Arizona turkey hunting

I’m leaving Sunday afternoon to pick up a load of horses in Maricopa, Az. I might get a chance to slip off and try one around there if time allows. Just wondering if you fellas have ever chased them around there. Hope y’all are having a great season

never hunted there. I think I recall Az having a limited population of Goulds turkeys, don't know if they are hunt able.

They are huntable but I think the powerball odds are better than drawing a tag for an OOS with no points.

Looks like some good Merriams opportunities and national forest land on the east side of the state.

I bet that'll be a cool ride......Snap a few pics for us.

Go to the Gila on the SE side of the state. You’re welcome.

I almost took at trip there about 10 years ago for a hunt. But went to wyoming instead. Wish we would have gone south.

AZ is supposedly one of the hardest to get drawn for

I sure appreciate the advice fellas. I planned on finding some Indians to shake hands with if I had a little time and see if I could hunt some res land. Best case scenario is it’s a smooth sailing grind from here to there and I only get out the truck to fuel and load up. If I can make it there and back with the stock it will be a win. I doubt I’ll have a chance to hunt. I will say the best group of turkey hunters to ever ask advice from has to be this place here.

I’ll try to do that buddy. My buddies out west think I’m an ass. I’m always telling them there isn’t a prettier place than Barbour County

I sure appreciate it. Crenshaw, thank you for sharing that map.👍

Safe travels bud and hope you find some hunting ground

My good buddy Baker and I pulled out early Sunday night with 30 head of roping steers and a pair of Haflinger draft horses headed for an address outside of Beaumont. The place we got to at 7am the next morning looked about like the 9th ward but every house/trailer had a few horses penned up behind them. We were supposed to pick up a flashy mule another one of my buddies had bought and paid for but the fella we were supposed to meet called us saying he was running 3 hrs late. That whole deal was sketchy but we ended up finding the guy’s brother who sold the mule and got our money back before getting back on the road headed for Llano, Tx. North of Austin is starting to look like the hills around Hollywood, lots of money being spent around there. We dropped off what we had at my buddies ranch in Llano and took off for Casa Grande, Az. The further we got west from there the rockier and drier everything got. You could see the deer hanging out in the shade under those scrubby trees if you looked hard enough.

I stopped for fuel somewhere outside of Ft Hancock around 11pm on Monday night and a pack of kids came riding up out of the desert on those high dollar 4 seater can ams. Probably 10 of them, I figured that’s how they’ve been getting a lot of the illegals across the border but I really don’t know. Coming out of the darkness of the Guadalupe mountains and seeing the lights of Juarez/El Paso was a wild sight. Went through a border patrol checkpoint in New Mexico where they had the interstate drawn down to 1 lane. That woke me up in a hurry because we were loaded for bear and I had read where NM had the toughest handgun laws. They waved us right on through. I got to Casa Grande about an hour before daylight where I took hot shower and had some eggs and bacon. The place we picked up the horses bordered 2.7 million acres that belongs to the Tohono nation. There were birds hammering on that place but I didn’t have the time or permission to get after them. We loaded up the horses and got back on the road. The dust devils and pistachio orchards were about the coolest things to see around there imo. We had a blowout in a town called Truth or Consequences, Az. Thought that was ironic. We threw on a spare and got back to it. Stopped and bought a pair of stove pipe riding boots and a pair of elephant skins from a Mexican who had a shop in Juarez on the way back through. $170 for the elephant skins and he’s making me a belt to match. The speed limit through west Texas is 80 mph but no matter how fast you’re driving it takes forever. My eyes were crossing when I made it to Dallas and I stopped for fuel at Buckys around 4:30 am. I found out you can’t buy beer in Texas until 7am lol My buddy Baker closed out the rest of the trip and we made it back about 7pm on Wednesday evening. It’s sure pretty out there but I was proud to be back in Barbour county

I never realized how wild the dust devils are out there, they look like the water spouts you’ll see in the gulf running hundreds of feet in the air. I took some videos but they might not be worth looking at. The duramax started pouring black smoke on our way back and we found that the boost tube had a big crack in it. No one we called had a replacement tube so we found a carquest and patched it up the best we could in their parking lot. Y’all should have seen them watching us fix that tube using jb weld, baling wire, duct tape, and a few hose clamps. That’s the pic worth looking at🤣 didn’t lose a lick of boost all the way home. The Lord sure looks after us.

Sounds like a fun adventure. You wouldn’t have been able to hunt anything except reservation land anyways, without drawing a tag.

That’s right. I talked to a fella who has lived there since 2014 and he said he hasn’t drawn a resident tag in the last 3 years. He said it was easier to draw a mule deer tag than a turkey