billrquimby

I don't know how the guy who posted his nighttime lion kill story set up, but when we called jackals and African wildcats in South Africa I stood in the back of a pickup truck and had a 1-million-candlepower light on the cab pointed straight up. This lit up a wide circle about 30 yards around the pickup. We didn't touch the light when the animals came in (they didn't seem to mind the indirect light). We could see their eyes long before we could see the animals themselves, and there was enough light to find them in a riflescope and shoot them. This was a legal method where we hunted. I tried it in several places, but quit after a leopard circled us one night. As I understand Arizona's regulations, you must get away from your vehicle and the light can't be fed by a vehicle. If I were doing it, I would set up in the morning with the highest candlepower light and batteries I could carry to an open area away from brush, and come back just before dark and wait an hour before calling. I'd also have the light on, pointed up, when I started calling. Getting the lion into shotgun range could be the problem. Bill Quimby

186 3/8 Bill Quimby

I've shot several lone javelinas, including one like bdrew described. Its tusks were just smooth nubbins about a quarter-inch long, and the animal had thick callouses on its knees. I also assumed at the time that it was a former alpha male that had been kicked out of the herd. I've also shot a couple of lone javelinas that were females, so that blew that theory all to heck. There apparently is a lot of interchange between herds, with lone individuals wandering into the home range of another herd and joining it. AZGFD biologists Jerry Day and Tice Supplee, for example, tried to totally remove a herd above Roosevelt Lake by year-around trapping. After two years they gave up. Individuals from other herds quickly replaced every animal they captured and relocated. Replacement by lone pigs apparently does not come without some fighting, though. Another AZGFD study showed that a group of javelinas would accept individuals from other herds only if the new guy was submissive. I took a series of photos of a big boar being whipped by a female, of all things, when it was released into a pen with an established herd at the UA farms. It lasted only a minute or two, then the new guy slunk to a corner of the pen and laid down. He got up and joined the others after resting a few minutes and there were no more problems. In my photos, the hair on the backs of both animals was standing straight up, and you could see musk squirting from their glands. Bill Quimby

Interest rates that loan pigs charge can be unreasonably expensive, so watch out! Bill Quimby

"Surprised to see some of your comments. The AZGFD does not get funded by the general public. Never has, maybe some day will. So the inference that they get in line behind schools and prisons is pretty far off base. The public of Arizona does not pay a dime to support wildlife in AZ. Hunters, Fisherman, taxes on hunting items etc. have been the source of $$. The Indian Gaming money is also part of the parcel, but that is directed to traditionally non game species...BPJ " In addition to gaming money, which comes from the general public and includes the Arizona lottery, there also is money from voluntary contributions for wildlife on our state income tax forms. I haven't followed what it amounts to today, but AZGFD funds earmarked for non-game wildlife species were never insignificant. What bothers me about this now-dead (thank God) bill is that it could have been a big step toward "creative" fish and wildlife management by the Arizona Legislature, such as happens in too many states. Until fairly recently, our Legislature generally left such things to the commission/department process, a process that requires transparency and public participation and comment. As I've said before, sportsmen and sportsmen's organizations can be our own worst enemies. The more dedicated a hunter or fisherman might be, the more he/she wants to meddle because he/she "knows" better than anyone else what is needed. That seems to be what happened here. Bill Quimby

I'd agree with you on giving us geezers a special hunt, Lark, but someone would accuse me of having a vested interest because I qualify on every count you've proposed: I was born in Tucson, and I have lived In Arizona all of my 75 years except for about a few months in 1946. Bill Quimby

Before I dropped a truck on my arm during my desert sheep hunt, when I still could draw a bow, my self-imposed maximum distance for shooting arrows at javelinas was the length of a pickup. This was before everyone had compound bows with sights, and that was as far as I could be sure of hitting anything at least once out of every three or four shots. I lost a lot of arrows, even at that, but I had fun. Bill Quimby

