A
AZbowhntr
Guest
Well I don't really know where to start. It was a long week and I was glad to get back home but I sure had a great time up there. I think anything bad that could happen did happen to me. My troopers transmission is just about dead, my generator didn't work, my propane froze one night, and my trailer battery went dead. We started up high like a lot of the hunters did. Chef and I went scouting a few weeks before the hunt and everything was still high. We woke up the first morning to a frigid 18 degrees. Didn't see and sign that morning so we dropped down low and only saw a little. Bura Nut had told us where they were camping so we paid them a visit and we off to the races. The next day we probably saw 50 deer. Mostly does, fawns, and little fork horns and 3 points. So after getting our deer fix but not seeing what we were after we decided to drop down low and hunt the flats looking for one of the resident big boys. So over the next couple days we only saw a couple deer but we did see some monster tracks. Just couldn't find the owners of them. So we decided to move back up a little to the transition area that everything was in hoping that the bigger bucks were starting to show up. We were glassing one of the old burns and had just got set up and had probably seen 15 to 20 deer already when I heard something to my right. I said something to my buddy and looked over and then kept glassing. Pretty soon I heard something again and said something again. But this time I decided to grab my rifle and crawl over and check it out. I had only crawled about 10 yds when I saw a deer in the burnt brush. At this point I still couldn't tell if it was a buck or a doe. So I just kneeled on one knee and waited to see what it was going to do. It finally moved out from behind the brush and it was the first good look I got at it. At this point it is only 50 yds away and coming closer. He was a little 4X4 so I put my safety back on. He stopped at about 35 yds and turned broadside and I got a good look at his height and fork depth and I decided I might not see anything that nice again. So off goes the safety and I thought about it for a couple seconds and BLAM. By this time my buddy had gone back to glassing thinking it was only a doe. I didn't get to see it but he said he jumped about a foot off the ground the gun blast scared him so bad. So he only ended up being right at 20" wide and almost 20" high. I thought about having him mounted but have decided to do a european mount instead. When I checked him in the G&F guy said his neck was the most swollen of any buck they had checked in yet. And this was Friday night. So they are close to the rut. Over all we had a blast. Probably saw at least 300 deer, bighorn sheep, and a condor at about 25". After the first couple days I didn't think I would ever put in for this hunt again but looking at it now I would in a heartbeat. The hunt is designed to take the smaller bucks but there are some pigs taken too.
Here are some of the pictures that I took while up there.
Chef's trooper while he was up helping. Wish he could have stayed for the whole hunt. I'm sure he was wishing the same thing.
Here is our first camp. We ended up moving camp down lower so we could get an extra 1/2 hour sleep in the morning.
Here are a couple scenery pictures while hunting way out west.
And here is the buck.
This is where he fell.
And the rest.
Here are a couple others as well. We saw a group of bighorn sheep the same day as I got my buck. They were about 600 yds away so you might have to zoom in to see the ram but it was pretty cool.
And here is a picture of the condor that we about ranover coming around a corning in the road.
I guess he has a 9 1/2" wing span acording to the girl from the condor group we talked to later. His number is 6 but it is actually 276.
And last but not least here is the sunset on the last night I was there. We saw a bunch of these sunsets.
Here are some of the pictures that I took while up there.
Chef's trooper while he was up helping. Wish he could have stayed for the whole hunt. I'm sure he was wishing the same thing.
Here is our first camp. We ended up moving camp down lower so we could get an extra 1/2 hour sleep in the morning.
Here are a couple scenery pictures while hunting way out west.
And here is the buck.
This is where he fell.
And the rest.
Here are a couple others as well. We saw a group of bighorn sheep the same day as I got my buck. They were about 600 yds away so you might have to zoom in to see the ram but it was pretty cool.
And here is a picture of the condor that we about ranover coming around a corning in the road.
I guess he has a 9 1/2" wing span acording to the girl from the condor group we talked to later. His number is 6 but it is actually 276.
And last but not least here is the sunset on the last night I was there. We saw a bunch of these sunsets.
