billrquimby

I seriously doubt that baiting is as effective everywhere as some people believe. We see deer and elk in our yard regularly at our cabin in Greer. About five or six years ago I bought a salt block and a commercial "deer block" from a feed store in Eagar. Squirrels and rabbits hit the salt regularly, and ravens pecked out the corn, oats and goodies from the deer block, but we never saw a deer or an elk touch either although deer often walked within a few feet of both of them. The blocks eventually disintegrated in the rain and snow. Incidentally, was Texas and some of the southern states where baiting has a long tradition surveyed? Bill Quimby

It could have been a .300 Savage, because they made a few of them in that era. I would bet a double meat whopper, though, that it was chambered for the .303 Savage. Most of the pre-WWII Model 99 Savages were. Everyone I knew who owned a .300 Savage considered them their "elk gun" and "way too powerful" than needed for mere Arizona whitetails. Actually, they were ballistically similar to today's .308 Win. Bill Quimby

During World War II, beef and pork required ration stamps and we didn't get many each month, so my mother, brother and I ate a lot of non-rationed horse meat. Every butcher shop in Yuma sold it. It was so long ago I had forgotten what horse tasted like until I shot a zebra in Zambia and ate its backstrap. Zebra has a good, sweet flavor and it tasted just like I remembered what horse tasted like. Zebra fat is bright yellow, though, even after cooking, but I don't remember that with the horse meat we ate. Point is, we don't have to ship wild horses to France. I'd buy horse meat again if it were priced right. Bill Quimby

Amazon has six used copies for $48 each from the website below. It was published by Ralph Tanner Associates, and not Wolffe Publishing. I thought it was about 15 years ago, when it actually came out in 1984. Time flies, but I still remember the tales of his mule deer hunts on the Strip. http://www.amazon.com/They-Call-Me-Hunter-...s/dp/0942078098 Bill Quimby

I got a review copy when Wolfe Publishing released the book at least 15 years ago. Is it still in print? Bill Quimby

How come his pants, shirt and vest are so clean? He looks like a model for Cabelas. I always looked like an ax murderer whenever I packed out a buck. Bill Quimby

I enjoyed the book, too. It is a shame that he died so young. Bill Quimby

Wow, also! He might want to have an SCI measurer measure it. As freakish as it looks, that rack should score very high as a "typical" if the measurer believes as I do that those drooping tines actually are extensions of the main beams. Bill Quimby

... and many more! Bill Quimby

"Bill, my kids great grandfather hunted with the same...the .303 savage. He still has it and has shelved it for a long time just because he cant find the ammo for it. Can you still buy the ammo, or reload it only?" The last I bought was about 15-20 years ago. One of the sellers at an antique fair in Phoenix had a box of Winchester/Western on his table. I have about 100 cases stockpiled and haven't needed to buy any more, but if anyone is still making .303 Savage ammo the people at MidwayUSA.com probably would know. Bill Quimby

Neat photo, and he's carrying that buck the same way I used to carry mine. It definitely is a Model 99 Savage. I know, because my first "deer rifle" also was a 99 and it brought down more than a few deer and javelinas until I discovered the .270 in the 1960s. Although Savage made a few 99s in .30-30, most of the early ones were chambered for the .303 Savage (mine was). It was a .30 caliber Savage proprietory cartridge, ballistically identical to the .30-30. I still reload ammo for my rifle using .30-30 data in reloading manuals and a 50+-year-old Lyman "nutcracker" tool. Are you sure the photo is from the 1930s? I always thought that pistol grips and flat buttplates on the rear stocks of the Model 99 Savage came along a bit later. Bill Quimby

