npaden

I think saying that there is no difference between this bull and a high fenced bull is over the top.

It did take them a solid month of hunting to close the deal on this guy. Maybe I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I would assume that the shooter was with them most of the time hunting some pretty rugged country. If the guy was sitting back at camp eating steaks until they located the bull and then he just went and shot it that might be a different story, but I don't think that was the case. At any time during that month anyone with a license could have shot this bull that was on PUBLIC land.

The fact that he spent so much money on the tag and guides does detract from the accomplishment, but it doesn't equate to hunting a high fence IMO. Boone & Crockett doesn't think so either.

My 2 cents. Nathan

JNTURK

i have heard from reliable sources that the blocking of the road statement is TRUE. It did not happen to them, but of their friends who drew a tag and they all live in UT.

stealthycat II

npaden 4 years ago I paid a guy $500 to scout and find me a big Colorado muley buck, and give me the are that buck was in. Why? I wanted to do it myself, the hiking, packing etc. I saved 13 years of PP's and I wanted to give myself an edge towards killing a monster mule deer. I wanted 180" plus.

Hiking in, 3 horses rode up on me on the trail. 3 locals. We talked for a while and here is what I found out. Every weekend for the whole damn summer these 3 fellows had rode horses into those mtns looking for a big buck. Every weekend they missed some family time, spent family money and worked hard to find THE buck. They found him too .... 2 of them. A huge non-typical and a huge typical. Right where my $500 guy told me they were.

I did NOTHING but pay $500 and here I was competing directly for those 2 bucks. I felt like dog schit to be honest with you and ashamed. Why? Becuase I took short cuts and hunting isn't suppose to be short cuts. Those 3 DESERVED either of those bucks, i didn't. I apologized to them, and hiked into an adjacent canyon. They were so grateful - because I was being a hunter and doing the right thing - I bet they never imagined that happening.


have you read monster muley boards ? do you know how far these Mossback type guiys go ?

$6,000 will make you do some things .... $200,000 will make you do damn near ANYTHING for that one particular bull


Its all about the antlers - that's the problem I have - would he have killed the bull if 1/2 his right rack was broken off ? Its not about hunting the trophy animal, its net & gross score and this bull had it all and they spent tens of thousands .... HUNDREDS of thousands, dozens of men and hundreds of hours to finally corner him using radio's planes probably, GPS's and underhanded (but legal) tactics that would make any of us puke

but hey, Mossback got him huh ? hooorah !

most would ooooo and ahhhh and not tell him it wasn't hunting

npaden

So if you hadn't paid the $500 for the guy to tell you where the big deer were and you came upon the knowledge in another fashion (game warden told you, a friend who had been in the area that summer saw them and told you, etc.) would you have still gone after the deer if you had talked to those hunters? Is it strictly that you paid for the knowledge?

What if you just picked that area on a random basis and then talked to these guys and they told you they had scouted the area and knew there were big bucks in it? Would you have left for another area then?

At some point you have to decide that it is public land and not someone's private playground.

I'm just wondering where your line is. Some might think that since they were riding horses and you were on foot that they had an unfair advantage. It sounds like you started out ahead of them and they caught up with you anyway. What if those 3 guys worked for Mossback and were just lying to you so they could get their client hooked up with a monster mulie!!

bigcountry

I have to admit, I have went on guided hunts for moose, and looking back, I got very little satisfaction out of the hunt. My favorite kill was last year, when I scouted hard, found good sign during the rut, knew it was a big deer. And bowkilled a nice respectable 7pt on heavily hunted public land. I have killed bigger, but that kill was my best.

hillbillyhunter1

No I haven't and like I said if the mossback guys were doing something shady then shame on them. It does seem a little suspect in my mind that CAelknuts defended them so vehemently. I would expect a reasonable reply from a hunter who hunted near them when asked about suspect practicesto say "not that I know of", and not, "absolutely not"

As far as the antlers, although it's easy to rail against horn porn, especially in a cage (unlike this scenario). Antlers make part of even the legitimate hunting world go round. That's why there are special draws, super tags, trophy areas, bonus points in many cases. I was hoping the ol spider bull would break off his antler, but, in the end, I would have had no problem if the guides/shooter were ethical in their pursuit, no matter to what financial end they pursued him. If there are questions about their actions then that is another story.

