billrquimby

Ouch Bill, you sure have a grudge against those poor old sheep! I can't really argue with you there, but I still think they are amazing the way they move in that steep country! Amanda No grudge, and I would never discount the agility of sheep or their sure-footedness, but the many members of the goat family have sheep beat a thousand ways when it comes moving around in steep country and slick rocks. I saw Himalayan tahr, alpine chamois and feral goats in New Zealand and Rocky Mountain goats in Nevada and Idaho go places a wild sheep would never dream of going. When I shot my tahr my guide slapped my back and did everything but dance a jig. When I said aw shucks it wasn't a difficult shot, he said mine was the first client's tahr that he would not need ropes to reach! Bill Quimby

Actually a true carp's full common name is "rock carp." It has real horns (and not antlers) that leave its head and curl up, down and around. Mother Nature screwed up in designing those horns because a mature rock carp must constantly rub their tips to keep them from blocking its side vision. A rock carp perpetually wears a dumb look on its face and its teeth are almost always showing, even when its mouth is closed, kind of like that "what me worry?" guy in Mad magazine. As a rock carp gets older its butt gets more pointed, its knees get knobbier, and its belly bloats, even though its ribs may be showing. Its scrotum is so big it has to be careful not to step on it when getting up. If it weren't for its horns the rock carp would be downright ugly. As for its wariness, certain taxonomists actually have published papers proposing to change the scientific name for its genus from Ovis to Dumbis. Bill Quimby

This cancer has spread to every continent except Asia (that I know of). Bill Quimby

"Welcome to the addiction, it only took me 23 years to get my desert tag, now I have to work on getting my rocky tag. If you really need to feed your addiction, join the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society. Its a great way to feed your addiction and give back tothe wildlife of this state through building wildlife waters in sheep country. you also meet some great people." You are lucky you didn't have to wait one year short of four decades for your tag as I did. I agree about the ADBSS and the great work done by great people. I just don't share their fascination with sheep. I've watched a lot of desert sheep, a few Rocky Mountain sheep, and a very few Dall and Fannin sheep and none impressed me as much as a big bull elk or a majestic red deer or any of the whitetails, mule deer, roe deer, and the other deer species I've hunted. Talk with people who have shot all of the world's sheep and you'll hear about the wonderful scenery, the beautiful rams, and the remote places where they've hunted sheep but you'll never hear them accuse a ram of any species of being as intelligent as a deer. Bill Quimby

Believe me, sheep are the world's dumbest animals on four legs. Comparing them to a white-tailed deer or a six-year-old bull elk that's not in the rut would be like putting a kindergartner up against an Einstein in a math contest. Beautiful? Yes. Smart? No. Every Weatherby Award winner I wrote a book for agreed that sheep are like the blondes in all those jokes. An average size Coues buck is a better trophy than the biggest desert sheep, in my humble opinion. Bill

I found a perfect name for your dog in the nearly forgotten Beothuk language used by the long-extinct indigenous peoples of Labrador and Newfoundland. It's Sea Dubalu Dotcom. (say it out loud a couple of times) for "she who runs quiet and plays with antlers." For short, you may call her Dotty. You probably don't have 3XL Tall T-shirts, so make it a man's regular large. My wife uses them for nighties, and she likes big T-shirts. Bill Quimby

Another vote for the .22-250. Bill Quimby

I've been cut twice, and both were with scopes mounted too far back on Weatherby rifles ... one of them was the .416 Weatherby I took to Africa for the lion I use as a signon. Both were on loan from the mfg., and both had the old Weatherby scopes (they were junk!) mounted when they shipped them to me. One of the things I try to remember but almost always forget to look for when I buy a scope is eye relief. There is a big difference between makers and models. Bill Quimby

I checked the forecast for Greer yesterday. It called for a total of 14 inches snow by Tuesday, then the daytime weather gets back into the 50-degree range again. I'm in Tucson for the winter. Bill Quimby