Welcome back to the forum, Tony. You were missed. Bill Quimby

Agreed! (And thanks for putting us back on track.) Bill Quimby

Looks like a shoulder mount of a mule deer hanging on a tree to me. Bill Quimby

>>>>>>>>"So...the deer is called Coues' Deer (is this the correct way?)">>>>>>> That is one way. Another would be Coues's, depending upon which English stylebook for creating possessive nouns that you follow when writing the common names of animals. In most useage, the apostrophe is dropped and the word "deer" would not be capitalized except in headlines where the first letter of every word is capped. Note that the Boone and Crockett Club says "Dall's sheep" and "Stone's sheep" after the names of the men these sheep were named for, but calls our favorite deer "Coues deer." (No apostrophe. Go figure.) Nearly everyone else says "Dall sheep," "Stone sheep," "Coues deer," etc., capitalizing only proper names based on humans or actual locations -- such as "McNeill deer" and "Alaska-Yukon moose." <<<<<<<<<"BTW, I have a compendium of red deer from Dr. Geist that separates this animal into 3 species (European Red Deer, Central Asian Red Deer, Asian and American Wapitis). Like I said earlier...I tend to side with Dr. Geist on his red deer and mule deer research. But, he doesn't write much on white-tailed deer.">>>>>>> Geist is widely respected but not all of his work has been adopted by all scientists. As far as I can tell, most still classify those deer and others as one species -- Cervus elalphus -- with as many as 22 subspecies. This includes the five (one extinct) North American elk subspecies, Asia's four wapiti/maral subspecies, Eurasia's five red deer subspecies, Africa's one red deer subspecies, and the Bukharan, Yarkland, Hangul, Tibetan, Shou, McNeill, and Gansu deer. These last seven deer are considered "intermediate forms." You might want to get a copy of the SCI Record Book of Trophy Animals, just for the text written by naturalist Jack Schwabland of Seattle. He compiled the work of many authorities (including Geist) and wrote it in "our" language. The newer books would require that you buy three volumes, but you could search the Internet's used book stores for copies of the earlier editions (preferably any of the Editions 5 through 9) where North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific are in one volume. Below is a central Asian wapiti (elk) I shot in Mongolia when they still allowed foreigners to hunt them. (I had a hard time getting my Swarovski binocs back from that Mongol!) Darned if I could tell it from the elk I've shot here, but I didn't see that many up close in the ten days I was there. Bill Quimby

Color and facial patterns vary among individuals of the same race. Here is a borealis I shot in Michigan in about 1997-8. Ten other bucks taken on that hunt by other hunters at that camp had very little to no dark colors on their muzzles. However, they all had that certain similar "look" about them that said "northeastern whitetail." Bill Quimby

Here's a photo of that Spanish stag. My hand is covering the sixth tine on the stag's left antler. Also, the photo has a heavy reddish hue overall and does not show the true color of the deer's coat. It is more gray than red. These are interesting animals, and the spookiest of any deer that I've hunted. It was after the rut (it's called the "roar" in Europe) and they had been heavily hunted. They would bolt at 350-400 yards at the first glimpse of a human. Note the "last meal" the guide placed in the stag's mouth after the typical European ceremony to honor the animal, the property owner, and the hunter. Bill Quimby

