billrquimby

Please allow me to add my praise to Amanda, also. I feel lost when I'm forced to miss a day of this site. Bill Quimby

As usual I agree with Lark. Taking any pronghorn buck with a bow, especially the way you did, is an accomplishment. Congratulations. Bill Quimby

We hunted all over the Tortolita Mountains in the 1950s and early 1960s and never saw or heard of any indication that there had ever been a whitetail on that mountain. We did take some good mule deer and many javelinas there, though. Don't know about the Ajo and Picacho mountains, but we did see whitetails when we hunted javelinas in the Sand Tanks near Gila Bend when I was a boy. Bill Quimby

I haven't hunted on the fort, but during the 1970s and 1980s, friends and I took a few mule deer from the hills above the Research Ranch just outside the fort's west gate, as well as from the Baboquimari Ranch. There used to be a lot of deer in both of those places. Bill Quimby

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to you both, TJ and Lark. Bill Quimby

Shot a cow elk this morning at first light with the help of Bullwidgeon's uncles and grandfather in one of the depredation hunts that started Friday around Springerville/Eagar. 275 pounds of meat, according to Rusty the butcher. My score on elk isn't anything like TJ's, but I think it was my 12th or 13th elk, but only my second cow. I'm calling it my 75th birthday present to myself, even though my birthday isn't until next month. Bill Quimby

It's just me, but I call any branch-antlered bull with short main beams and short tines a "raghorn." It doesn't matter how many tines it has. Even a 7x7 can be a "raghorn" if its main beams are only 30 inches long and the longest tines are only five or six inches, Bill Quimby

Doug: My son-in-law is my butcher and chef. He's coming up this weekend to pick up the carcass from the locker where it's hanging and take it back to Tucson. We'll still be on the mountain for my birthday, so I won't get to taste the elk until we return to Tucson for the winter in November. He does great things with game meat, so it doesn't matter. Bill

Hope all went well and that you'll be back at work and on this site again soon. Take care. Bill Quimby

Thanks, all. Those of you who asked for photos are out of luck. If you had read my book you'd know that I gave my cameras away and stopped taking photos when I hung up my spurs at the Tucson Citizen in March 1994. Photography was the part of my job that I absolutely hated and I vowed to never again take a photograph! I haven't. As for a story of my hunt, here it is, briefly: After drawing the tag, I spent nearly a month driving into Eagar and searching for the best access into the unit and then patterning a herd of 41 cows, calves and raghorn bulls. For the five days preceding the opener, I kept track of that herd from where it spent the night to where it bedded, and made a plan to ambush it at a particular point in between those sites. By opening week, the herd had split and I now was watching only 22 cows and calves. On opening morning, Bullwidgeon's grandfather and I left his home at 4:00 a.m. and waited in ambush for the herd to arrive at first light, just as it had done for weeks. Three of Bullwidgeon's uncles were on a high place 3/4 mile away, watching us. For some reason, though, the herd had suddenly decided to feed somewhere else that morning. When the herd didn't show up, we moved to the bedding area in time to hear a teenager shoot and kill a member of "our" herd. Bullwidgeon's grandfather and uncle were able to see the boy get off the finishing shot. My wife and I had somewhere to go that evening, but our crew was out again the next morning and afternoon. The only elk we saw that day was at last light when a very small calf answered my cow whistles at the bedding area and walked up to six steps of where I was sitting. It spooked when it saw me, and took the herd with it. The next morning, Sunday, we went back to our original site and found two adult cows feeding a half mile below us along a fenceline. One of Bullwidgeon's uncles and I closed the distance while his other uncle and grandfather watched from a mile away. At about 350 yards, the elk on our side of the fence suddenly moved fifty yards to the left and presented a broadside shot. A flat post on the fence made a good rest, and because it appeared the elk wouldn't come closer, I decided to shoot. My first shot missed, but the second one didn't. It took one more hit before it was down for good. I lost count a long time ago, but that cow elk is somewhere between the 40th or 50th animal I've taken with my 7 mm Remington Magnum. I made the stock from a piece of the walnut tree that a friend and I cut in the Texas Hill Country many years ago. The action and barrel is a Czech-built Mauser to which I added a Timney trigger, a Model 70-type safety and a Leupold 3-9X compact scope with duplex reticle. Most of my game, including this cow elk, has been shot with 175-grain Nosler Partition handloads. Bill Quimby

Lark, the knitting tournaments are used as fillers on one of the fishing channels to help viewers calm down after all the excitement of watching guys with sponsors' decals sewn all over their clothes race their boats (also covered with decals) all over the place and catch fish with every cast. Really good stuff ... Bill Quimby

I enjoy TV hunting shows almost as much as I enjoy watching knitting tournaments. In my opinion most "hosts" and their bubba buddies are illiterate cretins who do our sport more harm than good. Bill Quimby

Incredible photos! Congratulations. If there are prizes for trail camera photos, you deserve them all. When I first opened the file that tank made me remember a couple of natural potholes in the Tinajas Altas and the Mohawks. They were smaller, and in solid rock. When I was a kid growing up in Yuma, those potholes were deathtraps for sheep during the driest seasons. They'd try to get to the water, slip and fall in and were unable to get out. Not many people ventured into that God-awful country in those days, and we picked up several ram heads from such places . This was before the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society came along, but Game and Fish eventually did some blasting to make it easier for sheep to get out. Bill Quimby

