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quailcat

Something to brag about!

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I know a place on public land where in a small area with few water sources iv'e passed over 200 sheds in couple of hours. I plan on goin there this year and seeing if it's as amazing as the last time i was there. Ive' only been there once and all i can say is when i found it i fealt like god was playing a joke on me. I ran from one shed to another until i couldn't carry and more. I put the less impressive ones down and ended up taking out 3 sets of matching horns. 2 of the sets were 6 by 6 mule deer horns that were just really thick and heavy. The third set was mule deer as well and it was't the size but all the little thorn horns that covered this relatlivley small set that made me decide to take it. About 80 percent of the antlers though were not fresh drops, they were old, older, and aincent even. Anyone ever found a spot like this? anyone got a guess where it is??

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Maybe you need a pack mule... I volunteer

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Hey quailcat if you have any pics of the antlers you can email them to me at cdude2006@cox.net I know alot of people would like to see some pics.

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That sends chills up my spine just thinking of a place like that! I had a similar experience on my dads Buffalo hunt on the House Rock Ranch about 20 years ago. Shed hunting wasn't even close to how popular it is today and a previous winter had kept all the deer down off the rim right where we were hunting Buffalo. Everyday and every time we went out, I came back with more than a 10 year old and two adults could carry. I didn't realize how special it was to experience that and didn't comprehend the size of some of the sheds until years later. I hunt the same area every year and can still find a few sheds but nothing close to that of the good ol' days. I have heard that there are places in the NW end of the Grand Canyon you can hike to that you can't shed hunt and few people have ever been to, that are as you describe, sheds laying all over, from fresh to ancient. I would guess your spot is a place like that, but I'm sure it's not the Canyon, cause' you wouldn't have carried them out. Would love to know where though, maybe a state? Or a part of a state? Or a unit #? Or the exact coordinates?!!!!!! :lol: :lol: :ph34r: JIM

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:ph34r: :lol: :lol: ......... NOW THAT WOULD MAKE FOR A GOOD DAY SHED HUNTING!!!!! :lol: :P hilarious!

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You found the bone yard :ph34r:

Must of been like a kid in a candy store :lol:

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I found a boneyard like that about 1967 or 1968, except we found heads and not sheds.

 

We were elk hunting on horseback along the Strayhorse-Chitty Creek-Crabtree Creek trails below Hannagan Meadow and Baldy Bill Point. There had been a record snowfall the previous year and we found remains of Coues deer and mule deer every couple hundred yards just about everywhere we rode.

 

One of the mule deer heads I found scored more than 180 B&C net points and is now in the Arizona record book as a pickup. I had been carrying a Coues deer head that may have scored more than 125 points, but I couldn't carry both. I had to make a choice and the mule deer head was more impressive. I'm ashamed to say now that I left the big whitetail head in a tree.

 

As a side note, Rolfe Hoyer, whom the forest service later named a campground in Greer after, was with us. He was killed in a wildfire not long after our hunt.

 

BillQ

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Yea I know that place............................it is Josh house.  :ph34r:

 

Josh's house is better than this story. . . . You can hardly even move through his garage! :lol: Its stacked to the ceiling!

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Bill I love that country. The only way to do it is on the back of a good mule or horse. I bet you saw some nice heads in there back in those days right. I would love to hunt that area back then. Now days during the elk hunts it is full of guides and clients. down around the stray horse. We hunted it once this last year and there was guys in the camps all day and they were pumping hunters in and out of there like a ride at disney land. Good thing is with as weired as this year was we found the elk in limbo above there.

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Bill I love that country. The only way to do it is on the back of a good mule or horse. I bet you saw some nice heads in there back in those days right. I would love to hunt that area back then. Now days during the elk hunts it is full of guides and clients. down around the stray horse. We hunted it once this last year and there was guys in the camps all day and they were pumping hunters in and out of there like a ride at disney land. Good thing is with as weired as this year was we found the elk in limbo above there.

 

 

I bought a mule after that particular elk hunt, just so I could hunt that country. That winter kill I described really knocked the deer population down for three or four years, however, but they rebounded after a big fire north of Rose Peak. I shot a couple of elk in there and lost a black bear. I never shot a deer there, though. I loved that country, too. It was as if we had the whole world to ourselves. I'm sorry to hear that it's getting hit hard.

 

Funny thing, one of the few people we saw there in those days was a wildlife manager who was surprised when we told him we were scouting for elk during the band-tailed pigeon hunt. He said we needed to look for elk on top, and that it took a lot of snow to push elk off the rim. My friend and I came close to giggling. We'd not only seen two or three big bulls in velvet an hour or so earlier, but the guy also was standing near what my friend Bill Mattausch calls an elk's "whooping tree."

 

BillQ

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