billrquimby

Fort Huachuca is the ultimate place to hunt Coues white-tailed deer. Years ago, there was a military wildlife management department with several employees. If that still is true, I would stop by their office and get to know those people well. Bill Quimby

I did a lot of shopping a few years ago for used and new boat trailers and found the best deal was at Harbor Freight. Bill Quimby

My wife and I had a Hudson in the late 1950s that looked a lot like the one in the photo. They were great cars. Bill Quimby

+1. The way some people swear by their special camouflage patterns today, you'd think no one ever successfully hunted before it was invented. The prey animals we hunt see the world in hues of black and white, and (as verdehunter said) usually are more concerned about detecting movement, sounds and scent. Many years ago, I had a small Texas whitetail buck walk up to where I sat in the open on a little dam. I sat as still as I could as it approached, and it didn't bolt until it had sniffed my boots! I was wearing jeans and a tan-color down jacket. Bill Quimby

Yes, TJ. Seeing my sketch on a post with that word is what made me ask about it. Bill Quimby

It's been a fifteen years or more since I drove that road, but I seem to remember at least two junctions without signs where I had to check my map before going on. It would have been very easy to waste a lot of time and gas. Bill Quimby

Two friends had a huge boar bear come to within ten FEET of their blind while they were using a box call for turkeys a few weeks ago. Bill Quimby

Bean bag toss a.k.a. cornhole, the bags are full of corn. Points cancel like horseshoes. Its great fun to play while having a few cold beverages. Thanks. I'm from an earlier era when the word meant something far different. I considered protesting your friend's use of my stylized sketch without my permission if that's what the word still meant. Bill Quimby

Don't know about this season, but I bought reservation licenses and bait for our adult grandkids last year at the Sunrise Lake service station and store a short distance past Sunrise Lodge. Bill Quimby

We had 35- to 50-mph winds in Greer last Friday, the same day the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest imposed fire restrictions. So what did a couple of jerks do to celebrate the ban on fires? They hiked up the Squirrel Springs Trail a short distance and built a campfire! Fortunately, the Greer and Eagar fire departments were called early and were able to contain the blaze to just five acres. If they had not, that fire would have roared down Hall Creek and threatened Crosby Acres, South Fork and the portions of our little village that managed to escape last year's Wallow Fire. The scary part is that their fire got away from them at night, while most of us were sleeping. Bill Quimby

Is that another deer or just brush on the skyline to the right of the buck in the foreground? Bill Quimby

What are cornhole boards? Bill Quimby

I came across a column I wrote for the Tucson Citizen nearly 14 years ago that some of you may enjoy. If this piece were to be used again I'd have to add Home Depot and Lowes to the list of chain stores and increase prices for land and the number of elk that can be seen. Bill Quimby GREER (July 17,1998) – The White Mountains have changed a lot over the 50 consecutive summers I’ve been coming up here. It may be hard for newcomers to imagine that it used to be a long, bumpy ride between the towns of Show Low, Lakeside and Pinetop, or that everything (except one gas station) shut down promptly at 5 p.m. on weekdays and was closed on Sundays and after noon on Saturdays. If you were hungry, you had only two choices – Charley Clark’s in Pinetop or Molly Butler’s in Greer. There was little else in between. There were only six lakes on the whole mountain, and they were called Big, Crescent, Greer, Tunnel, Bunch and Becker. Sunrise Lake – to say nothing about the Sunrise Ski Area – wasn’t even a dream in some planner’s mind when I first fished the Little Colorado River as a boy. For skiers, there was a small run on a hill where a microwave tower now stands, not far from what now is A-1 Lake, and a short run on the hill behind what now is the Amberian Point Resort in Greer. There were no designated campgrounds or recreational areas. We could pitch a tent or park a camper anywhere in the forest we wanted – even on the reservation – and our favorite sites were alongside streams. When the U.S. Forest Service started forcing everyone to use the new campgrounds it was building far from water, lots of campers rebelled and passed petitions, which were ignored. It didn’t matter where on the mountain we fished or hunted. Fish and wildlife on the White Mountain Apache Reservation still were under the jurisdiction of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and we needed only state licenses. Mule deer could be seen standing along the roadways just about everywhere at any time of day, but it was a red-letter day when an elk was sighted. Residents and cabin owners had few problems with bears. When a bear wandered into a campground or a back yard, people talked about the incident for months. McNary was a booming sawmill town with a railroad that brought logs down from the high country. It had its own hotel and a general store that sold everything from ax handles to china dishes to ladies fashions to groceries to lantern wicks and nails. Stopping at that store was a highlight of every visitor’s trip. Maverick was a real town, too, with its own post office, and it would be a long time before it became just a name on a map. The fork in the road between McNary and Pinetop wasn’t called Hondah yet. Nobody would have believed that a huge, domed stadium would be built someday at Eager, or that they would ever move the statue commemorating the pioneer woman and child away from the post office to two different sites in Springerville. People still talked about a trout hatchery that used to be at the end of the road at Greer, and the quarter-acre pond on Badger Creek that was stocked with trout for children and blind anglers, but both were gone long before my first trip here. So were all the small 200- to 500-acre ”wildlife refuges” that once occupied prime habitat all over the mountain. The road to the White Mountains from Tucson has undergone the greatest change in the past half century, though. It could take up to 10 hours to drive here by way of Tiger (a town that was swallowed up by what became the San Manuel Mine) or more if we were delayed by road construction. The road through the Gila River gorge was much higher up the canyon past Winkleman than it is now and much narrower and rougher. (The present road was built on an old railroad bed.) When there was a summer storm, a short tunnel sometimes filled with rocks and gravel, forcing us to turn around and take the alternate route through Ray (another victim of an open-pit mine). Kearny and San Manuel didn’t exist. The road through Salt River Canyon was always being worked on, and delays of two hours were common when highway crews were blasting and bulldozing. Today, it takes only a bit less than five hours to drive from my home in Tucson to my cabin in Greer. The towns of Show Low, Lakeside and Pinetop have grown together, and there are Wal-Marts, Kmarts, Circle Ks, golf courses and just about every fast-food outlet that was ever franchised. Property that once could be bought for $300 to $750 an acre now costs $75,000 to $100,000 or even more. The casino at Hondah is undergoing non-stop expansion, but nobody slows up going through McNary. There are more than 30 trout lakes now, and lots of campgrounds and snowmobile and cross-country ski trails. It is not unusual to see 75 or more elk during a sunrise drive over back roads. Sunrise Ski Area is one of the West’s largest. Although the White Mountains remain Arizona’s premiere summer vacation area, I yearn for the time when there were far fewer people.

