Hunt & Harvest Guides and Outfitting

Congrats to Eric and Josh! The Chiricahuas contain some rough terrain but these guys kept getting up every morning, hiking their butts off all day and were rewarded by bagging one of the most elusive animals in Arizona!

Camp breakfast of champions. I'll send a Morakniv companion to the first one who can correctly identify the contents of the plate

It was a long, difficult hunt but Todd managed to arrow this beautiful bull on day 9! Persistence pays. He made an amazing shot at about 35 yds, through a forked tree. It ended up being a high lung shot so after 50 yds of good blood the trail went cold. Luckily, Todd's son Trevor, followed his intuition and found the bull another 150b yds *uphill*. We'll have a video up on our YouTube channel soon.

For those inclined to numbers and stats this bull was a 5x6 when shot, however we have video of him a few days earlier as a 6x6 when he was challenging the herd bull. He also had several wounds from fighting other bulls. We tentatively scored him at about 240 (as if any score could capture the experience!)

Congrats and nice shot Todd!!

I got really lucky the first morning. We had a herd of about 50 elk, including some impressive bulls, come right under our stands while chasing each other and bugling their heads off! After recovering from the shock of the scene I managed to arrow the very last cow to pass by us. I was especially happy that my nephew was there to see the whole thing (and get some get video footage that I'll share soon.) One elk tag filled, two to go.

Dreaming about early morning bugles

Bob got a few good shots with the game cameras on one of our favorite hunting spots. The copious monsoons made for excellent antler growth this year.

Bob and I each drew archery cow tags and brother Todd finally drew his out of state bull tag! Stay tuned to see if we get him one of these beasts! It should be an interesting and busy early season.

Tongue tacos with all the fixins!

This elk tongue has a bit of a story. Our nephew killed a cow last year, his first. Bob and I both wanted the tongue so we did the only reasonable thing... BB gun shoot off. At ten paces we set out aluminum cans, wine corks, and a few pistachio shells. The smaller the target, the more points it was worth. It was a nail biter but I ended up the victor.

The Bax family took advantage of all these monsoons. Lobster mushrooms, boletes, and elderberries oh my!

Mushrooms and Monsoons. One advantage to working in the mohave and visiting home in Flagstaff is the ease with which I can dry mushrooms that I gathered in the high country.

Two aspen boletes and a pile of giant puffball was the haul this time. I think more boletes, lobster mushrooms, and oysters will be here soon!

Anyone else finding edible fungi?

I spy with my little eye, a mulie shed!

Here's a throw back to Bob with his homemade bow, Javelina's Bane.

Behold Bottarga! A good friend introduced me to the process of curing fish egg sacs. I never really was a fan of pan frying eggs so I'll certainly be making more this way. The prep is easy; dry the eggs, cover in salt for a few weeks in the fridge, switch out salt when wet, hang dry until they are as hard or soft as you want. Slice and eat raw or grate over a dish like parmesan.

These eggs came from a catfish I caught on our local lake. Salty, fishy, almost like a fish jelly bean. Yum!