They've completed dropping straw along the east fork of the Little Colorado River through Greer, but while it was going on my wife and I and a few friends enjoyed a great lunch last week while watching the operation from the patio at the Peaks. Next up is a project to scatter seed along that ridge from fixed-wing aircraft, we've been told. Bill Quimby

"6A is the best, everybody should put in for that unit every year. Don't apply for 1 or 27, there are no elk there! Stay away from these units they are a waste of time." Pine Donkey is one smart fellow. The handful of elk and other game that remained on this side of the state moved into New Mexico in advance of the fire. Bill Quimby

Your rifle was made by Philadelphia gunsmith James Golcher between 1833 and 1841. His Eagle Rifle Works must have made more than a few of them because several have survived and can be found on various internet sites. (Google Eagle Rifle Works.) A .54-caliber half-stock percussion rifle similar to yours sold at auction for $1,300 recently. I can't say whether yours would be safe to shoot, but I can tell you that many muzzleloaders from the 19th century were cleaned up and used for hunting and in competition during the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, before manufacturers started producing replicas. You need to have a qualified muzzleloader gunsmith look at yours. Have you dropped the ramrod down the bore to make certain your rifle is not loaded? Many old rifles still were loaded when heirs hung them on their walls or stored them in closets. If powder and ball are still in the bore after all these years, your ramrod will not bounce. It also will stick way out of the muzzle. Bill Quimby

I've never seen a carp deer, but rock or cliff carp are found in many of Arizona's southern units, as well as all along the Colorado River from Yuma into Utah. They're the beautiful, but not-so-bright, four-legged critters with curled horns. They are curious to a fault. Bill Quimby

Not all of the Apache National Forest is open. Here's the key paragraph in the newspaper article you quoted: "However, some areas which were severely burned by the Wallow Fire will remain closed for the rest of the summer and fall seasons. . . ." Unfortunately, although everything up here is soaked, many areas that were not burned near Greer and Springerville/Eagar still have barriers and signs saying that access is prohibited because of "fire danger." Whether that's because forest workers haven't removed them or it's because they actually still are closed is up for debate. That $5,000 fine for entering a closed area is enough to keep me from driving past the signs. Bill Quimby

Have a great one! ... and many more. Bill Quimby

There usually is fresh snow in the November hunt. Find tracks made during the night and concentrate your efforts there. Bill Quimby

Could be that little whitetail buck is only doing what its ancestors did. If you will look at the hide on the lower jaw of almost all of the world's 40 some-odd species of deer (including North America's elk, moose, mule deer, and whitetails), you will see a dark mark on each side. It is believed by some (including me) that these marks were passed down from prehistoric times when the ancestors of today's deer had fangs and were omnivores. Three deer species with fangs still survive in Asia -- the muntjac, the water deer, and the musk deer. Only the muntjac has antlers. Interesting to me, at least, is that caribou have the largest antlers in proportion to their size of any deer but are one of the exceptions in that they do not have these "remnant fang marks" on their jaws. Bill Quimby

Unfortunately, similar rules are being prepared for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. They've already had a comment period, or so I've heard. Take a look at the current map for the ASNF and see if your favorite primitive road is there. Chances are very good that it is not. If it hasn't been given a number yet, you probably won't be able to use it in the future. Bill Quimby

It started raining here in Greer about 10 this morning, and it still is raining at 12:30 p.m. Most of it was a light but steady rain, but there was a hard downpour that lasted more than 45 minutes. Don't know how much we will get today, but we had a four-day period last week in which we got more than 3 inches. We're still holding our breath that a big flood down the east and west forks of the Little Colorado will not take out our bridges, but Lark is correct (as always). When all is said and done, rain is good. Firefighters backburned the east side of Highway 373 (the road into Greer) during the big fire and that 3 inches of rain caused all of the blackened area to "green up" in just a couple of days. Bill Quimby

Ah shucks, Lark. I'm red-faced from embarrassment. It was an honor to finally meet you. I've long admired your down-home wisdom and humor. Bill Quimby

In my humble opinion, wild sheep (and especially desert bighorns) definitely are not the most intelligent of all of God’s creatures. A solo Coues deer hunt I made above Arivaipa Canyon several years before I retired more than a dozen years ago is a case in point. Both of my hunting partners backed out at the last minute the week the season opened, but I was able to convince my wife that I would not deviate from the map I left her, and that I would call her on my cell phone every couple of hours to assure her there was no need to send a rescue squad for me. I rented a motel room in Willcox, then got up in the middle of the night and drove to where I planned to hunt, arriving there just after first light. In less than ten minutes I’d found a good whitetail buck and a desert bighorn ram feeding on the same cone-shaped peak about about a half-mile away. I watched them for about an hour before they both bedded down. The buck chose a spot in the brush below a steep, rocky cliff. The ram’s bed was in an open spot about 50 yards below the deer. After making a wide circle, I finally worked around the peak and quietly moved to the top of the cliff. The buck still was in the brush below me. When I purposely made a noise, it jumped up and I shot it from about 30-40 yards as it was looking up at me. I’d forgotten about the sheep, and I was gutting the buck when I heard something rattling rocks on the cliff I’d just left. I looked up to find the ram looking down at me. We watched each other for a while, then I cut my buck in half and started relaying the two parts off the peak and down to a two-track 4x4 road at its base. The ram followed me all the way down to the road, and waited while I retrieved my truck and loaded the buck. It was still watching me as I drove off. I was somewhere on the wrong side of 60 then, and it hurt me a bunch to realize for the first time that I no longer could pack an Arizona whitetail off a little peak in one trip. It was the last time I hunted Coues deer. Bill Quimby