kidso

About 20 years when I shot my first Arizona black bear, I too knew nothing about skull size or measurements, but went to get the skull "scored" as a buddy at college kept asking me to have it measured. While talking with the scorer, he was intially impressed with the skull size and after I mentioned that it was my first bear he made the comment that most hunters will go their entire hunting career without getting a bear over 18 inches. I don't know how true that is, but that was based on his own experience as an official scorer. So, if skull size is the only "criteria" to consider here, then an 18 inch skull would be an impressive skull and as stated earlier, 20 inches will make the books. I had no idea that the measurement was simply calculated by adding up the length and width of the skull (top part; not the lower jaw). It is also interesting to note that if the outer curve of the skull's eye socket is missing from being shot out (this affects the skull width measurement), for example, then the measurement can only be made to the edge of the existing bone fragment and can not be extrapolated to where the missing bone would likely have been.

Get in there and harvest that lion before it eats up all the little piggies! Call that guy out and tag him!

Sweet. Go in there and get him!

Good job on the bear. Packing it out has to about kill you to make the adventure super rewarding! Way to finish it.

Here's a few more pics from my 23N game cams. I was hoping that my cams had not been destroyed or stolen...and they were fine. Had a few non-hunters on there too, but they just looked into my bucket and nothing more.

I have no idea if elk picture number one shows a break or not. I think picture 2 and 3 are the same bull and he might have a small antler tip broken off on the right side. I know little to nothing about bull elk as I have only ever hunted cows. I thought it was a cool elk picture in photo one, as I thought the bull was sniffing the female to see if she was ready to ovulate. I can post another pic or two of that photo a few seconds later and it may reveal a broken antler piece. Another kind of funny thing was that I took my laptop into the field to check my trail cams, as half the time I can not review my pics on a hand held digital camera. Anyways, I did find two hikers at one cam and they were respectful, and I think they never even saw the cam. When I got down to my LAST picture, however, I saw three hunters in camouflage who were doing some crazy dance ---for they realized they were on a trail cam. I thought that it was a respectful thing for them to do, acting silly versus vandalizing or stealing the cam. And then it hit me like a brick thrown into my head...those three crazy guys were us checking the cams! AND we were not doing a CRAZY dance! That pic is simply how we were snapped as we were moving in on the camera! Thus, if you ever see some crazy guy on your trail cams in camouflage doing a weird dance, think twice, as that WEIRD may actually be his NORMAL! My buddy and his son went up into 23N on Thursday to bear hunt. I joined them Friday night and we checked the cams. On stand one, Saturday morning, I called in a dark, dark brown colored bear. We were on one ridge of a small bowl and he was on the other. Only about 200 yards separated us, but he was into the oaks between us before my buddy's son could get off a shot. The bear was spotted at 19 minutes into the call. After 45 minutes, father and son went into the thickets looking for him, but the bear must have picked up something in the air, as it was swirling in the bowl. Stands two through four produced nothing and the fun time ended with a Powerade.

I have milk and Cocoa Puffs in the bucket. Actually, it is just water I scooped up from the creek with some twigs and leaves. The bear was not interested in either the water nor the mineral lick. He seemed to be interested in sniffing around where my rifle and back pack had been laid. When I came back today to get my trail cams, there was about four inches of water left in each of my buckets and it was a dark brown nearly black color. I'm not sure why? Maybe the elk backwash or something and it concentrates over time? I'll throw up a few elk photos that I also got on trail cams.

I checked my trail cams today in 23N. Had some cool bulls, does, and a bear on one cam, and received this surprise on the other cam!

Nice lion and bear. Wish you had a full body bear shot of that guy!

