billrquimby

My sentiments exactly, except I have a house and a cabin filled with antlers and heads and no space for more. I've been applying for cow elk tags the last couple of years with no luck. Bill Quimby

"I have to say I am confused as to why any hunter would want more restrictions. Usually, most of us are mad as heck at the G&F for the restrictions we already have. I do not think pt restrictions are a good idea, I think hunters should have the freedom to choose to shoot the best animal they can. " Twoguns I agree 100%. It has never ceased to amaze me how the most avid hunters -- and fishermen, too -- want more restrictions on themselves. If someone chooses to shoot a spke or forked horn and is happy with it, the more power to him. That's his tag and his choice. If someone wants to hold out for larger antlers, that's fine, too. The big whitetails running around in the archery javelina hunts should be proof enough that trophy whitetails are out there and can are smarter than we dumb humans. We don't need point restrictions. Bill Quimby

AZpackhorse: I'm not sure what you're asking. There are many more types of whitetails in the USA than the eight small subspecies I listed. If you mean where are these small ones found, here is that list: Florida Key deer, Florida Florida coastal whitetail, Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama Blackbeard Island whitetail, island off coast of Georgia Hilton Head whitetail, island off coast of South Carolina Hunting Island whitetail, island off coast South Carolina . Bull’s Island whitetail, island off coast of South Carolina Avery Island whitetail, Texas Gulf Coast Carmen Mountain whitetail, Southwest Texas Hopes this answers your question. Bill Quimby

"... I don't think he would get much of a response if he was more exact in his language and posed a question like, "Does the Virginianus couesi act like the Virginianus virginianus?" Bob " Bob: You're correct, of course, and I apologize. I just carried away when it comes to deer. I've been fascinated with them ... all of the 40 species and all of the many dozens of subspecies of them ... most of my adult life. I would rather hunt a deer species I've not taken than shoot the world record Marco Polo argali or the biggest elephant that ever walked. Bill

I suspect you saw one of Argentina's three species of brocket deer--red, grey-brown or lesser. Argentina also has huemel, pampas and marsh deer, but the southern range of South American white-tailed deer ends north of there. Pudu, the smallest of American deer are found high in the Andes, but it's more likely you saw brockets because they are fairly common in South America. (They're also found in Mexico and Central America.) Brockets are nifty little deer with slick coats. The weight mature males ranges from 20 to 120 pounds, depending upon the species. They typically carry only spike antlers. Argentina has three species of peccaries, the collared peccary (we call them javelinas), the larger white-lipped peccary, and the Chacoan peccary, the largest of the three. Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are the northern limit of collared peccary habitat. They range almost continuously all the way south to Argentina. You're fortunate that you were able to see indigenous species at the zoo you visited. I spent a morning at the big zoo in downtown Buenos Aires and was disappointed to see how few South American animals they had on display. I especially wanted to the see South American deer and all I saw were axis from Asia and fallow deer from Europe. Bill Quimby

I left out the whitetails of Central America. They are: Chiapas or Nelson’s whitetail Nicaragua whitetail Panama or Chiriqui whitetailh Coiba Island or Rothchild’s whitetail These are among the smallest of all whitetails. I find it interesting what happens near the Equator. Estrus can occur in individual whitetail females at any time. You can see hard antlers and pregnant does every month of the year. Bill Quimby

AZpackhorse: Here are the North American whitetails that are about the size of Coues deer ... or smaller. IN THE USA Florida Key deer Blackbeard Island whitetail Hilton Head whitetail Hunting Island whitetail . Bull’s Island whitetail Avery Island whitetail Carmen Mountain whitetail IN MEXICO Mexican highland Veracruz whitetail Rain forest or Toltec whitetail Oaxaca whitetail Sinaloa whitetail Lowland Mexican or Thomas’ whitetail Acapulco whitetail The so-called "fantail" has been discussed in depth on this forum. Every year Arizona hunters kill one or two mature white-tailed deer that are half the size of the average Coues deer. (I shot one in the Sierritas many years ago.) These are small Coues deer and not a separate subspecies. Separate subspecies cannot co-exist. Interbreeding would eliminate the less-dominate subspecies. I'm an old-timer, too, but I have never heard of whitetails in the Tortolitas. They could have been there, though. I saw a whitetail doe in the Black Hills near Oracle Junction, where they weren't supposed to be. There used to be whitetails in the Sand Tank Mountains near Gila Bend, and a coatimundi showed up in Greer last year. Anything is possible. Bill Quimby

