3 Great Days

Hello all, this is Art again. Its hard to find a place to start but let's give it a whirl. The last 3 days have been action packed around here! I got a kitchen pass from the wife to get out shed hunting with my brother so we planned an early start in a unit we used to do alot of shed hunting in. This area has never produced big sheds for us but it has always given us great numbers. Things started off with a bang when we picked up our first brown of the day on our drive in, right off the road. I love those kinds of starts. We ended up with  20 sheds that day with 4 of those being brownies. In the afternoon, as were driving to a different spot, we jumped a big lion off of it's kill. When I say jumped it, I really mean it. We actually heard the lion jump from a juniper tree a mere 15 feet from the truck. The wind must've masked our noise because we startled him as much as he did us. All lions look big at 15 feet but this guy was a brute. After making a few phone calls, we were able to get a hold of Floyd Green of OUTDOORSMAN, http://www.outdoorsmans.com/ , and we made plans to meet early the next morning to give the dogs a run at the lion. Floyd and Julie Green, Joe Mitchell, and Alan Hamberlin met with my brother and I and we spend the better part of the day following the dogs around as they trailed the tom. This was my first experience with dogs and I'm hear to tell, it was absolutely unbelievable!!! Even though the river swimming cat pulled a fast one on us, Joe and I enjoyed watching Joe M. and Floyd's dogs work the trail. I'm still at awe on how good these dogs were and how much Floyd and Joe actually think like lions. If you've never seen a pack of dogs work every square inch of dirt and every blade of grass for the slightest scent of a lion, even with the howling winds we had, you wouldn't fully understand why I was drop-jawed amazed. Had the river not been running so hard with ice cold, snow melt-runoff, that old lion would sure have been in for a fight. We finished our 3 days off with another shed hunting trip. Joe and I loaded up my kids and met Chad and his two kids for a day out in the woods. We done well considering we were just trying to learn new area while trying to keep the kids entertained. We were able to pick up a four more browns and a few white horns as well, including a nice 6x6 set that Chad and I teamed up on, and another whopper of a shed. I'm convinced my kids are good luck because we've been fortunate to haul in some giant sheds over the last couple weeks. You want to see how excited we still get, check out the video. It's like watching kids at Christmas time. Then watch as we try to teach 4 kids how to synchronize, or not synchronize in this case. Hilarious!! We hope you enjoy the video and pics as we sure enjoyed making them!!!

AZ Elk Preview

This should get a few hunters excited for their upcoming elk tags in AZ... Scouting, and lots of it will produce the bulls that we all dream of. Enjoy.

AZ Draw results are out!!!

Well, it is shaping up to be a year for the ages...
Draw results are now available at the AZGFD website
Good Luck!!!

https://www.azgfdeservices.com/

Dad's 2009 N.M. Ibex

Clay Goldman of Mogollon Taxidermy sent me an email the other day saying dad's ibex was ready to pick up. It didn't take long for dad to drive to payson and pick it up. It is an awesome mount and will provide a lifetime of great memories. Thanks to Brent Curtis, Joe Gonzales, and of course my Brothers and Dad for making this hunt one of the best in my life!!

Mother Nature Ends Our Shed Hunting Trip Early

Just as luck would have it.....my good friend Ronnie Michaels and I took a trip to the mountains to look for elk sheds. The morning started out fantastic as we were able to glass up 7 - 10 different bulls with most of the bulls that have already dropped their horns. We were so pumped to start our hike even though we knew we were going to cross several canyons to get where the bulls are. We glassed up 4 good Coues bucks as well with the biggest pushing 110. I love this time of year where you aren't worried about weather conditions or which direction the wind is blowing. Its all about spending time with your friends in the mountains and picking up giant antlers!

Another Nice One

Well I made it out to do a hike today, and finally was able to find a nice antler. Unfortunately I was a long way from the truck and it was getting dark, so I was not able to look for the match too long. It was from one of the bulls that we saw several times this past year. It was nice to be able to size up an antler with one we have video and pictures of. Some of his measurements are 23 3/8" G4, 16 7/8" G5 and a 56" beam. He has broke the tips off some of his tines but is a solid bull I am sure we will see again. I added a pic of him in velvet and a video clip of the shed and the bull on the hoof after he had rubbed his velvet.

A tribute to Freak Nasty

I've had alot of people ask to see some video of Mark's incredible archery coues buck. Well here is a little video I put together. I've made a full length video for Mark that included more footage of this buck and his stalk, I think it came out great. This is some footage of him feeding and doing what got him killed. I sped up his stalk a little so we could get it all fit into one clip small enough to be able to post. Mark is nearing the 60 day drying period so we can see what the official score will be. It will be interesting to see how some of his points will be scored. The footage quality suffers a little in order to downsize it enough to fit the blog. You can see that when Joe videoed this buck he had a point on the left side that was broken when Mark finally arrowed him. What an incredible buck! Joe and Mark definately showed patience while waiting for this buck to slip up. Congratulations to Mark on slipping an arrow into this beast.

Brown Gold!!

We gave shed hunting another try this weekend. Things are so wet and muddy it really limits where you can go. (Most importantly, it keeps some of the ATVs out right now) On Saturday, my wife and I loaded up the boys and went to a spot that I thought might have some potential. We gave it our best but walking was difficult for us, let alone my four year old. The only one that didn't get muddy up to their knees was the youngest, and that's only because I hauled him around in the back pack. After a few hours, we gave up and headed home. I spent this morning cleaning and packing my hunting truck so the wife and boys could head to NM. After they got on their way, I headed out for what I thought was going to be a little walk. Since I only had my 2 WD truck, I had to park on the main road and walk an extra couple miles just to get where I wanted to try. I left the truck full of energy at 1:30 pm. I was finally in good sign, at 4:30 pm, when I had to turn around. Of course, when I was furthest from the truck, I finally glassed up a brown horn. I got carried away looking for the other side and it quickly starting getting late. I didn't think I was going to make it back to the truck until 10:00 pm. Fortunately Chad called and offered to come pick me up and take a few miles off of my trip. I made it to Chad's truck at 8:00 pm and put on 12.9 miles. I ended up finding the match to my first horn about 1.25 miles away. Sheer luck!!! As I was on a death march to make it to Chad's truck, I stumbled across a 3rd shed. I didn't have time to look around for the match as it was starting to get dark already. Chad and I put a tape to the horns, and estimated a spread for the set, and came up with 365". The single side doubled with the same spread would be around the 370" mark. I love finding antlers in sets. Counting by two's is the way to go. You can guess where I'll be this coming weekend.

The first one, tines down.

Match to the first horn, about 1.25 miles away.

Third one, deceptively big, 57" main beam.