Those three that came closest to me were very pesky and did hang around. Other foxes that stoped around the 20-50 foot range took off and never came back, but the close ones didn't need much encouragement to hang around. They would pop up in bushes or on rocks and bark and me and circle partially around me and bark again...move to another vantage point and bark some more... and after a few minutes they finally left. They must be extra hungry, extra naive, or extra prideful when they come in that close that they end up sticking around a bit longer after being tricked. Who knows for certain? I'll let you know. I'm out tomorrow after work and a half day Saturday to check trail cams. I'll blow a few stands and see what comes in. I'll take the 12 gauge along in case a cat comes a-looking!

I've had that happen to me three times. Once the fox actually made contact with my boots before running off. A second time, I hit it with the stock of my rifle. The final time I threw a stick at it when I spotted it racing towards me. I was calling for bear and was not going to waste a shot on a fox. Two out of three times, the fox hung around for several minutes and gave me the obnoxious fox bark, which may have scared other predators away or alerted them to somehting suspicious in the area. Foxes make me nervous when they are around and I fear having to receive rabies shots. Now, I always place a few nice throwing rocks next to me before I ever start to call!

Nice job on the bear! That must have been the neatest thing to see that bear UP in the oak tree. I have seen broken branches high in the oaks and in a few other tree species, but have never seen a bear feeding up in the air. Neat expereince! What unit did you tag the sow? I almost forgot to ask, but do you have any sideways photos that you can post to show more of its color pattern from that angle? In picture 1, I can see a neat black patch on the hair, but wish you had a photo showing the bear's side to better reveal that pattern.

Yup. I recognize the blonde bears frolicking now that I see them. You have a nice place. I wonder how often the bears and lions take out the cattle. Reminds me of an area in 24A where three cattle were taken down in 10 days by bear. Wish I could get out there. Are you hunting your area for bear at all?

Thanks for posting the day bear pics. Did you measure any front pad widths in the mud?

Sweet bear. Is he a chocolate color? Can you post a daylight picture of that bear?

I trapped my spotted skunk the first three times with 9-Lives catfood from a can and the 4th magical time with a half-monster taco from Jack-in-the-Box, as I had forgotten my bait that day and had to sacrifice part of my lunch!

Nice spotted skunk. I once trapped one in a live trap about 20 years ago. I caught him three days in a row and told myself that if caught him again a 4th time, then it would be his destiny to become a mount. At the time, I was busy in grad school, so I threw him in the freezer and left him there for about 8 years. Needless to say, I actually HIT the scent sack while skinning him out with a slip of the scalpel and the beast sprayed me after being frozen for 8 years!!!! Yes, he may have been dead, but he certainly got the last laugh!! I'll post a photo of him in the taxidermy section for fun in a day or two. By the way, any more pics of the black bear?

OK. My buddy dropped off a couple dozen doves that he harvested last week and I remember reading about this recipie. In particular, I drooled over the thought of bacon-wrapped dove nuggets! So, I tried it out tonight! First, I de-boned the breast meat into two nuggets, per bird. Next, I soaked them in cold water for a mere five minutes to help draw out any remianing blood from the breat meat. After that, I placed them in a Zip-Lock bag with 0.5 cups white flour, 0.5 Tbsp salt, and 0.5 Tbsp black pepper and twirled the bag for about 3 minutes to ensure a nice coating of flour and spices on all sides of the breast meat. Then, I took each coated nugget and wrapped half a slice of smoked uncooked bacon around each one and placed them in a 9 x 13 glass cooking dish lined with tin foil. Finally, I baked them in the oven at 350 degrees for 35 minutes with tin foil wrapped over the top of the dish to keep in the moisture. However, after pulling them out of the oven, I decided to place some sharp cheddar cheese slices ontop of most of them and threw them back in the oven for about 2 minutes to melt the cheese. These babies came out like miniature dove-cordon-blues, or something like that...but they are truly DELICIOUS!! I'll definitely cook another round this weekend.

Sweet pics! That bear looks kind of strange, almost sheepish? Do you have more photos of that bear? I think the light is distorting what I am seeing.

Love the bear at 4:30 pm on 9/2, very cool colors! One of those bears swiped your feeder, you can see it wobbling in the photo. What do you have in it?

