Coach

Can't wait to hear how it goes! Should be a great year for horn growth. Best of luck!

Beautiful rifle there. Bump.

Guess my scopes don't have parallax adjustment, lol. Maybe I haven't caught up with technology and 600+ yards with the latest scopes and rifles really is a "chip shot". I do appreciate the constructive feedback.

How awesome is that? What an amazing hunt and story. So happy for you two to have that experience. Thanks for sharing and huge congrats.

Great buck! Nice job making a clean shot and finding him.

Might be my last post on this, but have you ever lined your gun up on a bench as solid as you can and just move your head around to see how the sight picture changes? As you move around without touching the gun the crosshairs move with you while the gun is still pointed at the exact same spot. My point is, if you don't have the ability to line up exactly the same each time - cheek weld, head and neck position, you aren't even aiming at the same spot consistently. People spend years just learning this - off a bench. To go in the field and and replicate that one thing - having your eye aligned exactly as you had practiced is a tough skill to master.

It is really great to hear from so many people on here that have realistic expectations and really know what their limits are - great job putting ethics ahead of ego. For those of you who acquire the ability to take long shots and understand all the variables that go into it, kudos. To those who choose not to take a shot your aren't confident in and get closer - also kudos. To the ones who want to go "fling lead" or "fling arrows" without proper preparation or respect for our animals, please take up golf.

+1 on the borax. I usually put it in the water I'm boiling the skull in and it really helps dissolve/soften tissue. Then a brush or pressure washer removes it from those hard to reach places pretty easily.

Yeah this has been a disturbing trend for sure. MOA at a thousand yards is a ten inch group and there are not a lot of people who can consistently shoot MOA in field conditions. Honestly, I haven't seen many people who can consistently shoot sub-MOA off of a bench with no wind. My guess is most of these people bought an expensive gun and a box or two of factory ammo, sighted it in at 100-200 yards and printed out some ballistic chart. Most of them probably would miss by feet on a realistic, in the field shot over 700 yards. I'll be the first to admit - I reload and shoot a lot and I wouldn't shoot over 500 yards with any of my rifles. That's just my personal limit based on what I feel comfortable and confident with. There are some very skilled shooters out there who put in the time and practice to be able to confidently make 700- 1000 yards shots, but IMO they are few and far between.

Great deal for someone.

That is a beautiful buck - congrats to you and your wife! I hope the full story is coming!

Great story and hunt! Those are some absolute stud bucks. Just to see one like that is tough - going 3 for 3 on bucks of that caliber is absolutely amazing. Great job!

Wowzer - two amazing bucks. Especially for the early hunt. Those guys don't move around much this time of year. You two definitely know how to hunt the big boys. Great job and huge congrats to you both on some awesome bucks.

Great buck. Congrats!

Great thread - and lots of great responses so far. I too love to hunt a wide variety of animals. When I'm hunting elk, that's all I can think about. Same with antelope, and mule deer, even javi's and turkey. There's just something special about coues deer that keeps us addicted. The beauty of the habitat they live in, their elusive nature - as others have said how they tend to appear from nowhere and disappear just as quickly. I think if I had to choose one thing that makes hunting coues different is how it really makes you challenge yourself to slow down, really think like a deer. You get up super early, hike harder, glass longer and push yourself. You find yourself in places few people are willing to go, see things most people will never see and experience a challenge that only coues hunters love for its sheer difficulty. You can go days on end, working hard, glassing hard and still go home empty handed. But when it all comes together, you know it took hard work, skill and usually a little luck to find a buck you know has outsmarted a lot of hunters, lions and odds to become a mature buck.

Great hunt and great write-up! That bear is HUGE!

Very cool video! Awesome job.

Nice job getting those young hunters hooked - huge congrats to them!

What a great looking buck! Huge congrats to your son!

Heck of a buck! congrats to the hunter.