I'm not trying to put anyone down or be a smart butt. It's just that I believe members of this site should be more knowledgeable about white-tailed deer than other hunters. For that reason, I'd like to add that (in addition to California, Washington and Oregon) portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta also are west of us (I checked my atlas). They have some huge whitetails up there that are left out in your definition. There also are several whitetail subspecies living southeast of the Rockies that are as small or smaller than Coues deer. Should we call them "easterns," too? Separating the subspecies into "Big Ones" and "Little Ones" when talking about North American whitetails would require you to lump all the small races of whitetails in the USA, Mexico and Central America with the Coues subspecies. White-tailed deer are the among the greatest animals I've been privileged to hunt. They come in too many varieties to be lumped into just two categories. Bill Quimby

Northern California, Washington and Oregon are farther west than we are and have two different subspecies of whitetails. I know most people on this site use "eastern whitetails" for all deer that reside east of the Rockies. I was hoping to educate them. The white-tailed deer is a magnificent animal and there are many more than just two types, no matter what the Boone & Crockett and the AWF record books might say. Neither is the final answer on taxonomy. For many years B&C listed the Coues whitetail as a separate species! The Texas and Carmen Mountain whitetails I shot in Texas were no more like those I shot in Wyoming and Michigan than all the Coues deer I have shot in Arizona. Each subspecies is unique and lumping all except our local deer as "eastern" not only does them a disservice, it is wrong. It also does not include the subspecies of whitetails in the western United States and Canada. Although its system also has its faults, I like the SCI idea of multiple categories for white-tailed deer based on regions. B&C, although it claims to be a record book for North American big game hunting, totally ignores the various (smaller) whitetail subspecies in the southern USA and Florida, as well as all those in Mexico and central America. Bill Quimby

Hey guys, the Coues deer is just one of about 40 subspecies of “Virginia” deer found in North and South America. I am being picky, but there is no “eastern” white-tailed deer so I'm assuming you've lumped a bunch of subspecies found east of Coues deer range. But what do you do call the whitetails north, south, and especially west of us? Bill Quimby

Huh? Don't you mean "sleeves"? Bill Quimby

"WOW!!! Thats not right! What's next? 25-06 said it all, it's becoming a rich man's sport which really sucks for me! I am surely not rich and I have only just started to hunt in the last three years!" I just returned from Caborca, Sonora, where friends are setting up a desert mule deer hunting operation. At our hotel's restaurant this morning we bumped into Carlos Gonzales Hermosillo, one of the three biggest hunting outfitters in northern Mexico. He said he has booked 48 mule deer, 18 whitetail, and 9 sheep hunts this season. The going rate for hunts for these species in Sonora this year are $7,000 for either deer and $45,000 to $50,000 per sheep ... and the clients get no guarantees of success. I did some quick math and came up with more than $900,000 in gross income for him this season. Carlos then said he has more than 100 employees and owns and operates more than two dozen vehicles at his various camps. He leases the land he hunts and pays owners for each day his clients are on their ranches, as well as trophy fees on what they kill. He also buys expensive advertising in magazines and has booths at four trade stows in the USA, as well as a couple of other shows in other countries. I don't know about other shows, but one small space at SCI's convention when I retired in 1999 was more than $1,200, and Carlos always took three spaces. I'm certain it costs more now. He also has airfare, hotel and meal costs of attending these shows and printing brochures. His home is in Mexico City, so he buys a lot of air tickets to Sonora and to visit potential clients all over North America. Each year after his hunts he charters a helicopter and surveys his hunting leases to learn his post-hunt animal population so he'll know how many hunts he can sell the next year. And only God knows what he must pay government officials and departments just to operate in that country. He and other outfitters down there are making money or they wouldn't be in the business, but there are a lot costs most of us don't think about that go with it. Bill Quimby

"I guess it is a more common occurence than what you think." It is very common all across the USA. I had a friend break his neck and die about 20 years ago in Florida. Two years ago, two friends were seriously injured in Pennsylvania when a commercial stand collapsed as one of them was climbing it. He fell on the other guy, who was steadying the thing. The climber broke a leg, the stand holder suffered a broken back and still has pain. Just last year, someone I'd met on a deer hunt in Michigan fell off his stand in Texas and broke an arm while trying to strap on his harness. I hope Mike has a speedy and complete recovery, without complications. Bill Quimby

No.

I've been following this thread, trying very hard to keep from jumping in. I can't stand it any more. First, ethics have been mentioned a lot. The definition I've given to the word as it pertains to hunting is this: "Ethics are the standards acceptable to the majority of hunters in a particular region." Judging by the thread, the majority of hunters on this forum do not accept using paraplanes for scouting. If this also is true of the majority of hunters in this region, then it is unethical no matter how legal it might be .... and that puzzles me a bunch. I've only been around one of those things once. It was so noisy I suspect it would chase any self-respecting deer so far out of an area that it would be six months before anyone saw it again. There also has been some talk about costs. I don't know how much it costs to rent a helicopter with a pilot these days, but I suppose a couple of hours' flying time would be less than buying a paraplane, a lot less risky, and a heck of a lot more effective. How do those of you who defend scouting from paraplanes feel about scouting from helicopters? In the 1960s, a well-known Arizona sheep hunting outfitter used a SuperCub to scout for sheep. He spent hours flying dangerously low levels over every ridge and mountaintop in the unit he'd be guiding in. He chased a lot of sheep out of his area, of course, but his customers always took good rams. I doubt if he told many of his clients what he did. How do you feel about that? My $0.02 worth is this: If someone wants to use a paraplane or a helicopter or a SuperCub to scout, so what? As long as it doesn't affect my own hunt, I don't care how he uses his tag. As for heroes with feet of clay, I'm sorry but my heroes are not the guys who put the most entries in record books, and it doesn’t matter whether they use a rifle, bow, spear, catapult, sling shot or poisoned darts. Bill Quimby

