billrquimby

The Electorial College determines elections, so it seems to me McCain (and America) would have been better served by if he had chosen someone from a "swing" state. Two westerners from states expected to be on the Republican wagon doesn't seem like a good move on the part of his advisors. In the end it probably doesn't matter. The media already have elected Hussein, and his followers have granted him god-like credentials. I expect we'll have to endure eight years with him. I find it interesting that McCain is only about a month older than I am. His Social Security number is eight. Mine is ten. Bill Quimby

Saw four groups of elk Monday evening above Greer. One had 75-80 cows and calves, some of them very small. One group had five bulls, all 6x6s, but nothing outstanding. The two other herds had maybe a dozen cows and calves each. Suspect it will be a couple of weeks before the bulls get serious about gathering harems. Bill Quimby

Lark: Don't have any first-hand knowledge about how a Yuma roofer's armpit tastes, but I did live in Yuma from about 1938 to 1954, and one of my many jobs in high school was helping a roofing crew for just one day. It was just too darned hot on top of that roof for me. I and the other workers smelled so bad after just a couple of hours that no one had to tell me that our armpits would taste as putrid as a peccary. I just knew it. Coues'n'Sheep: I've killed only one Arizona black bear and I still can't understand why our state requires us to utilize that meat. It was so greasy that I should have taken it to a refinery instead of trying to cook it in an oven, pot or frying pan. The only way I could get it down was to roast it on a rack so the grease could drip off, then recook it as machaca. The taste was OK, I guess, but after butchering that darned thing and seeing how much a skinned bear carcass resembles a stout man's, I couldn't get over feeling as if I were a cannibal. This was before Crock Pots, though. I suspect slow cooking in a Crock Pot or a pit is the answer to making anything edible. Drench a two-day-old road-killed skunk in Jack Daniels original barbecue sauce, wrap it in a half inch of wet newspapers, toss the package on a piece of tin placed on six inches of white-hot mesquite coals and bury everything for twenty four hours and someone might be able to eat it, too. That doesn't make skunk gourmet food, however. And in no way can pit-barbecued bear or javelina or skunk compare with a cooked-any-way-you-choose Texas Hill Country whitetail that has grown up in that horribly overgrazed country eating pellets and other supplemental food put out for cattle. Put a whole hind quarter of a THC buck in a big turkey roaster with about an inch of water -- along with onions, carrots, celery, garlic and potatoes -- and cook at 350-degrees until done and you will have food for the gods. Or butterfly, pound until flat, and heavily pepper their little backstraps and bread them with flour and whipped-up egg, and then fry them until the breading is just crisp, and you'll have to beat your friends away with a two-by-four to keep them from raiding your freezer. Bill Quimby

>>>>>"Good stuff Bill! Can't wait to read the book. Too bad I have to wait until Feb! Oh well, it will be a nice surprise when it shows up. Amanda">>>>>> Is February when Safari Press said it would ship? I was hoping it would be ready for Christmas, or at least for the SCI and Dallas Safari Club conventions in January. Bill Quimby

>>>>>>"Love that "I've seen only one live Arizona whitetail with antlers that would come close to matching the antlers on her buck, and it jumped up a second after I shot a smaller one" ------ hehehe, classic!">>>>>>>> It's the story of my life, Amanda. The best bull elk I ever saw when I had an elk tag in my pocket suddenly appeared on a steep ridge above Chitty Creek (below Hannagan Meadow) when I stood up to cross the canyon to climb across to gut a cow elk I'd just shot. My tag was for any elk, and the bull was standing exactly where the cow had stood when I killed her a couple of minutes earlier. I swear that bull's antlers could have scratched its rump. I did what any hunter would do: I removed the rounds from my rifle, centered the crosshairs on that bull's chest, slowly squeezed the trigger, and loudly yelled, "Bang! You're dead." About the same thing happened with a Lichtenstein hartebeest bull in Zambia, and another big bull elk in Mongolia. Funny thing. Such incidents rank high in my memories of a lifetime of hunting. Hunts when nothing went wrong and nothing memorable happened other than a "trophy" was collected don't mean as much to me. One of my most memorable hunts was an archery antelope hunt south of the Apache Maid lookout in the late 1960s, and I had the only shot our party of three got in a week -- and I missed! It rained cows and horses all day and night and we didn't see the sun for five days. We stuck my truck up to its doors every time we moved it and we all were constantly covered with a thick coat of heavy mud, making our boots weigh at least 20 pounds each. We drank bacanora and played Fantan for pennies every night in a tent that leaked bucketsful. The highlight of the trip was when a Porta-Potty chair broke while one of my partners was using it. It was a heck of a hunt, and I'd love to relive every minute of it. Bill Quimby