>>>>>>>>>?I've been meaning to ask Dr. Geist if the scientific community is separating the North and South American white-tailed deer into two species...I have seen a thesis on this somewhere on the internet.?>>>>>>>>>>> Valerius Geist is a respected authority on the world's deer, but his theories are not accepted by all authors. I also have read most of his work, as well as Hall's, Whitehead's, Kellogg's and Schwabland's, as well as those of lesser knowns. Geist tends to be a "lumper" while some others with comparable credentials are "splitters." Who is correct will be debated long after we laypeople are long gone. We hunters emphasize the most apparent visual differences -- color, size, shape of antler, etc. -- while such things as skull and bone measurements, location and absence/presence of glands, average length of tails and ears, etc. often are more important in taxonomy. After taking five (couesi in Arizona, texanus in Texas and eastern Colorado, borealis in Michigan, ocrourus in Wyoming, and macourus in Minnesota) of the many races of whitetails in North America, I found the differences between them were quite apparent to this hunter/artist/cervid enthusiast/author. As editor of the SCI record books for many years, I also inspected hundreds of photos of white-tailed deer from every U.S. state and across whitetail range in Canada. Your belief that visual differences among the southeastern U.S. races no longer exist because of translocations does not hold water. >>>>>>>>>There is something fascinating with the open plains/savanna adapted animals. I am also looking into information on the Spanish Red Deer that lives in the Chaparral Habitats of Southern Spain.>>>>>>>>>>>>> I shot a 6x6 trophy stag in the Toledo Mountains of Spain in the 1980s on my first trip to Europe. Its body was about the size of a large mule deer. Although we did not weigh it, I estimated it was 175 to 200 pounds after field dressing. Its antler beams were 34 inches long with perfect "crowns" on each side. The habitat we hunted reminded me of the country around Sonoita -- mostly gentle hills with oaks. Although red deer are the same species as elk/wapiti/maral, the Spanish subspecies (as did a much larger red deer I shot in New Zealand) lacked the neck ruff found on bull elk and the stag was a gray (not red) color overall. There are lots of good books and papers on the many Cervus elaphus races including hispanicus. One that may interest someone who is attempting to learn more about the world's deer is G. Kenneth Whitehead's "Encyclopedia of Deer." Bill Quimby

>>>>>>>"I even read somewhere that there were once several subspecies in the Southwest, but due to hunting...the Texas, Coue's, and Carmen Mountains deer are the surviving subspecies...while the rest either were hunted to extinction or absorbed/assimilated into the Texas white-tailed deer? ">>>>>>>>> I don't know where you read this, but the author cannot have any credibility. Also, the Coues white-tailed deer is named after Elliott Coues. If you insist on adding an apostrophe, it should be at the end of his name. Bill Quimby

A cliff carp. Bill Quimby

Started hunting Coues white-tailed deer after moving from Yuma to Tucson to attend the UA in 1954. Why? The same reason some people climb the world's tallest mountains -- because they are there (here). We called them simply "whitetails" or "desert whitetails" then. It wasn't until I'd hunted a bunch of other types of deer that I realized how blessed we Arizonans are to have them to hunt near our homes. Unfortunately, all good things must end. My health and age does not allow me to hunt these niftly little deer today. Although my Arizona deer hunting is limited to mule deer in easy country now, this site helps me remember the good times my friends and I enjoyed in years past. Bill Quimby

They don't need to clone anything. With some vehicles (and thieves know which ones) all they need is a heavy screwdriver to break a window, tear open the steering column shield, press the right thingamajig to start the engine and release the steering wheel lock, and drive away. They can do it in seconds I lost a six-month-old pickup Chevrolet truck that was stolen from my office parking lot two weeks before my sheep hunt started in 1994; my wife lost her Cadillac from our carport in the middle of the night three years ago. Our insurance company, Farmers, did well by us, but I cannot say the same about the Pima County Sheriff's Department and Arizona Highway Patrol in the case of my truck. I called within 20 minutes of the theft, and the dispatchers would not alert anyone to stop the truck on the roads south from Tucson. They took my name and phone number and said I should call back at 7:30 pm that evening when the person covering vehicle thefts would return! My truck showed up about a year later when the embassy in Hermosillo, Sonora, called me to say the Federales had turned up with my truck. I had signed the title over to the insurance company long before then, though. Bill Quimby

>>>>>>"I don't know if Arizona and New Mexico have a history of re-stocking deer populations as in the Eastern United States.">>>>>>> As far as I know, no white-tailed deer have been translocated anywhere in Arizona, but there was a period very early on when pronghorn antelope from Anderson Mesa and mule deer from the North Kaibab were released across southern Arizona. >>>>>>>>>"White-Tailed Deer in Eastern USA are largely mixed in the Southern States due to restocking of deer from as far west as Texas and Great Lakes regions)..."<<<<<<<<<<<<< Wouldn't this be like introducing a mutt into a population of registered French poodles? In not too many generations the mutt's genes would have negligible effect on the pool. Also, wouldn't the habitat conditions that made a particular race so distinct from others eventually erase the effect of introducing a comparatively few specimens of another race? Bill Quimby

