billrquimby

There's little chance of a hybrid, in my opinion. Bobcats EAT domestic cats. We lost our cat last month to a big bobcat that's been hanging around our winter home. She had escapted numerous coyotes over the five years we had her, but she couldn't get away from the bobcat. We have seen two -- the big one I caught eating our cat, and a much smaller one -- in the past two weeks. We also have a herd of javelinas that visit regularly, along with more coyotes than we need. We have seen seven of the ten Arizona big game animals over the years at our cabin.

Looks like if you shoot one of those your going to need one of those to pack him out. HUGE. That photo has been around the Net for a while. The guy who created it should write a book on how to use Photoshop. Bill Quimby

"No person shall knowingly use any substance as bait at any time to attract or take bear." Seems to me that all that would be needed to accomplish what some people seem to want would be an amendment to change the word "bear" to "a big game animal" or (even broader) "wildlife." Bill Quimby

No so. When I had my mule I'd point her in the direction I wanted to go, then give her head and relax. She found the best trails AND game for me. When she stopped and looked, she usually had found a deer, pig, or whatever long before I saw it. Best of all, she packed out everything I shot (except a bear). It's no wonder that nearly half of the people taking this poll so far have checked the button for "mule." Bill Quimby

Tony: I did not know Grits, but I did meet him on a junket to the Weatherby factory in Maine and spent some time with him with other writers. He seemed a friendly guy. When he took off that beat-up ol' signature hat I was surprised to see he was bald. May he rest in peace. Bill

Agree about the second half of your comment. I meant over the years, of course. Back when my health and age allowed me to walk more than short distances I used to find at least one shed nearly every time I went out. There also was a year in the early 1970s when we hunted elk from horses in the canyons below Hanagan Meadow that our group found at least a hundred whitetail carcasses -- with their skulls and antlers intact -- after a major winterkill. With this winter's snowfall, I would not be surprised if someone came out of Chitty Creek and elsewhere around Strayhorse with a similar story later this year. Bill Quimby

I put a deer block and a salt block outside my cabin in Greer three years ago. The squirrels and blue jays work on the deer block, but nothing touches the salt. I've watched mule deer and elk walk past both blocks without even looking at them. The mule deer eat our wild rosebushes; the elk eat the grass and nibble on the bark on our aspens. After this limited research it wouldn't bother me if salt and deer blocks were banned.

Question 2: when someone asks where I found that nice set of sheds. ... Maybe I'm dense, but why wouldn't someone tell where a shed might have come from? I must have found a pickup load of them over the years and never felt a need to keep where I found one a secret.

I like this provision: "Endangered species may be removed, captured, held or destroyed without permit by any person in emergencies involving an immediate threat to human life or private property." If we can get the department to declare elk an endangered species we finally will be able to protect ourselves from those big bulls that are an immediate threat to our lives up at our cabin. Same with those dangerous javelinas and whitetails on some land we own near Nogales. Bill Quimby

If I could have only one rifle, and could hunt only Arizona mule deer or whitetials with it, it would be a .25 caliber -- .257 Roberts (standard or improved), .257 Weatherby or a .25/06. The .243 or 6 mm would be my second choice. Bill Quimby

Well said, Audsley!

"bullet diameter and weight does not make up for poor hits. (unless it's a 7mm/08) i have an old remington mohawk 600 .243 that has killed more deer than mountain lions. with my kids shootin' it. 100 gr hornadys work real well. i've never seen a well placed shot with "any" center fire that resulted in a lost deer. some may go a little farther than others, but they never go very far and they spray enough blood out they ain't hard to find. deer ain't that big. even big old muleys. it's real simple, if you hit one in the lungs, they die. any centerfire hits harder and does more damage than any arrow. and a bow is real deadly, if you hit em right. here are the rules, just so you guys don't get confused:" Again I can't disagree with you, Lark (except for the comment about the 7mm/008 ). My .243 also is a Mohawk 600 and it's killed maybe 20 deer here and in Texas. It's been said before, but everything in shooting game animals boils down to bullet placement. In the right hands, a .22 rimfire will take anything that walks in North America. Bill Quimby

I used a .416 Weatherby Magnum with and without the brake in Zambia. This rifle is a tooth-loosening, eyeball-popping, shoulder-buster and the brake definitely reduced its recoil, but the rearward muzzle blast was awful for anyone standing next to me. My professional hunter asked me to remove it when we went after my lion. Bill Quimby

