I think all the good stuff has been covered by various posts (lots of great reports!), so I'll be brief.
I hunted with Stu on Sunday afternoon. We elected to hunt quail rather than call. You can read about that in his post. I got to meet a couple other mods on Sunday night before the week's events started. We enjoyed a nice Mexican dinner at La Posta in Mesilla. Great company! It was a pleasure to chat with Jeff and Barry and their lovely wives.
Unfortunately I had to work Monday through Wednesday, but made it to the orientation on Wednesday night where I coordinated a Thursday hunt with Hidenseek and his hunting partner from Missouri.
We started out Thursday morning early and made 11 stands that day. We called in two and killed one. Hidenseek also killed his first scaled quail. Take a look in a previous pictures thread to see the coyote and quail. That night was a nice meal and the round table discussion. I'd like to thank all those in attendance for putting up with a noisy kid!
Friday I teamed up with Rustydog and hidenseek. We headed out early to hit some country not far from my house that I'm pretty familiar with. We made 14 stands that day, and while all of them looked good, we fought pretty bad winds and only called in one. Too bad we missed... On the way back to town we bumped into those boys from Virginia and had a good time harassing the coyotes over the hill with our howlers. Friday night was again fun, though I missed out on door prizes.
If it's actually possible to suck at raffles and the like, I do.
I didn't get hooked up with anyone for Saturday morning, so I took it easy with the kids and started getting ready for my javelina hunt (which actually started that day). Hidenseek called and told me that the egg shoot had been rescheduled from 1PM to 10AM and asked if I was going. I didn't commit, but said I'd consider it. I finally decided that I'd go watch the shoot to see how it went in preparation for competing next year. My wife kept after me to compete, so I threw my rifle in the truck just in case. Went to the shoot, finally caved to peer pressure
and registered, then in a bout of sheer luck, won the crazy thing!
I still can't quite figure out how that happened... After the hunt I went along with the Predator Pursuit guys in an attempt to get another kill on film, but we got skunked. Did call in a nice Jeep though.
The banquet that night was great - good food, good company, and tons of prizes for all (well almost all - bad raffle luck again).
- Congratulations to Ric on the Will Craig award. It's well deserved. Thanks also to Ric for all the calls he donated, especially for the kids. They're our future and Ric makes sure they stay involved.
- Congrats to all who won raffle prizes, especially NMleon who cleaned house on the special prizes.
I too would like to thank the PM staff and their wives for the hard work and dedication that I'm sure it took to pull this convention together. Please know that your efforts are greatly appreciated.
Finally, thanks to all who made it to the hunt/convention and got to experience what southern NM has to offer. I hope you were satisfied with the hunting and the overall experience. I enjoyed visiting with many of you and sharing the country I call home with some. I hope that PM selects Las Cruces for next year's convention so I can look forward to meeting up with old friends and making new ones. 'Til then - CHEERS!
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