wetmule

First of all and most importantly, condolances to those that didn't draw anything. I think we've all been there many times over, and if you haven't you most likely will at some point. A bitter and hard pill to swallow. Congrats to those that did get lucky. Have fun. Drew 2nd choice - 27 ML Bull with 14 pts. Nada on everything else

My Guess and if I was G & F, I would get the draw done and inform people asap, before some stinking liberal judge rules the whole process invalid and un-constitutional. Or before some jerk files another lawsuit. BTW has anybody heard anything from THE JERK ??

That's it he wins Best of Show, beautiful pup Scotty. Heck that's what I'd name him BOS Have fun

Cool lookin big bull for sure, don't know what he will score - he's probably got another month or so to put it on. He could add quite a bit or he may only add a little more. He appears to be pretty well developed. Why don't you guys track his progress and keep us updated. Thanks for posting

Best hunting partner a guy could have is his Father. Enjoy them while they are around, learn as much from them as you can and pass their knowledge and ethics on to your own kids and others that will listen.

Marlon, I'd be very careful with those catalytic heaters and leaving them on all night long. We use propane heat and or wood stoves in canvas tents that breathe pretty good. The heaters are great for taking the chill off in the morning but when the lights go out so do the heaters. If it's real cold wood stoves are a great way to go, or a combination of both. You've made it this far so I guess you know what you are doing. Don't know anyone personally but a good friend of a friend left a wife and two kids fatherless on a turkey hunt several years ago from a catalytic heater.

Awesome, what a pretty buck !! Thanks

Smooooth like butta ! , nice knowin ya

Couesnut, You should change your name to Antelopenut or Pronghornnut, keeping your kid out the the draw pool so as to not add to your competition, that's cold, LOL. I know dads can give their youngins their tags if they want, maybe you should petition the G & F to reverse that rule to where kids can give their desperate old man their tags. Hope you get your tag this year.

Uno Dos Tres - 98, 109, 111

I can't count that high, lets just say it would take all my fingers and toes plus all of coueshunters digits, and he has 4 toes lol. OK I'll try Elk 14 Deer 5 Lope 11 Sheep 12

AZ4Life, I hope your wife is doing ok, sorry we missed you, no need to apologize and totally understandable. Family first for sure and definitetly in an emergency situation. I'm glad you are interested and we'd love to have you. Yes we have a board meeting once a month and it is always (unless otherwise noted) the third wed. of every month @ 6:30 p.m. and will be at the same location. You or anyone else are always welcome, you do not have to be a board member to attend or to offer any insights or contribute in any way you can. The minutes of the board meetings are posted on our website. Last nights meeting minutes will probably be posted hopefully sometime before the next meeting. Id' like to personally thank Lee (aka) couesdiehard for attending. Thanks Lee for taking the time out of your schedule and thanks for your insights, I hope you come back it was great to meet you. The annual meeting is kind of boring, we elect new board members and officers and we talked about some short and long term goals and how to help us achieve them along with a few other topics including this weekends Kaibab meeting, fundraising banquet, financial info. The next meeting should be very interesting with a report of what is going on in Kaibab and the results of our meeting up there with G & F and the Forest Service; and we will be getting back into the meat and potatoes of ADA business including habitat projects and helping AZ's deer. Anyways, I hope this helps a little, and I hope your wife is quickly on the mend. Thanks for your interest. Kevin

Great topic T.S.M., and great responses guys with some very informative data collected by experienced CW members, keep it coming.

Amanda, You are giving hunters far too much credit in saying that 10% of the hunting public does all the wildlife conservation work that needs to be done while the other 90% sits on the sidelines. I would have to say that it is below 1% and possibly far below 1%. We probably have 100,000 to 200,000 hunters in AZ, if it were 10% that would mean we should have 10 to 20 thousand volunteers doing wildlife conservation work. Hopefully that will change when and if the Conservation Bonus Point rule goes into effect and you can actually earn a bonus point for giving back to the wildlife. No, very few people ever give back to the wildlife or ever do anything to insure that there is wildlife for them to hunt or to insure that their kids and grandkids get to hunt. They want their tags and permits and they want big bucks and bulls in the woods and they want their hunter opportunity and they are good at bitchin and moaning when things don't go their way; but they aren't willing to ever do anything about it. Probably pretty harsh, but it is reality.

