billrquimby

C.J. McElroy, the guy who founded Safari Club International and took an amazing number of B&C, RW, and SCI record animals told me if I had to look twice at an animal to judge whether or not to shoot it, it probably wouldn't score very high. "The best ones look too big to be real," he said. Bill Quimby

Nice. Do you do the foundry work yourself? What would it cost to cast in bronze something I might do? Reply to my email, billrquimby@cs.com if you prefer. Bill Quimby

"Thanks for the small look at your book, would love to buy a copy when it gets published! JIM>" Jim: I'll post here when it's available. Craig Boddington is doing the foreword. It will not cover my hunts in South America, Europe, or the South Pacific (the publisher feels there's less interest in those places), but the other continents -- especially North America -- are well covered. It will be the 13th book (the first about me) I've written since retiring from my post at SCI in 1999. I hope the number doesn't mean anything. Bill Quimby

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the Coues deer chapter in my book. The publisher expects to release it in late 2008. During the many years I was a newspaper’s outdoor editor I hung out at Tucson’s taxidermy and blacksmith shops during the hunting seasons, looking for stories for my twice-weekly columns. Newspapers still published photos of hunters with their trophies, and I saw and photographed a great many Coues whitetail bucks local hunters took during that period. For a while I naively believed I could tell where a buck was taken by merely looking at its antlers. Southern Arizona’s whitetails are found on and around so-called “sky islands,” small but rugged and high mountain ranges that are separated from each other by wide valleys that usually are inhabited by desert mule deer. There is very little movement of whitetails from one “island” to another, so a case could be made that these deer, isolated from others of their race, would develop characteristics that are distinctive to their home range. The tips of the main beams on many Coues deer taken from one mountain, for example, might come close to touching while the tips of the antlers of many bucks from another range, for example, would be much farther apart, or so I believed. I thought I had stumbled onto some undiscovered natural history fact until I realized I was guessing the kill sites of only about half the deer I inspected. Tossing a coin would have given me similar results. Bill Quimby

We left our cabin in Greer two weeks ago because my wife slipped on the ice on our deck and broke her ankle. We drove back to Tucson to find a rattler coiled up at the back door at our house down here. It took a while get around to the front door, get my 20 ga, return to the back door and give that snake a dose of No. 7.5. I hate those things, especially around the house. Bill Quimby

I never killed a whitetail in velvet, but I did take a small mule deer in full velvet from the Doz Cabezas during an October hunt. We saw another small buck in velvet that day, too, but did not kill it. I wonder if this has something to do with the year rather than individual animals. Bill Quimby

There needs to be a category for those of us who can't draw a tag where we want to hunt. Bill Quimby

That still doesn't look like any coyote I've ever seen, and I've seen one or two. Bill Quimby

Not sure if we qualified for hogging a campsite, but a hundred years ago, or thereabouts, two friends drew tags for an early season in the Strayhorse/Chitty Creek country. The tags my hunting buddy and I drew were the very next hunt in the same area, so we decided to combine our gear and make a super camp in some very wild country. The first group took our stuff and set it up with theirs, and when their hunt ended, they put everything inside the two big tents and headed back to Tucson. We got there just a few days later and found somebody had stolen everything, including the tents! Bill Quimby

Outfitter Sentenced “An outfitter who admitted to cheating hunters, forging licenses and evading state taxes was sentenced to 10 years in jail [in September] in one of New Mexico's biggest cases of poaching and wildlife-related fraud. Thirteenth Judicial District Court Judge Camille Olguin also sentenced Adrian Romero, 35, to five years probation following his jail term, and ordered him to pay almost $200,000 in restitution to 28 hunters whom he and his wife, Henrietta Romero, swindled in their illegal hunting and outfitting operation from 2002 to 2004. The Romeros pleaded guilty in October 2006 to a combined 10 felony charges, including racketeering, forgery, tax evasion and embezzlement. Henrietta Romero, 33, was sentenced Oct. 30 to five years probation as part of a plea agreement. The Romero’s were indicted in January 2006 on 66 felony charges related to the operation of their business, Non-Typical Outfitters. The indictments were the result of a 1 x-year investigation by the Department of Game and Fish and the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department.” (Source: New Mexico Department of Game and Fish).

