When was baiting first allowed?????

[m77]

I was discussing the baiting issue with a co-worker today and he made the statement that baiting wasn't always legal in Arizona. Does anyone know when baiting was first allowed? I'm sure Outdoor Writer can answer this question. If it wasn't always legal, why did it become legal? I've made the following statement before in this forum and it wasn't viewed to good but here it goes again. "I feel many hunters in forums like this have sealed their own faith by posting the photos and stories they have about their hunt. Too much information for all to view. A nice photo (try to keep blood out) and an enjoyable story (skipping some of the details) would probably have prolonged the baiting issue we are facing now." We need to police our sport. We already read about too many pouching acts. Making comments about future illegal activities if baiting is eliminated is NOT the right comments for sportsman to make.

[JMP]

i know it's been illegal for bears and some birds... but i didn't know that baiting was ever illegal for other big game. i've always known guys to be dropping salt blocks. and you're probably right about the comments and stories, envy is a nasty thing.

[billrquimby]

Baiting for big game other than bears was never illegal in my memory of AZGFD rules, and that dates back to my first deer hunt in 1948. It just wasn't mentioned. I was covering the commission meeting for the Tucson Citizen when the bear-bating rule was passed, and I don't remember a single protest.

 

Bill Quimby

[m77]

Bill, thanks for your input. Your knowledge of hunting Arizona is in the highest regards. I would love to hear the story of your most exciting Arizona hunt or outdoor experience.

[yotebuster]

Bill, Isn't it amazing what one gov't employee with an agenda can cause!!! Back in ND, about ten years ago, we had a Game and Fish Dept. biologist that had a personal vendeta against bowhunting, and he actually singlehandedly got the Archery Antelope season closed for a year! Don't ask me how he did it, his reasoning was (he stated) that the does weren't getting bred becasue of the rut season dates (gun season is in october after the rut), but at that time, in ND, bowhuting for goats was a new fad, that had barely caught on. There were less than 200 tags sold statewide (OTC) and fewer than 25 animals harvested the year before, so it got no resistance or headlines until the 200 guys who were into it tried to buy tags the next year!!! Well, it was repealed the following year, but it just blew my mind that one person with a personal agenda could make such a change..... Really scares me when I think about what Obama Clinton could do!!!!!

[billrquimby]

Bill, thanks for your input. Your knowledge of hunting Arizona is in the highest regards. I would love to hear the story of your most exciting Arizona hunt or outdoor experience.

 

Thanks for the kind words. As for my most exciting outdoor experience, please pardon the crass commercial that follows:

 

I spent the past ten years writing and ghost-writing books about the hunting feats of Weatherby Award winners, but when a client cancelled his project late last year, I finally had time to write my own book.

 

"Sixty Years A Hunter" should be ready for launching at the SCI convention in Reno in late January. More than a third of it covers my 39-year quest to take the Arizona Big Ten. One chapter is devoted to hunting Arizona whitetails.

 

If I had to pick a most exciting hunt in Arizona it would be a mountain lion hunt when a horse panicked and fell, then rolled down a shale slope and over a couple of cliffs. After sorting things out, my partner and I wound up spending all night New Year's Eve on a ridge close to Baboquivari Peak without a fire, hugging each other to stay warm and listening to the hounds bark treed below us. I later killed a lion after 57 days on horseback spread over three years with three different houndsmen and their dogs. Lions had me jinxed.

 

The rest of the book covers my hunting elsewhere in the USA, Mexico and Canada, as well as South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Mongolia, Spain, New Zealand and Argentina.

 

The final chapter tells about some of my experiences with SCI during my 16 years as its director of publications. My longtime friend Craig Boddington did the foreword.

 

If I had to pick my most exciting hunt of all, it would have to be my 1994 Zambia safari, when I took the lion that I now use as my avatar. Walking in the dark toward the sounds of two male lions fighting over the zebra we had hung for bait has to be the scariest thing I've ever done, and what did this dumb klutz do? I missed the shot at 30 yards with my .416 Weatherby! Lucky for me, the lions returned later that day.

 

You can find this book and a few of my others at www.safaripress.com (type "quimby" in the space at the top left of the home page, hit "search" and then type "quimby" again in the blank space above "author"). The publisher won't charge your credit card until the book is ready to ship. The last I heard, he was going to charge $39.95 for it.

 

It's the least expensive of the five Quimby books that publisher has published. The most expensive is the $1,250.00 (each) Morrocan leather-bound, signed and limited edition edition of "Royal Quest," a book I wrote about Prince Abdorreza of Iran. The regular version of that book is "only" $325.00. I was told an Iranian expatriate bought fifteen of the deluxe leatherbounds to give to his friends.

 

Bill Quimby

[billrquimby]

The publisher emailed me today to say that my book will not be ready for the SCI convention in January.

 

Bill Quimby

[GameHauler]

The publisher emailed me today to say that my book will not be ready for the SCI convention in January.

 

Bill Quimby

Sorry to hear that Bill