Last fall, I told you that Coues deer outfitter El Halcon in Chihuahua, Mexico, was no longer booking hunts, but that one of the operation's former partners, Carlos Terrazas, had started up his own outfit, called Grey Ghost Outfitters. Well, I hunted with Grey Ghost this past January to see for myself if it offered the same hunting quality that El Halcon had provided for years.
Terrazas has partnered with well-known Arizona hunter, Danny Carrasco, a real desert rat, - that is, one of those guys who lives and breathes to hunt the diminutive Coues deer. The partnership is a good match because Carrasco has connections with the avid Coues deer hunting community and Terrazas has access to first-class ranches in Chihuahua. Many of them are the same ranches El Halcon was hunting. Terrazas is also a Coues deer hunting nut in his own right, with one of the better collections of big bucks that I have seen. This past season was officially Grey Ghosts' first, as they weren't ready for paying clients the season before and took out a few friends instead. Their first official season was incredible, perhaps the best I've ever heard of. That was in spite of a few complications, such as Terrazas having a kidney stone attack bad enough to hospitalize him for several days in the middle of the season and the transmission in Carrasco's truck failing. These problems didn't stop the duo from producing some monster bucks. Their three best bucks scored 123, 121 and 119 points. The average for 13 hunters was slightly more than 107 points! It would have been higher but for a hunter who passed on a buck estimated to score 130 points! Seems this client was set on killing a buck with a particular type of rack and held back despite having the big buck in his sights. That is a testament to disciplined hunting. He ultimately went home empty-handed, but was still content with the hunt. I killed a buck on the second day of my hunt that was smaller than a big buck........(continued)