"COME ON BILL, YOU'RE JUST BEING MODEST, I THINK I'VE HEARD MORE HUNTIN' STORIES FOR THE LAST 20+ YEARS ABOUT YOU, ALEX, AND MY DAD THAT COULD ACCOUNT FOR MOST OF THOSE MOUNTAIN RANGES, AND I KNOW I HAVE NOT HEARD ALL THE STORIES. YOU'VE HUNTED THEM ALL HAVEN'T YOU. JUST KIDDING... A BLAST FROM THE PAST "LITTLE" GRANT MACLEAN...I'M NOW 37!!!!" Hi Grant. Alex and your father are part of my memories of many great hunts from about 1970 or so. We had lots of fun together from the Strip to the Patagonias and every conceivable place in between. It would be great if we could be young again and do it all over again. Incidentally, your father is one of the best Coues deer hunters I know. Bill

I don’t have a unit map here, and I’ve forgotten most of the unit numbers, but here are the mountain ranges where I’ve killed Coues deer since I started hunting deer in Arizona 58 years ago. Some of these places may be in the same units: Catalina Mtns, BaboquivarI Mtns, Galiuro Mtns, Santa Rita Mtns, Tumacori Mtns, Sierrita Mtns, Patagonia Mtns, Chiricahua Mtns, Peloncillo Mtns, Huachuca Mtns, Sierra Ancha Mtns, Eagle Creek, Blue River, Texas Canyon, Skeleton Canyon. . There could have been a couple more, but these are the ones I remember. When the Tucson Citizen still published feature articles about deer hunting, I tried to hunt a different place every year so I could write about it. I went all over the state and brought home deer more often than not. More than half of them were mule deer, though. I can’t explain it, but I never mounted any Coues deer I shot. I guess I was hoping to get a really good one. (I do have a mount of a very wide nontypical head I picked up in Mexico.) My best Coues deer was a heavy, 103-net buck from the Baboquivaris, but I never was a trophy hunter when it came to deer. I always shot the first one that jumped up. I like to eat them too much. It’s amazing how many good memories this thread brought back to me. Thank you. Bill Quimby

Regarding the U.S. State Department advisory. This agency is extremely conservative, as it should be. Its job is to warn U.S. travelers of all possible dangers. That said, I have hunted in a whole bunch of countries and except for Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and Australia I can't think of any that the State Department wasn't advising me to stay away from. I went to Zimbabwe a year year after its revolution, when ex-soldiers with machine guns and rockets were killing, raping and robbing anyone foolish enough to drive the roads at night. I was all over South Africa during the Zulu/Xhosa anti-apartheid atrocities. There were warnings about hijackers and muggers in Lusaka both times I went to Zambia. Someone was eaten by lions next to the ranch I hunted while I was in Botswana. I hunted in Mozambique where the roads had to be cleared of landmines before we went in, and in Namibia when terroriists were coming out of Angola and raiding German farmhouses along the border. I was in Beijing one week after the demonstration in the Square, and in Ulan Bator the same week the Soviet Union collapsed and Mongolia kicked out the communists in its government. There were State Department advisories against going to Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina while my granddaughter and I were there two years ago but I've forgotten what they were. The point is, if I had waited for the State Department to say it was safe, I would have missed a whole lot of experiences to remember now that I'm a-drooling-at-the-mouth ol' fart. I own a few acres above the Kino Springs golf course, one mile from the border outside Nogales, that my wife and I visit regularly without fear, and I'm going to Mexico on Monday to spend a week at a friend's ranch near Caborca and on the beach at Puerto Lobos. If I still were capable of hunting whitetails again there are several spots smack on the border I would hunt without hesitation if I could draw a tag. My greatest fear of the illegals coming across the border is what they are doing to our culture, language and economy. As for safety, I can think of a great many places in the USA I won't go after the sun goes down. Bill Quimby

