elkhunter

If it's warm then they can move quite a bit overnight. I always like to watch the pigs until I see them bed down under a tree before leaving them to find them in the morning. Alot of times in the last few minutes of light the pigs will cover quite a bit of distance to go to their "known/usual" bedding spots. I have seen pigs run nearly thousands of yards from their feeding spot when the sun went down to their bedding grounds. Again every herd is different!

Dad has the archery tag again and going for his 11th pig in 11 year with only stick and string, according to statistics and probability starting in 2004 when he bought his bow, he had a .00058% chance of going 11 years straight with success, well he beat it today! (Sorry cmc! Smaller than 1%!) Yesterday he went out with mom and surprisingly saw a hunter in a canyon we have never seen anyone else in! Pops saw 1 juvenile running and that was it, most likely this hunter spooked the herd. Today we went out in the same spot knowing they would move back to home area after 24 hours like they always do. Again found hunters, the same one as yesterday and both were sitting in the middle of the home feedin spot (300 yds by 800 yds) our best bet is that thy saw the herd yesterday and today they decided to sit down and wait in the spot they spooked them from yesterday. We did however find half the herd but they were highly skittish and we let em go, let em find the rest of their family. The hunters sitting in the feeding area never saw those pigs, hopefully it's not a member on this site! We opted to go find the large herd that's a few canyons over, since there were a fair deal of hunters and road traffic I brought up to my pops that the pigs will be on a certain hill for sure. As we climbed the ridge I looked at the hill I called out earlier and boom there they are! The wind was blowing good, 15-20 mph, we circled around and worked our way downward to the herd. A unsuspected pig above us to our right about 40 yards caught our movemen and busted down the hill takin everyone with him, well almost everyone! As we watched the herd slowly walk up the opposite ridge I noticed a pig at the bottom of the canyon walking away from the herd to a saddle on our left, maybe 200 yard hike and he could intercept the pig crossing over, Pops made a quiet beeline to the saddle and I witnessed a miracle, this pig was 100 yards away and walked away from the saddle and right to my pops, he went behind a mesquite at 35 yds, pops went into full draw, pig is at 32 yards, 25 yard pin at the top of spine and 35 yard pin above the sternum and let er release. I never saw the arrow, neither did pops, the pig however jumped at the shot and slowly ran away, that was my first sign of a hit, we marked the spots and looked for the arrow, when I found it it was covered in dry blood, pops said that's the arrow he shot his pig with last year and that my mom no longer lets him wash bloody arrows in the dishwasher. We looks at the arrow and there was no wet blood, it did not smell and the broadhead had dust on it but nothing wet, all signs of clean miss right? Well about 15 yards away I find a microscopic spot of blood, so small I saw it an lost it. Moving farther away the blood trail became serious and blood coming ou solid both sides of the trail, another 40 yds with my pops to my right quietly looking around, I see an object inside a thick overgrown mesquite 8 ft away I use my binos to confirm it's the pig, looked at my dad and screamed 'dead pig!' I swear he was spooked and started to draw his bow haha, the pig was hit high under spine, that explains the lack of blood the first few yards, once his belly filled up with blood the heavy trail began, thanks to slick tricks! No self timer

9 coues, 12 pigs and 3 elk

Can't believe it ate the rabbit head, that's just awesome

Awesome, this story makes me wish I could hear on the phone so that I could hear the story first hand!

Have a small order of hoodie and full zipper hoodie, can't go wrong and it's profit for the website

Sweeeet!

Congrats!

No 34b lope tags! Ouch!

Congrats!

I forgot to mention, the pig was blind in one of his eyes and that eye was the one facing my pops, pops was literally standing in the wide open

Lmao !

When I drew this tag I came up with a goal that I wanted to harvest a buck that had age to him, big bodied and billy goat lookin. I had plenty of time for this hunt and was willing to go home empty handed if I didn't find a mature buck over 5 yrs old. First day I took my 2 yr old son out with me and only turned up an 85 inch buck at 3 yrs old, not what I wanted. 2nd day of hunt I got fogged in at the top of the mountain so pops and I moved lower, glassed up a rutting buck, young body and great rack right at 93-94, not what I wanted. Later in the day found a group of of 3 bucks and one of em was a decent 100 inch buck, problem was he had no gut and looked perky and young. Looked him over for an hour and decided to pass, at this point my dad is wondering what is going on. Yesterday headed out again before sunup, began glassing and spotted bucks and does everywhere. a lot of bucks in 80's and 1 buck about 95-97 but still no age. I caught a glimpse of a buck moving through thick cover downhill and saw his old body and his rack looked to be a 2x2, pops stayed behind as I moved up the mtn to see if I can find him again and get a better look at him. Once at the top, I glassed for an hour and 40 minutes and can't find the buck but found 2 other bucks and 8 does all bedded within 200 yds of me. I was ready to head down the mtn back to the truck when I decided to do one last thing, I pulled out a mule deer grunt tube from the bottom of my pack that I have never used before and started grunting, only once or twice per minute, no need to scare the deer just wanted them to stand up, 5 minutes later I found him at 158 yards! I looked him over through the 15's and thought he still looked young but had sign of age, maybe 5-6 yrs old. At this point it's midday and I had hiked 1600 ft in elevation to check him out, I decided I would be ecstatic to have this buck, knowing he waaaa slightly above 100 and has age to him. At the shot he dropped and rolled down the mtn a good distance and got hung up good. I really enjoyed this hunt, no pressure, plenty of free time (Christmas break for teachers) and got to see about 30 bucks in only 3 days of hunting and for the first time in my life I passed up 100 and 90 inch bucks! enjoy the pics!

Good work! Good to see more 3x3 coming from fort!

Here's more dark antlers, I didn't think he was that dark until I compared him to my other two large and older bucks, wow what a difference! Habitat is the main change between dark and light antlers (my best guess)

I just bought this rifle 3 months ago for my dec hunt and shoots awesome for out of the box, I got a remington 700 in 270 wsm topped with vortex long range scope, 6.5 inch group at 500 yards. I shot my coues buck at 158 yards and saw him drop before the recoil, it shattered both shoulder blades and left heck of a blood trail down the mtn, no doubt it's an elk rifle, a 130 grn Hornady sst at 61.5 grn 4350 flies right at 3200 Fps, that's pretty deadly compared to 300 win mag 180 grn flying at 2800 Fps! When I draw an elk tag I am using my 270 wsm no doubt. Probably with a copper bullet or full jacket though

Awesome buck

Wow!

Thanks again!

Great buck, congrats!

Dark antlers!

Scooter- it sure is! All fall season I watched my students kill whoppers and finally my turn came

AZkiller- YES! Unit 32 how did you ever figure that out?!

Got the skull boiled down and meat cut up today, quite a bit of meat on this big bodied buck, aged him at 7 yrs old!

Sticker in the front windshield, has a headache rack