billrquimby

This is in response to Tony Mandile’s post in the thread about the murdered Douglas rancher. Tony’s piece was thoughtful and well-written, but it’s doubtful it will be printed in its entirety as a letter to the editor. It could be an “op-ed” feature, but that status makes the odds against it being published even greater. Large daily newspapers receive a dozen letters for each letter they publish. Few are rejected because the author’s views are contrary to the editor’s. Most are rejected because they are too long, too repetitive, too unoriginal, too uninteresting. Take it from someone who worked for a daily newspaper for close to thirty years, including eight years on its editorial board, the way to increase your odds of your letter being published is to: 1. Keep it short. Most news articles are 700 or fewer words. Letters to editors should be only about 100 words. (This post is 251 words, and is too long for a letter to the editor.) 2. Make just one point per letter. Multiple arguments on the same topic are less effective and reduce your odds for publication. 3. Strive to make your one point an original thought. If it’s been said before, or if others are saying it now, it probably won’t make a letter to the editor. 4. Edit your letter after your passion has cooled. Never mail it the same day you’ve written it. Avoid an accusatory, denigrating tone of voice. 5. Check your spelling, syntax, punctuation and, most of all, your facts. Bill Quimby

Pro: AARP has good insurance programs. and a membership card will get you discounts at hotels, car rental agencies, and some restaurants. Con: AARP was among the first to endorse Obama's socialized healthcare plan, and as EBB says, it usually leans w--a--y to the left. I used to be a member but haven't renewed for years. Instead, I joined the American Automobile Association. It gets me similar discounts and offers a variety of insurance programs. When I need roadside service (and when my wife locks her keys in the truck) it's a phone call away. Bill Quimby

Has anyone found a petroglyph anywhere in Arizona that looked like the early artist was trying to depict an elk? I've seen lots of "drawings" of deer, antelope, bighorns and snakes, even rabbits and birds, on rocks all across our state, but never an elk. Bill Quimby

Hi Tony. Glad to see you on the forum again. Your posts have been missed here. My intent was not to single you out, but I did want guys who share our views to know what it takes to make their letters to editors more effective and how to improve their odds of being selected for publication. One of my many jobs in years past was to edit (cut) the letters to the editors and op-ed pieces. I retired from newspapering a long time ago, but the rule-of-thumb of 100 words for letters and 700 words for articles (and "op-ed"/"my turn" pieces) still applies, as far as I know. Bill Quimby

I tried it many years ago, using tusks that taxidermist John Doyle supplied. A lot of the tusks split when they dried out after being removed from the jaws. The necklace was too primitive-looking IMO, and I gave up on it before it was finished. I suspect a handsome piece could be made by an artist with silversmithing skills. Bill Quimby

TAM: Yes, there are many places in the U.S.A. that I know to avoid, including right here in Tucson at certain hours. I also have always been treated as a welcome visitor (except for that one incident on the highway to Hermosillo many years ago) and I have never had an encounter with a drug cartel or anyone I thought might be connected with one. On the other hand, I've not been down there since the cartels and government declared all-out war on each other. I'm convinced it is only a matter of time before innocent visiting foreigners will be killed in shootings and bombings in Sonora and elsewhere. The kidnappings that so far have been restricted to Mexican citizens also will be expanded to include Americans. I will not be one of those innocent victims. There are just too many things I want to do in the few years that are left for me. Bill Quimby

TAM: The difference between me and Chicken Little is that the title character in that children’s fable was an alarmist who repeatedly warned others of a non-existent threat. The nearly 18,000 body count in 39 months of Mexico’s bloody drug war should be proof enough of a clear and present danger, to borrow Tom Clancy’s title. The U.S. State Department apparently agrees with me because it has issued at least three official travel advisories for Mexico in the last 15 months, and each has been more dire than the previous one. Please note that I have not urged anyone to stay out of Mexico. I’ve only said I will not go down there while that war -- and it is a war -- still rages. Bill Quimby

Everyone is welcome to do as they please. For me, and I repeat, I intend to stay out of Mexico until the war down there is over. Bill Quimby

A wench or a winch? Bill Quimby

wench |wen ch | noun archaic or humorous a girl or young woman. • archaic a prostitute. winch |win ch | noun 1 a hauling or lifting device consisting of a rope, cable, or chain winding around a horizontal rotating drum, turned by a crank or by motor or other power source; a windlass. winch 1 2 the crank of a wheel or axle. Bill Quimby