This is the Story of My Second Lion. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!!!! My portable alarm clock shouted louder and louder into my dreaming ears. It was 4:30 am. I rolled out of my sleeping bag and felt the chill of the cold mountain air run across my body. It was still dark all around me, except for the faint glow of light provided by the stars and fading moon hanging in the night sky. I was extremely excited because I was out hunting black bear in the rugged mountains of central Arizona with my good friend Brian. The area around us was full of deep canyons and rolling hills covered with prickly pear cactus. We hoped that some monster-sized bears would come down from higher mountainous elevations and venture forth into these lower rolling foothills to feast upon the ripening purple colored fruit of this succulent cactus. I quietly dressed in my camouflage hunting clothing that I had previously washed in a special detergent to remove human scent and ultraviolet colors that otherwise could scare away wild animals and alert them to my presence in the area. If I knew anything at all about bear hunting, I knew that they had very sensitive noses that could practically smell a human from a mile away. Thus, I had to be certain not to take any chances with my scent if I hoped to meet up with a bear today. So I then proceeded to spray myself with a bottle of scent killer to further eliminate any suspicious odors that I might be producing. My hunting partner then joined me and we quietly hiked away from our campsite along a four wheel drive road we had driven on the night before. It took us up a long mountain slope that worked its way along the ridge of a steep canyon. As we neared the canyon's edge, we peeked over to take a quick look below us and spotted a small brownish furry creature scurrying away into a thicket about 20 yards beneath us. We were not sure what is was, but it left us with a feeling of excitement, perhaps foreshadowing the thrill of what hopefully was to come. We walked just a bit further before sitting down on the ridge top. We both lifted our binoculars to our eyes and began scanning the canyon below us and sides of the steep mountain just across from us, which just happened to be loaded with prickly pear cactus just begging to be devoured by black bears. After glassing these areas for about 20 minutes with no success, I decided to use my predator call to see if I could entice any predators in the area to come around for breakfast. I proceeded to blow on my call for nearly 40 minutes with no apparent luck, so Brian and I decided to hike further up the canyon and try our luck again. After hiking about another quarter-mile along the canyon's edge, we eased ourselves quietly over its edge and seated ourselves on a hillside that had been cleared of trees and brush. It was risky to call from such an unprotected located that lacked good vegetative cover, but we decided to try it anyways because it gave us a nice view of the canyon beneath us. I commenced calling and within three to four minutes, I could hear Brian whispering something to me from his position about 10 yards off to my left. Because I couldn't understand what he was saying, I turned my head to face him. I still couldn't audibly connect with him, but I saw Brian's mouth forming the words "mountain lion." My heart skipped a beat and nearly stopped dead in my chest. Mountain lion, I repeated to myself. Where? I frantically scanned the topography that lay in front of me, but I could see no sign of the prowling feline. I searched again. Nothing. Nothing but rocks and brush. Inwardly, I started to panic. Where was the big cat? Another minute passed, and then Brian again whispered, "Mountain lion." Only this time, he added the dreaded words, "Should I take the shot?" My heart sank into darkness and despair. I badly wanted to shoot the cougar, but I had no idea where it was and I could not locate it for the life of me! I sadly and slowly forced out my hesitant reply, "Sure Brian. Go ahead and take the cat." I steadied my heartbeat and faced the terrain before me to watch for any sign of impact from Brian's shot, wherever it might strike, when ---BOOM!!! His rifle roared out like thunder clashing during an intense desert monsoon storm. Almost simultaneously with the loud noise, I observed a puff of dirt erupting 200 to 300 yards away from me in front of a large cedar tree on a down-sloping ridge. I immediately raised my binoculars to my face and glassed that exact spot while the dust was settling. Nothing. I saw no dead lion on the ground, nor any wounded cat limping or crawling away. I raised my binoculars ever so slightly higher and a twitching movement caught my eye. There, sitting on its haunches under an overhanging branch of the cedar tree was beautiful brown mountain lion, which was looking straight at me and wriggling its ears! Brian's shot had been about ten feet short of its sighted mark. I quickly told Brian with an excited voice, "You were short by ten feet. Raise your rifle slightly and shoot again!" BOOM!!! Once again his shot echoed like thunder in the canyon. And once again, I saw dirt spew up into the air as his bullet fell short of its intended target by merely two feet. "Short again, I whispered to Brain. Raise your rifle up a bit more." At this point, I opened my mouth in awe due to the fact that the devil cat had not fled the scene after having two bullets strike the earth directly in front of its position. As fate would have it, however, I dropped my jaw too soon, for the predatory feline began to walk out from underneath the cedar tree and began strolling along broadside in front of it. I immediately rushed out a pitiful shriek from the varmint call which stopped the cat in its tracks, if only for a brief moment. And in that instant, time seemed to stand still, although volumes of events unfolded before me. As I stared off towards the beautiful beast, I realized that it was currently beyond my comfort range for striking its kill zone with a well-placed bullet. But at that instant, I heard my wife inside my head repeating her proverbial phrase of, "You're going to miss all of the shots you never take." Almost immediately, my conscious whispered that if Brian could take shots at that range, then I certainly could at least make an attempt at it as well. My mind raced backwards in time to our drive up the four-wheel drive mountain road the previous night when our conversation actually centered on the physics of how bullets drop in elevation as distance away from the rifle barrel increases. I knew that the 220 grain bullet in my 30.