Can't Pass That One Up!

Cold and windy, now its starting to spit rain!  Perfect conditions….. well maybe minus the wind!  P.T. Carter and Jamie Mace have a good bull that just laid down under a cedar tree to try and get a break from the wind.  Nice 6X6, with no broken points, which by the way is very hard to find this year.  They figured he was about a 330” bull and the two shivered while they mulled over whether or not this was the bull they wanted on the first day of the hunt.

The elk were just out of the rut, and almost any bull in the woods was busted to pieces!  From where the bull laid down, this would be an easy stalk ending in what should be a easy shot, but Jamie decided this just wasn’t the bull he wanted on day one of the rifle hunt!  Nothing like being picky on a hunt that was designed to be a harvest hunt, not a trophy hunt!

No problem, respectable bull, but not quite what he wanted, still lots of time left in the hunt.  This was, after all, the afternoon of the very first day.  P.T. and Jamie glassed this bull up right off the bat so there was no need to pack up and move just yet, theres still lots of country to see from here, and almost as quickly as they found this bull another group of bulls were glassed up!  The wind and rain continued to pick up making it a little difficult to see exactly what these four new bulls were, but from this distance and in these conditions, one looked promising!

The two packed up and began to move in for a closer look.  The trees and low lying ridges made it difficult to set up and get a good look, so they ended up moving within rifle distance before they were able to get a good look, and that’s all it took.  One of the four bulls was very heavy horned, and even though he had broke his fifth point, Jamie wanted to set up and shoot! 

The four bulls fed in and out of the trees when the one Jamie liked finally moved out into the open.  With video camera rolling, Jamie eased in behind his rifle and let one rip!  The bull immediately went down as the other four packed the mail for quieter territory!  The rain was really starting to move in, and the sun was moving out, so P.T and Jamie packed up once again and made their way to Jamie’s bull.

Upon inspection of his bull, a happy Jamie Mace kept saying “you don’t pass bulls like this on this hunt!”, and he was absolutely right.  His bull taped out at 350” with the missing 5^th!  Great bull on a late hunt!

 

You can watch the video of this hunt on MuleyBull Oufitters "Just Hunting, Volume 1" found at Amazon.com

 

A Coues a Day!

MuleyBull guides Bryant McGee and P.T. Carter had three days to kill two coues deer in unfamiliar country!  The two had decided to put in for this unit for a little change of pace, and a reason to learn a new unit.  The two had just come off a couple elk hunts, followed by a couple deer hunts, cutting their plans of scouting for a week down to a day and a half.  During their day and a half of scouting, they found some country they decided to hunt and located a couple bucks they liked.

On the first day of the hunt, P.T. glassed up a buck a couple miles off as he fed along a fairly open hillside.  He packed up his gear and headed out to try and get a shot while Bryant stayed behind to watch through his binoculars.  The hike took P.T. over some rough country and took a little longer than planned.  Bryant caught site of P.T. as he was going over a ridge that looked like it should put him close to the buck.  Bryant watched with anticipation as the buck fed down the hillside and eventually disappeared behind a ridge between him and the deer.

P.T. located the buck and quickly set up on a half dead cedar tree that would serve as a good rest.  His first shot sent the buck rolling down the hill!  The buck ended up being a very nice 3X3, and due to the unfamiliarity of the new country, it took Bryant quite a while to figure out how to drive to a location to shorten up the pack out!

That afternoon and the next morning didn’t show much.  A few small bucks that Bryant wasn’t interested in, and a handful of does and fawns.  Finally, with only about 40 minutes of day left, Bryant glassed up a group of 3 bucks in the canyon below.  The scramble was on!  Trying to make time, and do so quietly, he finally moved to within about 350 yards of the bucks.  The hillside was steep, and trying to get set up for a shot was tough, but Bryant finally used a small juniper tree for a rest and settled in on the buck he wanted as he fed out of a clump of brush.  At the crack of the rifle, the buck jumped and started to run.  The two bucks that were with him threw up their tails and began to head out making it tough for Bryant to figure out which buck he had shot at, but one buck gave out and rolled down the hill.  This didn’t look like it was going to be any easier a pack out than P.T.’s buck, but at least P.T was able to do so in the daylight, it was well after dark by the time they got the deer packed out to the road.  Bryant’s buck had 3, almost 4 points on one side with 5 on the other!

 

Greg in 8

Greg Bordour comes to us from beautiful San Diego, California.  A contractor by trait, Greg never passed up an offer to go hunting… actually, he was the most likely one to make the offer!  Greg had drawn an archery bull hunt, and P.T. Carter and Bryant McGee were going along.

