billrquimby

Congrats.

"Mr. Quimby, what have you not taken yet?" T-Rex. Should have hunted them when I was younger.

"Even a tired, worn-out ooooooooooooold timer like Mr. Quimby is enjoying getting into it with somebody now. Wow................I'm impressed and happy." Mr. Darnell. You've got my number, to be sure. Because of my age and health there's no way I could keep up with you. You'll be hunting (and bitching) long after I'm gone. You're a true macho man. I have a challenge for you, though. Before I got so tired and worn out, I took 51 different types of big game animals -- including all ten in Arizona -- on six continents and I'm still hunting at age 70. Match that, my friend. Bill Quimby

A man is nothing without a good woman. As of this past March 30 I've had mine for 50 years. Bill

I much prefer Arizona's method to Wyoming's. There, governors and commissioners have tags that they can give away to whomever they want. Lately most of their tags have gone to conservation and hunting groups. I'm not certain but I think these groups can keep 100% of the proceeds. I do know that in about 1984 or so I was sitting next to the wife of country-western singer Hank Thompson at a One Shot Antelope Hunt Banquet in Lander, Wyoming. Across the table was Wyoming governor Ed Herschler. When Ann Thompson complained that she had never been able to draw a bighorn sheep tag, the governor promised to give her one the next year. Whether he actually did I can't say, but I suspect he did. Although I have no experience there, New Mexico and South Dakota supposedly had governors and commissioners that were able to hand out tags as they wished in those days. I suppose all states have cleaned up their acts by now. Bill Quimby

"My question is how to do you affix that small square, which appears the size of a postage stamp to the deer? or even a turkey? Pretty funny when you think about it One goes back to game and fish and one on the animal... Might be a good thread to start - Arizona Vintage Hunting Memorabilia? - Just a thought! - I'd like to see some pictures of the old metal tags and such.." AZP&Y: By the time I began hunting Arizona had dropped the tear-off stubs on the license and we had metal tags. In the 1970s and 1980s I hunted the Texas Hill Country a lot and their licenses were similar...with four deer and four turkey tags printed on the same piece of paper. Each time we shot a deer, we would cut off a tag and tie or tape it onto an antler. For does (two of the four deer limit had to be females), we simply stuffed the tag deep in an ear. The Texas wardens seemed to not care how many deer someone shot, or if a deer was tagged or not, just so nobody trespassed on somebody else's land. That was a major violation over there in those days and my friend who owned the ranches we hunted made a point of telling us every year that we were not to cross his fences onto his neighbor's property, even to retrieve a wounded deer. I hunted there for 12 years and shot 48 whitetails and maybe a half dozen turkeys with rifles and muzzleloaders. Bill Q

Thank you, Jim. When I go after things on e-bay I never go more than my first bid. In this case it was $32.40. If you see the price go above that you'll know I'm out of it. Bill You both are good people...Bill, back in them days were the tags good for the whole state? Huntin around Tucson could of been some what of a chore for turkey Did they have turkeys around Tucson back in them days? 25-06: By 1948, when I first hunted a deer (12 years after that 1936 license was sold), the limit was one deer and one turkey per year. A general hunting license cost $4, and tags for deer and turkey cost $1 each. The tags were metal. You could buy them anywhere licenses and ammo were sold. Turkeys were reintroduced to Mount Lemmon, and elsewhere in southeastern Arizona, long before I moved to Tucson to attend the UA in 1954. I shot one up in the pines in about 1955 near where they later built Rose Canyon Lake and another in the ocotillos just above what now is the Burney Mines a couple of years later. Both were in the fall, and I shot both with my .303 Savage. Spring turkey seasons are relatively new. Quite a few hunters fought the game commision when it wanted to open spring hunts, claiming it would "wipe out a limited resource." Hunters also fought the commission when it wanted to open Mearns quail seasons in the late 1960s. We hunted the eastern slope of the Galiuros a lot for whitetails in the late 1950s and early 1960s and we found turkeys way out into the oak and brush-filled canyons on the flats between the Galiuros and Pinalenos. The turkey season and the deer season did not overlap, however. Today most of this country is inhabited with mule deer. In the mid-1950s, we saw mostly whitetails. The deer tags were valid for either mule or white-tailed deer, but the limit was only one buck per year. The deer season opened on the last Friday of October statewide and ran about a month. To encourage people to hunt whitetails, the season south of the Gila River was open a bit longer so if you didn't use your tag up north you could always hunt down south. 80,000 to 90,000 deer tags were sold every year until about 1969, when the number passed 100,000. "Hot" units might have had hunter success rates of 18-19%. There were a lot more roads and damned few locked gates, so we could hunt just about anywhere we wanted. Also, the season was so long that if you waited a week or two before going hunting you would see few other humans. Bill

Thank you, Jim. When I go after things on e-bay I never go more than my first bid. In this case it was $32.40. If you see the price go above that you'll know I'm out of it. Bill

Jim. I'm afraid I'm the guilty party. I hadn't read that you'd bid on it until after I'd already placed my bid. I'll back off if you truly want it. I just thought it would be nice to have a license from the year I was born. It's disturbing to realize that the items I grew up using are now collectibles. My first deer rifle was a Model 99 .303 Savage on which I later mounted a Weaver 2.5X scope with a post and wire reticle. (Everyone thought I was crazy -- scopes made everything wiggle and you couldn't hit running game with them, they said.) I couldn't afford factory ammo (about $3.50 box, I think), so I saved and bought a Lyman nutcracker tong tool. The bullets I loaded were seconds from the old Arizona Bullet Company factory here in Tucson. My hunting knife was a Barlow, and I wore WWII Army surplus clothes to hunt in. Binoculars? I didn't know anyone who used or even owned them. We pounded the mountains and rolled a lot of rocks. I couldn't afford boots, even from the surplus stores, so I wore tennis shoes ... the old ankle-high black ones with white shoelaces and white real-rubber soles. We slept in genuine U.S. Army pup tents, the dull green canvas ones that came in two pieces and kept you dry as long as there still was wax on them. I bought my first Arizona hunting license ($4) and metal deer tag ($1) in 1948 and shot my first mule deer very near where Lynx Creek Lake now sits outside Prescott. The dirt roads to there from Yuma were so bad we camped out overnight in Stone Cabin (there still was one) near Quartzite going and coming. The only pavement on the whole trip was on Yarnell Hill, and it was bumper-to-bumper with the cars and trucks of other hunters all the way up the night before opening day. Signs and banners saying "welcome hunters" were everywhere on Whiskey Row in Prescott, and everyone who shot a buck made a point of showing it off by driving around the square. The deer season opened statewide on the last Friday in October and ran at least a month. Thinking back about those years makes me realize the good ol' days are now, though. At any rate, I'll stop bidding if you want it. Bill

I was born in Tucson the year that license was issued.

Here are a few of my favorite trophies. The 17.5-inch antelope came from Seligman. The double shovel caribou is from the Northwest Territories. The 31-inch northeastern whitetail is from Michigan; the sable antelope is from Zimbabwe (I shot a larger one several years later in Zambia but can't find the photo); and the Himalayan tahr is from New Zealand. I've have lots of "favorite" trophies, including a very good Cape buffalo, a 32-inch Arizona desert mule deer, and a Siberian roe deer that was No. 1 when I shot it in Mongolia. The heads are in Tucson and in Greer, but their field photos are gone. I'm sending these in black and white to save space. Bill Quimby

Deer Have never failed to draw a tag Antelope I hunt them in Wyoming Elk 3 (took 11 years to draw my last tag) Buffalo lifetime tag filled in 1959 Sheep lifetime tag filled in 1995 after 39 years of applying

A 7 mm Rem. Mag on a Mauser 98 action, with Timney trigger, Shilen barrel, and 3x9X Leupold scope. I stocked it myself using walnut cut on a friend's ranch in Texas. I carry 10x50 Swarovskis. When driving and glassing, such as for antelope, I use a 20X Zeiss spotting scope. I've taken everything from 10-pound grysbok in Zambia to big Alaska-Yukon moose in Canada, in addition to most of my Arizona Big Ten with it. It works. Bill Quimby

"It's really hard for me to believe and see how many people in here is/are being saying that they knew that the survey was missing something but still they kept their mouth shut,unbelievable!!. If a blind guides another blind were we'll go?? If the ones that know,do not teach the ones that do not know where we'll end up? Knowledge and wisdoms are blessings and we should used to bless others not to keep it for our selves;other wise those blessing may be taken away from us." Ernesto: The "survey" already was in place when I first saw it. My commenting then would not have changed anything. Bill Quimby

"About 4 years ago, Arizona Bowhunters Association convinced the G&F not to put the Kaibab on a draw and to gather harvest data at a hunter check station. G&F thought that the harvest was 1500-2000, but ABA did not believe those numbers. Subsequent surveys showed that only 160-180 deer were taken the next year." If there were a way to learn exactly how many deer are taken across the state by bowhunters, I would not be surprised if the number were substantially lower than anyone realizes -- especially with whitetails. The Kiabab is a huge area, and it had lots of access roads to distribute people the last time I hunted there. It is hard for me to believe that a determined hunter couldn't get away from the crowds. Bill

Alot of Stephenville,TX cotton tailed bunnies, cuz that is where that snake was caught.... Texas white-tailed deer?

Folks, please do not misread what I'm about to say. I am in NO WAY advocating putting any bowhunt on a permit-only basis. I despise any system that tells me and others we cannot hunt. However, lotteries for archery hunts would allow more individuals to go hunting each year. Archers who bowhunt deer and also draw rifle deer permits are taking opportunities from those who hunt only with rifles. There would be no difference in revenue as long as all permits were sold, which they would be with the paltry numbers of permits now available. Has anyone at Game and Fish threatened to put deer bowhunts on a permit-only basis? Bill Quimby

Coues white-tailed deer?

Amanda. I know you and others put a lot of effort, blood, sweat, and tears into this thing. Nonetheless, despite AGFD participation, it was not scientificallly conducted, which means some or much of its findings are suspect. The question is, which findings? Here are some of the things that bothered me: -- Hunters opposed to the AGFD's proposed changes promoted the survey to like-minded persons, thereby shaping responses and tainting the survey. There apparently was no such effort from the "other side". -- There was no security to keep fanatics from loading the survey. The same person could take the survey multiple times by using made-up names and birthdays. There wasn't even a way of determining if the participants ever had hunted a deer or would hunt a deer in the future. -- Opinion surveys usually have "control" questions to determine if the participant really meant how he/she responded to other questions. There was no such effort in this survey that I could see. -- Surveys should be limited in scope. This one tried to learn too many things. -- Some of the questions were biased against any change in the regs, IMO. Bill

1. "I do think a random 1,000 hunters surveyed by a un-biased group would be valid." So do I. A statistician might even say a smaller sample would get acceptable results if participants were properly selected. 2. "How can we the average hunter make a scientific survey and completetly valid for the commissioners? or what we should have done?" I don't know. I do know that surveys done by biased non-professionals have about as much effect as petitions, with is not much more than nil. 3. "Let say that we had provided an randomly and scientific survey...............Do you think that the commission would take it in consideration? or they will do as they want regardless of the survey results?" If a reliable survey showed the majority of whitetail deer hunters wanted something, I believe the commissioners would have would have listened. 4. What's your opinion or why do you think that the Az G&F helped put together the survey if it was going to be completly useless? The Game and Fish Department is comprised of employees who sometimes do things to minimize conflict. Game and Fish Commissioners do less of this. 5. "Did you knew that the survey was not randomly and scientifically made before the commission meeting?" Si, Sr. Ernesto. I did not say anything until after the meeting because I disagreed with many of the others on this forum, and I did not want my criticism of that survey to affect the outcome of the process. (The commissioners obviously were able to detect the survey's faults without my help.) If you noticed, I stayed completely out of the debate leading up to the meeting. As I've said often on this forum, I believe the future of hunting depends upon providing more hunting for more people. If we continue to lose deer hunters at the rate we have lost them over the past 30 years it will not be long before we soon will be talking about hundreds of hunters, not thousands. I really shouldn't care about the future of hunting because my grandson is not a hunter, and it won't be very long before I am too old to hunt, but I do care ... a lot. Bill Quimby