Would you sell just the boat? Bill Quimby

Ernesto: I grew up in Yuma and have spent much of my life all over Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Baja California Norte y Sur. I've also visited D.F., and four nearby states down there. I still love the country and most of its people. I cherish the memories and friends I made down there. In all my time in Mexico I only felt personally threatened once, and that was when my friend Alex Jacome and I were returning from Bahia Kino in the mid-1980s. We were forced off the road near Benjamin Hill by a pickup truck loaded with federal agents, one of whom kept jabbing me in my stomach with an automatic rifle. Alex tried to explain that we were good guys with important friends, and had in fact had breakfast with the governors of Sonora and Sinaloa before leaving Kino Bay that very morning. They paid him no attention and went from one end of Alex's truck to the other, searching for guns and drugs. One guy took an immediate dislike to Alex and kept waving a .45 semiauto in his face. I had a big box of salt water fishing lures, which they dumped on the clothes they had taken from our suitcases and thrown onto the side of the road. Finding nothing, they let us continue on. When we reached Santa Anna, the same guys had a Mexican man on his stomach on the ground. One of the agents had his foot on the man's back. The barrel of his rifle was jammed against the poor man's head. Meanwhile, the victim's wife and kids were being frisked at gunpoint as we drove past. For the first time in my life, it was really hammered home to me that the rights we American citizens enjoy up here mean zip down there. I've returned to Mexico many times since that incident, but have never felt comfortable until I had crossed back into the USA. The present war between the cartels and the government is a real war, and in real wars there is "collateral damage" -- innocent bystanders get maimed and killed. I don't want to be one of them when this war escalates, which it will. I'm convinced we haven't seen anything yet. To compare what is happening in Mexico to drug-related murders in the U.S. is not worth commenting on. I've been in other places that the U.S. State department considered "hot" and was advising Americans to avoid. I spent three weeks in Zimbabwe's Matabeland when Shona bandits with AK-47s, flame throwers and hand grenades were running around conducting atrocities against the Matabele people and anyone who drove "their" roads at night. I visited South Africa many times when the Zulus and Xhosas were running amok, jamming people onto sharpened stakes, burning them inside gasoline-filled tires or hacking them to pieces with machetes. I walked across Tiananmen Square just weeks after Chinese troops opened fire and massacred more than 2,000 protestors at that very spot. I am not a Chicken Little, as someone here has accused me of being. Nonetheless, I intend to stay out of Mexico until the war down there is over. Bill Quimby

If it doesn't melt around Greer by May 1, I guess I could call from my cabin's back porch. My neighbors usually don't show up until July or so. Bill Quimby

I have a tag for the second season in Unit 1 around my cabin; will also hunt across the border in New Mexico. Bill Quimby

Lark, that's one. You don't want the count to reach three. Bill Quimby

OK. I not only hope you folks rot in that place where it's beyond unbearably hot 24/365 for your bald-faced lies, but I also expect to be reimbursed for my long-distance phone call to the Game and Fish Department's headquarters. Speaking of that place that's even hotter than Yuma or Gila Bend in August, did you hear that its warden, an especially ugly guy with horns and a long tail, made it a point to check his inmates regularly to make certain each suffered to the extent that he/she should? When he reached a chubby fellow with white hair who had been condemned to shovel coal non-stop into a furnace for all eternity, he decided to tighten the screws on this particular resident even more. "Hey Teddy. Did you hear that your Senate seat went to a ... Republican?" he asked before poking the inmate in the rump with his pitchfork and walking away, grinning cruelly. Bill Quimby

Beautiful, Doug. Bryce Canyon is my wife's favorite national park. She loves to hike the trail through those columns of rocks. She was impressed with your photos, too, and said the snow looked like Cool-Whip. Bill Quimby

Inheritance taxes are not the only thing that comes into play when someone dies. My mother died of cancer in late January 2003. I had power of attorney of attorney while she was alive, and was the administrator of her estate after her death. Two days before she died in a hospice, I transfered her checking and savings accounts into a new account earmarked for paying her bills. We hadn't even had her memorial service when I discovered that more than $1,000 was missing from the estate's account. When I called the bank I was told that the IRS had grabbed it! The government apparently does not pro-rate its Social Security payment during the last days of a taxpayer's life -- it takes back everything it sent the taxpayer that month. To this day, her estate and its administrator (me) have never been officially informed of what the IRS did. Bill Quimby

John: Email me at billrquimby@frontiernet.net and we'll get you one. Amanda: Mail your copy to me (I think you have the address) and I'll sign it and send it back to you. I'm heading back to Utah to finish up my latest book, but should be able to get both books turned around before I leave. Bill Quimby

Thank you both, Tom and Jim. If anyone else is interested in an autographed copy, please let me know. The response this book has received has been flattering and much appreciated. All of my other books are about the experiences of people who did more hunting in more places than most of us could ever imagine. I bought a case of 20 from the publisher when the book first came out in December. Most went to friends and family, and two went to my bookshelves in Tucson and Greer, but I also sold a couple and they're all gone now. If enough people want one, I'll order some more. Please email me at billrquimby@frontiernet.net Note that an R separates my first and last names. Bill Quimby