Pit-barbecued javelina Dig a hole about the size of a 55-gallon drum, fill with mesquite wood, and ignite. While allowing mesquite to burn into deep bed of coals, take two halves of javelina, slather with commercial barbeque sauce, and place each half in a clean pillow case. Wrap each half with thick layer of wet newspapers, tie each bundle with wire (so you can pull hot packages from pit later). Place sheet of tin over coals, lay bundles on tin, place another sheet of tin over bundles. Cover the pit with the dirt you removed earlier, until no smoke escapes from hole. Dig up packages 24 hours later. Strip meat from bones and shred. Serve with flour tortillas, beans, salad, and sangria, and enjoy. Also makes bears, bobcats, and mountain lions edible. Bill Quimby

My wife has a snub-nose Taurus .38 special and I have a .357 Smith and Wesson with a 6-inch barrel. These are strictly our home/car defense handguns, although I plan to bump off a javelina with mine in February. For what you want, though, I suggest you consider getting a small semiauto .22 long rifle pistol, like a High Standard or Colt Woodsman. I have both and they are surprisingly accurate. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a lion with either of them, if that was all I had, and they are big enough to scare off the two-legged coyotes along the border. Unless you handload, you won't shoot the .357 mags as much as a .22 and you'll will miss out on a lot of fun. Bill Quimby

"And it would be neat if more members used their REAL NAME, at least as signature in a message. I hate having discussions with anonymity. -TONY" Tony: Me, too! Must have something to do with making our daily bread by selling words ... Bill Quimby

"Hybrids can come in all different combinations of percentages because the females are fertile (not the males) and can back-cross to either species." Jim: All I was taught, and all that I've read, has said that the test of a species is that the offspring of different species of the same genus are infertile. I know there are exceptions; the most notable being the rare mules that give birth. Are the hybrid female mule deer/whitetail crosses always fertile or just occasionally? Incidentally, the antlers on that hybrid from St. David remind me of many of the deer I saw at The Sanctuary game ranch in Michigan. They had been confined in a 640-acre enclosure for so many generations that non-typical antlers were far from rare in that 600-buck, 400-doe closely managed population, and more than a few had mule-deer-like branched antlers like the hybrid buck in your photos. Bill Quimby

Your right bout the books being conservative.. I believe my 270WSM is shooting 1-2 grains above listed max with nothing more than the regular WSM pressure signs. and I get awesome accuracy and velocity! I have many of the major reloading books published since the 1950s and it is interesting to compare loads that were listed as maximum years ago against those listed today. I'm not suggesting that anyone should load heavier than the new books list. However, I used those early books for years and never blew up any of my rifles. Maybe the powders and primers weren't as potent as today. Bill Quimby

"I've been hunting Coues for more than 50 years. I believe the number of hunters has declined the last 10-15 years. I don't blame game and fish. The big problem is access and it's just going to get worse. When I was young it's true there weren't as many hunters, but you could go just about anywhere to hunt. I pity my kids and grandkids who may have to pay for a place to hunt or know a friendly rancher like they must do in many other places in the country. Jack" I also have been hunting in Arizona for more than 50 years (it will by exactly 60 years next year) and I agree that the number of hunters has declined the last 10-15 years. (Actually it has been the last 37 years, ever since the permit system went into effect in 1970.) I, however, do blame Game and Fish. That agency has steadily reduced permit numbers and has never been an active advocate for hunter access. Permit numbers today are based on parking spaces. Whenever another gate is locked permits get reduced another percentage point or two or three . When I was young, there were nearly three times as many deer hunters as now. The deer season started on the last Friday in October, and ran into December. I and more than 100,000 other hunters bought tags over the counter at sporting goods stores and went anywhere we wanted. If we wanted to escape crowds, we waited until the second or third week. Believe me, we had entire mountain ranges to ourselves after the first week. Please, everyone, don't dig up the lame old excuse about the growth in Arizona's human population and the advance of civilization eliminating deer habitat. Nearly 82 percent of Arizona is in some form of public ownership and will never be devloped. Bill Quimby

