rclouse79

You should have just rolled with it. Great marketing strategy I say.

I got drawn in the regular draw, and then helped my neighbor put in for a left over tag. He told me he got his tag in the mail already which made me start to worry because I have not see mine yet. Does everyone already have their tag? I am deciding if I should call the game and fish office.

You guys are brave. I was half expecting a ricochet or a pissed off cat to come flying out of that hole after you shot.

Chaching. Got mine.

Thanks guys, I can stop freaking out now. After having my credit card get cancelled right before the elk draw I was thinking maybe this was a year destined for bad hunting luck.

270

Do you already have 15x binoculars? Once I got a pair I sold my spotting scope on ebay, but I am not a big trophy hunter who need to judge antlers from a long ways away.

You should be able to kill something with that.

Has anybody found any H4350? I saw the Accurate 4350 at sportsmans, but I guess it is different enough from the H4350 that I would have to work up new loads.

I was sick of buying crap in the $30 to $40 range that would work some of the time. I also was not a fan of trying to get three AAA batteries in correctly in the dark. After some research I bought a zebra light headlamp, which runs on one AA battery and puts out 200 lumens. It is nice to have all of the electronics in your pack run on the same battery. If I just would have spent the $64 in the first place for a zebra light I would have saved myself a lot of money and headache.

I have been getting fired up for my first true attempt at a bivy hunt for elk this October. I weighed my pack fully loaded, minus food, and it came in at 49 lbs. I have been trying to cut as much weight as my budget will allow. A nice trick is to find one object that will serve multiple purposes. One piece of gear that was bugging me was my game bags. For elk you need four or five, and the ones I have take up a decent amount of space and weight. I had already decided I needed to man up and glass while sitting one the cold wet ground instead of bringing my nice cushy, and heavy, butt pad. During one of my sleepless nights I came up with an idea while my mind pondered over any conceivable pickle I might get myself into while hunting. I rolled up four game bags individually and wrapped all of them with a fifth game bag. I then cut the leg off an old pair of levis, which I found were the perfect size for the rolled game bags to just fit. I sewed one end of the leg shut with my wife's sewing machine and sewed Velcro strips one the other side to close it. It makes a better seat than a rock and weighs less than bringing my game bags and seat cushion. I have also: Switched to a cook pot that doubles as a mug/bowl Switched from a commercial cooking system to an alcohol stove made out of an aluminum beer bottle (that fits inside my mug/bowl/pot + windscreen + fuel + pot holder + matches) Switched from an ok tent to a good bivy and tarp Accepted the idea of one pair of clothes (minus undies and socks) Realized that my body is my most important piece of equipment. . . . and it is not something I can buy on Amazon as an impulse purchase a couple of weeks before opening day I know there are people out there smarter than me with more experience. Be a pal and throw some ideas out.

I am crossing my fingers that I don't get dumped on, but you have to be ready for anything.

I will be in Colorado October 12th at 11000 feet. I will be in a wilderness area where there are no roads. The last elk I shot was in unit 10 in December. We hung the quarters in a shady tree for three days while my buddy hunted. We did not put the quarters in a cooler and they were still frozen when we dropped them off at the butcher in Tucson. From what I can gather the weather at that elevation will probably be colder than unit 10 was at the beginning of December.

My plan is only to go in as far as the weather permits. If it is a normal year I think it will be cold enough to freeze the quarters during the night which means I won't have to hurry too much. If I get one I will quarter it, put it in game bags and hang it in a shady spot. I plan to pack out the backstraps and tenderloins inside my normal pack on the first trip out. At the truck I will have a pack frame to go back in for more. I also have a friend who does not have a tag but is meeting me to help glass and be a pack mule if we are successful.

I actually looked at these packs last night and there is no way they will be in this years budget. For this years hunting trip I will be using my Gregory Palisades pack. I know it isn't designed for hunting, but I have already loaded up with all of my hunting gear and it works fine. It is probably not designed for hauling out elk quarters, but that is what I have a pack frame in the truck for. I checked last night and the Palisades is $400 and is right under 5 lbs. The other packs might be better designed for hunting and a touch lighter, but for someone without unlimited hunting funds I will have to make due without the top of the line this year.

I put in for it my first year hunting coues because I didn't know any better and got drawn. I haven't tried since.

Sounds great. Give me a call.

I looked at some jackets made by this company on amazon and they all had above 4.5/5 starts, and the cheapest camo one I could find online was $100. Due to the hole I found while looking it over (pictured below) I will sell it for $25. Call Rob at six09 two924 if you are interested.