"i saw a documentary on tv and i believe it was done by azgfd i may be wrong but they fenced off i believe a mile sqare had deer in it. out in the middle of the hills and they watched those deer in the fence and the ones free roaming for a couple of years and the only difference was out side the fence were the predators mainly coyotes. same rainfall and vegetation and the deer outside the fence didnt fare well compared to the ones inside the fence . anybody every here or see anything about this ." Jim Hefflefinger can comment better about what the study on the Three Bar showed/is showing, but I can comment on how wily the animals some of you guys call "carp" can be. About 1990 or so, I met the area's wildlife manager (whose name I've forgotten) in Pumpkin Center and followed him to the enclosure to do a feature article for the Tucson Citizen. Roughly 640 acres -- one square mile -- of typical desert habitat overlooking Roosevelt Lake is surrounded by a 3-meter-tall fence and I had visions of seeing lots of deer inside the "pen." If it were flat terrain it would be easy to understand why we didn't. But the enclosure was long and narrow, encompassing a long canyon, and there was a good glassing spot at the top. I remember that we saw only one small buck and several javelinas in a half hour's glassing right after sunup. There were three or four bucks and a number of does and fawns inside at the time, the WM said, but we never saw them. There also was a doe with a bell on its neck, and we kept hearing the bell tinking near us but couldn't find the deer. I eventually got up and walked across the little canyon to see if I could find the doe. I almost stepped on her before we made eye contact and she jumped up and ran off. She had been hiding in a little grass-covered cut, with her neck stretched out on the ground just 75 yards or so from where we had been glassing. So much for dumb ol' mule deer. I saw a trophy class 4x4 mule deer buck do the same thing when hunting antelope on the White Mountain Apache Reservation way back when it cost a whopping $25 extra to hunt there. Bill Quimby

Ernesto: Sorry, but I asked my daughter and she said she doesn't want a brother. Desertbull: If someone with a family of 8 with a 9th on the way didn't learn what was causing his predictament after siring three or four kids, he should not expect society to support him and seven or eight others. He needs to get a trade. Raising the minimum wage is inflationary. 12 to 18 months after raising it, and all that will happened is the price of everything will have gone up a notch and the actual status of the guys at the bottom will not have changed. He still will not be earning a "living" wage. Bill Quimby

You will. Please take some advice from an old man: buy real estate now. Whatever land and structures cost, it will never be cheaper than it is now -- if you select the right property. I own four houses and 150 acres of land in a prime area. My total investment was only about $120,000 during the 25 years I was buying real estate. I was working two jobs then, and every time I had some extra cash I bought properties -- some of it with mortgages, others from my own savings. My investments have grown in value more than 20 times what I paid for them. It took time, though, and time is on your side at age 28. Bill Quimby

"Then we can SIMPLY believe in anything we want to, science or God." Why must it be "or?" There is no reason why science and God cannot be compatable. Bill Quimby

Mattys281: "... sooner or later people have to put away the credit cards & start paying down the debt. ... I don't think that any credit based system can go on indefinetely. " I agree. Ultimately, things will crash if individual debt continues upward, but I was speaking of November 2006. America's economy has never been better than today. I expect a major change starting in a couple of monthhs. TAM: "One of my first jobs was bagging groceries. I think I made $3.20 an hour (probably a lot more that Bill made at his first job, but I'm only 33)." My first job was when I was in high school. I made signs and helped trim windows at a department store in Yuma for 75 cents an hour. My take-home pay for 20 hours a week was about $10. I had a variety of jobs after that while I worked through college, including making cantelope crates in the summer, installing seat covers and cashiering at a drive in movie. ... and most of those jobs paid $1.25 hour. After graduating from UA my first "real" job was as advertising manager at a department store for $8,500 year in 1958. I thought I was rich when I went to work a year later for a public relations agency for $10,000 year ... and as an art director for $12,000 for another agency a couple of years later. I took a pay cut when I started a new career as an outdoor writer in 1967. Along the way I accumulated so much debt I am ashamed to mention how bad it was, but counting house, cars, credit cards, etc., it had to have amounted to three times what I was making per year at the time. At age 70 I owe no one, and my net worth is far more than I ever imagined I could attain. So there is hope, Mattys281. Bill Quimby

Actually Bill, this is worse than high fence hunting. The deer in the Coues Sanctuary are not Coues deer. They are glorified domestic farm animals. They are born in pens and live their whole life on a farm.....Bob Bob I suspect the deer at the Coues Sanctuary have no idea that they are behind wire or that what they're eating is especially formulated to make them grow bigger antlers. Deerslam has it right. It depends upon the size of the property and the cover. Let me add that it also depends upon the type of animal. Enclose a pronghorn in 5,000 acres of wide-open antelope country and you can find it and chase it to a corner in 15 minutes. Put a Coues deer in a similar 7.8-square-mile enclosure with broken country, brush and lots of cover, and it may take a few days to collect it. If there's no good place to glass and if you're unlucky, you may never see it in a month. Bill Quimby