I agree with Lark, too (I've been doing a lot of that lately), but I can't believe I'm the only guy on this thread who plans to jump, click heels, spit and yell after shooting a world's record Arizona whitetail. Bill Quimby

No factory loads have tainted any of my rifles or shotguns since I bought a Lyman tong tool in 1957. What I load with depends on which rifle I use and what size game I go after. I experiment until I find the load best for each rifle. Nearly everything I've shot in the past twenty years has been with Nosler Partitions, but I did shoot my desert sheep with a Nosler Ballistic Tip. Bill Quimby

We are on the same track. World records are not equal. For two years I held the world record for a Siberian roebuck I shot in Mongolia on one of those old "budget" elk hunts there ($4,000 including air fare from San Francisco and sightseeing in Beijing). I was the SCI record book's editor at the time and I felt it was wrong for editors to publish their own trophies, so I didn't enter it. Point is, no one would have thrown money at me nor would I have made headlines if I had. Don't know how much someone would pay for a world record Coues deer. It would be more than for a world record specimen of any of the many other small whitetail subspecies in North, Central and South America, but how much more is the question. Don't give up on your dream, but you might consider altering it a bit. At the moment Zimbabwe is still open and it's more affordable than Tanzania, Botswana or Zambia, and you can take four of the Big Five there. You won't get East Africa's unique antelope, but you can have your 21-day dangerous game safari in Zim for about the price of a fully equipped GMC pickup truck with a deluxe Polaris quad loaded in the back. There's nothing shabby about southern Africa's antelope, either. You might also want to look into a roan, leopard and lion safari in Burkino Faso, which is even more affordable than Zim. Bill Quimby

That's phenomenal if the Millo buck's antlers sold for more than half a million dollars, and that's enough to do a bunch of hunting. I wonder if a Coues whitetail deer would bring anywhere near that much, though. Bill Quimby

I remember when Maverick (it is inside the reservation) still was an active lumber camp. I was 21 years old when I shot my first and best bull elk on the Apache Forest about a half mile from the reservation boundary, 400-500 yards off the road you're talking about. A logger named Bob White (it was hard to forget his name) saw my partner and I carrying out the pieces, and stopped and helped us. He then invited us to join him for lunch at his little house in Maverick. There was no TV up there then, of course, but a weekly TV show by the same name was my favorite weekly program on Tucson's two channels. This was in 1957, exactly fifty years ago. I haven't been back to Maverick since then, but I may go back next summer, just to see what happened to it. Funny thing, thinking about Maverick the logging camp suddenly brought back the odor of that bull. It was then that I learned elk in full rut can stink so much. Bill Quimby

I don't know about Roosevelt. I haven't done much fishing since I retired from the Citizen and no longer had to report on it. If you're talking about the White Mountains, Carnero Lake the only lake off the reservation that I know of where you can camp near the water. I remember when McNary's mill still was open and the town was booming, too. I stayed in its old hotel during a snowstorm that closed the road over the mountain. The place was full of elk hunters and all the rooms were taken. The desk clerk was letting people sleep in the lobby. I curled up on a coach. My wife used to like to shop in the town's general store, especially the basement where they kept the dinnerware. Time flies. Bill Quimby

My understanding about the new Sunrise to Big Lake road is that it will graded and graveled, and not paved, at least for now. They are re-routing the road at Sheep's Crossing and building a new bridge across the Little Colorado. I haven't heard if it's in the plan, but I would hope that they would create a number of pull-off parking spots along the road into the canyon. However, knowing how planners like to keep people in "managable" clumps, there probably will be just one large parking lot complete with toilets ... a long walk from where most of us want to fish. There was a story in the White Mountain Independent this summer saying the "improvements" probably won't be finished in 2008 because of "problems." A sign at the barricade by the toilets on the Sunrise side says entering the closed area can bring a fine of $5,000 (I think it was) and imprisonment. That hasn't stopped some people. As has been noted, there aretracks going around the gate on the Greer to Sheep's Crossing road. If they don't close the little roads that provide throw-down camping closer to Crescent Lake, I don't think improving this route will hurt a thing, except to fill up the designated campgrounds quicker with fifth wheelers and motorhomes that might have gone elsewhere. The paved road from Eagar past Mexican Hay Lake hasn't hurt. I look forward to the improved Sunrise-Big Lake road cutting the time on my trips to the Black River. I just don't want to lose any of the short two-trackers off the Poole Corral road or off the Big Lake to Black River roads. Closing more roads to keep people off roads that already are closed, or because wolves are being re-established, are the dumbest excuses for eliminating two-trackers I've ever heard. Bill Quimby

