billrquimby

I emailed my opposition to the ban on the basis that it was not needed to protect or manage our wildlife and would be unenforceable. Bill Quimby

Nice buck. But, Amanda, a Texas WHITEY? Tsk. Tsk. I hope he didn't shoot it with a muzzy and take it to a taxi. Bill Quimby

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