Congrats.

Just wish it was a little cooler for you while you are here. It's 84 in Phoenix today.

nice dude!

On Wednesday evening after the Game and Fish presentation, I met and chatted with member desert dave. Since he hadn't made plans for Thursday, we decided we'd go calling together. Thursday morning he and I met up with Matt1953 and Toro2269 for a bite of breakfast before heading out. We traveled about half an hour to some state land outside of town and were set up for our first stand before the sun rose. Three of us set up overlooking a wide open area, while Toro watched a narrow road carved through the heavy brush to our rear. Before we started calling, we heard barks and howls in the distance, so instead of going right to distress, we threw out some female invitation howls and whimpers. Then into some bird sounds, rabbit sounds, and back to the birds. I mixed in some rabbit distress using my catwhacker-make open reed antler call. Shortly into that series, Toro opened up on a large coyote trying to sneak in our back door. Despite what appeared to be a solid hit (based on hair and blood), we were unable to recover the coyote. Disappointed, we moved onward. By midmorning, we left the rocky desert areas behind and entered flatter, sandier scrublands.



On a stand much like the one pictured above, we called in another coyote, which I managed to scare off by switching sounds just as Toro lined up for the shot. Lesson learned - make sure there's not a coyote in full charge ten feet from the call when you switch sounds. It was very frustrating to lose out on another coyote, particularly since Matt and I needed to leave shortly after that to get back to help set up for the opening night of the Convention.

Of course that night we were treated plates full of tasty Italian grub and then educational and entertaining presentations by Big Al Morris from FoxPro, Tom Austin from Predator Strikeforce and FoxPro, and John Bailey of EOTech.







Then it was time to tear down and make plans for the next day.

Thanks for posting Troy!!

When Thursday evening's festivities came to a close, we had made arrangements for five of us to head out Friday morning to see what we could rustle up.

Friday morning we (SnowmanMo, desert dave, Toro2269, Matt19953, and myself) met up in the parking lot, selected a location to hunt, and hit the road. About an hour later we pulled off to finalize plans and split up - Mo and I headed north and the other three guys headed south - with plan to circle around and meet up in a few hours.

On the first stand of the morning, Mo called in a nice looking fox, which played hard to get before finally popping out of the brush in completely the wrong spot at less than ten yards from me. We had a short stare down, and when I made my move to bring the shotgun to bear, the fox bolted. I burned up three rounds of buckshot and killed a mesquite bush, but managed to miss the fox completely. Disgusted, we left and made a few more stands, but had no other takers.

We met up with the other guys and decided to try to get out of the increasing heat by heading into higher country. On the way, Mo, aka The Fox Whisperer, stopped the truck and told me "You guys have to call that little canyon right there. There's a fox in it." Not one to argue, I grabbed the other three guys and we hiked down into the canyon and set up on a nice vantage. Less than 20 seconds into the set, I saw a fox come bailing off the far ridge on a beeline for us. While watching for it to reappear on a small hill between it and us, another fox popped up right at the call, caught a whiff of human scent, and exited stage right. Drat, I knew I should have set up over the caller with the shotgun. A few minutes later, the first fox made its appearance and got made famous. Here's desert dave recovering his first Arizona fur.


I'm not sure who was happier here - Dave for getting his fox or me for calling my first fox double and getting one for a new buddy.


We left there to move further up into the hills, but the heat followed us and we had little further luck on our several more stands (though Mo did call in and get backdoored by a coyote). I had to get to the Game and Fish office before closing time to get a CITES tag for my bobcat, so Mo and I left the other three to make a few more stands and made tracks for town. On the way out, we saw evidence of at least one truly intrepid desert adventurer.


We also saw several places that just begged us to come back and call for foxes or cats.


(Aside - if you kill a bobcat in Arizona and want to remove it from the state, you need one of these tags, which are like zip ties. That's not a big deal. However, Game and Fish personnel are required to route the tag through two of the three holes in hide of the head. That's a bit of a challenge if you freeze the cat without skinning the head.)