The only javelina meat I've been able to eat was slathered with barbecue sauce and cooked for 24 hours three feet down in mesquite-fired pit barbecues in our arroyo. It's a lot of work, and takes a lot of mesquite. I suppose a Crock Pot with lots of sauce would work, too, because the secret appears to be to cook the meat slowly. However, my wife would demand that I do it outside to avoid smelling up the house. Otherwise, javelina meat has been totally inedible every other way we've cooked it -- and I've tried most everyway there is -- no matter how careful I've been to keep the musk gland (and all hair) from tainting it. I rank it one step below bear meat, and that's really rank! No way does it taste like lean pork. It has its own distinctive flavor, even when at its best when pit barbecued. To me, at its worst, it's about like biting into a roofer's armpit at noon on a 120-degree day in Yuma. Bill Quimby

I was advertising manager at Jacome's Department Store in the mid-1970s and one of the fashion artists who reported to me there was Chrissy Saathoff, Bill's wife. Although the Saathoffs moved to Hereford I kept bumping into them over the years. I wrote several articles for the Tucson Citizen about Adam attending the NRA shooting school in Colorado and competing on the U.S. Olympic team, and Bill later mounted one of my mule deer. He was John Doyle's student in many things besides taxidermy, including the use of quality optics and "Moses sticks" for hunting in Arizona. (John and brothers Jim and Seymour Levy were the first and stories Sam Fadala and I wrote about them helped spread the word.) Bill was a great guy, quiet and unassuming, and hearing about his death comes as a great shock to me. Rest in peace, Bill. Bill Quimby

I own a lot of rifles, including calibers that are better suited for either Coues deer or elk, but the last few years whenever I'm going hunting somewhere I reach for the Czech-built Mauser 7 mm Remington Magnum I stocked myself from a piece of walnut we cut in Texas. It's taken maybe 50 or 60 head of game with 175-grain Nosler Partition handloads. The scope is an old Leupold Compact 3-9X with DuPlex wires. Bill Quimby

Thank you, Amanda, for buying my book but, more than that, for creating and maintaining this site. It provides this old man many hours of fun reading about the exploits of younger Coues whitetail hunters. I especially enjoyed seeing the photo this week of the young lady bowhunter with her beautiful buck. Congratulations to her! In sixty years of hunting in this state I've seen only one live Arizona whitetail with antlers that would come close to matching the antlers on her buck, and it jumped up a second after I shot a smaller one. To take such a deer with a bow is a heck of an achievement! It would be wonderful to be young and healthy again, and able to walk and climb hills as I once did. I urge you all to squeeze in all the hunts you can while you can. Bill Quimby

C.J. McElroy, the guy who founded Safari Club International and took hundreds of trophy animals from obscure places all over the world, always said if you have to ask yourself if it's a trophy then you shouldn't shoot. "You'll know it when you see it," he told me. Problem is, my view of a trophy is different than his or most of you. After editing the SCI record books for sixteen years, such books do not interest me. I no longer measure my trophies with a tape measure but by the experiences of the hunt. A little spike buck I shot years ago in Texas with a $50 muzzleloader ranks just as high in my personal book as any of my "real trophies" because it got me interested in hunting with and building muzzleloaders at a time few others were doing it. Bill Quimby

Thank YOU, Bob. Bill Quimby

Thanks, all. It's appreciated. Although the books won't be ready until at least mid-January or so, I'm telling friends to order now because only 500 will be printed in this first edition. Safari Press says credit cards won't be charged until the books are shipped. Bill Quimby

