.270

oh dang, you really told me. hunt in subdivisions if you want. i don't want to. take whatever shots ye want. i don't care. but i still think it's a dumb, lazy way to hunt. and if ya read what i wrote, i said i didn't know what the law said as far as bows. far as i know, there is no rule there. as far as your dog getting et by a lion. lions are everywhere. my dad's next door neighbor got bit by one last year while he was feeding his cats. i kinda doubt if this dummy baited in a lion by feeding deer. the lion was there because of a buncha reasons. anyway, if you think you're managing the herd by shooting tame animals in somebodies neighborhood, go ahead. have fun doing it. give us all a bad name if ya want. i'll just cruise by on my way to the hills and leave all the pet deer for you. Lark.

if you choose to have limitations, that's fine. personally, i don't want any. and also, personally, i feel like a lot of the stuff that folks are using these days are going to eventually have a lot to do with hunting going away. the % of the population that hunts goes down every year. but the number of hunters goes up slightly, because so does the population. they aren't making any more land. we have what we have, and accessible land, public and private, goes down every year. the west is in a drought. but if you really look at it, the west is always in a drought. outside the rockies, it's pretty much a desert. there are some places, like the olympic rain forest and the sierra nevadas that get rain, but they are another story all together. game and fish departments don't manage wildlife anymore, for the most part. they manage a budget. the look for dollars to run their business. and they let out too many permits and allow things like elk running off the deer population, predators number to get too high, endangered species work, importing non-native species, manipulating permits so more non-residents can get drawn, etc., etc. to take precedence over real wildlife biology and management. all these things add up to, or subtract, as the case really is, less quality hunting opportunity. game numbers, land availabilty, permit numbers, all go down every year, while the amount of folks that want to hunt stays the same or creeps up slightly. throw in 800 yard rifles, range finders, big binoculars, trail cameras, quads, 15 guys with one guy with a tag, folks hunting in subdivisions, feeders, governor tags, etc., and things really get muddied up. personally, i feel that folks oughta get out and hunt as hard as they can. try to get closer than half a mile. learn how to track and use the wind. develop some real hunting skills. not technical stuff. the stuff that makes the hair on the back o' your neck stand up when you realize you're close. the stuff that makes your heart beat so hard you don't know what to do. don't be some emotionless sniper. i have good optics. i have some cannons that will shoot a long ways. load my own ammo. know how to shoot. my kids have rifles with scopes on em that together cost more than most pickups i've owned. i love to shoot long ranges. at pigs and coyotes and targets. and i will shoot a long way if i have to. but i don't think that it should be what a guy sets out to do. and you don't need a dang elephant gun to shoot a coues deer. as far as glass houses, them windows were broke out years ago. actually, i shot em out. i can't go like i once did. but i still go as hard as i can. i like to see folks hunt and take their kids hunting. now i'm going the other direction. i take my dad hunting. he's too old and beat up to do much, but he does what he can. and he can still dot an i from a fair piece. and i still learn from him. if you want to be impersonall and not get to know your prey, fine. but not me. i chose to hunt with stealth and experience. if you can't , or won't, get closer than across a canyon from what you're after, i feel sorry ya. ya don't know what you're missing. and i can kill anything, anytime, anywhere, with a .243. Lark.

shut up and go practice the banjo. Lark.

what was that guys name? outofthecloset or outhouse, whatever. superhero? nope, just a hunter. some o' you guys act like whitetail are some mystical thing that takes a cannon at 600 yards. if i see a deer too far away, i get closer. and i will take a long shot at a running animal if that's all i get too. don't matter to me. i just hunt. don't have to pack some 15 pound thing with laser sights and a tripod either. i have a bipod. seldom use it. i didi use it on a goat in colorado last year. had it on my rifle when i shot a big muley there too. but didnt' use it. i was only shooting about 50 yards. because i can sneak. no range finder. no calibrated scope. if you have to have all them crutches, that's fine. but i don't need em adn don't tell me that i do. and i could kill anything in north america with a .243 if i had too. and not even worry about it. because i can shoot and i can hunt. to say a .243 ain't enough is absurd. to say any reasonable center fire ain't enough is even more absurder and to say you have to have a .300 mag to hunt whitetail is plum goofy. i don't care about crosswinds, big canyons, whatever. because i can shoot. sorry if you can't, but maybe with a little more practice and a lot more experience, you can get proficient. in the mean time, i guess you'll hafat use the trainer wheels. Lark.