Greg got all he bargained for on his hunt!  He got to see his first javelina as a small herd worked around the hunters eventually winding them just a few yards away putting on a show as the hair stood on their backs, the “woofing” started along with the stiff legged jerky walk a wary javelina will show as he tries to figure out where the danger is.  At one point, a couple hunters to the north jumped two monster mule deer bucks that nearly ran Greg over as they came to a skidding halt when they noticed they had run smack dab in the middle of humans!  Greg learned what to look for to determine a lion track from a dog track as the crew examined the fresh tracks of a monster tom that had visited a small waterhole.  Turkeys were a regular guest as the crew chased elk through the forest, and Greg got a look at a great coues buck that was leaving a waterhole mid-day.  At one point, the crew wondered into an area that was infested with what seemed to Greg, rabid mosquitos!  Of the three, Greg was the only one that the mosquitos paid any attention to, and they paid a lot of attention to him!  Greg even chipped in to repair a busted drive line when the u-joints went kaput on P.T.’s truck.

Not to mention the large amounts of elk he got to chase!  Greg passed up on a handful of bulls before his guide threw a monkey wrench in his whole operation!

The three were driving down the road when they came upon a small group of elk with a decent bull!  As luck would have it, the cows went left as the bull turned and went right!  When all the elk were out of site, P.T. dropped Greg and Bryant by the road and drove off.  Greg and Bryant started off toward the direction of the bull, and after a short distance, Bryant got a glimpse of the bull as he was heading back toward his cows!  Greg set up and Bryant let out a couple low cow calls.  Immediately the bull turned and started in the direction of the hunters thinking that was where his cows were.  As the bull was passing through a small shooting lane 18 yards away, Bryant let out a low cow call to try and stop the bull for a shot.  The opposite of something good happened!  At the sound of the cow call, the bull startled, spinning on a dime and running a few steps.  The good news is, the bull was still just over 20 yards away!  The bad news was, he was stopped in a very thick group of pines looking directly at the hunters!  Greg tried to thread the needle, but his arrow clipped a small branch and flew just over the bulls back!  The rest of the day found Bryant down in the dumps for spooking the bull the way he had!

On the next afternoon, the bunch was watching another small group of elk as a bull chased cows around in a wide open flat.  The bull started to act like he was going to head to a dirt tank that was also in the wide open flat when Greg and Bryant decided to try and make the tank before the bull got too close.  At one point, the two were running almost on all fours to try to get low enough to hide behind the small dirt mound of the dirt dam, but they were able to get there and try to catch their breath as the bull topped the dam and headed toward the water!  Bryant popped up just high enough over the dirt bank to range the bull.  55 yards.  Greg set up on his knees, drew his bow, and started to stand up high enough to clear the dirt.  As the bow went off, the bull spun and made a beeline toward the trees! 

Greg was on his feet!  Jumping up and down while throwing punches at the air, the two slapped high fives and laughed as P.T. made his way toward them.  Not sure exactly where the bull was hit, the trio made the decision to head in for dinner and come out at first light.

When there was just enough light to see the next morning, the three were on the ground bloodtrailing the hit bull.  As it turned out, the bull had run a total distance of just under 200 yards before piling up next to a log.  Greg had his first Arizona bull, a great 6X6 and a handful of memories, pictures, and videos to take back home with him!

 

You can watch the video of this hunt on MuleyBull Outfitters "Just Hunting Volume 1"! found at:

Amazon.com

Bob's Lion

MuleyBull Outfitters hooked up with Rick Murphy, owner of Six Shooter Molly’s Guide Service to help Bob on his lion hunt.  P.T. Carter had caught a monster tom a couple days before Bob showed up, so it was decided to go back and try to find him again.

The first day was a wash.  P.T. Carter and Bryant McGee tried to find where the big tom may have gone while Rick went a little further north.  Rick cut the tracks of a big tom that was heading south, but after tracking him for several miles, the day finally ran out.

Day two started to look like a repeat of day one.  Bob sounded a little skeptical about his chances of actually seeing a lion.  Finally a decision was made to unload the dogs and work a rim in hopes of cutting a fresh track.  About a mile into the hike, the dogs struck on something!  The dogs started to get excited as they worked the track from the bottom of the canyon to the northern rim where they trailed to a cave entrance.  This is when they went ballistic.  In the back of the cave sat the same monster tom P.T. and his wife had caught a few days back!

It wasn’t long before the big tom decided he was in a bad spot, so he started to fight his way out of the cave.  The scramble of hunters trying to gather up dogs, dogs trying to get to the lion, and the lion trying to get out of the cave was a sight to see!  The big tom made his way to the cave entrance and made a break for it!  He only got about thirty yards downslope before the dogs forced him up a big pinion juniper.

Seeing the big cat up in the tree was an experience Bob never thought he would get.  Video cameras and still cameras came out and pictures of the whole fiasco were taken by everyone there.  Bob finally pulled out his pistol and set aim at the big cat.  One shot sent the Lion out of the tree and down to the bottom of the canyon.  Turns out Bob is a good shot with a pistol, and the big tom laid dead at the bottom of the canyon.

Bob kept repeating how he couldn’t understand how a couple guys and some dogs could turn up a lion the way they did.  What he may not know is most of the credit goes toward the dogs!

 

 

You can watch the video of this hunt on MuleyBull Outfitters "Just Hunting Volume 2" found at:

Amazon.com

Coming August 2014!