I started my deer hunting career 60 years ago with a lever-action, non-scoped .303 Savage, and it served me well until I a bought a .257 Roberts. It also served me well until Sears had a sale and I went into hock for $80 (a lot of money then) for a brand new J.C. Higgens .270 built by the FN Mauser Co. I thought I'd found the perfect hunting rifle and shot a bunch of game with it, including everything in Arizona except a sheep. Later I acquired and used on various game a .22-250, a .243, a .25-06, a 6mm Rem Mag, a .308, a .30-06, a .300 Win Mag, a .300 Weathery, a .35 Whelen, a .375 H&H, a .45-70, a .416 Weatherby, and a .458 Win Mag. They all do what they were designed to do, but I kept going back to my .270. It shot flat, the recoil was mild, and with proper bullets it was suitable for everything up to elk out to 300 yards. Then l I bought a 7 mm Rem Mag Czech-made barreled action, built a stock for it, and took it around the world. It has taken everything from 10-pound grysbok to 1,500-pound moose and eland (and an Arizona sheep). I like it because the recoil is acceptable and it shoots 165-grain bullets as flat as a .270 with 130-grain bullets. I point it at the middle of something out to 350 yards, touch the trigger, and it drops dead. And we all know there is only one degree of dead. Sorry, Lark, but all my other rifles including that faithful ol' .270 have been retired. Bill Quimby

"Yes, Jones was a good friend of Roosevelt's, who appointed him as the first game warden of Yellowstone NP. Jones and writer Zane Gray were also good buddies. If I recall there are several books around that chronicle a lot of Jones' life." Tony: Jones got pissed big time at Roosevelt when the president visited Yellowstone and refused to hunt lions with him, or even to see Jones at the park. One of the things Jones did to get back at Teddy (there were other things, too) was to hook up with a wealthy political foe of Roosevelt who wanted to pooh-pooh Roosevelt's highly publicized African safari. Funded by Roosevelt's enemy, Jones and two cowboys from Arizona and Texas went off to Africa to try to rope many of the animals Teddy shot with rifles. Their horseback "hunts" were filmed and the movies were shown across America. I have been writing a book about Jones in my spare time over the past three or four years, but may never get to finish it if new clients keep knocking on my door (I hope they never stop). In doing the research I collected the six books written about Jones, including two by Zane Gray. I also have the early magazine articles written about his two African expeditions. His African movies can be seen at a museum in Kansas devoted to his feats ... he began as a commercial buffalo hunter, rode in the Great Oklahoma Land Rush, served briefly as Yellowstone's first game warden (until he quit in anger when Roosevelt snubbed him and he was ignored by U.S. Army officers who also had responsibility for anti-poaching), rode in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Circus, worked the lecture circuit across the USA, brought bison from Texas, Montana, Canada and elsewhere to Arizona, and roped critters in the arctic and Africa. He was a busy guy. It was a shame that he became an anti-hunter as he aged. It would be nice to know more about what went on at House Rock. Jim Owens and Jim Elliott originally were partners with Jones in the buffalo experiment, but they had a falling out, and Owen's' company fenced off the waters that were being used by Elliott's cattle. Elliott won the lawsuit, but Owens won the war when his investors bought the Lees Ferry operation and forced Elliott to selll his cattle and move away. I'd like to know if Game and Fish's House Rock property was originally owned by Jones, Owens and Elliott. Zane Gray's book shows a a photo of a log cabin, so their ranchhouse must have been higher on the mountain or else they had to pack the logs for it a long way. I don't remember seeing a log cabin or any remnants of one the two times I was there. Bill Quimby

Tony: Lots of history north of Grand Canyon, and it's great that you're preserving some of it. Have you found anything about Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones, Jim Emmett, and "Uncle" Jimmy Owens who brought the bison to Houserock? Specifically, was the Game and Fish Department's House Rock Ranch Jones's original ranch or was it somewhere else in the valley? Emmett ran Lee's Ferry when Jones was trying to breed his cattalo and he and Owens were in partnership with Jones, I think, but I've not found anything to confirm it. Owens, of course, was the guy who took Teddy Roosevelt hunting on the Kaibab and caught all the lions up there. Jones went on to the arctic and captured muskoxen, then went to Africa with a couple of cowboys, one of them from the Strip named Ambrose Means, and ROPED a lion and a rhino, among other critters. Bill Quimby