Thanks to all who stuck up for me, and to those who liked that old column. 123456 and I have exchanged a couple of friendly private messages, and all is well with the world. Although there were no "multiple errors," 123456 made a valid point. He (and probably many others) believed I have appointed myself the guru of grammar on this forum. I apologize if that's what my past posts have made it seem like. After more than a half century of selling my own words and editing the work of others it is tough not to comment when I see our language abused. Henceforth, I will try my best to avoid this. Please bear with me when I slip up. Bill Quimby

There were two small calves among the seven cows and yearlings in the meadow across the road from our cabin at first light this morning. Bill

Wish I'd seen the complete post from 123456 before someone deleted it. I learn from my errors and welcome having someone point them out to me. Bill Quimby

" I photographed this one in unit 33 a couple of years ago, it was not the least bit afraid of me and waited for me to get my camera out of my pack. I was only about 10 yards from it." Don't know if everyone is aware of it, but as with bats, skunks, foxes and coyotes, rabies is endemic to populations of coatimundis. It's what limits their numbers. If a coati starts getting too friendly, I'd leave. Bill Quimby

"We are asking the public not to loose sight that there are still a lot of hazardous conditions when entering any forested area, burned or not,” ASNF Forest Supervisor Jim Zornes stated." Lose -- (looz) verb (past and past part.) Be deprived of or cease to have or retain something. Loose -- (loos) adjective. Not firmly or tightly fixed in place. Rest assured, Mr. Zornes. We will not "loose" sight of the dangers lurking out there. Bill Quimby

Wish you guys would hold this in the winter, when we're in Tucson. Bill Quimby

"Bill did you try the Xeriteq theme? I think that one is easier on the eyes than the IPB basic. " Yep. Tried them all. I like the simplicity of IPB Basic best. Bill Quimby Like This

It's not just you. To change to a simple, fast-loading look, go to the bottom of your screen and click on "change theme," then select IPB basic. It's clean, non-confusing, and very easy to read. Bill Quimby

Hi Amanda: Thanks for taking so much time with me. I'm using an 8-year-old Mac laptop with a slow, dial-up modem here in Tucson, but only for today and tomorrow. Will return to the cabin for the summer on Friday, where I have a big-screen IMac and a high-speed wireless connection. The features you described do not appear on my laptop's screen. Will see what happens when we are back on the mountain. Thanks again. Bill Quimby;

Hi Amanda: Yes, the avatars look great now. However, there is no text at all below the "reply to this topic" box on my screen, and no options appear when I click on "view new content." Bill fQuimby

Hi Amanda: Can't find the "change theme" button. There are eight buttons in a horizontal row, but none is labled. Below that, there also is what looks like a one-fourth section of an orange target. Is one of these what you meant? I've clicked on all of those buttons, but the black and mud-brown graphics do not change. Also, is there a way to limit the number of days that are shown when I click on "view new content"? Any chance of making the avatars larger as were those in the most recent "skin"? Bill Quimby

I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter whether it's public land or not. What counts is whether the owner (if any) of those waterdogs has a legal agreement with a federal or state land management agency that allows him to grow them commercially in those ponds on public land. If a lease exists and those critters are there legally, it would be similar to saying you have a right to kill livestock found grazing on public lands. When I came across a similar situation years ago in Reddington Pass, I tracked down the owner of the waterdogs. He told me he didn't post the ponds because doing so called attention to what he was doing, and people would steal his 'dogs. I also learned that although a rancher built the dam and maintained the ponds, the rancher had nothing to say about whether or not someone leased from the U.S. Forest Service the right to grow a crop of waterdogs in them. Bill Quimby