After a lot of playing around I have come up with a light weight cook set for backpack hunting that I am pretty happy with. I have gotten so many great ideas and advice on this site over the years I thought I would share for those who might be interested. First here is the outside of the pot I bought. It is a GSI minimalist, which sells for $24 at Sportsmans Warehouse. It has a 0.6 liter capacity. The main reason I like it is has a cozy which lets it serve as a pot, bowl, and mug. It comes with a cool orange silicone pot grabber and spork. Here is a view of everything packed. It fits quite nicely, but there is not much room to spare. I am also going to add a handful of strike anywhere matches. The top of the 4 oz Nalgene bottle fits perfectly inside the stove, which fits just barely inside the pot. I cut off an old wool sock to put around the windscreen so it does not scratch the inside of the pot. I put superglue around where I cut the sock to keep it from coming unraveled. After a lot of searching at the store I found two 1.7 oz shampoo bottles for fuel that fit perfectly. Taking all of the fuel bottles I have enough to cook two cups of water four times for Mt. House, and heat up two cups of water for coffee or tea four times. If you wanted to forego hot drinks you could make Mt. House 7 times before running out of fuel. I am sure on most of these Coues hunts you will probably be starting with warm water, and could actually get away with using less fuel. There are faster stoves out there, but one of the things I like about the alcohol stove is you can bring the amount of fuel needed for the trip. If you know you are only going out two nights, fill up the 4 oz container and leave the others in your truck. These stoves are also stupid lightweight, and have no moving parts which might break. I made the windscreen out of aluminum duct material from Lowes. You can pick up a big tube for $5. I folded each end over twice to make a latch to hold the windscreen together. I made to give about a ½ inch of clearance around the pot and made it tall enough so it would fit inside the pot and still leave enough room for the pot lid to close. I drilled ¼ inch holes in the bottom for air flow, but recommend a metal punch if you have it. If you type bud light alcohol stove in youtube there are a couple good videos that show you exactly how to make it. To operate the stove you simply pour denatured alcohol in the center and light it on fire. After 30 seconds to a minute the fuel in the outer chamber will get hot enough and jets will flame out of the holes. At this point you set the pot directly on top of the can. I actually made a few different types of stoves (that has been my addiction this past week). When you watch a video the person who made it will tell you the number of holes for the most efficient stove. The thing they don’t take into account is the optimal number of holes is determined by the pot size. The less holes you have the bigger the flame jet will be. One BL stove I made had the recommended 19 holes. I found that when I used this with my tiny GSI pot the flames shot past the outer edge of the pot, and one oz of denatured alcohol would only get cold water to 130 degrees. This exact same stove will boil water on a large diameter pot in 4:30. I tested another stove with 32 holes on the gsi pot and found it would get the two cups of cold water in the GSI pot to 180 degrees with one oz of fuel. I was still seeing flames come out over the bottom of the pot so I decided to make a stove with 40 holes. This seemed to work perfectly. When viewing the pot at night there was a nice blue glow coming out from the windscreen, but no flames were dancing up the side of the pot. I am sure 40 is most likely not the optimal number of holes, but I was able to get water to 200 degrees with 1 oz of fuel which is good enough for me. One trick I came up with for drilling the holes is to take the circumference of the bud light aluminum bottle and divide it by the number of holes. Then I drew a straight line the correct distance below the top of the can on a piece of paper and put marks at the correct spacing using a pair of calipers. The holes are not perfect, but are close enough for government work. I had some trouble finding these bottles, but finally located them at Walgreens. I don’t know if anybody will feel like playing around with alcohol stoves but if so be warned that it is fun and addicting. I plan on taking this setup on my elk hunting trip this October.

I bought razors edge knife sharpener. Thought it was pretty cool until I bought a havilon knife. Now all those other ones I sharpened stay at home or in my truck.

Number 7 made me smile. I pretty much stopped drinking beer while on the boat because most of the year it is so dang hot you just end up dehydrated, tired, and not wanting to fish. I have a buddy on the other hand who goes on a drinking trip while I go on a fishing trip. He sees how many beers he can drink while I see how many fish I can catch. The last time we went to Rosey I was so into the fishing I didn't pay much attention to what he was doing. When we got back to camp he had darn near finished off an entire case. I guess he holds his liquor pretty well to not even be noticeably drunk. I think I would have fallen off the boat and drowned if I drank that much. It seems like most people do not judge you as a problem drinker by how much alcohol you consume, but by how you act after consuming it. I have had friends who just don't mix with alcohol at all, and others who are all smiles and good times.

I didn't see any snakes, but I did notice two black beetles with orange tipped antenna. I thought they were cool and tried to take a picture of them. When ever I would get the camera closer they would keep rotating to turn their rear end towards me. Then one shot a fine spray out of its butt onto my arm. I figured they were probably some rare poisonous beetle and I was about to end up on the show "1000 ways to die", so I left them alone. Does anybody have an idea what they are? I will attach a pic, but it isn't very good due to my uncooperative subject.

I really enjoyed this hike, even though its main purpose was training for my high elevation elk hunt. I started out at Catalina State Park (2700 ft) at 5 p.m. last night. I hiked until 9:30 which put me at the top of Romero Canyon where I camped. I hit the trail again at 6:30 a.m. and made the top of Mt. Lemmon (9100 ft) by 9:30. Then I walked down to the Iron Door Resaurant by the Mt. Lemmon Ski resort for a well deserved meal. The sandwich I had was great, and I highly recommend stopping in for a bite if you are up there. Thank you to my wife for meeting me for lunch and giving me a ride back down. I don't think my legs had another 12.3 miles in them even if it was downhill.

burpee

I am convinced burpees are the single best exercise on the planet. I started out doing 5 every minute until I could get to an hour. Now I just go to a max of 30 minutes, but add one burpee per minute each time I hit half an hour. Right now I am at 9 burpees per minute for 16 minutes. I am having a competition with my brother, which keeps me going. The other day he did 18 sets of 9 which is going to suck to beat. After you have done burpees until you are about to pass out, nothing else seems hard in comparison. It is unbelievable how much harder it is when you add one more burpee per minute. Hopefully this self torture will pay dividends when I am hunting elk at 11000 feet this October.