I think you've an inflated view of the value of a set of antlers, even a set larger than Ed Stockwell's. A 21-day full-bag Tanzania safari will cost about $35,000 in daily rates, not counting travel from Tucson, charter flights, gun fees, and all the other fees the government tacks on, before you pull a trigger. Then add the trophy fees for a "full-bag" of four of the Big Five, plus all of Tanzania's glamour antelope species, plus tips, dipping, trophy expediting, shipping, etc., and you could double that. Add the argali hunt and you're talking more than $100,000. I can't imagine even the richest antler collector paying anywhere near that much. Barbara Stockwell, I suspect, would give a lot of thought to selling Ed's world record antlers if someone offered a fifth of the cost of your hunts in Tanzania and Mongolia. Forget about making money from magazine articles. You might sell one to Outdoor Life or Field and Stream (but not both) for $1,000 -- if you're a good-enough writer. More likely, someone else will write and sell your story. The smaller outdoor magazines pay $300 or so per article, but after a couple of articles are published your market will dry up. The manufacturers of the equipment you used, MIGHT pay a small amount for your endorsement if their ad agencies recommended endorsements, which most won't. At any rate, don't expect to make much money here, either. As for personal appearances after shooting a world record you can forget that, too, unless you're the greatest showman on earth, which few of us are. If I were to take a buck bigger than Stockwell's, the first thing I would do would be to try to get a wildlife manager to follow me to the scene and take lots of photos to document where and when I shot it and with what. (There are just too many people who like to spread rumors and lies about record breakers.) After doing that, I'd jump up and click my heels, spit twice, and yell, "HOT dang, WHOOPEE!" Bill Quimby

"I think there is a happy medium, unfortunately it always seems that they keep inching up on us taking more and more away and that is the scary part." Unfortunately a "happy medium" on an access issue is no different than compromising on a firearms ownership issue. In both cases we lose something, while the government only gains. The bureaucrats view a "happy medium" as a victory, giving them the confidence to come back later with another proposal to take something away from us. Road closures on national forest lands began in the 1980s, with something the bureaucrats called "RARE" -- Roadless Area Review and Evaluation -- followed a couple of years later by RARE 2 with public hearings all over the West. The stated purpose was to decide once and for all which areas on the various forests needed to be protected, and then create roadless areas by closing existing trails. Existing roads outside the protected areas were to remain open "in perpetuity." The two programs fell short of creating designated wilderness areas, but in many cases that was the next step. If you are pissed about crowded hunting conditions in Southern Arizona, you can blame these programs for eliminating the old mining trails that used to distribute hunters across the Coronado National Forest. If all the old two-track roads and Jeep trails we used to use were still open, we wouldn't have people racing each other to prime parking spots today. Bill Quimby

"guess when I am too old or lazy to hike it in I might have a different view and opinion" Please do not equate age or health with laziness. Most people have not walked, hiked and ridden horses and mules as far and into as many rugged places on six continents as I have. If the close-all-the-two-tracks people have their way, only maintained (bladed) roads marked on maps and given numbers will be open for public use when everyone now under 50 reaches their so-called golden years. I hope I'm gone by then. Graded and graveled roads hold no interest for me. In the meantime, I don't intend to stay home just because my backcountry travel is limited to motor vehicles. Bill Quimby Incidentally, there are designated roadless areas in Unit 1 where people can hike or ride a horse or a mule and not see a vehicle. Two of them are called Mount Baldy and Teapot Dome.