billrquimby

Tony, and all: After nearly 30 years of working at a daily newspaper, including about a dozen years when I was a full member of its editorial page board, I feel qualified to pass on a few tips on getting your message printed in newspapers: 1. Submit only 75 or fewer words (this note is more than 400 words). An old rule of thumb for a letter to the editor is, "if you can't write it in longhand on a postcard, you're trying to say too much." Although a paper may publish longer letters, you improve your odds if your letter is short enough to fill an unplanned "hole" when the letters section is being "built." 2. One thought is enough, and it must be unique. Cliches such as "when guns are outlawed..." won't get you published. 3. Don't get carried away by your passion. Stay calm, and never, ever attack the publication if you want your letter to be chosen over the hundreds it receives every week. As for "op-ed" pieces, one way to stand out above the huge number of people who want a newspaper to provide them podiums is to telephone the editorial page editor. If you can get to her or him, be prepared to say in a few words what you want to say and why you are qualified to say it. If you do get a commitment, ask how many words your piece should be (it probably will be 700 to 900 words) and then edit and edit and edit what you write until it does not exceed that length. You also need to be respond quickly and be timely. Three or four days is a long time when responding to something that appeared in a daily publication, and five days is too long. Readers (and editors) are fickle and have short memories. Again, stay focused (two thoughts should be enough; four are too many) and positive. If your piece is published, be sure to call the editorial page editor to say thanks, then follow your call with a letter saying the same thing. Include your business card with the letter and suggest that the editorial board call you to "get the other side" when a similar issue arises. Believe it or not, a publication wants to present both sides -- if for no other reason than controversy sells papers. Most editors, though, want to be "fair and balanced," to quote a Fox News motto, even though it is impossible for many of them. Bill Quimby

I've been hunting Coues deer off and on since I moved from Yuma to Tucson to attend the UA in September 1954 -- more than 56 years ago. That makes me an ol' timer, of course, and I can tell you that there were a heck of a lot more people hunting these little deer then than are hunting them now. Heck, nearly as many Coues deer were killed year after year in those days as our permit-only system allows to go hunting today. There was only one season, a long one, and an unlimited number of tags were sold every year. We could hunt Rocky Mountain mule deer up north and, if unsuccessful, hunt the next couple of weeks down south for whitetails or desert mule deer with the same tag. Just as now, there were some really big Coues whitetail bucks killed by the "ol' timers." The difference is today's dumb emphasis on antler size and the way photos of really big bucks are so quickly broadcast around via the internet. I remember a time when my father-in-law and I helped a couple of guys whose truck had broken down in the Galliuros. We gave them and their two deer a ride to Willcox, where they lived. I knew Ed Stockwell and saw the mount of his record buck many times, and one of those bucks we transported to Willcox seemed to me as big as Stockwell's. As far as I know, that head from the Galliuros was never recorded anywhere. In those days, before I outgrew my "trophy" phase, I saw dozens of record-class Coues whitetail racks hanging on barns and in carports that were never recorded. The average hunter had never heard of the Boone & Crockett Club or its record books. As for the SCI and B&C measurement systems, the only difference is that SCI has a lower minimum and does not deduct points for non-symmetry. An SCI net score is a B&C gross score. Bill Quimby

So did I. Bill Quimby

Fifteen hunters inside a circle two miles in diameter (that's a one-radius) is not excessive. Nor is the number of people hunting deer in Arizona in all the various seasons today . I began hunting long before permit-only deer hunting, stratified seasons and all the other dumb things that pass for wildlife management today. We bought our tags at sporting goods, hardware and grocery stores and hunted wherever we wanted during a month-long season. There was no limit on tags sold, so 80,000 to 100,000 of us got to hunt deer every year. (That's more than twice the number of hunters we have now.) We were satisfied with 13 percent to 18 percent success rates, and we blamed ourselves instead of game department policies and crowded conditions when we didn't kill a deer. Despite all those hunters, it was easy to avoid other people --- we crossed the highest ridge or we stayed home on opening weekends and the first week of the season. There were fewer deer then, but the amount of public land open to hunting hasn't changed much. What is different is the number of locked gates denying us access to public and private land as well as the closing of hundreds of access roads by federal land management agencies. Also different is that we had only one opening day. Today we have five-day seasons and three or four or more opening days in the same limited area. There also is a stupid emphasis on trophy size today. We didn't judge our skill as hunters (or our manhood) by the size of the antlers on the deer we shot. We hunted for the experience and the meat, and not to get our names in record books or to impress our peers with our prowess. If you want to blame the game department for something, blame its lack of an aggressive and effective campaign to restore access to our public lands. I can think of at least three mountain ranges in southern Arizona with highly restricted access. This results in crowding along the few open roads and complaints of "too many hunters," even though there are thousands of acres of public land and many hundreds of deer that never see a hunter. Bill Quimby