I waited a long time to finally hunt AZ antelope (19 BP). Drew unit 9, which has some great bucks. My plan was to go up early and learn the area. The first thing I learned was, it's a really big area. I got up there Tuesday before the hunt, got camp set up right in the middle of the unit just NW of Red Butte. I figured from there I could hunt the whole unit. Drove around a little and it was not what I expected - great elk country, not what I thought of for goat country. The first night I had elk bugling right outside my wall tent, which was pretty awesome. A little bit of light rain, but nothing major. I had elk hunters with just a couple days left buzzing around camp and Wednesday morning from my first glassing spot found a stud bull walking around in the open, bugling - I just kept thinking I was going to see him get shot. Pretty much from that point forward it was nothing but super heavy rain, hundreds of miles of super muddy roads each day, hard to glass. Skipping forward, by Thursday night, hours before the opener, I had been all over and still hadn't seen a shooter. One area I really liked was like a zoo - probably 20 trucks in a 10 mile stretch. I opted to go to a different area, but the storm coming through was going right over that area. Opening morning looked like this: That's my truck from about 75 yards away. I hiked up a hill to get a better view and it looked like this - Those bumps sticking up are miles away and it's like a lake of clouds. Visibility is limited, to say the least. As the fog started to lift I found some goats just under 700 yards off. I knew the plan was working. As I scanned from one to the next, all 8 turned out to be does or tiny bucks. The plan worked, I was in the right place, and the goats were there, only no shooter bucks. I continued to glass and found 2 more groups but they were WAY far off, but I hiked off the hill to drive and get closer. As I drove to where I could see them better, I bumped into some guys out there and, wow, were they loaded with optics. One guy had Kowa Big Eyes, another had 2 Swaro 65mm spotting scopes set up on a mount like binocs, and finally the young girl they were hunting for pulls out an 85mm swaro spotter. Nicest guys ever, but it was obvious they could outglass me all day. The 2 groups I had seen from the top of the mountain, they had pegged from ground level, and as soon as I drove to within range to see if there were any good bucks in those groups, they were right behind me. That evening I went up to Red Butte and glassed from the lower tower and found a huge group of antelope, but couldn't tell if there were any bucks in the herd - they were so far off all I could see through 15x swaros were bodies. I set up a plan - where to drive to (3-4 miles) how to hike in and get in range. About an hour later, I'm inside 400 yards of the herd, everything worked out exactly as I planned - all but one thing. Out of 14 antelope, not one was a mature buck. Now I'm down to the last couple hours of light and trying to make a plan. The West side was totally filled with hunters, the one herd I thought would hold a shooter didn't. As I was driving out, I was texting a buddy who had loaned me his wall tent and asking how the hunt was going. All of a sudden, 2 bucks run across the road in front of me. The first one, all I could see was mass, so I pulled over grabbed my rifle and tried to get on one. The first one - the one with the mass paused at the top of the hill. He was facing away but I had enough body for a shot, and BOOM, he dropped right in his tracks. Turns out it was 188 yards offhand. The bad news was he kind of dipped his head to scratch and because of the angle, the bullet went in his right flank, out just above his left armpit, into his left eye and out the top of his head. Somehow I hit every major organ in that goat including his brain, and did not hit any big muscle areas. But it did break his good side from the pedestal. The other side had a completely broken off cutter. I'm going to do what I can to reconstruct what he would look like with the cutter intact and, well not getting shot through the head, lol.

Happy Birthday, Amanda. Looks like you are having a great day.

How much for the bananas? JK, great prices. Might be interested in the rest for my son - gotta see if it's in his budget. Will you ship?

Good luck to everyone with an AZ coues tag. I get to go too this year, but in NM in about 6 weeks. Should be fun to see what the 6.5 does if I can get an opportunity. So far it has killed on every hunt - first was a 400 yard shot by my son on a muley - right through the heart. Then on my Antelope unit 9 hunt, again flawless. Glass hard, and remember they don't usually move around much this time of year. It takes patience, and don't forget about that 12 O'clock stretch or moving from one side of the tree to the other as the sun changes angles at mid-day.

Great machine, and priced right, IMO. Bump for a good deal for someone. Spent the day in the high country of unit 1 and 27 with the whole family in our 06 ranger. Great day, saw some bomber bulls that made it through the archery and rifle hunts.