Sneaker

Hearing they are going pretty good in some spots with mature bucks with most of the doe groups in northern AZ. A two point was harassing a group of does behind my place yesterday morning. Some smart guys poached him with rifles a couple hours late. The Calvary showed up and eventually after some excitement the guy/guys got busted. Don’t use rifles in archery season boys and girls.

Thought I would start a thread to share what people are seeing out there. I know someone out hunting today, haven't heard any updates yet. I'll probably do some driving around with my kids tomorrow to see what is going on out here near Kingman.

I ordered a new box of Sevrs for a recent hunt. 125 grain. When I get them in, all 7 of them weight within .2 or 2/10 of a grain of 120 grains... They sent me a long reply email when I told them this information saying that you can't have all three of 1. durability, 2. weight, and 3. function all of them time. You can only pick two and they have proudly picked durability and function and they cannot control the weight... I can't believe they are serious. I mean they succeeded in getting them all to within .2 grains of something, its just the wrong something haha. They just need to adjust their 125 grain manufacturing specs to get it to the right weight. Never had this issue with heads all being off by so much, and by the same amount. Obviously 5 grains doesn't equate to much until you get out to some good distance, but maybe they need to start marketing 120 grain heads instead?

Nah its got a nice muzzle break on it that wipes what feels like at least half the kick out, and I think laying prone helps, she says it doesn't hurt and doesn't seem to have any problems with it anyway:)

She had a blessed year drawing an unlikely tag her first try and then getting to take this bull with one shot of the 7MM at about 45 yards in self defense as he was coming to trample us:) This was 10/3 at 4pm in the afternoon. We never could find any rutting action and never saw a cow in the two days we hunted. We just had moved sides of the unit to try an old area for the evening and had hiked into a secluded area. My daughter is a good hiker and we were just cold cow calling every couple hundred yards and this guy let out a very faint quick half-a-second groan/sigh really, like the very very end sound portion of a bugle, at maybe 100 yards or so, I'm sure from his bed. I was pretty sure it was an elk, but expected it to be a spike or something, but within a matter of seconds we saw him coming, we jumped down prone and got her all set up. She is really good at finding things in the scope but this time wasn't much of a challenge haha. My father dropped back to continue cow calling during this time, and the bull never really stopped coming so I had to eventually tell her to shoot just him before he got too close. He went down in about 10 seconds, and she was a very happy hunter!

If its late afternoon, hanging it in some shade until at least the sun sets if not later, and then loading up to pack out can by a good idea for you and the meat too sometimes...

I had a long day yesterday, woke up at the parking lot at 2am at 5500’ to start hiking and was expecting to stay up on the mountain most of the week but I never ended up setting up camp. I picked up this guy at first light and bedded him down a long ways away. It took about 6 hours to hike up and around one of the highest peaks in the state at just under 11,000’ and get around into position above him in a series of cliffs. I probably saw 50 or more mountain goats by the end of the day. Within 5 minutes of finally settling in for a wait above him, the wind switched to going down hill, I saw his head jerk, so I drew back, he jumped up and I let it go. He ended up eventually taking the “fast way” down the cliff he was perched on all day. That was followed by a nightmarish hike to get out that had me doubting my sanity, abilities, choice of hobby pursuits, and praying hard. Some of the pics won’t upload but here are some, good luck to everyone this weekend that’s going out!

In my opinion, nothing is more deadly than a secluded water when it hasn't rained for 3+ weeks and with bucks coming in during the daylight multiple times a week. That scenerio is pretty impossible to beat for lethality, but it usually requires alot of scouting, cameras, and prior knowledge of an area to really get your odds high. Without those, your odds are horrible picking a random water and setting up a blind. Even in deer country, sometimes I only get daylight visiting bucks on a consistent basis on 1 in 20 waters, for instance. Many times they will act like one water is the best thing on earth one year, the next year nothing will touch it and they are watering miles away, same month of the year. FYI, blinds really cook during the middle of the day, lots of frozen drinks help. If it rains, cancel any water plans, no matter how excited you were about them, until its been dry for a couple weeks. That being said, spot and stalk is more fun and can be very deadly if you glass them early and watch them bed down. You just have to be physically acclimated to do a suffer fest heat stalk in the middle of the day, and be able to get the meat taken care of asap. Are you the kind of person that will exercise in 95+ degree heat? Thats kind of what it takes to do desert August hunts, and be good at them, and not die, in my opinion:)

If you can access state trust land by using other public lands or right-of-ways, then you can legally hunt on it during season(hunting only with legal hunt license and tag, scouting would be different). If you want to camp(even during a hunt) and generally recreate(scouting here too), however, you have to secure a separate recreation/camp permit. It can get a little touchy. Like a helper, spotter, kid tag-a-long, technically, is not allowed to be there with you when you hunt, unless they have a recreation permit for themselves. But, they could have a license and a weapon and be "small game hunting" and be ok... If you had to cross private to get to it, then you would need permission to cross the private first. Lots of State trust land that isn't accessible because you have to cross private in northern AZ. Much of the state trust lands aren't specifically marked and fenced, others are marked really well and have signs that explain what it is when you enter.

I was thinking the same thing on low numbers of online feedback so far. We did draw one September bull tag so I am counting my blessings.

Thanks to deer not being so wise during the rut, I was able to bring this buck home with a last ditch evening hunt for the year. The rolling hills and cliffs near me, when they are in the rut, are very conducive to hunting as follows: walk until you see some in a little canyon, since you are not being careful, they are usually standing up and looking at you but they usually don’t spook too bad, back out the way you came until they can’t see you, and circle around down wind and pop over as close to them as you can for a shot. Shot this guy from a large boulder cliff, 67 yards down hill.

Man that stinks. Also proabably want to make sure you are 1/4 mile away from the houses on the north and the south in the future. New rule in place requires archers to also give habitable structures the buffer zone... I don't agree with it, but that's what they passed.

Anyone with the heavier trucks that has done the vehicle permits at the boarder successfully?

Has anyone taken a 3/4 or 1 ton to hunt outside the free zone in 2019? Hearing they started just charging more for heavy trucks but getting first hand verification from someone that has done it recently would be great.

I won't lie, I have a trip planned for Jan, and our ranch is not too far from this latest incident. I have had some second thoughts about it, but still plan on going as of now.