Great story, and congratulations on sighting the jaguar. I saw what I've always believed was a jaguar swim across the Colorado River near San Luis (south of Yuma) when I was a boy hunting geese on Gadsden Lake. I thought its head was a beaver (there were lots of them in the river then) until it climbed onto a sandbar and walked into the arrowweeds. There was no mistaking that it was a big cat. As you described, its coat seemed to be very dark at a distance, but that could have been because it was wet. It was about 1948 or 1949. Then, in about 1970, I was fishing either Lake Dominguez or Hildalgo (I forget which) in Sinaloa when we came around a point in our boat and saw a dead cow on the edge of the water. When we returned a couple of hours later, the cow was gone. The Mexican I was with said a jaguar had dragged it into the brush while we were fishing elsewhere. We kept on fishing and didn't check for tracks, so I don't know if he knew what he was talking about. As Tony said, the brush there was extremely thick. We fished the two lakes on the El Fuerte River maybe six or seven times over as many years but never saw a deer. I wouldn't want to try hunting in that stuff! Bill Quimby

Wrong.

I was at the SCI convention in Reno when this thread was spun. You may be interested in knowing that one of the international hunters I've written books for, Hubert Thummler of Mexico City, has created two awards for hunters. One is for hunters who collect == in a single year ==four of the various whitetail races found in Mexico; the other is for hunters who collect all of Mexico's races of mule deer and white-tailed deer over multiple years. One American already has qualified for the first award and is working on the other. The various South American whitetails vary greatly in size -- from about 40 pounds on the hoof to maybe 140-150 pounds, depending upon the subspecies. The smallest are closest to the Equator, the largest are found the farthest south. A similar thing happens in reverse in this hemisphere; the farther north you go the larger the deer. When I edited the SCI record books, some of the photos submitted by members showed a couple of races of South American whitetails with nearly as much white as gray/brown/red on their coats. Their white throat patches continued unbroken down their necks through their bellies and on to the insides of their legs and rumps. Color of their coats varied all over the place, mostly depending upon the season and sometimes their locality. The interesting thing, I think, about the whitetail is that the closer it is found to the Equator the longer its rut -- and not all does will be in estrus at anywhere near the same time. Bucks with hard antlers and bucks in velvet can be seen every month of the year. Farther south, the rut stabilizes and occurs in the fall (which is our spring). Also interesting to me is that all of the North American and European deer species (whitetails, elk, moose, red deer, fallow, axis, etc.) released in the Southern Hemisphere have switched their breeding cycles to correspond to the seasons there. Bill Quimby

Here I go agreeing with Lark again. The bonus point system is a bone AGFD has thrown to those of us who can't understand why we're not allowed to hunt just one of all the elk we keep seeing. . After reading the posts in this thread I'm buying $200 worth of lottery tickets this week. This should increase my odds of getting drawn by 200%. Bill Quimby

And coyotes DO chase javelinas. I watched two of them disembowel a sow years ago. They kept biting its belly as they chased her down a hill. Her intestines snagged brush and she went down. They were on her in an instant. I was bowhunting and this happened across a canyon or I would have shot them. The noise that pig and coyotes made was something else. Bill Quimby

It's like missing easy shots. Anyone who says it hasn't happened to him/her is either: a) a liar doesn't hunt much c) both of the above Bill Quimby

I also have found piglets "abandoned" after I spooked a herd. On both occasions an adult returned and took them away within ten minutes or so. I've also seen "pigs" start drifting back to their feeding ground after I busted up the herd. I used this trait once. I called my partner to come over after I'd shot one. It wasn't long before he had one, too. Bill Quimby

"Josh, Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the photo you posted was of a guy that wandered into camera range last Oct., and the camera was stolen just recently, like in the last week or so, right?? If that is the case, I wonder why the guy in the photo didn't steal anything the first time he was there. I guess what I'm saying is you might be pointing the finger at the wrong person, given the situation. It's possible it is the same guy, but IMO, it's unlikely. -TONY" Josh: Sorry about your loss but I am with Tony. I also noted that you said you have inspected trail cams owned by others and left them alone. Bill Quimby

When I found the site several years ago it was telling people that the word "javelina" came from their having teeth that resemble javelins! I wrote the site's owner and after we exchanged a couple of emails (he's a nice fellow, by the way), the site now notes that "jabalí" in Spanish means "wild boar," and that adding "ina" makes it "little wild boar." We Gringos bastardized the word to make the "B" a "V." Bill Quimby