donnie, state law says no shooting firearms within 1/4 mile of an occupied structure, unless you have permission of the folks in the house. don't know what the rules are for archery. you also can't be within city limits and in some cases, like alpine, can't even be in the area. if you wanna shoot around where people live, go ahead, but don't call yourself a hunter anymore. all you're doing is shootin' semi-domesticated animals that ain't afraid o' people anymore, and bringin' unwanted publicity on yourself and everyone else with a hunting license. legal don't mean right. and like i've said before, if you have to have a tape measure to see if you're legal, you ain't doin' right. Lark.

maybe all o' them guys were brush beaters, bangin' on pots and pans to herd it to where the hunter was sittin'. sorta like how the britishters useta hunt tigers in india. put a couple hunnerd indians out there to drive the tiger to yer elephant. if a couple indians got et, well that was ok too. personally, i don't like the photos where there are so many guys that you can't see the animal that got shot. what did the hunter/shooter do? i bet he didn't leave his house until they called and said they had him figgerd out. Lark.

this stuff scares the crap outta me. if you think arnold is liberal, look at this guy we have for a gov. again, don't drink the koolaid. Lark.

sounds like a lotta guys have elmer keith-itis or craig boddington disease and think ya hafta have a elephant gun for everythng. except elephants. then ya use a whale gun. it's sorta like the short guy/big truck syndrome. i almost said the .243 would be the better choice, but am too biased with the .270 to do it. my kid killed a nice one at about 20 yards with his bow the other day. it ain't near as hot as a .243. couse deer seldom weigh a 100 pounds. they ain't hard to kill. knockdown means absolutely zilch, especially with couse deer. unless you're a totally lame hunter and can't get within a couple hundred yards, anything will work well. depends on how good o' hunter you are. my ol' man laid a lotta bucks down with a .30/40 krag, a .30/30 and a .348. no lazer sights or range finders either. but then again, he's a good hunter. . Lark.

the endangered species act ain't about endangered species recovering. as soon as one does, they want new rules to keep em endangered. it's about getting anyone off the land that huggers don't want. after they outlaw hunting anywhere the condors might want to perch, and they will do it if folks sit by and watch, then they'll outlaw cattle bacause they have too much cholesterol and the buzzards are gettin' clogged arteries. then they'll outlaw anything off of the pavement for some other reason. it's all BS guys. look at the entire edangered species program. nothing is true. this california law even outlaws copper bullets because they have traces of lead. heck, probably any metal has traces of lead. they just stopped hunting with a firearm anywhere these buzzards show up. and Az. is next. and the azgfd is complicit, because they actually lobbied to get em here. this ain't a good deal and folks best wake up to it. next will be arrows. when this was hashed out in the political section i couldn't believe how many people were all for it. "Oh, ok, we'll just use barne's bullets. what's the big deal?". it's a shame when any animal dissappears or gets to the point that they might. but once it happens, there ain't much anybody can do about it. look at what these guys do. they've been trying to close off vast areas of southeast Az. for years over some desert snail that only lives on a few acres. it's the only place it's found. but they think it might expand it's territory if they close off more country. no one knows if they were ever found anywhere else or not. they want to bring alaska gizzlies and turn em loose on the blue. now there's some good news. spotted owls, gosshawks, shrews that never were here, fish that never lived in the waters they are protecting for them. makes me sick. now bill says they want to turn these buzzards loose by rodeo? it's a ploy. just a tool to pry folks off of the land. last thing they want is for condors or any other endangered species to actually thrive, because then they lose control. don't drink the koolaid. Lark.

you probly all text while yer drivin' too.........Lark.

either one is fine, but if i was you i'd sell em and get a .270. Lark.

what the heck would all you guys do without alla them 'lectronic gadgets? 'lectric maps, 'lectric range finders, 'lectric cameras, 'lectric gps's, etc., etc., etc. dang, whatever happend to huntin' skill? ya ever hear of thinkin' to yourself, "he's under that rock by that tree"........? how much does all this stuff weigh anyway? Lark.

i just never miss. unless it's a javelina. Lark.

scrooyoo conspiracy theorists, that is about the coolest photo i've ever seen. Lark.

have a nice trip. so are you as old as me yet? birthdays are nice until all them candles set off the sprinklers in your house. once we were campin' on my mother in law's birthday and they made here a cake but didn't have any candles. i told her we couldn't put that many on the cake because the forset circus would figger there was a forest fire. told her to blow out the campfire instead. she didn't think it was funny. have nice annual celebration of the day you was borned. Lark.

guys, it don't matter if it was 100% legal. only thing that matters is how it is percieved. the news is always gonna take a negative slant. on anything. crisis sells stories. the thing to do is, don't hunt around houses. every year in the late elk hunt in u1 i dodge nice bulls on the roads in town, getting up to the mountains. ain't no way i'll hunt like that for 2 reasons. 1. you might get busted or worse yet end up on the news or in the papers, and B., it ain't huntin'. Lark.