Like Lark, I've had a 99 Savage in 250/3000 for many years and used it a couple of times on Texas Hill Country deer, which usually were only very slightly smaller than our Arizona whitetails. It did everything it needed to do. I also have a Ruger 77 in .257 Roberts with which I've taken pronghorn in Wyoming, Coues and mule deer in Arizona, and feral goats, red deer and sika deer in New Zealand. George Parker hunted lots of game all over the world with his .25/06, including all of his many North American sheep and big kudu and eland in Africa. The 250/3000 is suitable for everything we hunt in Arizona, including elk, with proper bullet placement. Those last three words, in my opinion, are the most important element in humanely killing an animal -- and much more important than velocity or bullet size, type or weight. Get within 150-200 yards of your buck, do your part and your rifle will put it down cleanly. Bill Quimby

Rough Cut: I don't remember any discussion of Brown Canyon on coueswhitetail.com, but the USFWS website where I got that information is: http://www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/arizona/buenosaires/ Vegasjeep: We used to hunt Brown, Thomas and Sabino canyons (the one in the Baboquivaris and not the Catalinas) a lot of whitetails and javelinas, but it's been at least 20 years since I was down there. I remember a windmill just inside the canyon, but no ponds. Unfortunately, I also don't remember a Chilton, Hanus or Lopez owning land in the canyon itself. There were some small properties outside, but we typically drove to the locked gate just past the windmill, parked, and climbed to hunt deer and pigs. I also did a lot of lion hunting from horseback on the ridges above the three canyons and up to the peak, but we almost always rode in from the dude ranch in Sabino Canyon. There always were a lot of deer and lions there, and I assume little has changed. The following is from my book, Sixty Years A Hunter. It tells about one of my hunts that went wrong above Brown Canyon: ... Hunting only on weekends I then spent a total of fifty-seven days over three years -- nearly two months of my life -- following hounds on horseback with three different houndsmen before I finally took my lion. I began by hooking up with a man named Gene Clayburn. He was not a professional guide, but he liked to run his hounds and wanted company. He and I shared expenses and followed his dogs all over the Chiricahua, Sierra Ancha, Baboquivari, Catalina, and Santa Rita mountains and chased a lot of lesser game. We even chased a few lions but I never had an opportunity to take one with him. Gene liked to hunt a place he called “The Lions' Kitchen” on the ridge between Brown and Thomas canyons in the Baboquivari Mountains twenty miles north of the Mexican border southwest of Tucson. He called it that because we sometimes found Coues deer that had been killed, partially eaten, and covered with dirt and brush by lions there. It’s still one of the better places in southern Arizona to find a mountain lion. Gene had a buckskin gelding he called “Sam” that I became attached to the first time I rode it in the mountains. It was an old, gentle, sure-footed animal, and it didn’t panic in brush or rocks as some horses do. I felt safe on that horse so I bought it from him. I enjoyed riding Sam and hunting with Gene even though we never caught a lion. We spent some interesting days together, dragging our mounts through brush and across shale slopes, and up hill and down dale because neither of us knew where to find the horse trails that cattlemen have made in every mountain range in our part of the country. We also spent a miserable night trapped on a cold, wind-blown ridge. It was the last day of 1970 and a rancher had called Gene to say a lion had killed one of his calves the previous day and probably returned to the kill site that night, so the trail should still be hot. It was our opportunity to break my lion jinx so we loaded our horses and his dogs and went hunting. Jean and I had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party that evening, and I told her I’d join her at the party if I got home late. What was intended to be a half-day hunt was a disaster. The lion’s scent took Gene and I, along with a friend named Richard Kane, up Brown Canyon, across Lions' Kitchen, and then along the ridge above Thomas Canyon all the way to the base of Baboquivari Peak. We’d reached the point we’d decided we should turn around and follow our trail back if the dogs didn’t bump the lion in the next half hour. We’d ridden the same trails on previous hunts and it had never taken us more than four or five hours to make the loop. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way this time. Richard’s horse was a handsome and expensive black quarterhorse that had little experience with rocks and rough mountains. It panicked as the three of us were leading our mounts across an especially nasty shale-covered slope. It jerked the reins out of Richard’s hand and tried to bolt uphill but it was too steep and when the horse began sliding on the shale it reared up and rolled backward down the slope. In the excitement Sam and Gene’s horse broke away from us, too, but they made it to the top of the ridge. We could only watch in horror as Richard’s horse rolled end over end downhill for two hundred yards, falling off a couple of ledges along the way. We could hear a hollow “thunk” every time the horse’s head bounced off a rock. The three of us slid down to it, picking up Richard’s camera, food, rifle, and an assortment of items from his saddle bags that were scattered across the hillside. The horse was unconscious and wrapped around a tree above another ledge when we reached it. The saddle tree was broken and Richard could lift up a bloody triangular flap of skin about the size of a folded napkin on the horse’s rump. When we got to the animal, it woke up, lifted its head, then slammed it on the ground, knocking itself out again. I was sure we would have to shoot that horse where it had landed. There was no way we could get it up where it was. Gene took one look at the situation and said, “One more fall won’t hurt it.” Gene had broken his left arm a few weeks earlier and it still was in a cast, so he had Richard tie his horse’s neck with a long rope to the tree then the three of us sat down and pulled on the horse’s rear legs while using our feet to shove the front part of that horse off the ledge. After it hit the end of the rope and fought to stand up, we released the rope and the horse found its footing and stood there, shaking. Richard then packed all his gear on the horse and led it off the mountain while Gene and I went looking for our mounts. I found Sam on top of the ridge, not far from where Richard’s horse had panicked. Gene’s horse was feeding a hundred yards away. Before I climbed on Sam I found a piece of wood jammed between the skin and hoof of its left front leg. I pulled it out, thinking I’d gotten it all. I hadn’t, though, and a piece of that stick eventually worked into a joint and caused Sam to go permanently lame. Sundown was just minutes away and it would take at least an hour to get back to our truck. Forget what you’ve heard about horses being able to see well in the dark. Ours couldn’t. We rode them until they refused to take another step. We were in a bad spot. The knife-like ridge we were on dropped almost straight down for forty or fifty feet to the south of us. To the north was a steep slope covered with shale and a series of ten-foot-tall ledges. It was so dark and it was such a dangerous place that we couldn’t move very far to look for firewood, even if we’d had a flashlight, which we didn’t. There wasn’t a lot of wood on that rocky ridge anyway. Gene and I spent the night trying to stay warm. The wind had blown the snow off the ridge where we were, but it was so cold our saddle blankets soon were frozen stiff. We had taken off the saddles and turned them on their sides, and tried taking turns using them as a windbreak. We even tried hugging each other to share our body heat. To make matters worse, Gene’s dogs barked treed most of the night. They’d caught a lion below us and there was no way we could get to them. Long before daylight I thought I saw someone with a lantern walking up our ridge. The more we watched the light the more certain we were that whatever we were watching was moving toward us. Just before dawn we realized we had been watching a star. Gene’s dogs joined us after we’d saddled up and started off the mountain at first light. The lion they’d treed probably had escaped, but it also was possible that they had grown tired of waiting for us to show up and left it. .... Bill Quimby

