, souvenirs, etc. These costs would be variable depending on what you buy and where you stay. I would carry at least $3000 in cash. Their currency is actually about the same as a Euro and the US dollar definitely does not command the respect that it used to on international trips. We brought our own guns and this was not really very difficult. The outfitter you book with should set up the permits and our outfitter had a "facilitator" that met us at the airport and helped us through customs and with the gun and ammo paperwork. In retrospect the "facilitator" was probably the most important person on the trip, because without them you would likely have problems getting in and out of the country. All of the guides are locals and no matter what outfitter you book with (Safari outfitters, Caprinae, Shikar, PRO, profi-hunt, etc.) you end up having the same guides based on the location that you are hunting. We were in the Sheki area. This is far from the Nagorno-karabakh region and foreigners are banned from even visiting that area. Where we parked the trucks and started on foot there was a military base that was probably soviet era. Other than that the mountains were essentially empty except for a few goat herders. Baku was actually quite interesting for a city and spending some time there lets you see some of the historical sites and local shops. One and a half to 2 days there would be about right.

Redwings. I have yet to find something that lasts as long.

Congratulations!! Your life is about to change drastically, but in a great way.

Great buck, congratulations!!

A few more pictures. It was what I would call a medium length chase that ended up going across about half a dozen smaller canyons. I will see if my brother's GPS still has the distance in it.

I still think the transplant can be successful. Just look at NM and the results of targeting lions in areas where the bighorns were having problems. I think that lions are often incorrectly blamed for low prey (deer, elk, bighorn, etc.) numbers, but in certain instances such as a new transplant of bighorns or very low numbers then targeting predators in that area can make a difference. Here is a link to the NM data. http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/conservation/bighorn/documents/lions.htm

Young aoudad rams and the ewes are delicious. The old ones can be so tough that it is like chewing on rawhide. The flavor isn't bad, so they do fine as ground burger and sausage.

Nice video, it looks like you guys had a blast.

+3, got coues said it perfectly. The story also brought tears to my eyes.

I use an external frame when backpacking, but they are a bit of a pain when hunting in brushy areas because they get caught up on things and are louder. There is not an internal frame pack that I have ever seen that will handle big, heavy loads anywhere close to as well as an external frame. I have both an internal and an external and use each one depending on the hunt and the location. My two go to packs are both >15 years old and still going strong.