The spider seemed doomed from the beginning although lately it seemed that he may have been a little cagier then was first suspected...but the odds were stacked atoo far against him.


Yes, but let's say that a hunter in your shoes (in this scenario) also worked hard, spent time away from family, to make the extra money that earned him this same knowledge...plus he stayed awake for 30hrs straight to get there, paid much larger license fees, had only one shot (the week he was there.... unlike the guys that could hunt off and on for months). Doesn't seem like a lot of inequity there...

stealthycat II

random basis isn't paying $500 for an unfair advantage, there is a difference in paying money for an edge, and working for it - surely you see that ?

shady doesn't mean illegal ........ why not allow them to stretch all laws, hell its what they do for a living, tens of thousands of dollars is being exchanged for whoever leads the shooter to that bull - why does it matter if things are stretched ?


because it matters, thats why

thats exactly what I did and I cheated around what hunting really was for horn porn. I did it, and I'm glad those 3 horse back riders brought me back to the reality of what hunting was.



look, the things earned in life are vastly more important than the things bought of given

you buy a 500" bull and it really means you shot a bull you paid a lot of money for, its nothing more than that, its not hunting, and it never will be and because its become SO popular to do it we're losing what hunting really is all about

Chris_H

I dont know why but this whole thing just kinda made me think about the Jimmy Houston incident. Just without the cage.

starhunter21

Who is denny austad?

Was this killed on Monroe?

I heard that someone shot a 430 with a muzzle loader on the 27th on the beaver mt.

CAelknuts

Hillbillyhunter, perhaps you should pay a little more attention to what others write. I never did say "absolutely not" about the things they did or didn't do. I was there, and saw more than just about anyone else who is posting on here. They struck me as decent and ethical hunters from what I saw, and that is more than I can say about some of the DIY hunters who I encountered. I'm simply passing along observations of what I saw, and the opinions I developed as a result of my observations. Where you got the "absolutely not" comment is beyond me. As for blocking roads, I spoke with one of the people involved with some trees being cut down, and he told me in no uncertain terms it was done by the landowner because he didn't want everyone driving on roads that led through the middle of his property. I don't have a problem with that, but do have a problem with people who couldn't even find their way to the unit today saying it was someone else. That's nothing more than clueless speculation.

Barebackjack, It's interesting that you think the fact that I'm from California explains my viewpoint. I don't know where you're from, or care. I guess you don't realize, or perhaps you don't care, that I might be the only person posting about this elk who was actually elk hunting in the same unit, in the same places as the Mossback guides and hunter, along with quite a few other draw tag hunters. In case you don't quite comprehend what I just said -- I WAS THERE. Were you? I saw these guys hunting, I know where they hunted and have a good idea of how they hunted. I ran into them a couple times, either in town when buying supplies or out in the field. We drove past each others camps on our way to places we were each hunting many days. I even talked to them a few times (god forbid!) about not only the spider bull, but some other nice bulls too. So, do you get it that I have a little different perspective than just about everyone else who is posting on here?

Denny Austad arrived the evening of August 30th from what I was told, and he was still hunting hard when my season ended on September 12th. I never ran into any of the Mossback guides or Mr. Austad out riding quads fifteen minutes after shooting light in the morning, but I did have more encounters with DIY hunter's possees like that than I'd have preferred. More than a few of the draw tag hunters had multiple helpers, heck I even hadone buddy along with me. The times that I went past the Mossback camp, I never saw more than five or six trucks there, and that was at times when they were in camp, i.e. at night. These guys busted their butts and hunted hard, including Mr. Austad. I say that from being there and observing them, not from hundreds or thousands of miles away with nothing more than an opinion, like some others on here are doing.

I wasn't there yesterday when they killed that bull, but from what I saw when I was there, the guys in the picture were probably the entire crew that was hunting him. And that doesn't make them all that different than some of the other hunters who had elk tags on Monroe, DIY or guided.

You may be biased against my comments because I'm from California. That just indicates that you're a closed minded individual. The fact that you're commmenting on a situation of which you have no first hand experience proves that it doesn't matter where you're from to be clueless. You are proving that clueless people live in states other than California. I imagine that all fifty states (57 states if you're Mr. Obama) have clueless people with opinions. You don't even have a clue where they were camped, hunted, missed the bull last week or killed him yesterday, other than the unit name and state. I have firsthand knowlege of nearly every one of those aspects that I just mentioned, so how long do you care to debate this?