This has been discussed here before. Here is what I wrote in my book, "Sixty Years A Hunter," that Safari Press is publishing. Bill Quimby "A scientist will tell you it is impossible for two distinct races of the same species to exist for long in the same location. That's why I always was (and still am) skeptical about the stories I have heard about “Mexican or Sonoran fantail deer.” "The fantail supposedly is a miniature race of whitetail that lives among our Coues deer in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. While I worked for the Tucson Citizen I saw several miniature adult whitetails in our city’s taxidermy shops. I even shot one myself in the Sierrita Mountains southwest of Tucson. "The eight-inch wide antlers on my forty-pound buck had five points, counting eyeguards, on each side of its miniscule rack. A Game and Fish Department wildlife manager who checked its teeth said it was just over four years old, so it was a mature buck and not a juvenile. "Carlos Gonzales Hermosillo, a hunting outfitter who operates in northern Mexico, is convinced fantails exist and offered to take me to an area in Mexico's Coues deer country where he said they are regularly taken. Unfortunately, I waited too long to take advantage of his invitation. I no longer can climb the steep, rocky mountains where Coues deer live. "If the fantail is a mythical beast as I believe, then the only explanation for the half-sized Coues deer that a few hunters take in Arizona and Sonora every year is that they must be dwarfs, abnormal individuals that will never grow to the size of the average deer of their region. "Problem is, dwarfism is supposed to be rare in wild populations of animals."