Thanks Bill, I will contact Norden next week. Besides yourself, Housholder, and O'Connor, are there other authors that have published tomes chronicling hunting exploits in Arizona? I have a couple of Bob Hirsch's pamphlet/soft bound "books" on fishing the rim, etc. just wondering what was out there. Arizona has such an interesting hunting history/heritage, I would think someone (how about you Bill?) would write a history; or do you consider the "Arizona Wildlife Trophies" books to be a form of that history/story telling? I answered you in a note that was so long I was disconnected from the internet and lost everything I'd written. This time, I'll just give you a few names and you can Google them: AUTHORS Charles Sheldon. William T. Hornady, Kermit Roosevelt Zane Grey Jack O'Connor Felipe Wells Hunter Wells David E. Brown Neal Carmony Ollie O. Barney Jr. SUBJECT (not the titles) The Coronado expedition Pancho Villa Ben Lilly The Lee brothers Elliot Coues Onza (a large, mythical Arizona/Mexico cat supposedly the size of a mountain lion) Mule deer roundup on the North Kaibab Hi Jolly and camels in Arizona There are more, but these should keep you busy. Bill Quimby

Amazon.com has a copy of Housholder's "Hunting and Guiding for Desert Sheep in Arizona" for $150. I've seen it sell for as much as $300. I knew him very well, and served as a judge on a panel for the award he gave to distinguished Arizona guides. As with everyone else, I was shocked when he was charged with some disgusting things involving children. The following is from my files: From three Arizona Republic articles about Bob Housholder, the founder of the Grand Slam Club in 1956. Among his club’s first chapters were the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep and the Arizona Desert Bighorn Society: "Hunter arrested in morals case," dateline Phoenix, March 26, 1983, describes how Housholder, 61 at the time, was arrested for what police said was "investigation of taking photographs of a seminude 14-year-old girl and molesting two girls." He was booked on charges of exploitation of a minor, sexual abuse and furnishing harmful items to minors. "Police believe Housholder asked two 14-year-old girls and two 10-year-old girls to pose nude or seminude for him and showed them photos of either naked people or sexual acts," the article reported. "One of the 14-year-old girls allegedly posed for him, and he allegedly pinched two of the girls, Sgt. Brad Thiss, police spokesman said." "The acts allegedly occurred at Housholder's home betwen April 1982 and this month. Housholder exhibits an animal collection at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. He was the first Arizonan to bag all 26 species of North American big game," the article said. Another article outlined a plea bargain that resolved the case. Headlined "Outdoorsman sentenced in sex-photo case," it said Housholder was sentenced to three years' probation for a misdemeanor charge of showing sexually explicit photographs to a minor. He also was ordered to have no contact with anyone younger than 18 years old and to undergo mental health counseling. "Housholder pleaded no contest to a charge of attempting to furnish obscene or harmful items to minors with the agreement that no other charges would be filed in connection with the case," the article said. A 14-year-old model allegedly told police she had posed nude 10 times for Housholder since August 1982. "Housholder admitted to court officials that he took the photographs but said he 'did not know she was as young as she was' because he previously had seen her buy beer," the article said. Although Arizona secretary of state Wesley Bolin and a former U.S. congressman from Arizona wrote letters supporting Housholder, he was asked to resign from his job as an administrative assistant with the Arizona Department of Transportation. The third article, "Coroner's aide allegedly loaned out slain girl's photos," was published in 1985. The Republic said police documents cleaimed Eloy Ysasi provided Housholder with photos of the corpse of a murdered 8-year-old girl on an autopsy table. Police said Housholder told them he wanted the photos to discourage children from hitchhiking. Some of the photos allegedly were explicit closeups, but the aide denied providing them to Housholder. I have not seen a follow-up article to this charge, but I do know that Housholder was never sentenced to jail. He died a few years later. Bill Quimby

Jeff: Most of Bob's "books" were thin pamphlets of 24 pages or so that he self-published. His book on desert sheep has become quite collectable. There's a hunting book dealer called Hunter Books near you that probably can find it and others for you. It's a two-man operation, and the partner in the Phoenix area is a fellow named Norden van Horne. Phone: 952-474-5780. Email: orders@hunterbooks.com Tell Norden I recommended him. Bill Quimby

