Hi all, just wanted to post a pic of a nice coues buck I took on Dec. 20th. He's a 3x4 with double eye guards on both sides and my best to date.

AZOneCam,

Excellent coues deer! I've nevered hunted them myself, but I do know a good one! the double brow points really make it a special trophy, gives it some character.
What a Christmas present!

Have a great holiday! How much better could it get then this!

Welcome!

Now, for lesson 1.

Never ever tease us with a short tale and picture. C'mon AZ, tell us about the hunt! Rifle? Cal? Shot distance? Bullet? Factory or handloads?

Damn son, give us the scoop. You're like a female storm, just when we all thought we were 'gonna get some' it quit on us!

Dandy buck by the way. Where did you kill him? I took a nice velvet 8 pointer back in 95. I was thinking about coming down for OTC archery tags near Tucson for January.

I'm curious how small are they? What does one weigh. Up here some whitetails reach the 400's live weight.
Nice tropy AZ, hearty congrats!

My buck was aged at 3.5 and weighed about 110 live.

They are DINKY. And they really throw you for a loop on shot distance because they are so small.

Here's my little guy. My wife refers to him as the 'girl' deer because of the really long eyelashes.

What unit were you in, I'm hunting on Fort Huachuca. Seen over forty deer and two of them have been bucks so far 30 deer have been shot here on Huachuca during the Dec hunt. Going out tommorrow to try my luck, the biggest well heaviest has been close to 95lbs I think the smallest was about 50lbs. Nice Deer!

AZO,

Dandy buck!

If you have some high-res photos or good prints of it and would like to have one in trophy photo section of the AZ hunting book I'm now working on, let me know. -TONY

Alright here's the story, and hopefully some answers to Doc's questions. I was hunting in the central portion of the state and had been scouting just about every weekend since August. I also had the same tag last December, and scouted hard then too, so I knew the unit really well. I was shooting a .300 Wby Mag with handloads that I've been refining for a couple years now - finally getting really good results with 180 gr. CT ballistic silver tips and 86.0 grains of IMR 7828 with Federal #215 primers.

On to the hunt...

My hunting partner drew the same tag, as did 2 of his brothers, so we had a big camp. Another friend of my buddy's who is an excellent hunter came too to help out. He went out with the 2 brothers on the first 2 days of the hunt while my buddy and I hunted some really remote stuff. We didn't see much, but they saw this buck along with several others. The never got a shot at this one and took a smaller buck before heading home on Saturday of opening weekend. They told us about the big buck and we started focusing on the area they had seen him. After a day and a half with lots of pressure from other hunters in the same area we hadn't gotten a glimpse of him. On Monday night we approached from a different angle and split up. At about 3pm I found a bedded doe, but the brush was so thick I couldn't tell if she was alone or not. I continued to scan the mountian, occasionally checking back on her. At about 5pm she finally got up, and within a couple of seconds, the big guy showed up almost out of nowhere. He had been laying there below her in the thick brush only 260 yards from me for over 2 hours! I hit him with the first shot, although given the amount of time I spent practicing and the closeness of the buck, it was not a great shot. In my defense I was shaking from adrenaline and cold, and knew I had about 2 more seconds before he was going to slip into the thick brush and disappear for good.

Thanks all for the kind words, and good luck on your hunting adventures.

Merry Christmas,
Jason

Jason,

Wonderful buck and super good job getting on him. What do you think he will score, looks to be a good spread? Puts this years' little 3x3 (maybe 65 pounds) to shame, although I find these little guys are each and every one a trophy. For us it was super cold and windy on Thursday, near Globe, and it was nasty, no long shots in that wind. Got up on Friday and it was 9 degrees!.

Well done.

I'm no coues hunter but I can tell that one is a dandy. Well done and thanks for sharing.

Mark

Easyup, his rough gross score was 106 5/8. Heading back out tomorrow (just a few hours from now) to see if we can get a good one for my buddy.

Jason

That is a nice deer.

Thanks for sharing.

Great Coues deer! Congratulations!