In the early 1990s, disgusted with what then was available to hunters, I got the presumptuous notion to do the research and write a book myself about the forty species (and many dozens of subspecies) of the world's deer, a book that would be easy for a layperson to read and understand. I had written perhaps 75,000-80,000 words when other projects came along, but the research triggered an interest that persists. It also led me to hunt as many types (17) as I could. Some hunters become obsessed with wild sheep (retarded cliff carp); I am that way with the world's many types of deer. My goal was to include personal anecdotes from people who had actually hunted a deer being described, as was done with the Peruvian whitetail. At the time, I knew only two or three people who had hunted whitetails in South America. Since then, I've visited three countries on that continent and made a few contacts down there. Don't know if I'll ever work on this manuscript again. There simply are too many types of deer in Asia that have never been (and never will be) encountered by hunters from "outside." CWT.com members may be interested in what I learned about the eight races of white-tailed deer in South America, however. As you can see, a lot more work was/is needed for this chapter. BILL QUIMBY SOUTH AMERICAN WHITE-TAILED DEER On average, the whitetails of South America are smaller than the North American races, standing only twenty four to thirty two inches (61-81cm) at the shoulder, which makes the largest of these whitetails comparable to the Coues and Carmen Mountains white-tailed deer and the largest of the Central American whitetails. Weights are similar to the smallest North American races, from sixty to one hundred pounds. The largest South American specimens come from Brazil, the smallest from Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela. The antlers I have seen, and the photographs published in the SCI Record Book of Trophy Animals, resemble the antlers of some of the whitetails of northern Mexico. They appear to be relatively heavy, although small and usually narrow, and their tips tend to come together, some nearly touching. Antlers of mature bucks typically will have a main beam with a brow tine and two crown tines. Steve Gallizioli of Phoenix, an acquaintance who retired as the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s chief of game management in the mid-1980s and who knows as much as anyone about Arizona’s Coues deer, was quoted by the Wildlife Management Institute as saying the museum specimens he inspected while on assignment in South America indicated that the continent’s whitetails were capable of growing antlers comparable to the whitetails of Arizona. With all due respects to Steve, I think this would depend upon the race of South American deer, because the smallest subspecies surely could not grow antlers scoring the 110 points the Boone and Crockett Club has set as its minimum for Coues deer. Some reports I have read have said it isn’t known whether all South American whitetails replace their antlers annually. But I cannot image these deer being a lone exception in the large family of deer. It is more likely that South American whitetails in some regions, like those in the southernmost portions of Central America, have no fixed season for the rut. Depending upon the region, antlers can be dropped and regrown throughout the year, and fawns can be dropped in any month. All of which must mean that these deer must get very frustrated when they go out looking for willing sexual partners. Some scientists have reported that bucks in some regions may change antlers at ten- to eleven-month intervals, but this also seems unlikely. The months when hunters can expect to find more deer with polished antlers is March to September. The tails of South American white-tailed deer that scientists have measured are smaller in proportion to body size than North America’s whitetails, with the tails of South America’s averaging 13% to 14% of body size, compared to tails averaging 15% to 20% for North American whitetails. Taxonomists say the skulls and teeth of South America’s whitetails are slightly larger than Central America’s whitetails of approximately the same size. Facial patterns shown in most of the SCI Record Book’s photos of South American whitetails (all are from Venezuela) are similar to those of Coues deer, with a major exception. A deer that California publisher Ellen Enzler-Herring killed in Venezuela in 1985 had very little white on its face, and instead had a dark mask that extended from its forehead to its nose. The few photographs I have seen of live South American whitetails show a large amount of white on the throats of these deer, many of them with the white areas continuing unbroken from the rump well up onto their sides and all the way to the jaw on some deer. I have been told this feature is most conspicuous with the apurensis subspecies. The most distinguishing characteristic of most South American whitetails, though, is the absence of metatarsal glands. In its place (but not in the same place as the metatarals on North American whitetails) hunters will find a glandless tuft of hair. As with their northern cousins, South American whitetails do have orbital, tarsal and interdigital glands. South America’s whitetails are confined to the northern part of the continent – Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, Surinam, French Guyana, northern Brazil, Ecuador, and northern and coastal Peru – with 15 degrees 15 minutes south latitude generally reported as being the approximate southernmost point of their range. They are found in open grasslands, savannas and open forests from twelve thousand feet (some say fifteen thousand feet) elevation down to sea level, preferring arid conditions over rain forests. Interestingly, despite this much reported preference, the Wildlife Management Institute reports that “a major part of the (South American) whitetail’s range is covered by broad-leafed evergreen and semideciduous forests, including tropical rain forests and humid montane forests.