Superbowl? It's barbary time!

Good luck to all you barbary hunters. I'll be chasing 'em first thing tomorrow morning. Can't wait to get out there!

Spare me at least one, Cookie... ;-)

You have at least an eight day head start! I'm stuck at work until at least the eighth. Hope you get a monster

Someone is going to get mine this year. I took on a major project at the house and cant seem to get away from it.

Maybe later in the season.

I saw no less than 5 million retards heading out to hunt. I promptly turned around and decided I am not about to go get shot at like I used to do as a kid. I will wait and go in the middle of the week"s" when the pressure is down. Think I'll load up the Lapua and go after lunch tomorrow. Most people are morning hunters anyways. I think I'm just gonna go find one and see if the lapua is bad enough to take him down at about 750 yards with one shot. Been dying to test my 250gr scenar's out on a tough animal. colorado muledeer give up so I'm curious to see what a barbary will do.

Good luck Moz kill a good one

Good luck and can't wait to see some pics Moze...

And Stinky, God save the sheep that gets within range of you and that little pea shooter of yours....I better see some pics of that as well dude.

Good luck moooozey!! post some pics! and crazymaes..why aren't ya goin down w/ him? LOL

vinihunt!!

Vin,

I spent all my Barbary money getting ready for my brothers ibex

hunt.Ended up buying a new sleeping bag and tent.My bros taken a

bigger hit though.New backpack,rifle,scope and sleeping bag.

11 more days.....

Hey there Mozey hope you had some luck let me know how you did.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-04-09 AT 01:00PM (MST)[p]Monday (our first day) BIGBULL48 and I went to an area that must have been a shooting gallery the day before. We found twelve 30-06 casings on one particular look-out point, and found two different fresh blood trails, but no gut piles and no sheep at the end of either one. It was in an area that I doubt the sheep could have been carried out whole without at least gutting. The blood looked watery indicating a gut shot. To that person, I would say that the vitals on a barbary are much further forward than they are on a deer or elk. You need to shoot through the shoulder (similar to an oryx). Ended up seeing one small ewe the whole day. First time I've seen so many other hunters (six) away from the road, so now I think I know where you guys were talking about on the other threads. I may try that spot again, but next time it will be towards the end of the season after it's had a chance to calm down a little bit.

Too much company for our tastes so we packed it up and headed to another area that I stumbled on last year. It's a bit of a hike in, but at least we weren't bumping up against other hunters. After about a two hour hike in, we were walking though the bottom of a drainage when BIGBULL spotted about a 22" or 23" ram looking down on us from about 250 or 300 yards up. I put the swaros on him and saw bigger one (about 25") hiding down in the yuccas to his right. BIGBULL debated whether to shoot the bedded one, but while he was thinking about it, the bigger one bolted from its bed up over the top, which pretty much ended any debate. We hiked up after them and glassed all down the opposite side, but never saw either again.

Shorthly thereafter, we decided to split up to cover more territory, so BIGBULL went south and I continued north. I was walking along a fence when I topped over a hill and saw a cow (bovine) and two deer sniffing at this poor guy through the fence. He was obviously having a bad day:







The wire had cut into his leg a little just above his hoof, but I was able to get his leg out. After being freed, he ran down the hill into a canyon. His leg was still stiff; but hopefully he wasn't on there long enough to do permanent damage.

I continued north and spotted a couple of bucks bedded under some junipers away from the sun, one was a nice 4X4, probably 150 to 160 class. Snuck to within a hundred yards just to see if I could do it. Then headed east directly away from the bucks down a ridge that was covered with yuccas and junipers. Jumped two more barbarys (a ewe and a lamb) out from under a juniper at 20 yards. Had a stare down for about 60 seconds hoping daddy was nearby, but apparently not. The barbarys walked off the top down into a canyon where I stopped paying attention and focused my attention on the junipers about 600 yards across on the opposite slope. Under the fourth one, I spotted a huge buck (possible 180" 4X4) bedded in the shade facing away from me. This was by far the biggest desert muley I've ever seen, looked to be 26" to 28" wide, deep forks both front and back, and lots of mass, much more than this set which I found in the same area last year:



As I was watching him through the swaros, two barbarys also stepped into the view. It was the same two that I'd spooked about 10 minutes earlier. They had crossed through the canyon and were now only about 15 yards from him. He stood up and turned around to face them and then took a couple steps toward them. I thought he was going to run them off, but instead they both just settled under the next closest juniper about 20 yards away, and then he circled around his juniper, bedded down and went back to chewing his cud. I'm amazed at how well these two species seem to get along with each other.

Anyway, I think I'll be headed back there in a couple weeks to do some shed hunting. I'll take my rifle along too, just in case I find that ram I'm still looking for... ;-)

First day kinda sucked, but the second day was awesome! No barbary hunting for me this weekend--I'll be at the expo taking pictures of Spidey...

Thanks for sharing those pics! I am headed down tomorrow morning and plan on hunting until Monday. Hopefully, I can get on them early as it looks like it is going to be hot down there.

Mozey
thanks for sharing! hope you get the ram you want. sounds like alot of guys are out there huntin this year! good luck to you and can't wait to see some pic's!

You never told us what happened on BIGBULL48S Hunt.

Is he still out there walking around.Did you leave home without

him.Is he stuck in a fence somewhere.Geeez.lol

Thanks for sharing Moz man

heheh...I figured he can account for himself if no one was there to witness it...

I think the real reason he wanted to split up is he was getting tired of spotting all the animals for me...but he came back with some story about seeing nothing but a dead skunk on its back that some coyote or fox decided to take a dump on its chest... :9

I wasn't really gonna report in much, but now that Mozey started it: While he's rescuing a yew from the fence, I went back to check where we'd found the rams earlier.

After such a cold night and then a warm day, I'm walking in my T-shirt down in a valley and I see a skunk taking a siesta on his back in the sun. Then I realize he wasn't sleeping, he was croaked. I couldn't understand why some critter hadn't made an easy meal out of him. But as I got closer I noticed that those critters (fox or coyote) had not only turned their nose up at the free meal, but their tail too. They took a dump right on his chest. Skunks get no respect - even when deceased!

Since Mozey posted his pictures, I wish I'd had my camera with me so I could post mine. Maybe next time.

Crazy, good luck on the Ibex hunt. Take a lot of pictures.

mozey and bigbull48

u guys had awesome trip! congrats! and funny abt skunk!

vinihunt

Mozey that was fun to read. Thanks for sharing the story and your pics. I need to think about getting out.

...well, I have to disagree with BIGBULL on that "skunks get no respect" thing. Whenever I encounter one, I give it a wide margin of respect...

Moze, I'd say your barbary karma is due considering your good deed, and Bigbull, that's one of the funniest stories I've heard in a d@mned long time! Please tell me you took a photo...talk about the best thing to email to a hunting buddy as a joke.

Well if BIGBULL ain't going to post it, I guess I will: