billrquimby

Noel. I also am a third generation Arizonan. (My great grandparents got here just after the Indian Wars.) The point everyone is missing in this thread is that only about 18 percent of our state is privately owned. Everything else is in some form of public or tribal ownership and (with the exception of some reservation and State Land Department land) will never be developed. If ranchlands are being developed, it is because ranchers are selling their own land. They certainly do not keep development at bay on 82% of our state. We will always have land to hunt on as long as public opinion does not turn against us. The problem you'll find in fifteen years already is here: First you have to draw a tag in a lottery, and then you have to get around locked gates. Incidentally, don't be in such a rush to be retired. Not having to go to a job every day is great, but I can say from personal experience that being old really sucks. Bill

Deerslam (and anyone else on the forum who will be there): I'll be signing my books -- including my newest, "The History of SCI" and "Wind In My Face" -- at the Leopard's Lair Lounge from 10 am to noon on Wednesday 18 January and from 1 to 4 PM on Thursday 19 January. I'll also be moderating my annual seminar "Your First African Safari" on Wednesday from 10 AM to noon. It's SCI's longest running and most popular seminar. We usually get a turnout of 250-300 folks, nearly all of them heading to Africa for the first time. Look me up and say howdy (you don't have to buy a book). It would be nice to put faces to your posts. Bill

Josh: Have you ever seen an elk petroglph in Arizona, especiallly in our present elk habitat? I've been told none has ever been found. Significant numbers of elk bones and antlers supposedly are missing from dig sites, too. Bill

I've always figured they were both spiritual and historical. Some marked places that the makers held sacred; while other told stories of what happened at that camp. Nobody knows, so one guess is as good as another. I do know that I've found a lot of symbols of bighorns in places where there haven't been sheep in recorded history ... like the Salt River Canyon and the Huachuca Mountains. I've seen what I'm sure are deer, antelope and rabbits, too. What I've never seen are symbols of elk. I'd be very interested in knowing if any exist in Arizona. Bill

What both sides are saying here is nothing new. Governor Jack Williams gave me his Conservation Communicator's Award in 1973 for using my newspaper columns to expose the horrible overgrazing of the Kofa and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuges. Members of my family were cattlemen in the past, however, and I have no problems with grazing on public lands when it is properly managed. Many cattlemen have done good things for wildlife, but the ultimate responsibility for stewardship of our lands is entirely the land management agency's responsibility. Thirty years ago there were no wildlife specialists for Forest Service and BLM lands, and no money for habitat improvement work to benefit wildlife. That's changed. The land management agencies, by and large, are no longer dominated by livestock groups. If you have a problem with an area you feel is being trampled by cows, or if you want to praise someone for good stewardship, write the land management agency and your Congressmen. Bill

The horse wouldn't take a step until the owner got to it and led it off the mountain. He said it turned out to be a good mountain horse after its rump healed. Translated, that means the beast was extremely cautious in spooky spots from then on. My wife forgave but never forgot. She's put up with a lot from me in the 49 years and 9 months we've been married. Missing a New Year's Eve party is among the least of the things I've thrown at her because of my obsession with hunting. I'd write a book except I'm having too much fun writing books on contract to other hunters with tons more hunting experience than I have. I tried to tell our daughter not to marry a hunter but she wouldn't listen. Bill

It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it brief. His horse wound up wrapped around an oak tree. Every time it would try to get up it would throw its head up and slam it back to the ground. There was a triangular flap of skin torn up on its rump that we could lift and see muscle. The owner figured one more fall wouldn't hurt it, so we got on our butts and shoved the horse over the ledge. When it got up, it just stood there, shivering. We collected all my friend's stuff from his saddlebags and he led the horse off the mountain. Gene Clayburn, who owned the lion dogs we were chasing, and I climbed back up on top of the ridge and retrieved our horses. By then it was almost to dark to see. Don't let anyone tell you that horses can see in the dark. We rode ours for no more than 100 yards before they refused to take another step. We spent the night right there. We had no food, no flashlights, and couldn't see well enough to find much wood for a fire. Gene and I spent the night taking turns dancing around and huddled in our saddles to stay out of the wind. There was about two inches of snow on the ground and everything froze up. To say that my wife was unhappy when Gene and I returned to Tucson the next day is an understatement. She had gone to the New's Eve party without me. Bill <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it brief. His horse wound up wrapped around an oak tree. Every time it would try to get up it would throw its head up and slam it back to the ground. There was a triangular flap of skin torn up on its rump that we could lift and see muscle. The owner figured one more fall wouldn't hurt it, so we got on our butts and shoved the horse over the ledge. When it got up, it just stood there, shivering. We collected all my friend's stuff from his saddlebags and he led the horse off the mountain. Gene Clayburn, who owned the lion dogs we were chasing, and I climbed back up on top of the ridge and retrieved our horses. By then it was almost to dark to see. Don't let anyone tell you that horses can see in the dark. We rode ours for no more than 100 yards before they refused to take another step. We spent the night right there. We had no food, no flashlights, and couldn't see well enough to find much wood for a fire. Gene and I spent the night taking turns dancing around and huddled in our saddles to stay out of the wind. There was about two inches of snow on the ground and everything froze up. To say that my wife was unhappy when Gene and I returned to Tucson the next day is an understatement. She had gone to the New's Eve party without me. Bill

That is an incredible buck. If it came from Georgia and not somewhere in southern Canada it is really incredible. Bill

Those are nifty drawings, Amanda. I don't know if the guy with the spiked hair is supposed to be Popokapeli, but that same figure is on a lot of rocks around Arizona. I know nothing at all about such things, but I have found a bunch of them. The Recortado (sp?) Ranch north of the Three Points Shooting Range has a little hill just above its corrals. I doubt that there is a single boulder that isn't covered with drawings. There's a well-known place on the Gila River near Painted Rock Dam that has a bunch, too. The Corps of Engineers put a fence around it. Problem is, a goodly number of the drawings were scratched into the rocks recently, or so it seems to me. The Tucson Mountains have lots of petroglyphs, especially around the Picture Rocks Road area. I've also seen lots of them arround Carrizo, Eagar, Casa Grande, Stockton Pass, upper Canyon del Oro, and I've forgotten where else. Some people find arrowheads (I've never found one) but for some reason I regularly stumble into rock drawings and pottery shards. Next time you drive north through the Salt River Canyon, stop at the first scenic pulloff. Look for the metal stair rails. The highway crews apparently gathered up a bunch of petroglyph-covered boulders and stashed them there for the public to see. Some have been vandalized, but if you've never seen a petroglyph you might want to check it out. Also, if you ever get on the ridge between Brown and Thomas canyons up very close to the eastern face of Baboquivari Peak you'll find a shallow rock overhang where the ridge gets very narrow and the south side of the ridge drops about 75 feet. If you search for it you'll see "BQ" scratched into the rock wall. I put it there in 1960 after a friend's horse went over a ledge and rolled down a shale slope, and we spent a New Year's Eve at that spot. I''ve been told that under Morris Udall's U.S. Antiquities Act, anything over 50 years old is an antiquity. If so, my "art" stops being grafiti in just five more years. Shucks, I became an antiquity nearly 20 years ago. Add another 100 years and someone will want to declare it a historic site. Wish I could be there. Bill

Westoakland: I suspect the whitetails you saw in Aguascalientes and those Amanda spoke about in Durango are indeed Coues deer. I still can't find my reference books (especially Hall 1981) -- I have more than 2,500 books on natural history and big game hunting and I sometimes lose books for months at a time -- but below is what the SCI record book gives as Coues range. It was written by a naturalist in Seattle named Jack Schwabland, and I can tell you no one alive or dead picks nits more closely than he. Jack did not adopt these boundaries willy-nilly. There had to be non-conflicting references in the accepted literature or it would not have been included. ------------ ? Mexico: all of SONORA; west of Hiwy 45 in CHIHUAHUA from the U.S. border to Jimenez, then west of Hwy 49; DURANGO west of Hwy 49; ZACATECUS west of Hwy 49 to intersection with Hwy 45, then west of Hwy 45; AGUASCALIENTES west of Hwy 45; JALISCO west of Hwy 45 to Lagos de Moreno, then north of Hwy 80 to Guadalajara, then north of Hwy 15; NAYARIT east of Hwy 15; and SINALOA east of Hwy 15. This boundary approximates Hall (1981) and other authorities." ------------- I was unaware of any scientist who combines the Coues and Carmen Mountain races as BenBrown reports, but I would not be surprised if one did. I shot a Carmen Mountain deer many years ago near Alpine, Texas, and there wasn't a dime's worth of visible difference between it and all the whitetails I've taken in Arizona. For that matter, the small herd of deer a friend captured in the state of Queretaro and now keeps in an enclosure at his ranch northeast of Mexico City also look just like Coues deer to me, but what do I know? I would hope that CeMex is absolutely certain that couesi and carmensis are the same race before it "reintroduces" couesi to the Sierra del Carmen. It would be like dumping northern woodland whitetails from Michigan into the Huachuca, Galiuro, Santa Rita and Tumacacori Mountains. The effect on the gene pool of the little deer we all love would be disastrous. Actually, I didn't realize carmensis needed reintroducing to the del Carmens. Bill

"As more entries are received for each of the 17 subspecies in Mexico and Central America I would expect more categories in those regions will be created." Oops! I meant to say 16. BQ

"What SCI does re: Coues taxonomy is interesting (maybe even acceptable) but not necessarily biologically driven. Instead, my experience with B&C tells me their taxonomy designations may be based more on biology rather than trophy-member accolade." I have no intention of getting into a hissing contest over SCI versus B&C. As the former editor of the SCI record book, however, I can tell you that while SCI's Trophy Records Committee does indeed listen to "trophy-member accolades," every attempt is made to be certain its decisions are based on sound biology. SCI's Coues deer range, for example follows Hall (1981). It is a fact that SCI does have more whitetail categories than B&C. These came about from a suggestion from Craig Boddington when he was SCI's Americas chairman in the mid-1980s. Craig felt, and rightly so, that it is unfair to have only two categories ("white-tailed deer" and "Coues white-tailed deer") for listing trophy specimens of the 30 North American whitetail subspecies. The differences in average antler size of typical bucks in the various regions is just too great to lump them all together as it had been doing. There was no way SCI could establish 30 categories, however, so it was decided to create regional categories. Thus, SCI accepts entries for "northwestern," "northeastern," "southeastern," "Texas," "Coues," and "Mexican" and "Central American" white-tailed deer. (I've been out of the loop since I retired, so there could have been some recent changes.) The system is not perfect, but it seems fairest to me. As more entries are received for each of the 17 subspecies in Mexico and Central America I would expect more categories in those regions will be created.

"Bill - what other Mexican subspecies are you referring to? And where does the blending occur? I would think other than over by Texas, that there isn't much chance of blending of subspecies. Let me know if you have other info." Hi Amanda. I still can't find my Hall and other respected deer reference materials, but the WMI's "Whitetail Ecology and Management," page 517, has an excellent map showing the ranges of the sixteen subspecies in Mexico and Central America. It shows the Coues range touching the ranges of O.v. sinaloae, O.v. texanus, O.v. nelsoni, O.v. miquihuanensis, and O.v. carminis. "Blending" (or intergradation) occurs along the borders of the ranges of the various subspecies. The Coues whitetail race does not reach the state of Texas. Bill

It depends. I temporarily can't find my other reference books, but SCI follows many scientists who recognize Coues white-tailed deer from all of Arizona, New Mexico and Sonora, and portions of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Aquacalientes, Nayarit and a couple of other Mexican states. The key word is "portions." There are areas in Mexico where the ranges of Coues and a couple of Mexican subspecies overlap and "blending" occurs. Bill

I agree with all of you .22-250 fans --- until it comes to the distances you're talking about. I'd change "up to 300 yards" to "no more than 150 yards." Few young boys and girls have enough experience to pull off longer shots. The length of three football fields is much too far for them unless you want to risk gut and hip shots. Heck, I took a husky 15-year-old out during the cow elk youth hunt around my cabin in October. His elk was only about 40 yards off and it dropped in its tracks when he broke its neck with his first shot from his dad's .270. Problem is, he said he had aimed at a spot behind its shoulder. That means he missed his target by nearly three feet! If it had been a Coues deer it would still be running around today. Bill

Recoil is a big factor for kids (and me, too). For a young boy or girl shooting a 75- to 100-pound deer at 150 yards or less, I'd choose the .22/250 with a 55 to 70 grain bullet that held together well. All the Hill Country whitetails I shot in Texas with a .22/250 years ago dropped in their tracks if I hit them in the heart/lungs. There were no exit wounds. All of the energy of the bullet was absorbed inside the animals. I shot about a dozen springbok in South Africa on a cull with a .223 and it performed well, too. Springbok weigh only about 50 pounds, though. The .243 is a better choice for mule deer, in my opinion. The problem with it is its recoil. Its double that of the .22/250. (See below) Instead of the .243, however, I'd opt for the Roberts' better ballistics. It performed perfectly on 500-pound red deer and 300-pound tahr in New Zealand. With heavy bullets at short range I wouldn't be afraid of hunting elk with it. Bill Q FELT RECOIL .223 Rem. 03.2 ft/lb .22/250 04.7 ft;b .243 08.8 ft/lb .257 Roberts 09.3 f/lb 25-06 12.5 ft/lb 6.5 Rem Mag 13.1 ft/lb .270 16.5 ft/lb 7 Rem Mag 19.2 ft/lb .30-30 11.8 ft/lb .308 17.5 ft/lb .30/06 20.3 ft/lb

I've heard about the so-called "fantails" all my life, and I even shot one that might qualify for that name in the Sierrita Mountains in 1959 or 1960. It was a miniature five-year old buck that weighed less than 50 pounds gutted. It was the only 4x4 (not counting eyeguards) Arizona whitetail I ever shot. I carried it out like I would a javelina. Funny thing, I didn't know how small it was until I walked up on it. From across a canyon it looked as big as any other Coues whitetail. Coues deer are merely one subspecies of the many whitetail subspecies found in North and South America. Ask Amanda. It is genetically impossible for two races of the same species to exist together in the isolated range of our little deer, which means my buck and the very few "fantails" taken every year in Southern Arizona must be dwarfs, which are extremely rare. Some scientists will even tell you that dwarfism does not exist in the wild. Go figure. As to tail color, I've seen all colors on whitetails on the same mountain, but rufus (red) seems to be in the majority. More interesting to me is the face color of Coues deer in Mexico. Those I've seen from and near Chihuahua typically have very dark gray muzzles, unlike those in Arizona.

I think most hunters would be surprised to know just how many whitetails are living within 500 to 1,000 yards of paved high-speed roads.

There is a huge difference between the size of the antlers from region -to -region in what we call "eastern" whitetails. The various subspecies found in the southeastern United States will have a tough time competing with bucks from the three major subspecies found in Texas, Kansas, Michigan (where I shot the buck I show in this forum) or Alberta, for example. The Coues whitetail -- as much as we love it -- is merely a subspecies of whitetail, and there is no particular reason why it deserves a separate listing in the Boone and Crockett record books when North America's other 37 subspecies are lumped into just one category. The Coues is far from the smallest, too. Certain subspecies in Mexico and Central America, as well as the Florida Key deer and the stunted O.v. texanus individuals in the Texas Hill Country, are considerably smaller. A seperate listing for Coues deer began when Boone and Crockett and many misinformed "experts" believed it was a separate species. It continues because of tradition. Bill

Let's face it. Game and Fish will sell every tag it offers at these grossly inflated prices -- and at even higher prices, too. It's a matter of supply and demand. The supply is low and the demand is high. What nobody on this forum has asked is why the number of our deer hunting permits have declined each year until we now allow fewer than 40,000 hunters to go hunting. It's not because "more people are moving to Arizona." Only about 18 percent of this state is privately owned and has a potential for development -- ever. Granted, not all of the remaining 82 percent of the state can be hunted because some of it is National Park Service or Tribal land. And a heck of a lot of prime hunting areas on public lands are locked up by people who consider our lands to be their personal fiefdom. But our open-to-hunters public land inventory is larger than the size of many eastern states. The fact remains that the permit lottery system initiated in 1970 -- when Arizona sold about 110,000 deer tags and had a statewide hunter success of about 24 percent -- has been a miserable failure. We should have more permits, not fewer if this lottery thing actually encouraged deer production. If Defenders of Wildlife could claim it had removed 70,000 deer hunters from our state over the past 35 years we'd all be up in arms. When Game and Fish and its annual lottery does it, we look for ways to limit others from getting "our" permits. Bill

Casey, keep shooting until it's down ... and then be prepared to shoot again if it gets up as you approach. Twice in my 57 years of hunting deer I've shot bucks on the run and watched them drop instantly. One was jumping over a fence in Texas when I hit it. I climbed down out the tree blind and was walking toward it when it jumped up and ran straight at me (it apparently hadn't seen me). My second shot put it down for good just a few yards behind me. The bullet that dropped it in mid-leap had gone high through the gaps in the vertical bones on top of the shoulder and cold-konked that buck. If I hadn't killed it after it recovered I suspect it would have lived a long time before infection or a predator killed it. The other was a whitetail in the Sierritas in the 1950s that I dropped on the spot with a long, lucky shot. I had my rifle on a sling on my shoulder as I approached within 100 yards or so when that buck got up and darted for the top of the ridge as if it had never been hit. My second or third shot killed it. Again the shot that dropped it first was a high spine shot that had not hit a bone. Just remember, it's not dead until it's dead. Bill

Raising fees to deter non-residents won't work. Just look at the White Mountain Apache Indian tribe's elk hunt fees .... about $14,000 the last I heard .... and they have a long waiting list! There are people out there across these United States to whom even $50,000 is pocket change.

I'm lucky in that I'll qualify for a Pioneer's license next year. ... if you can call being 70 "lucky," which I do. Bill

I've been bit once by a scorpion (on my stomach inside a sleeping bag) and twice by brown recluse spiders. No stingers left behind by either critter. I knew immediately when the scorpion hit me, and it hurt terribly for at least 12 hours, after which the pain diminished rapidly. On both spider bites I had no idea I had been bitten until I saw the wounds. Brown recluse spiders leave a target-like wound (both were on my thighs) about the size of a small saucer. I ran very high temps and felt awful, and the flesh in the bite area in the center of the wound started rotting until I was treated with certain antibiotics. If I had to make a choice, I'd choose the scorpion any day. Bill