I can only assume your question has to do with a certain presidential candidate's response to a reporter. Imagine yourself followed around by a horde of vultures who hope to get you to give a wrong answer, just so they can get an "exclusive." Then imagine having a wife with more money than God, and a fleet of accountants who know the most tax-effective way to hold her property (not all of which is legally yours). When ambushed with a question out of the blue by a reporter, our hero's safest response is: "I'm not sure. I'll check with staff and get back to you." Bill Quimby

Who is your hunting partner? I'm not saying your friend didn't do as he says, but Ed Stockwell was a friend and I can't imagine anyone teaching him "about hunting." His bee-keeping business kept him outdoors in some of Arizona's best whitetail country year around, and in the last years of his life he was one of our state's better hunting guides. Bill Quimby

Seems to me that the flap over radios is much ado about nothing. In a book I ghost wrote for an international sheep hunter, the author told about hunting Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in an area where hunters cannot legally possess radios. The outfitter got around the law by having the guy manning the spotting scope carry a set of large flash cards. The guide and client were furnished a sheet telling what each card meant. If the spotter held up a card with a "T," another with a "B," another with a "S", and another with a "11", for example, it meant "trophy ram bedded south of you, 11 o'clock on the hill." The guide and hunter kept checking the spotter's cards with their binos as they moved up to the ram. A sophisticated code of hand signals would get the same results. Didn't sailors wave flags to "talk" between ships before radios came along? What is considered ethical varies from region to region. In southern Africa, for example, local sport hunters consider it highly highly unethical to shoot an animal anywhere near water. (I cannot repeat what they say about visiting bowhunters who shoot thirsty game from blinds at waterholes.) Some even claim it is unethical to bait for leopards and lions. A hunter is supposed to track his game on foot and not hide and ambush it, they say. Bill Quimby

This is from my book, "Sixty Years A Hunter," that Safari Press will introduce in January: TWO Mule Deer: My First Big Game Animal THERE IS nothing like the smell and sound of pine burning and crackling in an old-fashioned, red-hot, pot-bellied iron stove, especially when you are twelve years old and in a wood shanty that has been wallpapered with newspapers to keep the wind from blowing through its widest cracks. The corner with the stove was uncomfortably hot while the other corners were cold enough to hang meat. The place belonged to someone my father had befriended, a man named Theodore Gallardo. In those days people could “patent” government land if they found valuable minerals on it. They only had to “improve” (mine) their claim and live on it for a specified number of years to get full ownership of the land. Theo was a veteran who had found this spot on Lynx Creek near Prescott after the Spanish-American War. He dug a tunnel with a pick and shovel and claimed that he was getting gold from it. I doubt that the gold (if any) he found amounted to much, however. His “guest house” was my first hunting camp. I still remember struggling to get under the heavy, hand-sewn quilts that covered the iron bed my father and I shared the night before my first deer hunt began in October 1948. I still can see myself going outside to relieve myself while wearing only socks and my first pair of long underwear. It was so cold I wanted to run back inside but I gritted my teeth and did what I needed to do -- on the firewood stacked outside the door. The smell of the Ponderosa pines and the sight of a dusting of snow in the moonlight made everything seem magical. The smell of urine-soaked wood