Later than night we regrouped for dinner and more camaraderie. After a meal of roasted game hens and all the fixins', Byron South of Convergent Hunting Solutions took the stage to regale us with tales and video of him and others using the Bullet call and related mobile phone apps. If you like tech, this call could be for you! It appears to have a lot to offer, and I'm eager to see one in action personally.


As the festivities wound down for the night, I wandered by the table on which the various Egg Shoot prizes were on display.

Here's the custom AR that the winner took home.


And the trophies and other prizes.


Past Egg Shoot winners get a chance to take home this traveling trophy and FoxPro Shockwave .


And last but not least, young PMers get to compete in their own Egg Shoot for one of these trophies.


All of these trophies were won Saturday morning and presented during the main banquet on Saturday night, but that's another post...

Thank you Troy for an awesome adventure!

Troy, what did you do with your bobcat?

well, I'm glad Troy is willing to tell us about the parts he got into, since everyone else seems to have lock jaw...

Been that way for a couple of years now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I froze it again. I'll be running it down to the taxidermist for a rug when I get the chance.



I hope to finish up tonight with tales of Saturday's Egg Shoot fun and the banquet where, once again, I didn't win a rifle. Got a nice scope though...

Troy, I heard you ended up with a rifle though

Nope. My daughter won one of the little Savage .22s that were used in the Egg Shoot, but I didn't, despite putting a bunch of tickets in little boxes. I really wanted that PTG AR, but it wasn't to be. Guess I'll have to buy an upper from Mo now...

Saturday dawned clear and bright, with minimal wind - the perfect kind of day to go hunting predators, or in our case, eggs. If you don't know about the Egg Shoot, take a few minutes to read up on it HERE. After all the shooters checked in themselves and their rifles, the crew delivered the eggs to the 150-yard line.


Yes, there really is a wooden stand with five eggs on it in this picture. I'm not sure mere mortals can see it with the naked eye though.

The contenders were divided into shooting groups of five or less for the first round.



After some good shooting, and some luck I think, the field started to narrow...


And within a short time, only two shooters remained to duke it out for first and second.


But in the end, there can be only one, and AWS from Washington (on the left) walked away the winner of the 2016 Predator Masters Egg Shoot. He'll get to hunt next season with that dandy AR I showed above.


Once all the hands were shaken and congratulations were imparted on the three winning shooters, past Egg Shoot winners took to the range in the Egg Shoot Champion shootoff. In case you didn't know, past Egg Shoot winners are not eligible for the standard Egg Shoot, so PM recently started a secondary contest that pits past winners against each other in a yearly match to see who still has it. This year there were four past winners in attendance, and we lined up for our turn to send bullets down range.


Within just a few rounds, we were narrowed down to two (reb8600 and me), and then just one (unfortunately not me). Reb8600 outdid me in the final round when I missed and he didn't. In fact, he didn't miss an egg in the entire shootoff. Darn fine shooting sir! After getting our butts kicked, the three of us were still nice enough to pose with this year's champ (second from the right).


When all the big guns were put away, Jeff Mock and I broke out a couple of the little .22s that Savage sent over and got them sighted in for the Youth Egg Shoot. There were four kids in attendance this year, and we wanted to them to have some fun. In addition to the rifles donated by Savage, the fine folks at Predator Technology Group donated enough ammo for the kids to take plenty of shots at those pesky eggs. We moved the egg stand in to 50 yards and put the kids to work.

Here's my son sighting through the scope to get a feel for a strange rifle.


And here he is after a couple good shots.


My daughter also shot. Here she is getting ready for her turn.


And reloading after a less than perfect shot.


Here are the four happy egg hunters after the match was complete.


Good times and good shooting. When it was all done, we had a few hours to kill before the banquet, which I'll summarize in my final post (you're ready for that, right) in the next day or so. Thanks for reading this far.

I will have some information on the egg shoot as well as pictures of it and the banquet nights but am trying to get caught up at work and home. I will try to get something over the weekend. I didn't do much hunting so I wont have any stories for that.