-06 would fall before it hit the cat, but I had no idea just how far it would actually drop. I quickly raised my rifle, peered through the scope, placed its crosshairs about a foot above the lion's front shoulder, held my breath, and squeezed the trigger. Boom! My rifle bellowed my rifle like a Civil War cannon. I looked up just in time to see the great cat crash to the ground beneath him. Immediately, I excitedly began to shout, "I got him! I freaking got him! I shot the lion!" "Yeah you got him alright," said Brian. "Great shot." Just then, the mountain lion popped up from off the ground and began dragging its body downhill through some brush. As it was moving through the vegetation, I could clearly see that its back legs were dangling behind its body like dead weight and were in no way functioning to help propel the cat thorough the canyon. At that moment, I thought my bullet had struck its hip bones and shattered them, however, I would later find out that my initial shot had severed its spinal cord which actually paralyzed the rear half of the lion. There was no way this feline was going to from me, so I carefully watched it disappear into the tall brush about 30 yards away from where I first dropped it and patiently waited for it to reappear on the opposite side in the shorter vegetation. After scrutinizing that area for 20 minutes with my binoculars for any movement, I decided that the great cat had finally expired and was down for good. I began hiking across the canyon towards that thicket, while Brian stayed put on the hillside to guide me to the right location using our walkie-talkies. Nearly 20 minutes later, I arrived at the base of the cedar tree where I had previously struck the cat when it began walking away. I examined the ground while moving in the direction that the feline took on its flight out of the area and picked up its blood trail on the rocky ground. I immediately contacted Brian on the walkies to let him know I had a positive trail to follow, whereupon he begged me to sit on the site and wait for him to join me before proceeding further. Waiting the 10 minutes for Brian to join me on the pursuit seemed to be the longest time span I ever had to wait for anything in my life! Eventually, though, he made it over to me and we began to follow the blood trail over the rocks and through the brush. Following the lion was easy because it left large swaths of blood painted on the vegetation every five to ten feet and its dragging hind legs were overturning rocks and breaking branches along its exit route. I tracked the cat by following its exact trail through the brush, under limbs, and into thickets. It probably wasn't the wisest thing to do in retrospect, but I wanted that cat and I was not about to lose its sign anywhere. Brian, however, stood in a clearing with his rifle and provided what little cover he could to protect me from any wounded charging beast. Needless to say, when I was slithering on my belly like a rattlesnake under an overhanging cedar limb, Brian shouted out, "I see the cat!" My heart raced with adrenaline and fear and I began to panic, for I could not even raise my own rifle to defend myself if the situation required it. I quickly screamed out, "Where! Where's the lion?" Brian replied, "About 20 yards in front of you near the base of another cedar tree!" I scrambled out of the thicket as quickly as possible and saw pointing towards a cedar tree a bit lower on the ridge I was following down into the bottom of the canyon. It was then that I spotted the great cat. There it was 50 or so feet away from me lying on its back with one massive arm reaching up and clawing its nails into an overhanging branch as it struggled to pull itself up on all fours. Without a moment of hesitation, I raised my rifle and sent another bullet whizzing through the air to find its mark just behind the raised shoulder of the feline. The lion’s body whirled over from the impact and the cat took off running again through the brush. I could hear it crashing through the vegetation for a period of about eight seconds, which was followed by a one to two second soundless period, which immediately was followed by a tremendously loud splash. I raced down the hill without thinking of my safety and discovered that the wildcat had scurried through the brush to end of a rock outcropping that jutted about 15 feet above a small intermittently flowing creek beneath it, before falling off the edge and plunging into a deep pool below. The sight beneath me was almost surreal. There on the edge of a pool of green-blue water lay the enormous yellow-brown cat, with half of its body in the water, and half of it lying on the adjacent black basalt rocks. Already, blood was leaking through its wounds and tainting the opalescent water around it a dark scarlet color. I practically slid down the rocks and approached my cat. She was absolutely beautiful. I grabbed her by the front paws and heaved her from out from pool. Brian helped me carry her a few yards away to a fallen tree where we photographed our hard-earned prize. She was indeed an amazing beast, and I was filled with unspeakable exhilaration. As a hunter who predator calls exclusively for bear and lion, I can only hope for the opportunity to repeat this adventure again...but next time, I hope it will be with a monster-sized bear!