burning in a crowded shack was something else, I soon learned. My first deer hunt did not last long. We were out before daylight after a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee (my first taste of it) that my father cooked in a tin skillet and a blue-enameled pot on top of the little stove. Everything about this hunt was memorable. I still can see the stars above us as we ventured out of our shelter in the dark and started climbing the hill behind Gallardo's house. I was wearing an old pair of leather-soled “street” shoes, and not boots, and I constantly slipped on rocks and loose dirt. Over my long underwear I wore a heavy shirt and a thin, olive-colored military jacket I'd bought at one of the hundreds of army surplus stores that opened after World War II. In my pocket was my first hunting license and deer tag, which had cost a total of $4 -- $3 for the license, $1 for the tag. (I kept the license for a long time under the butt plate of my .303 Savage Model 99 lever-action rifle. I lost it several years later when I installed a stock with a flatter plate.) Many years after this hunt the U.S. Forest Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department built a dam across Lynx Creek and the lake that flooded Gallardo's place began attracting hundreds of visitors from Phoenix and Prescott on weekends. In 1948, though, Lynx Creek was as remote and unknown as anyplace in Arizona. There were pine trees in the canyons and along the creek but the slopes were covered with manzanita, an awful brush whose name means “little apple” in Spanish. The stuff grows reddish-purple branches that intertwine and make it impossible for a human to walk through it. Deer may eat its leaves and twigs and they also use its dense growth for cover. Other than that it has no other reason for existing that I can see. We had climbed only one or two ridges when a mule deer buck ran out of a patch of manzanita and my father shot at it and missed. I started shooting, too. My father stopped to reload just as the deer was about to go out of sight across the canyon. I fired my last shot, saw the deer drop, and immediately heard the “splat” of my bullet hitting the deer. There was no doubt that I had killed that buck, but all my father would say later was that “we” had gotten it. In the late 1940s the only reasonable way to reach Prescott and points north by car from Phoenix, Yuma, or even Tucson, was via a two-lane road that twisted up Yarnell Hill and on to Prescott. That part of the road was the only stretch of pavement between Yuma and the Grand Canyon except for the streets in Prescott and Flagstaff. Every other inch of the trip was on gravel and dirt. Near the base of Yarnell Hill was a gasoline station and cafe at a junction called “Aguila,” or eagle in Spanish, although I doubt that any self-respecting eagle was ever seen there. A sign pointed toward a place called “Bagdad” somewhere down a dirt road. Despite the misspelling, it brought visions of the Arabian Nights to my young mind. The opening of Arizona's annual deer hunting season was a major event in the late 1940s. There was a continuous line of hunters' vehicles going up Yarnell Hill on the night before the season opened, and a long line of vehicles going down two or three days later. An itinerant photographer had set up shop in Aguila to photograph successful hunters with their deer and I convinced my father to stop at the man's stand. I don't remember how much he charged to photograph me with my buck but I do remember that I paid for it. You can imagine my disappointment when the photo arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later and I opened the envelope to find a glare on the camera's lens had obliterated most of my image. The photographer had staged the photo with the deer in the trunk of my father's car while I held its antlers as my father sat on the bumper. All that could be seen of me in that photo were my waist and legs. Bill Quimby