I put together my favorite 7mm Rem Mag rifle using a Czech-made Interarms Mark X Mauser barreled action and a stock I built from a slab of walnut I cut in Texas. After installilng a Winchester 70-type safety I used it from Arizona to Zambia over the past 15 or so years. (The safety that came with the action was junk!) It has never let me down. Bill Quimby

Again, I cannot disagree with anything Lark has said about this. AZpackhorse is right on, too. In addition to turkey vultures, we'd be knee-deep in dead bluejays, coyotes, foxes, skunks, etc., etc. after every deer hunt if lead bullets in gut piles were a significant toxic agent. Bill Quimby

A TV news reporter today said the fire was burning south of Copper Creek, and that officials suspected that it had been started by (!!!) hunters. Bill Quimby

Farmers' insurance was super to me. They gave me a check that allowed me to replace everything (except the pistol and walkie talkies, which were not covered by my household policy) with new items, including the truck, in time for the hunt. The guys at Game and Fish gave me a hard time, saying there was no precedent for issuing duplicate sheep tags because I was the only numbskull in history to have lost one, but they eventually got tired of harassing me and printed out a new one. My problems didn't end there, though. (I've written about this a lot, so if you've already heard the story I apologiize.) I broke my left arm when I was changing a tire and the jack slipped, catching the arm between the tire and fender well the second day of the hunt. I had steel plates installed in the arm at a hospital in Phoenix that night, but I went back out the next day and shot my ram on Day Twelve. It completed my Arizona Big Ten. The stolen truck showed up a year later, when Farmers had it towed out of Mexico. Someone I knew at the U.S. embassy in Hermosillo said it had been used by a federal drug strike force in Cuidad Obregon. They turned it over to the embassy when the tires got bald. Bill Quimby

People are no dang good. I've had three vehicles stolen over the years. My wife's 49 Jeepster was taken from a movie theater's parking in about 1956. but we recovered it intact. In 1993, before I retired, someone stole my new 4x4 silverado and took it to Mexico. Inside the truck were the sheep tag I had waited 39 years to draw, 10x50 Swarovski binos, two Nikon 35mm bodies and 3 lenses, a .357 Mag Smith & Wesson, two walkie talkies, and mechanic's tools. It was stolen 10 days before my sheep hunt started. I was not a happy camper. Three years ago my wife's Cadillac was stolen from our carport and totalled. The police said it was a gang initiation. The same punks stole and trashed four other cars the same night. They were caught and charged with attempted murder after they took my wife's car and rammed a pickup driven by a security guard at an apartment complex where they were hot-wiring another vehicle. Don't know how the case came out. Bill Quimby

If they're getting $1,149 to $1,999 for these (which seems way too much to me), I wonder how much my pre-1964 Model 70s are worth? Two are safari grades: .458 Win Mag. and .375 H&H. Two others are featherweights: .270 Win Mag and .30-06. And one is a .257 Roberts in regular weight. All exept the .270 are in very good condition. The .270 and I spent a lot of time knocking around together before I discovered the 7mm Rem Mag, and we both have a lot of dings. scratches, and bare metal showing in places. Bill Quimby

Yep. Really, really old. Game and fish issues them to anyone who reaches 70 and has lived in the state for more than 20 consecutive years. The actuaries figure we are too old to damage fish and wildlife populations (and they're right). Bill Quimby

Don't feel bad, guys. I qualified for a pioneer's license last year, but couldn't draw a deer or elk tag in 2006 or 2007 to put it to use. I don't like swatting bugs or birds much, but I hated to see the license I waited 70 years to get go unused, so I broke down a couple weeks ago and fished the Little Colorado near the cabin for the first time in five years. Caught and released two Apache trout in 20 minutes and went home. It made me feel better knowing that license hasn't gone to waste. Maybe 2008 will bring me a tag. Bill Quimby

