elkhunter

Lets just say that an adult can shake more than a 10 year old kid while putting crosshairs on a buck. Pops and I did not draw our "wanted" tags so we opted to do a leftover tag in a unit that we really do not like. We usually hunt a unit that we did not like, this was a unit we really did not like but have the time to scout. Once we drew the leftover tags, I pulled out the map and looked for areas that has the least amount of roads, I located just one spot on the map that looked dandy. After our first scouting trip, we found that 90% of the roads on the map did not exist and there were a few roads that was not on the map that we located out there. All the USFS road markers were either not present or missing 2 numbers or more. Which made scouting pretty fun. After more days of scouting, we found there's quite a bit of life in this area, mt lion, bears, coons, javelina and coues deer. We had located 7 bucks prior to the hunt while 2 of them were awesome shooter bucks and were the caliber that you would consider shooting on a december hunt. My pops headed out on Thursday morning prior to the hunt. I opted to stay at work on Friday so that I can hunt Monday and Tuesday after all the road warriors went home. Needless to say out of all the hundreds of tags in our unit, we only ran across one hunter on one day that was hunting a complete different spot that we were hunting. Opening day my pops located 4 bucks, passed them all. Being at his age and retired, he won't settle for anything less than 150 incher on opening day, he really likes to hunt 6 days since he retired. Friday afternoon after work I headed out to camp, I didn't have any firearms in my truck since I am a teacher and firearms are illegal on campus or something. Shoulda left a gun at home and picked it up after work because I ran into 5 bucks while driving to camp. Two groups total, one group had 2 wonderful awesomely large large 2 point bucks 80 yards away while I was taking pics of goulds turkey 15 yards away. The bucks trotted off and I took note of their last position. I drove another 300 yards and hit the canyon right before the campsite, 3 bucks right in the middle of the road eating acorns off the dirt, 1 was a spike and 2 of them were medium 3x3 (all were shooters to me!). They took off running at a pace where I would doubt I'd find them again. I went to camp and glassed, found 2 different herds of javelina and that's all. Dad rolled into camp and we made plans for opening day. Opening day came and I glassed a buck bedded under a nice sized bush, stalked to half the distance, saw that he was an obvious 3x3, got the rifle railz mounted and took a deep breath and fired, buck didnt move, took another deep breath and a shake, fired again and buck got up and walked over the ridge. We were confused and went to check the site, apparently there's about 15 branches in the way of the buck's vitals and lets say I killed the tree. Also lets say I was uber excited. The next few days accounted for finding HUGE bucks, one buck was missed due to the brand spaking new scope, the vortex scopes have a focus knob towards the eye end, the quad can shake that mother all the way out so that when you look in the scope, there's 2 crosshairs! One morning my pops saw a dandy buck walk into some thickets, never lcoated him again. My grandpa rolled into camp a few hours later so we hung out with him and took him into the field with us, 82 year old dude. After glassing the thickets the buck appeared outta no where and pops and i went on our stalk while gramps stayed behind. Pops and I got to 300 yards, my pops settled down in his rifle railz setup and had the shakes pretty good, he had to fist bump me a few times, I told him "smell my eyes man, kill em" when the shot went bang, I saw red allover the buck's lower third. The buck went 10 feet and bedded down, upon watching the buck he was still very active....too active for a shot in the lungs. We opted out and pursue the buck in the morning. In the morning it took us a good ole 2 hours and about 15 different vantage points to lcoate the buck again, bedded down. We moved in to an angle and pops loaded up rifle again, BAM! bullet hit the buck right under the spine slightly above the shoulder blade and the exit was infront of the shoulder blade, the buck rolls down hill and lays flat, yahoo! NOT, the son of a gun decided he wasnt gonna let a 300 wsm kill him. He bedded down again and I noted his spot, I explained to my dad that theres a rock and that's the buck's rear hip, my dad rejected my solid hypotheis. I told him I promise that's his rear end, I told him lets get to an angle where the bullet will hit the last rib and travel out the front of the shoulder. We re arranged our shooting site and got settled.....BAM! He asked if I saw movement, I saw a little twitch in the antlers and thats all. My dad still had not believe me that the rump thing was a buck, he said "well there was no puff of dirt so it couldnt be a rock then." My dad went ahead and moved up the hill to find his awesome massive 96 incher buck laying motinless. It was funny to see my dad pull out his little "illegal immagrant pistol protector 38" on the buck at close range, thank god the buck was dead. No one wants to see a 10 inch hole from a soft point at close range. The second shot my dad made on this buck would have killed most deer, I am assuming this buck was breathing out which caused the lungs to collapse and for the bullet to strike flesh only. My dad's first shot took out the buck's brisket which we could see the heart and lungs through. This was a tough buck that had all desire to live to the rut! This buck had an abnormally long and heavy head on him, the rack was far heavier than we originally thought. He was aged at 5 and half years old and had several kickers that were ready to grow nice and long next year! Overall this buck is a 4x4 with several small kickers. This is one of the bucks we had scouted out the weeks before the hunt, we had found him bout 500 yards from where we originally saw him. After this buck was harvested I ended up passing the rest of the bucks. All in all we saw 23 bucks, killed one, missed a few and passed up a whole lot of bucks. Enjoy the pics, this is my pops largest and not his last! We had a blast on this hunt, it doesnt happen often to see multiple bucks on an oct hunt and get the pleasure of passing up 3x3's. We are already hoping that we do not draw our dec tag next year! Although I did not tag out this year, all the bucks I missed walked away without a scratch, I actually feel like I got my fill out coues hunting and am very satisfied with the result of the hunt, I'm very proud of my pops for sticking it out to harvest a buck that we had put a non-fatal shot on.