i send my boys over there to drag it out. works real well............Lark.

hate to say i told ya so, but get ready, we're next. and to think there were folks on this site just last week that were all for this..........Lark.

we were in 27 this weekend and the youth hunt was going on. it was cool seeing guys with their kids out chasin' deer and campin' and all them dadly sorta things. but we saw a couple deals that really yanked my chain. saw a young girl with a nice 3x3 muley she shot friday morning. sunday it was still hanging, in the sun, with the hide on it. it was pretty warm. way too warm to leave the hide on a deer all day, much less for at least 48 hours. i bet they say how "gamey" it is when they eat it. fact: rotten meat don't taste good. that's why bears just lick off all the maggots and wait for more. saw another kids that killed a little forkhorn coues. they skinned it and put a game bag on it and hung it in a tree, and promptly, but where it was it spent a lot of the day in the sun too. it mighta made it ok, but why chance it? they went to all the work to go hunting, got a deer, skinned it right out and bagged it up nice, why not make a little more effort to make sure it's gonna taste good? here's a news flash, when you shoot something, skin it as soon as you can. when it's hot, skin it even sooner. and try to cool it down. hang it up at night when it's cool, lay it down and cover it up in the shade in the day time. how long does it take to skin a deer? half an hour if ya take your time? how long does it take to take good care of one in the field? maybe a half an hour a day? hunting is a real blessing. treat it that way. Lark.

anybody who thinks there isn't as much "sport" in running a bear with houds, has never done it. the hardest work i've done is trying to put a big mean bear up a tree. you can putt around with dogs on a box and try to wind youngsters from the road, and might occassionally cross a big bear track, but probably wont' catch it. you can do the same after a fresh snow for lions and be quite successfull. if you wanna see how tough you are, get on a horse, or on foot is you're really tough, in rough country and try to tree a big bear. they can cover more rough country faster than you can imagine. and a mean one will just lay up and rest and wait for the dogs to catch up so he can whip the heck out of em and run some more. don't ever cut houndin' a bear short. sometimes you can tree one quite easy, but seldom. most of the time you're in for a race like you've never seen, and plan on doctoring dogs. Lark.

a real good taxiedermist i know of says to put em in the freezer for a year. just in the freezer. don't wrap em in anything. he said worked better than any of the tanning processes. Lark.

nobody cuts game right. deer, elk and pronghorn need to be thin for my liking. so we cut our own. i worked as butcher as a kid and know how. we have a really big grinder and a tenderizer. with these new plastic tubes for hamburger, it ain't much trouble. you can take big ol' tough round steaks of an ole buck or bull and run em throught the tenderiser and make a heck of a good steak out of em. Rusty's in springerville does a good job and takes a lot of care with it. i've taken em to southwest out in QC and they do real good too. but nobody takes the time to cot the steaks thin enough. anymore we do the vaccuum pack foodsaver deal instead of paper to wrap it too. stacks up nice and keeps real well. it doesn't take long to make up the price of the grinder either. ain't elk 60 cents a pound now? i know i wouldn't cut them dirty shot up things for less. Lark.

read in the paper today that Doc Hamman died. he was a chiropractor in safford for years. for many years he had the world record typical archery coues buck. musta killed it in the 50's or early 60's. the rack hung in the old western auto store forever. when i was a kid i used to always go in there just to look at it. it was a big 4x4 + eyegurads. seems like it was 110-ish. a guy named Kouts had the world record typical b&c coues for many years in safford too. used to always find an excuse to go in his cabinet shop to look at it. anyway, another ol' whitetail hunter is down. Lark.

somehow you were holding it different. something was touching the barrel or it could have been just from unsecured recoil. or you may flinch a little different in the different positions. when you have one on a bench in a rest, it is usually quite secure, especially if it is strapped into the rest. the weight of the rest can affect the recoil pattern, which will affect where it hits. best thing is to get the gun deadnut zero'd on a solid rest on a bench and learn how to get the same results from different positions. unless there is pressure on the barrel, a different rest will not affect the zero of the rifle. it might affect how you shoot it and where you hit with it, but it won't have any affect on the correlation between the scope and the barrel and how it is sighted in. i can tell by reading your stuff that you shoot a lot and know what you're doing. but it sounds like it's just the difference in how the different rests affect you. Lark.

i'm still afraid that sometime in pig season i'll be drivin' down the road and there will be poor bullwidgeon hangin' in somebodies camp..........i like how when folks shoot a little bear they always have a big story about how it almost got em. "it was him or me"!!! poor bears. Lark.