As many know Reids bill has made it through the Senate, it still needs to make it through the House process. You can help by contacting your representatives in support of it. You can contact your reps. through e-mail by going to www.ushouse.gov (I think) Here are some phone numbers for our reps in Washington from AZ, CALL THEM! John Shadegg 202-225-3361 Rick Renzi 202-225-2315 Trent Franks 202-225-4576 Ed Pastor 202-225-4065 Jim Kolbe 202-225-2542 JD Hayworth 202-225-2190 Jeff Flake 202-225-2635 Raul Grijalva 202-225-2435 My rep is Shadegg, not sure where you all live but contact your rep. or better yet contact them all. HELP make this happen!!!!, we all remember what happened last summer when George bent us over, lets give him the same and put states rights back into the states hands, not George or his attorneys or the 9th Circuit. Thanks

RB, Ended my post before I could thank you, must have been sick of typing on that long winded post. Anyways, thanks for acknowledging us and the efforts we've put forth with the ADA. Thanks for at least considering getting involved with us, sounds like you already do some wildlife conservation work. There have been a couple others on this thread that have said they would like to get more involved if their time allows. All I would say is we'd love to have you or anyone else that has an interest, we could use the help. Personally I'd like to see some more coues people get involved to help us out with their knowledge of coues and their habitat and the Game management units that they hang out in. Some of the units you guys hang out in may have problems or need help & improvements in some way with water, habitat, predators or whatever it may be. If we had that knowledge and expertise in those areas through your insight and guidance we could do something about it. Anyways, thanks very much !

THE PRESIDENT SIGNED THE BILL IT IS NOW LAW !! Arizona and every state can now go back to determining their own fate. If you get the chance, thank your Senators and Reps. Go away George and USO

Redbeard, Just a few thoughts on some of what you have said. You stated that you never considered joining the ADA because someone told you that we were a bunch of self appointed leaders and had an elitist attitude. I believe I know who you are referring to and I can tell you that there are two sides to every story and you haven't heard both. I can assure you that everyone involved has their hearts in the right places and is in it for the right reasons and everyone is very down to earth and hard working with busy jobs & families etc. and all of us are stretched thin with lots of irons in the fire, much like alot of you. As far as I know we are the only organization that is trying to help our states deer herds and their habitat, while at the same time trying to hold the dept. somewhat accountable without totally pissing them off. We have supported them on lots of issues and differed on others and I'm sure we have, I know, we have pissed off or at least frustrated alot of Dept. employees while trying to help AZ's deer. You said in an earlier post that you've made posts a long time ago about managing the deer herd and still nothing has changed. You also said that we need to stand up and demand that the G&F does the right thing, we need to play hardball and get them on the run. I can assure you that NOTHING will change unless you and others get involved. Making posts on the internet probably isn't going to have much of an effect. I think everyone that loves coues deer and mule deer and enjoys hunting them should be a member of the ADA. We are fighting as hard as we possibly can for YOUR rights as AZ Sportsmen and as Women and as AZ deer hunters; and we are fighting as hard as we possibly can to improve AZ's deer herds and their habitat, given the limited resources and extremely limited manpower that we have. Did you know that throughout this state we have an estimate of close to, I believe, 500 broken and dysfunctional wildlife drinkers that the Dept. was unaware of? We made them aware of it and through a couple years and lots of hard work, meetings, frustration and sweat they now have a water program in place to fix or replace them. To be fair to the Dept., many of them are BLM owned, but a large percentage are owned by the Dept. We are also funding alot of the repairs and refurbishing of the Drinkers and trick tanks. Did you know that when Pres. Clinton created the Parashant Natl. Monument on the Strip, the Sierra Club in Partnership with the Grand Canyon Trust started a ad campaign to shut down the monumnent, close the roads, turn it into wilderness, severely limit access to our public lands? If you wanted to horseback in the monument they wanted your horse to be wearing diapers. We actively campaigned and opposed these steps. The Monuments status and use issue has yet to be determined. These are some of the issues we are facing and fighting to protect for you and other sportsmen and women. Unless you are a member or are in some way involved, these are issues that you are probably not going to hear much about. We need all of your help and without it we will fail and the issues and the wildlife that are so important to all of us will suffer and the politicians and beaurocrats will make those decisions for us.

