hunter4life

Congratulations, sounds like you had a great time!

Awesome! She is really tough to be out there hunting for that long. There are a lot of grown men who give up after 2-3 days.

The havalon piranta is a great knife and a single blade can easily skin, quarter and bone out a whole deer. No other tools are needed than the knife and a game bag. You can easily go through all the joints with the knife once you learn where they are at. I am also a fan of the gutless method. I usually hang quarters from a nearby tree and then bone out meat on a clean flat rock. If one isn't available I have a large plastic trash bag to lay out. I then put the meat in game bags. The best game bags I have found are made by this company: http://www.dicksonindustries.com/sport-game-bag.php I had some of their bags for years and they truly are reusable and machine washable. I found them again this year at Sportsman's here in Albuquerque, NM and just bought some new ones a few weeks ago. Once the meat is boned out, pop it in the bag and hang it in a tree to cool off in the breeze.

You aren't crazy. That was the exact same situation I was in this year with a freezer full of elk meat. My wife also had very similar words for me. Here is one of the better bucks I passed up along with his smaller buddy.

WOW! Awesome buck.

Congratulations Travis!

Congratulations, a nice NM muzzleloader buck!

Good luck on your hunt. Elkhunter is 100% correct. The lions know where the hunting is good.

Great video!

Nice video! NM elk hunting can sometimes be very tough.

Congratulations! I wish they would put these ibex into a couple of different mountain ranges.

Congratulations! Good job on the hunter and guides doing the right thing and searching for this amazing animal.

Big Congratulations, that is awesome!

Congratulations on tagging a great buck! High country backpack hunts are a bunch of fun and I have been lucky enough to go the last 2 years.

Congratulations!

Congratulations, that is a unique buck!

Very good post!

Usually there are good numbers of antelope on the plains of San Augustin and the quality is very good from what I have seen when driving through.

I will second TAM's complaint on the J34. They should make the zippers go all the way to the top so you can fit longer items in the pockets such as a full size spotter or tripod. I can just barely fit my Swarovski ATS 65 in the pockets. Otherwise well built and good to carry light-moderate weight loads. Great design for day hunting where you might kill a coues a few miles from camp and want to carry the deer and all your gear back in one load without having to make a second trip. What JMP said has some definite merits. These packs tend to put weight out farther from your back and it ends up centered fairly low causing the weight to fulcrum on the hips and try to pull you over backwards. This makes you have to lean forward and puts a lot of the weight onto your shoulders. I have tried putting light items in the bottom and cinching down the bottom strap to keep the dense heavy weight items (meat) up higher and close to my back but the pack still tends to distribute a lot of the weight on the shoulders and tends to pull you backwards. For big loads (elk hindquarters) or multi day backpacking trips I still go with an external frame pack and have yet to find any internal frame pack that can even come close to handling those kind of weights with the relative comfort that the external frame affords. Do not overlook packs made by backpacking equipment manufacturers like JMP mentioned. They often can be found for cheaper and can accomplish the job as well or better than "hunting" specific packs as long as you don't mind them not being camo colored. Overall, gear from hunting manufacturers is far inferior for backpack hunting than gear from mountaineering/backpacking manufacturers. Hunting specific gear tends to be bulky, and heavy.

No, they do not. A good lion spot is usually a good deer spot as well.

The best way I have eaten it is as roasts and italian sausage. Use the Italian sausage to make lasagne and it will be great. We fed it to a few people that had never had lion before and they all said it was the best lasagne they had ever eaten.

Nice, congratulations!

What range did he draw? I have been on hunts in both Rhodes Canyon and Stallion Range several times in the past few years. There are still plenty of oryx but it is not nearly as easy of a hunt as it was 15-20 years ago. The oryx have been hunted a lot more intensely and you have to be sneaky because they are quite skittish. Checking in to the base is easy, just make sure to get there on time. No need to get there too early because they check everyone in and then you just have to wait around for the security briefing. After the briefing is over there are a few idiots that always run to their trucks and peel out of the parking lot. It is actually quite comical watching those fat boys run to their pickups. Other than the Small missile range the hunt areas are huge and there is no need to be in a race to get out of the parking lot. Hunting is similar to a lot of antelope hunts. Stop at the high points and get out the binoculars and spotting scopes and take a look. Once you find something that looks good make a stalk through the creosote and mesquite. Good, high power glass is definitely an advantage.

Congratulations,nice bird!

Congratulations!!