I've carried my 7mm Rem Mag on six continents, taking animals as large as eland and moose and as small as orabi, grysbok and duiker with it. 139-grain bullets are fine for game up to the size of elk. With 165-grain bullets, which I prefer, I would not hesitate to use it on anything that walks in North America, including brown and grizzly bears. It is flat-shooting and has acceptable recoil. I hold mine slightly above the center of an animal's shoulder out to 300 yards, touch the trigger and it drops. What more could I ask? This does not mean there is anything wrong with the .243. It is ideal for deer-size animals, especially our little Arizona whitetails, and so are the 6mm Rem, 6.5x57, 6.5 Rem Mag, 7x57, .257 Roberts and .25-06. Bill Quimby

"i shot a .460 twice. only reason i fired the second shot is because i didn't believe it kicked that hard the first time. the second shot convinced me it did." Hope you didn't shoot that .460 without a muzzlebrake, Lark. Brakes really work. With one, the .460 usually leaves your corneas intact and only damages your hearing . I shot the lion shown here with a .416 Weatherby without a brake because the PH and trackers wanted to keep their eardrums intact, but I will never shoot that rifle for "fun" or sight it in again without it. I have two .375s, and they are manageable without a brake. Everything larger than that is pure pain. If you want some real fun, try shooting a .600. The owner probably will want to collect the $50 per round the ammo costs before you do, just in case. Bill Quimby

Lark: I shot a javelina with my .458 Win Mag once, just so I could say I hunted on two continents with it. I've also shot a .460 Weatherby at targets and I can tell you with some authority that the .458 Win Mag and the .460 Weatherby are too much gun for Arizona whitetails. I propose that the Arizona Game and Fish Commission enact a rule stating that the .375 H&H Magnum shall be the maximum for this species. If you decide on a .375, you might consider a English-made double gun shooting the rimless variety for the ultimate in couth and correctness. Bill Quimby

I cannot disagree with anything Lark has said on this thread. The .24 and .25 calibers are perfect for 100-pound animals. Bill Quimby

NOTE THAT THE ACT REQUIRES TOTALLY NON-LEAD AMMO, WHICH THIS STORY SAYS DOES NOT EXIST. BQ Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Bills to Allow Microstamping and to Ban Lead Ammunition In a move opposed by SCI, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law on Saturday banning lead centerfire ammunition in the range of the endangered California condor. The law, called the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act (introduced by Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara), usurps some of the authority of the State Fish and Game Commission to regulate hunting in the State. The purported purpose of the Act is to protect endangered condors from lead ingestion. The Act mandates non-lead ammunition for big-game and coyote hunting in condor range. The Act defines condor range in an overbroad fashion using deer zones and highways in an area of south and central California. The California Fish and Game Commission recently proposed a similar ban, but a more carefully crafted ban. For example, under the Commission's proposal, the "range" in which the ban would apply more accurately reflected where the bird currently exists, an exception was made for gun types for which non-lead ammunition does not currently exist, and recognition was made that copper ammunition contains trace elements of lead. The Act, on the other hand, requires completely lead-free ammunition, which CURRENTLY DOES NOT EXIST, according to testimony given to the Commission. The Act authorizes a program to provide free or discounted ammunition, but does not guarantee funding. Violations of the Act can result in fines of up to $5,000. The Act requires that the ban go into effect on July 1, 2008. Gov. Schwarzenegger also signed an unprecedented measure Saturday “requiring that certain pistols sold in the state be equipped to mark each cartridge when fired so police can more easily trace the weapons. The bill requiring that semiautomatic pistols be equipped with microstamping devices by 2010 is the first in the nation.” (Source: L.A. Times / Outdoor Wire)

In the spring I use my 20 gauge Charles Daly o/u with No. 6 shot and go for head shots out to 35 yards on gobblers responding to calls. When I used to hunt in the fall (we could buy tags over the counter then) I loaded reduced loads with heavy bullets for my .22/250. All my fall turkeys were running away and meat loss ranged from minor to serious, depending on where I hit them. I took a friend who had drawn a fall permit out and he shot his turkey at 40 yards with a .22 hornet last week. Don't know what type of ammo but there was minimal meat damage with a body shot. Bill Quimby

"I would bet that the Southwest Center will be pressuring the AZ legislation harder and soon for northern AZ protection " I may be mistaken, but I think I heard that there were plans to introduce condors into the mountains on the New Mexico border near Rodeo. If so, we will probably also see lead bans in several units in southeastern Arizona, too. Bill Quimby