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May 26, 2008

Philly

I'll be in Philly for a few days so no new posts until I return. We're trying to schedule a trip in Arizona right when we get back, so with any luck we'll have some great news to post after the scouting trip! See ya then.

May 23, 2008

The Long Road Ahead?

Another rascal from my first trip. The photo, though it probably doesn't deserve a title, will be called, "The Long Road Ahead." :)

May 20, 2008

First Trip 2008 - Part 2

Here's another decent buck Blake (ArizonaOutfitter.com) and I saw shortly after we started our scouting for the evening. Good length for this time of year and decent mass. His prongs were short, however.

May 19, 2008

First Trip 2008

I scouted for 3 days over the weekend and saw very few good bucks. However, I did see several that could have been good, but they were out in the distance. I would have normally walked to get closer, but every time I saw a potential big buck it was the middle of the day, extremely hot, and extremely sunny...and the bucks were running away. :( Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I did take a pic of at least one decent buck...

May 14, 2008

Horn Growth & Rainfall

Let's take a look at rain and horn growth. A lot of hunter's are excited about the rainfall recently and some even believe that it will impact the horn growth on certain animals. I have no idea how it will affect the deer or elk, but several years ago I researched what differing amounts of rainfall might do to antelope horn growth.

How the research was done:

I am not a researcher or biologist and this is probably a crude attempt at determining any relationship of rainfall and horn growth, but I'll present the findings anyway for your amusement. First, I went through the Arizona Record Book and marked down the number of big bucks. This was several years ago and I honestly can't remember what my cut-off number was for what I was calling a big buck - it could have been 82 or 84 or even 80. I then marked where each buck was taken and what year. Next I looked up records on the rainfall in those areas in those years. I then compiled this little graph. More or less. The accuracy of these results are up in the air, but it's interesting nonetheless.

How to read the graph:

Obviously the number of big bucks taken is on the left side. The bottom indicates during what period I grouped together for the relationship of horn growth to rainfall. For instance - the first three bars represent the number of record book bucks taken the year after "poor rainfall", "average rainfall", and "good rainfall". This does not take into account the year that the bucks were actually taken. From the graph you can see that if the rainfall was poor the year before the buck was taken then there were only 5 big bucks taken. If the rainfall was average the year before the buck was taken then there were about 7 or 8 big bucks taken. If the rainfall the year before was good then there were about 17 big bucks taken.

The P/Y stands for the rainfall the Prior Year and Year of being taken. So, 1/0 means that just the prior year was taken into account. And 1/1 means that the prior year was taken into account and the year that the buck was taken.

I know this all seems complicated (even to me now), but when I actually did all this many years ago it made sense at the time. If I haven't explained it good enough just post your questions in the comments below.

May 11, 2008

Podcasts?

I've been entertaining the idea of doing a podcast of some type for some time. I'm not sure what it could be or what I could do with it, but it's always been something that has intrigued me.

If anyone has any ideas for something like this, let me know.