Do you like to eat Dove, Bill? Shoot some of the Eurasian Collared Doves, cook them up and let us know what you think. Amanda Sorry, but I stopped shooting doves ten years ago when the people I'd been giving mine to were transferred out of Tucson. I would suspect the meat from a Eureasian collared dove would taste like all the mourning doves, white-winged doves, band-tailed pigeons, barnyard pigeons, and the various doves in Africa that people have talked me into tasting -- simply awful! I can't stand dark-meated birds, especially doves. Someone on this forum (I think it was Lark) called them liver with wings, and I agree. I don't eat liver, either. Bill

It's only my opinion (but it's based on a 72-year-lifetime that included hunting in every corner of Arizona) that our state's wildlife habitat is in the best shape that I've seen. There are some exceptions, but on the whole, land managers and grazers are better educated and more professional now. I honestly believe most truly want to be good stewards. I couldn't say that in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s or even the 1970s. Bill Quimby

We've had both band-tailed pigeons and the Eurasian collared doves around our cabin in Greer this summer. A band-tail is eating corn out of one of our squirrel feeders below my loft's window as I write this. Bill Quimby

<<<<<<<<< know this thread is about deer and cattle and has gotten off to a very deep path of discussion. I would like to throw out an example where cattle and ranching helped a species thrive. Back in 1939 when the Cabez Prieta Refuge was established there was a large number of cattle and the water and food sources to support them. Natural and man made. The decision was made by USFW to remove the cattle grazing rights and remove the water sources that were not natural. Prior to this decision the numbers of the currently endangered Sonoran Pronghorn was in the hundreds. After the removal of the water sources used by the ranchers the Pronghorn started to die off not surprisingy. At one time the herd dwindled down to less than 10 animals! Recently the USFW has established artificial water sources and a food plot to bring the numbers back up and now are around 40 animals after a transplant operation with animals from mexico. My point is that cattle and the ranchers that raise them do alot for the natural environment. I will get off my soap box now.... >>>>>> I know a bit about the Cabeza Prieta and the decision to remove cattle from it. I won two press awards and was named the Governor's Conservation Communicator of the year after I did a series of newspaper articles and photos exposing livestock overgrazing on America's remotest wildlife refuge. This was before land management agencies, refuges, wildlife agencies -- and cattlemen -- really got serious about multiple use and sustainable habitat management. Every range manager I interviewed claimed the place was a horrible mess. I've forgotten the numbers but I seem to remember being told here were at least four times the number of cattle on the refuge as the allotment allowed. As for water, at the time the grazing permit was yanked, my sources claimed there had never been a documented report of anyone seeing a Sonoran pronghorn using water. They drink water, of course, but they apparently have additional sources other than developed livestock waters out in that nasty desert. About the same time, while I was serving a term as the president of the Lander (Wyoming) One Shot Antelope Hunt's Past Shooters Club, I got the club's board to approve a donation of $10,000 for water development for the Sonoran pronghorn on the Cabeza Prieta. Until then, little was known about the subspecies even though it already had been officially declared endangered. Dave Brown, then the AZGFD's big game chief, instead asked that we earmark the money for an aerial survey and a pronghorn movement study, neither of which had ever been done before. He felt building new water sources would benefit coyotes more than pronghorns, and predation by coyotes was the limiting factor for pronghorn reproduction and survival. The Department of Defense got into the act and provided a free helicopter, and in addition to counting pronghorns, a couple of animals were caught and collared. The publicity that resulted from the project our puny seed money launched (especially coming from an out-of-state hunting club) apparently embarassed a bunch of other groups and money for Sonoran pronghorns never again was a problem. Don't remember hearing that the number of pronghorns on the Cabeza Prieta ever fell to ten. It could be so, but I do know that tracking collared animals showed that they moved in and out of Mexico regularly. Could that survey have been done at a time when most of them were south of the border? Bill Quimby

Guys, people have been conducting surveys since Biblical times. There are certain formulas that have stood the test of time. Using a Statistics calculator from the Net I came up with the following. THE GIVEN: There are 1,000 deer permits and you want to know how many deer were killed. You send cards to all 1,000 permit holders. From past experience, you can expect 85% (or 850) of the cards to be returned. THE RESULT: If the returned cards show a success rate of 29%, you can be 99% confident that 290 deer were killed. The error factor is 1.7%, or plus or minus five deer. If a confidence level of 99% and an error rate of plus or minus five deer per 1,000 permits bothers you, then you should require every hunter to check in and out of his/her unit. Bill Quimby

"You know Bill i have been told by biologists that coyote's do not hunt in packs..." As I said before, this was the first time I have seen more than two coyotes going after antelope. They may not have been huntng in a pack like wolves, but those three certainly were planning on pronghorn for dinner until I drove up. Bill Quimby

I may have saved the life of at least one antelope buck yesterday. After buying groceries and gas in Springerville I was returning to my cabin in Greer about 7 p.m. when I spotted two bucks running between the highway fences in front of me. Hot on their tails were three coyotes. I rolled down the windows and when I drew alongside the coyotes I honked and yelled, and they veered off. It was the first time I've seen three coyotes chasing antelope. Usually I see only one or two at a time. It also was unusual to see them chasing adult males. Unfortunately, some of the the does are dropping fawns now so I suppose those three devils haven't gone hungry. Bill Quimby

There is no way that rack came from a mule deer or even one of the black-tailed deer. I would bet my next elk tag that it's a whopper of a Coues deer. It could be from one of the larger northern whitetail subspecies, but I think not. It has just too many characteristics that say desert whitetail to me. Incidentally, to those who say there's no way the rack of a North American elk can be confused with another species, there are several closely related deer species in Asia that have similar antlers and it would take a knowledgeable person to tell their antlers apart. As for types (subspecies) of elk, there are many on this planet. An elk (Asian wapiti or maral) I shot in Mongolia years ago had 6x6 antlers and a body that looked exactly like those I've killed in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. If you want a 480 elk, I suggest you hunt in China's Tian Shan. I've not been there, but that mountain range is where the world's largest elk are found. Bill Quimby

According to a news report I saw, thanks to Republicans in the House, the legislation with the Cap and Trade provisions is dead. Unfortunately, it probably will be back after the elections. Bill Quimby