The question should be, why must we be forced to sign a rancher's logbook before entering land owned by the state of Arizona? It was decided long ago that hunters and anglers are granted a right to hunt and fish on state land when we buy licenses. The three instances I know of where hunters must sign logbooks before entering state land in southern Arizona resulted from AZGFD negotiating with lessees who already had locked gates or erected fences without gates across existing roads on state land, forcing hunters to drive through their corrals or yards on private land. One of those roads had been paved by Pima County just a couple of years earlier. I asked the lessee of that place to show me the vandalism and damage that had caused him to block historic access routes, and I wound up spending a half day with him and Tom Spalding (then AZGFD regional director in Tucson). The rancher was certain that hunters were not allowed to shoot within one quarter of a mile from a pond on state land. He also was convinced hunters had purposely destroyed one of his windmills. Spalding and I picked up some greasy nuts and washers around the windmill -- proof, according to the rancher, that hunters had tried to dismantle it. Spalding sent those nuts to a crime lab, and its report showed that a wrench had been used only to tighten the nuts. There was no sign of a wrench turning any of those nuts counter-clockwise. They were greasy because someone had put too much oil in the mill's case, which leaked and loosened the nuts and caused a vane to be thrown off. Running off balance in a high wind eventually bent the top part of the tower and tore off all its vanes. In five or six hours of driving around the place, the only littering the rancher was able to show us were perhaps 50-60 empty shotgun shells scattered around two ponds. About half of those shells were several years old. We did drive by an arroyo on state land where he and his workers had been dumping their garbage over many years. Don't know if it was on state land, but it was downright unsightly. The rancher refused to believe the crime lab's report that Spalding gave him later. In his mind, hunters destroyed his windmill. Bill Quimby

TJ: My javelinas were taken over a span of 64 years of hunting in southern Arizona. You are well on your way to beating my score. A few things I didn't mention: -- Their coarse, stiff hair provides little protection against cold. God gave them such hair to keep them cool, not warm. They pile up on each other during cool mornings and days to share their body heat. If it's cold and windy, they might stay in a cave or under an overhang next to warm bouldlers all day long unless someone busts them out of there. If you can't find with your binocs a herd you know lives in the area, you will have to find where they are hiding. -- If you bust a herd that was feeding somewhere, sit down right there and wait a half hour. They often will drift back to the same spot, even though you shot and missed them earlier. -- In my experience, javelinas can be called with a mouth-blown varmint call or by "woofing" with your voicebox. (Neither method will work every time, though). If using a varmint call, the typical reaction from a herd that is near is to bolt and run away from you, but don't stop calling. The herd may run 100 yards or so and stop. When it does, keep calling non-stop and one or two (or even the entire herd) will turn around and come straight to you with teeth snapping and the hair on their backs standing straight up. Keep calling until they are in range. Woofing works best when they are 100 yards off and you want them to move into bow range. -- Their eyesight is notoriously bad. If you get downwind and move slowly and quietly toward a group of javelinas that are feeding, you usually can get into rock-throwing range. There is nothing wrong with their sense of smell or hearing, though. Bill Quimby

Here's what little I've learned about javelina hunting: -- The home range of a herd is actually quite small, maybe 500 acres or less. That 500-acre range could be only two acres wide and 250 acres long, as was the case of a herd that lived in a brushy wash in the flats where we used to hunt along the Papago reservation years ago. The herd will have several bedding areas and which area they use depends upon the weather. If there are caves or overhangs, look for their droppings. They will use the same bed generation after generation, and you sometimes will find dung in that bed that is six inches or more deep. -- What they eat depends upon the season and the availability of the food they prefer. Actually, although they eat a lot of prickly pear pads, they actually can starve if fed a total diet of prickly pears. The filaree (short and thick new green weeds) that pop up in the spring is like candy to them. They also like the roots of shin-daggers and cholla. I've found barrel cactus that they've totally hollowed out, and once shot one after spooking it out of a barrel cactus. -- Glassing absolutely is the best way to find them, but only if they are using the sidehills while you are glassing. If they're in the bottoms of the canyons and don't leave, you won't see them. If you can't find them, try walking along the sidehills, stopping often to glass below you and across the canyons into the side canyons. Toss small rocks into brush, and keep looking for sign. Hope that helps. After shooting my 50th javelina with rifle, muzzleloader, handgun and bow, I got to thinking I knew all about hunting these nifty creatures. Then I went three years without finding one! Bill Quimby