Great job on the lion! I also love Jim Hartsock's work at his studio. He has done one lion and one bear for me and is working on another bear. I love how he wrinkles the face! Here is the lion he completed.

That is a cool feeder that the bears are hitting. Is it something you manufactured or bought somewhere? It must be soild enough as the bears didn't rip it off the tree.

Did you see any bears at all during your hunt? Was their much left of the fox hide after smacking it with your .270? I shot a bobcat that came in with my .300 while calling bear and it blew his back out. I sewed it up and home tanned it and use it in my classroom for science lessons, but it sure blew out a large exit wound!

After 45 minutes, if I have not seen or heard any response, I move on. I start calling at just about shooting light in case something comes in quick and will keep calling 45 minute stands until about 11:00 on a clear day. On a cloudy day, I will call longer, and may not stop at all. I then begin recalling around 3:30 and keep going until dusk. So on a hardcore hiking bear hunt, I may call 6-8 stands, depending upon how far I hike between them. Like Reed said in his seminar..."stick to what works for you." I have called in bear with both the Tally-Ho and the T-Rex hand predator calls. I have tried several others, but they never produced bear or lion for me, personally. The Tally-Ho is open-reed so you can produce a wide range of vocables, which I do. The T-Rex is closed reed and I wail on that call like something being ripped into pieces! I once had a chocolate bear coming into a stand in the morning, when it winded us and turned uphill and out of decent rifle range. We watched it move up into a high thick part in a canyon and bed down. We moved into position around 3:00 pm and waited for it to come back down for an evening watering or snack. It started coming down about half an hour before dusk. We were laid up on a bench across a narrow part of the canyon he had entered and had scoped out several nice shooting lanes around 200 yards. When the bear was at about 700 yards, the canyon opened up with rifle fire as someone else started shooting at the bear from several hundred yards behind us and above us. They missed four times and bear disappeared. The only reason I share this is that the bear did come down the same basic drainage it used to work its way up the canyon in the morning. They can be creatures of habit.