"Bill you are right about it not being random and scientific, but anyone could take it and the azgfd sent out 44,000 e-mails to deer hunters from last year to take the survey, they were probably randomly selected and sent out, but nobody cared to take it. It was also posted on the azgfd home page, and anyone visiting the site could take it there too. I really don't think the ADA and the group that put the survey out had enough time to do it like they would have liked so they did the next best thing in the time they had." Keith: I was under the impression that there were fewer than 40,000 rifle mule deer AND white-tailed deer hunters in 2005. I wonder how they got everyone's e-mail address?.... I hunted deer in Arizona in 2005, and I have email capability. AGFD did not contact me, so I guess they didn't want my opinion. Just because everyone who felt strongly about -- and also knew about -- the poll could enter does not validate the results of that survey. There are three groups in nearly every issue -- those who disagree; those who are nuetral; and those who agree. To learn what the majority of whitetail hunters want, all three groups needed to be equally surveyed. Bill Quimby

"LOL! How do they know only 30% complied? If they know only 30% reported, then would have to know how many hunters were successful to begin with. A. They know how many archery tags are sold. B. They have only an estimate of the success rate for archery hunting. C. They know the number of kill reports received. A times B = X minus C = D (30%) A and C are known factors. B and D are only estimates. I suspect they are overestimating B. Bill Quimby

It's been 52 years since I took those statistics courses in pursuit of my marketing degree at the UA, but I did hire and work with professional survey designers during the dozen years I worked in advertising and public relations and I'd bet the rules haven't changed that much. I'm sorry if I step on the toes of the people who put it together, but I'm afraid I agree with the commissioners who said the survey was not scientific. 1. Participants were not randomly selected. The ADA and CW participants campaigned to get as many like-thinking hunters as possible to take the survey. Neutral hunters and hunters who agreed with the agency did not. 2. Although the instructions stated someone could vote only once, there was no way to enforce this if that person wanted to vote multiple times using different names and birthdates. 3. There was no way to know if respondents even had ever bought a hunting license, let alone hunted a whitetail in the past or intended to hunt in the future. 5. Some of the key questions would result in only certain responses, much like asking: yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife? I could go on. It would be interesting if someone would finance a professionally-conducted survery. A sample smaller than 6,500 could provide acceptable statistical accuracy if: A. Say, 1,000 participants were randomly selected from the 2005 whitetail hunting permit holders, and B. Much more time was spent preparing the questions to be certain the survey resulted in everyone knowing what the majority of hunters want. Bill Quimby

Bullwidgeon's grandfather and I went out this morning (he had the tag, I had the truck). We two old farts struck out because the birds weren't gobbling. Some jerk shot near us just before dawn. He apparently had put turkeys to bed in a roost tree and couldn't wait for daylight. Bill Quimby

I don't know about access now, but years ago one of the US Fish and Wildlife Service guys working on Fort Huachuca got permission for us to drive to the fort's southern border, as high as you can get on the mountain. We climbed the fence and entered the Coronado National Forest. I jumped a very good buck about a quarter mile down into a canyon, but missed three shots at it! I hunted near the fort's West entrance twice after that and killed a couple of average bucks. (There are quite a few mule deer the closer you get to the fort's gate.) I also did a bit of Mearns quail hunting off the road past Parker Canyon Lake on the way to the Coronado Memorial and saw whitetails in the low grasslands/oak country below the mountain every time I went there. I was surprised to see how many javelinas and whitetails were in that easy, open country. Don't know much more about the Huachucas. Sorry. Maybe someone else has more recent info. Bill Q