It is a fact of life that most people shoot lower-recoiling rifles best, and for most of us the upper limit of comfortable recoil is 15 to 20 ft. lbs. Recoil from a .270 WSM with a 130-grain bullet from an 8-pound rifle is 19 ft. lbs., while the recoil from a .300 WSM with a 180-grain bullet from an 8-pound rifle is 26 ft. lbs. That's close to 36% more than the .270 WSM's. That said, the weight and the shape of the stock of a rifle and how it fits the shooter have much to do with felt recoil, and so does the size of the shooter. I know women and small men who have no problem shooting a .458 WM. My .458 (and even my .338 and .375) pound me terribly, but I'm 6'4" and closer to 300 pounds than I'll admit. Bill Quimby

If you ever get to Abreojos, I'd appreciate it if you let me know how it's changed. Forty years ago, there were only three 8x8-foot plywood shacks and the ramada under which the Mexican couple lived. The closest other humans, I'm sure, were at the Scammon's Lagoon saltworks a long way away. Bill Quimby

The .270 (either the WSM, Weatherby, Ackley or Winchester) will put down nicely any elk that walks, so don't let that be your deciding factor. If recoil is a consideration for you, buy a .270. If it isn't, you may want the .300. Bill Quimby

Snapshot: I've been to Bahia de los Angeles. It's best known in the hunting world as the place where the Mexican government launches all of its desert sheep hunts in Baja California. Back in the late 1960s, when Baja Norte and Sur were still territories, I fished from just about every spot that had a name on both sides of the gulf and along the Pacific Coast with a friend who owned a Cessna 182. My favorite spot was on the Pacific side of the peninsula, a place called Abreojos, about fifteen minutes by air south of Scammon's Lagoon. Abreojos had a huge estuary that hosted at least 1,000 grey whales each January. A California-based black brant shooting club had built a long runway and hired a Mexican couple to live there in the middle of nowhere and watch its shacks and the fuel they stored there. Every black brant in North America, it seemed to us, spent the winter in the estuary. They were so many they would rise up like a 200-foot-tall black curtain as we moved toward them. For $2 per person per day, the couple fed us three meals of beans, homemade flour tortillas and all the longostinas we could eat each day. They let us sleep in the shacks at no charge but we had to sweep out our own scorpions. We would walk along the water's edge and cast silver spoons, not knowing what type of fish we'd catch next. My strangest catch was what we called a "needlefish." It may not be the correct name, but it was about 30 inches long and not much bigger around than a hammer handle. I remember the year when my pilot friend looked down and saw that the road south from Tijuana had been bladed to about half way down the peninsula and announced that it would be the last time we would fly to Baja. He wanted to remember it as we had seen it, before the motorhomes arrived and fancy hotels sprouted up. We were returning from Cabo San Lucas. If I remember correctly, it had only two hotels then. Later, we heard that Mexico's then-president, a guy named Eschevaria, was riding on one of the bulldozers cutting the road when we flew over it that day. Bill Quimby

Snapshot: Your photos brought back memories. The last time I was in San Felipe was with my Boy Scout troop in 1949. It was an adventure just getting there from Yuma. We crossed into Mexico at Algadones -- it was merely a shack on the Mexican side, and a small concrete block building under some tamarisk trees on the U.S. side, nothing else in sight -- and drove in a 4x4 command car for what seemed liked forever on sandy two-track trails. There was no source of water in San Felipe, so we brought our own. There were no permanent houses there, either, just a couple of shacks made from salvaged sheet metal and tar paper. We camped out on a beach and pit-barbecued a huge chunk of beef with mesquite the scoutmaster brought with us. I was only 13 years old, and I got so sunburned that I had to sleep on my stomach on top of my WWII army surplus sleeping bag. My back was covered with blisters the size of quarters, and the only thing the scoutmaster had to treat me with were cans of condensed milk, which he dribbled over my back whenever the pain got more than I could stand. Our troop had gone there two years in a row, but I never returned after that. Seeing all the houses, businesses, and that long wall along the beach with all the boats in your photos was a shock. Everything in sight, including that paved road, sprouted up since I was there 61 years ago. I don't know why I was so surprised, though. I used to go to Bahia Kino and Cholla Bay when there were only a few shacks on the beaches and I fished from Tommy Jamison's boats at Guaymas long before Rafael Caballero ever thought of building a marina at San Carlos. Talk about naiveté. I should have realized the other side of the gulf would be developed, too. Thanks for posting the photos. Bill Quimby