"i wish i coulda seen her smile a little better. it's hard to see through all them tears of joy. Lark." I was touched by your story, Lark, and I count my blessings that my daughter and her children did not have to go through what your granddaughter is experiencing. God bless you and your family. Bill Quimby

Unless I'm missing something, there's nothing new here. Vehicle access into Brown Canyon for hunters has been closed for at least 35 years that I know of, and that means long before the USFWS acquired it for its refuge. That canyon was one of the places I wrote about in a series of articles about the increased loss of access to public lands that I did for the Tucson Citizen way back in the early 1980s. Before that, a hunter had sued the State Land Department director for malfeasance for not prosecuting a landowner who had locked the gate at the canyon's entrance. The hunter lost the lawsuit. The landowner disliked hunting so much, he began setting off dynamite charges during the hunting season, hoping to scare deer away from hunters. (The deer I watched when I hunted there paid no attention to the noise.) When that landowner sold his holdings, wildlife artist Ray Harm bought them and continued to keep hunters out. After the feds acquired everything in the canyon, the refuge manager moved to close all of Brown Canyon to hunting, but couldn't close the state land. Here's what the USFWS website says now: Hunting Hunting is permitted on approximately 90% of the Refuge. In addition to all Arizona State Hunting Regulations, there are several Refuge-specific regulations that are in effect and must be followed. Please refer to the Refuge Hunt Brochure for a hunt map and listing of current regulations specific to Buenos Aires National wildlife Refuge. State regulations pertaining to hunting can be found at the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s website: http://www.gf.state.az.us/ Access Hunting is not permitted in high public use areas and near residences. These NO HUNT ZONES are posted on the ground and are identified in the Refuge Hunt Brochure. Brochures are available at Refuge Visitor Centers and brochure boxes posted throughout the Refuge. Motorized vehicles are restricted to roadways. Access may be limited by weather conditions. Refuge land in Brown Canyon is closed to hunting. Hunter access to state land in Brown Canyon is limited. All hunters must sign in and out and must follow designated routes of travel. Bill Quimby

If this were in a state with a generous limit, I'd shoot all three. Bill Quimby

You took a fine pronghorn, Lark, but I really like the curl on the head your son-in-law's father is holding. Congratulations to all of you. Bill Quimby