"... It is the bad apples out there that have created the "no access" mindset of most ranch owners, and I don't blame them. ... The only way to access this prime hunting area was through the ranch, or a 10 mile hike across very steep terrain. The hunting was primo for undisturbed animals. As you can imagine, most land owners and outfitters jealously guard their domain from outsiders.? Who really created that no=access mindset? A very few "bad-apple" hunters or the growing number of landowners and outfitters who jealously guard "their" domains from the public? Bill Quimby

As I understand it, those 46,000 deaths are directly attributed to Mexico's drug war, and do not include its murders from other causes. Bill Quimby

"Your post is rediculous. Try being on the other side of the coin. You try to scrape out a living raising cattle and have to deal with cows getting shot with both guns and bows or worse one your best horses." It's your post that is ridiculous, beginning with your spelling of the word. Then consider your "cows getting shot with both guns and bows or worse one your best horses." Now that's so "rediculous" that it's positively laughable. There are no guns or bows commonly used by hunters that are capable of shooting a horse at a cow, at least none that I know of. Bill Quimby

Amen, coach. Problem is, what is a "road?" Years ago, when I did a series of articles on southern Arizona's growing access problems for the Tucson Citizen, I seriously researched Arizona law and definitions used by DOT and the various state and federal wildlife and land management agencies, as well as the Department of Defense and Indian tribes. I've forgotten how many definitions there were then, but it was somewhat more than two dozen. I'd bet that there are even more now. Two tracks qualified as a road for some, not for others. Some required "regular maintenance," whatever that might be. Others required a road to be specifically owned by an entity. My favorite definition claimed anything that shows a history of use by wheeled vehicles is a road. Bill Quimby

Arizona has an adverse possession law that might apply. Although I am not a lawyer, I do have some personal experience with it. Briefly, it allows someone to take possession of another person's land after seven years of conspicuous use if the original property owner did not grant permission and took no action to restrict blatant use. Again, I'm not a lawyer and don't know if hunters and others who have used a road across private land for decades could bring this law into play, but I do know that there are locked gates blocking access to roads I used for more than 30 years. Some of those roads even had been maintained by counties. Bill Quimby

I repeat: let's save our energy to vote out our real enemies. I'm sure there are more than one or two of them in our state legislature. Bill Quimby

Whoa, there! Let's save our energy to vote out our real enemies. I don't know anything about this legislator, but I would suspect he submitted the bill because it was presented to him by sportsmen. Bill Quimby

"Two people on this site who are pretty well versed Tony and Bill seem to be pretty keen on the dos and don'ts and they seem skeptical as have others who frequent this site." I have taken no position on the bill, other than saying I believe profits from auctions and raffles of hunting tags should go to our wildlife agency and not private groups. I only skimmed the bill and did not see provisions for audits -- with tough penalties for misuse -- to make certain private groups use the money properly. Such provisions may be there, but I didn't notice them in my first reading. Also, I stand by my belief that the time for working with those who are denying us access to public land is long past. In the early 1980s, I wrote a series of articles in the Tucson Citizen about Arizona's growing access problems. The Game and Fish Department responded by cutting and removing locks that had illegally blocked access to state land in the Mustang Mountains near Elgin and Sierra Vista. It also created a new route across a few hundred yards of state land to reopen access to Redfield Canyon after a rancher locked a gate on a small parcel of private land in the Galliuros. As far as I know, those were its last such actions, even though there may have been a hundred or more illegally locked gates blocking access to state lands, even then. During the more than 30 years since, AZGFD has sought access solutions by negotiating. This has resulted -- in three instances that I know of -- in historic roads being closed by the lessees and hunters being forced to drive through ranch yards and sign logbooks before entering state land. There may be some, but I know of no lessee being charged by the State Land Department or AZGFD for denying sportsmen access to state land or any wildlife manager being allowed to remove locks without "consulting" with a lessee of state land since that one time in the Mustangs. Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club may not have our respect because of the lawsuits they've filed, but it cannot be disputed that they get results. Just the threat of being sued by them often results in their obtaining what they want. We need to borrow a page from them and stop being nice guys. Bill Quimby