Been very reluctant to jump into this fray, but here goes. I want people to care about our deer herds and their habitat as much as I do, as do most of our ADA board members. We want to see our deer herds do well and thrive and their habitat flourish. Tough chore given the current dry spell and conditions AZ and other western states have faced in recent years. Allen started a thread some time back asking for help for the ADA, (yes we need help!) asking people to get involved, come to meetings, join the board, help with the youth programs, fundraising efforts etc., etc., etc. -- That thread was supported by myself, Amanda, Stanley and Allen all with pleas for help. You would think this website would be a great place to solicit help for likeminded, passionate people that care deeply about our deer in this state and hunting deer - you would be Wrong! That thread received alot of hits and I think One response from someone offering to do some writing for our publication. My conversation with Josh stemmed from a phone call from me asking for help. Josh asked how he could help and asked what are some of the things the ADA is doing ? He offered his help and I told him about one of the efforts the ADA is working on with the G & F regarding the Kaibab deer herd. We have been in a frustrating (both sides I'm quite sure) struggle with G & F for several years over the Kaibab deer herd. We have strongly disagreed with them pertaining to the deer numbers and all the antlerless hunts that they offer up there. We learned that the Kaibab ( the most famous and potentially the finest deer herd on the Planet ) had never been surveyed at least not any kind of survey that would give them some kind of accurate numbers. Both parties agreed to work together to come up with a plan to learn more about the Kaibab deer herd and its current state. We funded a survey, spent alot of money on (dual count, helicopter, grid, blah, blah) a good sound scientific survey. Flew in late Nov. & also Dec. 04. The results of the survey showed 75% less deer than they thought they had in 12-A East, 75% less in 12-B, and 30% less in 12-A West. A LOT less deer than their computer model said they had. Bottom line is we are trying to work with the Dept. and they are trying to work with us to come up with some solutions. It hasn't been easy. One of the issues is carrying capacity on winter range, as CHD stated, and is there enough food up there for the deer to eat in winter? Many of you may remember the Bridger Knoll fire up there in 96', it burnt up alot of winter range habitat. Hopefully we will be working with the G & F Dept. and the Forest Service to do some re-vegetation which I believe is the responsibility of the Forest Service and it NEVER Happened. How come the Rodeo Chedisky fire got re-seeded? As Allen stated we are having a meeting up there in a couple weeks with the G & F and Forest Service, possibly BLM and our ADA affiliate chapter up there to hash all this out and come up with a plan. We will see what happens. Personally, I have hunted up there for 35 years and that country is near and dear to me and it is sad and hard to see what has happened to it. On one of my hunts up there some 12 years ago, guiding the auction tag holder, we kept track of all the bucks we saw in about a 3 week period. We saw over 1500 Bucks. I think if you spent a whole year out there now you would'nt you even come close to that number. Is all this drought related ? Is it being over hunted ? Is there not enough food? Is it predation? I don't know but I'd sure like to know and I'd like to help be part of the solution, and that is ONE of the things the ADA is pursuing. The Game & Fish believes in what they are doing and they are the professionals aren't they, we have to let them do their jobs. They also should be held accountable for their actions just as we all have to be. Just a couple more things in this long winded post - you guys need a group hug, I can guarantee you that those of you bickering are all good guys and are on the same side and we need to start working together. Guys, these deer truly need our help. I'm amazed at all the help the elk groups get - the Elk Foundation and the Elk Society - seing as how elk don't need our help at all, IMO, heck we've got elk running around Picacho Peak and expanding everywhere, while our deer herds are steadily heading south. I'm done.

Got word today that this bill (S 339 - HR 731), whatever the number is, passed the House yesterday and will be on the Presidents desk ready to sign in short order. Thanks to all who got off their @$$*$ to help your congressmen make the right decision. We will have our state back soon. So sorry George, ADIOS !!

Hey I'll take Madonna over Maude any day. When Jane Fonda was with Ted turner she was also a big bird hunter, that is one beyotch I would not go hunting with.

Thanks alot, Now I'm gonna have nightmares. That last one looks almost human with that eye lookin at us. Now I know why I won't go near the ocean.

Bump, BTT GET BUSY, GET ER DONE

BTW, PETA = POS, IMHO TY

Keith, Thanks for posting the links. You're right it is H.R.731. It must change numbers when it goes to the house, not quite sure how that works. But thanks for posting.