Sounds like you had fun. Where in the photo are you, Lark? Bill Quimby

123 pounds

Lark: Yes, that was Capstick at his best. That story was included in one of the books where they reprinted many of his magazine columns. I've forgotten its title. Death in the Long Grass was his first book, and it remains my favorite. Peter lived a full life, drank too much, and died way too young. Bill Quimby

With that much variance, I suspect you have a loose reticle inside your scope. It could be your mounts, but I doubt it. Try mounting another scope and see what happens. Bill Quimby

Lark: I think you would enjoy the books by Peter Hathaway Capstick. He was a controversial guy, but there is no doubt he lived a great life. He grew up in New Jersey, left his job as a Wall Street broker before his 30th birthday and outfitted and guided jaguar hunts in Central and South America before moving to Africa and working as a PH in Botswana and Zambia. He found his second wife in South Africa and lived there until his death at age 56. His books, especially, "Death In The Long Grass," are said to have encouraged countless people to make their first hunting safaris. I knew Peter though my position as SCI's publications director, but not well. His widow (also an author) and the man she married after Peter died and I have become good friends. I can't say whether Peter did some of the things he claimed in his books, but he certainly had a way with words. Bill Quimby

Right again, Lark, except that some of the PHs who can afford double rifles will have their gunsmiths eliminate the automatic ejectors. I can only assume that they don't to make it easy for a wounded and very angry critter to locate them when they must open their rifles to reload. Bill Quimby

Lark is right on ... again! There is nothing wrong with a Mauser action. Its extractor and feeding system are considered by professional hunters in Africa to be the epitome for dangerous game. My favorite rifle began life as a barreled Mark X Czech-built Mauser action with a 7 mm Remington Magnum barrel. I built its stock myself from a slab of Texas walnut we sawed from a tree on a friend's ranch. Its trigger is not the best, but it is safe and fine for the work I do with it. The only other thing I did other than to glass bed the stock was to replace the wimpy tang safety with a two-position Winchester Model 70-type. It is not the most accurate of my rifles, but I don't think that's the fault of the action. (All I ask from my hunting rifles is minute-of-deer/antelope/hog or whatever I'm hunting). I've taken game of all sizes from all over the world with it, and it has never failed me. Bill Quimby

Lark, darn it, you know there are no elk in Unit 1. They and every mule deer in the unit moved into units 27 and 3 or across into New Mexico a couple of years ago when the feds first released all those wolves. Bill Quimby

Lark: As we both know, there are more than three dozen subspecies of white-tailed deer ranging nearly continuously from southern Canada to Peru and Venezuela. (Our little Coues whitetail is just one of them.) Most of the subspecies in the United States are found east of Arizona, of course, but there also are subspecies north and west of us. However, I long ago gave up trying to educate hunters who won't bother to learn more about whitetails, an impressive animal that is arguably the most beautiful and smartest of the world's forty types of deer. If they want to lump all the many other North American whitetail races into a category called "easterns," more power to them. Bill Quimby

Lark's anger after watching a hunting video is exactly why I refuse to watch them. There may be a few good videos out there, but I don't want to wade through the junk to find them. Bill Quimby

My son-in-law is selling his bowhunting equipment. This includes the 60-pound bow with treestand risers and black limbs, 25- to 30-inch draw length. Bow Madness arrows also are included, as is a hard case and a 7-pin sight. If new, he says it would cost about $900-$1,000, but he wants only $425 for everything. Shipping is extra. Contact Rob direct at 520/488-8898 in Tucson. Bill Quimby

I find it interesting that Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones was not mentioned in the Wikipedia article. He was responsible for bringing bison to Arizona. Bill Quimby

Hunting is my thing and I have never followed running, jumping and throwing events. May I assume that the Diamondbacks are some sort of sports team? Bill Quimby

This is all I need to hunt anywhere in the world with mild climate. (More clothes and gloves needed for bad weather.) 7 mm Remington Magnum and ammo 4-inch blade pocket knife (2nd blade is a saw) short piece of rope 10x50 swarovski binoculars 2 bottles of water per day jeans long sleeve shirt jacket hat with brim 1 pr. heavy socks per day boots Jacket motel reservation American Express card Bill Quimby

"Last year I shot the dear in green pants and a grey shirt." Really? Don't remember ever seeing any deer so attired. Just kidding. Welcome to the grand tradition of deer hunting. That's a beautiful buck you took on your first deer hunt. As for camo, I shot a lot of deer while wearing "regular" clothes long before camo became the standard uniform for hunting everything. I wear it now because it's the pattern the best "outdoor" clothes come in. In Africa, most hunters wear solid colors of dark khaki or light olive and have no trouble killing game. In Europe, loden green is standard. Your instincts are correct about distance. If you can get within 300 yards, you can get 50 yards closer. Leave those 500-yard shots for the experts. Bill Quimby