I don't like the idea of giving tags to private organizations. If auctions or raffles are to be held for big game hunting tags, it should be our state's wildlife agency that reaps the profits and not private groups. If one of the purposes of the present bill is to provide more access to public land, I submit that the best way to get that is through lawsuits and threats of lawsuits. A three-decades-old attorney general's opinion has said the Arizona Game and Fish Department should be the lead agency in providing access to state lands for hunters and anglers who buy state licenses, yet it has never really done an acceptable job in that role. It continues to negotiate with landowners and lessees who block access. The time for negotiating is long past. The U.S. Interior and Agriculture departments need to comply with George W. Bush's executive order that ordered the Forest Service and other federal agencies to consider the effects of any and all of their actions on sportsmen. That order was not specifically rescinded by the Obama Administration, so it still is in effect. Those who lease federal lands should not allowed to block historic access routes to multiple-use public lands. If access guarantees are not written into grazing, logging and mining leases, they should be. The effect on us of agency-proposed road closures should be considered and steps need to be taken to mitigate it. If state and federal wildlife and land management agencies do not act to provide access for us, sue them. If landowners block access to public lands, sue them. Groups such as Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity have long known how to recapture the cost of litigation. (Believe it or not, the money they use to fight us in the courts comes from taxpayers!) Sportsmen only need to follow their example and sue the b@$%#&ds who are keeping us from using our public lands! Bill Quimby

There are very few true "free-range" (wild) bison hunts. Below is a website that describes those hunts in the USA, and all will require drawing a permit. It does not discuss wild bison hunts in Alberta and British Columbia. If you don't want to wait to draw a tag in one of those states, you will need to accept the concept of hunting a bison that is owned by someone and raised in a pasture varying from a few acres to a few thousand acres. It probably won't be behind a game-proof fence because bison usually can be confined by regular cattle fencing if the pasture is large enough, but it won't be a wild bison, either. http://www.huntthewest.com/bison.htm Bill Quimby

Sorry, folks, but for me a quality hunt means an Arizona elk tag in my pocket and a rifle on my shoulder. Sitting at home and only dreaming about hunting is in no way a quality hunt. As for "quality game," believe it or not, a state wildlife agency's mission is not to provide trophy animals for a minority of hunters, and no matter how much that minority tries to make it one, "opportunity" is not a four-letter word. I don't know about the other units, but since retiring in 1999 I have spent close to 180 days each year in unit one, with maybe 50 days or so each year looking at elk. We have no shortage of mature bulls, nor have I seen any decrease in the number of really big bulls on my regular excursions around the mountain. If anything, I see more, not fewer, than I saw ten years ago. Granted, elk on the Greer side of the mountain regularly move in and out of the White Mountain Apache Tribe's reservation, but that only reinforces my belief that unit one's elk herd is not overhunted and that it probably could stand a few more tags. As for going to Colorado, why should I have to drive that far when I have elk in my yard every night and a couple thousand more on the mountain behind me, just because I like to hunt and eat elk? Bill Quimby

I don't want to pay more, and with the time God has given men on this planet running out, I definitely don't want to wait. Don't know where you're hunting, but I have never had to "dodge a bullet" in any area in Arizona -- even when we had a heck of a lot more hunters out there. I live in unit one six months a year and I can guarantee you that we have no shortage of elk. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the most avid hunters and fishermen are our own worst enemies. We demand restrictions on ourselves that are neither necessary nor needed. If you want to hunt elk without seeing other hunters, save your money and buy a landowner permit in New Mexico or Colorado. Don't mess it up for those of us who don't mind competition and want to be allowed to hunt close to home a few more times before we're planted six feet down. Bill Quimby