Got called for a management hunt in 4b/3 border of Northern Arizona. Does anyone have any input on these units of how they felt they were succesful or not? Flat country but looks extremely driveable so probably will do a lot of glassing. Leave Sunday and Return Friday.
Arizona Anterless Elk Management
- Thread starter JWilliams
- Start date
Sweet deal. I was wondering how often people actually get hit up for these management hunts...
Don't have any intel 4B/3. I thought they generally run these hunts when they have herds causing too much damage on private agg. If that's the case, you might be able to get some permissions or find some public adjacent to whatever fields they're feeding in
Don't have any intel 4B/3. I thought they generally run these hunts when they have herds causing too much damage on private agg. If that's the case, you might be able to get some permissions or find some public adjacent to whatever fields they're feeding in
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Hey Y’all,
So here’s my quick summary. Leave Sunday-Friday.
We took off Sunday morning about 8am and made couple stops. About 9 hour drive so we didn’t get there till after dark Sunday. About 8am. Stayed in Holbrook which has just about nothing in it (no offense).
Monday morning got up hour before sunrise in the hotel and that way we could be accessing at day break. We didn’t want to go into the dale until we had seen it at day first.
So we did some driving around and more drive and glass, drive, glass, drive and glass.
About 8am got on this knoll that had a good vantage point. It’s super flat but you were just high enough you could see 3000-4000 yards easily with the swaros.
Ended up spotting to small Black figures in some shade and then we got out the rifle scope and confirmed at about 2400 yards were 2 cows. So we made a game plan and dropped into the flats to get to them. However if you ever hunted in that flat juniper you get so lost and once your down below nothing looks the same. I hiked back to the truck about a mile and then would spend 4 hours trying to walk my dad into them but it was so deceptive.
It would look like they were literally 300 yards west of him but then he would send me a picture and it’s just flat. Super trippy.
So by 12:30 I told him let’s pull out and not bush them and go learn the area more. So we did and ended up not spotting anymore the rest of the day. Drove and glassed for about 50 miles throughout the unit. It then started snowing by 2 hours before sunset and go so windy you couldn’t even see more rhen 200 yards so we took off and went into town for supper.
Tuesday woke up at hour before first light and got to that same knoll the day before.
Set up my 10x42s and the 15s on tripods and within 20 minutes I had a whole herd (20-30) at 3000 yards again working to where we saw them bedded say before. So we marked up a better plan and. I same thing tried to walk my dad into them but just couldn’t.
Well, behold I turnaround about 9am and there is a group directly behind our truck. 30-40 cows and few spikes. 650-780 yards.
So I call my dad and tell him to run back the mile and half.
I set up a launching pad as they all bedded down at 650 yards. But once he laid down, then you would lose them just over this knoll. Plus my dad didn’t want to take a 650 yard shot with his 30-06 because it only Carrie’s about 900lbs at 500 yards with his loads he had.
So they ended up busting us by scent though pretty sure when wind switch and they dropped over this over knoll south of us.
We made a big circle and spotted a group (not sure if same group) in a bunch of open flat sage grass 1000 yards away.
We then crawled to 500 yards to this so small knoll and my dad grabbed his buddies 300 win mag. We got him set up in prone. He takes a shot and misses… well he forget to turn up his scope all the way so when he shot the holdover we’re off from what they should’ve been.
He racks another. 480 yards they ran closer to us no idea what just happened, he dials some clicks this time, 1 final steps out from the circle of safety they made and drops one. He must’ve punched the trigger because we spines her but we then ran into about 200 yards within 30 seconds and he put one in the neck to seal the deal.
Had his first cow elk down at 11:30am. Did a gutless method (first time for both of us). Single pack out 1.5 miles in sage flats. Ended up with 160lbs total meat boned out.
We then packed up that day and shot home and we’re back in Alpine by 11pm.
Awesome experience. I would highly recommend it. I would gladly go assists if needed.
Not an easy hunt by all means just because you can see so far but the lands deceptive from being on the glass to being on foot.
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First picture is group about 650 we saw second day. 2nd is 2800 yards away.
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