“ Most photographs I have seen of live South American whitetails have shown them with cattle in open grasslands or along sparsely vegetated (overgrazed?) riparian areas. Densities for South America’s white-tailed deer have been reported as ranging from as few as one deer per 1,250 acres (fifty hectares) to as many as one deer per five acres (two hectares) across their range. This works out to 0.512 to 128 white-tailed deer per square mile, compared to the six to seventy-five whitetails per square mile the U.S. Soil Conservation Service reported in the USA in 1991. The northern portion of South America is one of the world’s most rapidly developing areas, with approximately one hundred million people inhabiting the countries that now are home for white-tailed deer. That represents an average increase of one million people a year since the 1930s. By 2050, some say this region’s population could hit two hundred million! Whitetails often thrive in habitats that man has altered, so South America’s whitetail numbers could very well boom as its human population grows, given adequate protection from year-around hunting. However, many articles have reported that the continent’s whitetails are subjected to very heavy poaching, even though all countries with white-tailed deer have enacted game laws, more or less. British deer expert G. Kenneth Whitehead, who obviously is a "splitter," listed eight subspecies of whitetails in South America in his Hunting and Stalking Deer Throughout the World. Other authorities sometimes list only seven. The eight recognized by Whitehead can be divided into two groups with five races considered “tropical” South American whitetails“ and three as “High Andes” or “Temperate Zone” South American whitetails. Sorting deer by the type of region they inhabit probably is not acceptable to some scientists, but lumping seven races into just two groups as done below makes sense for hunters, and this probably will be what organizations that maintain hunting records will do when hunters submit more trophies from that continent for entry in their record books. Because few international big game hunters go to South America to hunt deer (the few who do usually hunt South America's various indigenous brocket deer and the introduced European red deer, axis deer and fallow deer on Argentina’s game ranches, and not whitetails), Safari Club International receives few South American whitetail entries, and lumps all records of whitetails in South America into a single category, "South American White-tailed Deer." The Boone and Crockett Club does not recognize white-tailed deer entries from South America. The eight subspecies of South American whitetails are: Tropical South American whitetails COMMON NAME? whitetail (Odocoilus virginianus cariacou) – Colombia, Ecuador. Reddish year-around. (SIZE, ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) COMMON NAME? whitetail (O.v. gymnotis) – Savannas of Venezuela, Surinam, Guiana, Brazil. Brown in winter, reddish in summer. Heaviest reported weight, 144 pounds (65 kg.). (ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) Tropical whitetail (O.v. tropicalis) – West of the Andes in southern Ecuador and Colombia. Reddish brown year-around. These small deer (HOW SMALL?) reportedly closely resemble the whitetails found in Panama. (ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) Margarita Island whitetail (O.v. margaritae) – Margarita Island off coast of Venezuela. Reddish in color year-around. (SIZE? ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) Curacao Island whitetail (O.v. curassavicus) – Curacao Island off Venezuela. Reddish in color year-around. Protected by the Venezuelan government since the 1930s. Only about a hundred animals were reported to exist in 1984. (SIZE? ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) COMMON NAME? whitetail (O.v. apurensis) – Eastern Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador. The winter coat is reddish with two distinct color zones (most other whitetails have three) and its facial markings are not distinct. It is one of the smallest of the continent’s whitetails. (HOW SMALL?) Some scientists lump this race with gymnotis, and recognize just seven subspecies of South American white-tailed deer. (ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) High Andes or Temperate Zone South American whitetails COMMON NAME? whitetail (O.v. goudotii) – Flood plains of the Andes of Colombia to Sierra de Merida in western Venezuela. Reportedly, some specimens of this race have a dark circle below and in front of their eyes, apparently the only whitetails with such features. Winter coats are gray-blonde to yellowish-gray. (SIZE/ANTLER DESCRIPTION?) Peruvian whitetail (O.v. peruvianus) – Slopes of Andes in Peru and Bolivia. Winter coats reportedly are gray-blonde to yellowish-gray. Freelance hunting writer Stuart Williams of Seattle, Washington, hunted these deer at elevations of 14,000-17,000 feet in August1994. Williams said that although he saw many bucks, none had antlers that would compare with those displayed in the estancia’s lodge, so he returned without shooting a deer. However, he photographed a buck and a doe that had been shot by ranch workers for food and estimated these young animals to weigh 90-100 pounds. If these two young deer had the distinctive white bibs that are reported on many South American whitetails, it did not catch his attention. He remembered their color as being “reddish gray.” Williams said the antlers from the better bucks on display at the lodge closely resembled those of Texas Hill Country whitetails in size, mass and conformation, with several having four tines and an eyeguard on each side. He was told there was no set antler growing season, and that bucks in velvet might be encountered in any month. He was told that April and May were the best months for finding more bucks with hard antlers. Hunting was done from horseback, using mixed-breeed dogs. The horsemen would ride up grassy ridges and the dogs would run up the canyons, chasing deer out of the tree-lined bottoms. If he had decided to shoot one of the 40-50 bucks he saw there, he said shots would have been across canyons at distances up to 350 yards or so. Pumas (mountain lions) were abundant even in the highest elevations, according to ranch workers, but he did not see any cats during his week there. Hunting on the ranch in1994 cost $250 U.S. per day, and there was no limit or trophy fee on deer. Because of Peru’s restrictive gun laws, he carried the rancher’s rifle. COMMON NAME? whitetail (O.v. ustus) – Andes of Ecuador and southern Colombia. Winter coats are gray-blonde to yellowish-gray. (SIZE/ANTLER DESCRIPTION?)