Thanks guys!

Looks plenty of a gun there, congrats

Gates for sure, always have to glass for 5 minutes at each gate which means it takes me and hour to where I want to be

How does the promaster compare to aluminum tripods? I am curious about the shaking in the wind or the shaking when you wrap ur arms around the tripod while you are glassing

Most of the time nasty weather means it's easier to know when the deer are going to start feeding and makes it easier to locate bedded bucks. On very windy days, there's a tremendous amount of activity going on at the last 30 minutes of light when the wind starts to die down, it's a hunter's dream.

Just pay the other 28 bucks for a leftover tag, seems like the hassle of calling up the bank is way more difficult than paying 28 bucks for the 2nd tag

Scooter, I did run into a whole ball o mallards and teals along the huachucas bout a week ago

Hey! Clean out your pm box, it's full!

I watched the same show- it wasn't a good moment looking at the dog owner's face! Those jags are much more aggrensive and powerful compared to lions. That jag killed each dog with one swipe or one bite. What makes it even more crazy is they were not hunting the jag, they were just trying to get data from the jag

Maybe u can get a crack at gq!

Glad to hear the positive feedback on info from hunters, no one gives up their spots for oct in 36 b since its an easy draw but when someone gets a once in a lifetime tag everyone is willing to help out, good luck!

seen one and got a pick up head with a droptine- not very common

Wanna see before pics

27 is closed

Usually yold mule bucks will have a white face and younger bucks have a grey face, hope you do a repeat of ur buck from last year!

just don't shoot the truck!

I got a 300 winchester mag that does not have this problem for sale! You are in luck!

I hope my 357 mag turns up in a search, however we get pulled over a lot when we pull trailers, cops claim out blinkers don't work but they always do, always have to prove them wrong on the side of the road. We always tell em we have weapons in the truck, like 5 different guns, hate to see them go through serial check, like snapshot said, it's a traffic violation and it's not related to firearm violation

Holy crap that blows! Where are you located? A bunch of us will be in the southern units in case ur truck was stolen by illegals we will see it by the border this weekend

move into lower country for more visability and better glassing opportunities.

lots o lions in that area! If i'm reading the mountains in the background correctly then yes lots of lions there! When you see lions in the area, you should be happy cuz it means alot of deer. No lions = no deer/no food

A lot smaller for sure, still a shooter for sure!

Wow, speechless, that's awesome

Almost looks like a lope