Location of Coues in Mexico

[daryl_s]

Every time I go down to Mexico I just love to see how awesome the country is and I find myself driving without looking at the road. I am way to busy staring at the neat looking country that looks like a coues hunters paradise. As I get farther down I always wonder where the lines could be drawn on what is coues country and what isn't. Normally I only head down as far as Obregon, which I know there are coues in the mountains around there. I know Jim has hunted around there and I have seen shed antlers in the mercado downtown. I have been to San Carlos/Guaymas several times and always wondered if there were coues in the hills right next to the Sea of Cortez. I have talked to people in San Carlos that have seen deer but wouldn't know a coues from a muley. I guess I was skeptical because of the elevation more than anything. Well, I got a good answer from a few videos from San Carlos.

 

Check out the shed laying on the ground at the 1:20 point in the video. That would be a very nice buck.

 

!

 

Here's another one. Some WT does on trailcam starting at the 1:17 point.

 

 

I think it would be amazing to be glassing coues country and look out and see the ocean also.

[billrquimby]

The southern boundary for the Coues subspecies and the Sinaloa whitetail's northern boundary is the Rio de Sinaloa, not far south of Los Mochis, so any whitetail found near Guaymas would be a Coues whitetail. (It also means that an individual deer could become another subspecies, simply by crossing the river.)

 

A friend had a small plane that we flew all over Sonora, both Bajas, and Sinaloa in the early 1960s to mid-70s, and it seemed to me that there was a lot of potential whitetail habitat on the mainland near the gulf, especially 20 miles or so north of Guaymas and Empalme (the village of San Carlos didn't exist when we started going down there). I don't know that they do occur there, but that country certainly looked like the brush-covered hills where I've seen Coues deer elsewhere in Sonora.

 

I do have first-hand knowledge that Coues whitetails occur at sea level farther north at Puerto Lobos. We saw a doe and a fawn looking down at us when we were fishing in the surf just below the cliffs south of the village on one of our flying trips. There was no mistaking them for mule deer.

 

As for looking out and seeing the ocean while glassing for a whitetail, gun writer Jack O'Connor wrote about doing exactly that when hunting mule deer, whitetails and desert sheep in the Sierra Viejos between Puerto Lobos and Caborca in the 1940s and 50s.

 

Bill Quimby

[AZLance]

The mountain lions aren't there for the view of the ocean...

[Outdoor Writer]

daryl,

 

Bill has it pretty much dead-on. We had this discussion a while back and even had a map in the thread of where the various Mexican whitetail subspecies hang out. Although deer do exist at the loweer elevations all the way south, don't forget the spine of the Sierra Madre goes far south all the way through Sinaloa. And there are lots of deer -- and turkey -- to be seen at those higher elevations. I've seen both along the shorelines while bass fishing the lakes.

 

Bill's mention of seeing Coues near Puerto Lobos is also quite accurate. In fact, I killed the one pictured with Duwane Adams and me on the back cover of our book not too far from Caborca and Lobos, basically at sea level. Although the desert floor was close to sea level, the small hills we glassed from gave us a good view of the Gulf. In reality it was typical desert mule deer (and javelina) country, and that's the reason we were there rather than northeast of Hermosillo. One of Duwane's clients had tags for both deer species and killed good ones of each. I hunted only Coues.

[billrquimby]

The first time I saw Coues whitetails in Sonora's lower desert I couldn't believe it. Until then, all my experience with this subspecies had been in southern Arizona's oak-grassland habitat and here they were in what in my opinion was mule deer country.

 

Like Tony, I also saw whitetails (plus a jaguar) on trips to Dominguez and Hidalgo lakes. That brushy country looked nothing at all like my misinformed notion of what whitetail habitat should be.

 

I now know that the Coues subspecies is also found in pines and aspens, as well as palo verde and ironwood habitat.

 

A case in point are the whitetails living with mule deer in the thorny brush along the San Pedro River south of San Manuel. To me, that's the most unlikely Coues whitetail habitat I've seen, but the deer obviously haven't been told.

 

Bill Quimby

 

 

 

[COOSEFAN]

That was wild watching those video clips, I was in that same exact spot last summer! We were in a small boat and had to hug the coast on our trip back to San Carlos because of the winds and huge waves and hung out in that same exact cove with those old buildings. That looked like a good sized antler too and they probably never paid any attention to it, that's just crazy!

 

I heard there were Coues right in those hills along the shore but didn't see any myself. I have hunted them further south of Obregon and firmly believe the Coues around there are a different type of deer than what you'll find around Hermosillo. They all had a reddish color, smaller body, their horns were all very smooth around the bases and after a bunch of research I feel the further South you go the smaller the antler potential. We hunted very hard down there, talked to a bunch of folks and the general consensus was that a 70" type buck was big and a 90" buck was huge!

 

I initially thought there was great potential down there because of the size of sheds and skulls in the ranch houses, but later learned those had been brought in from ranches around Hermosillo! Our biggest bucks killed were low 90's and when the cowboys who have lived there their whole lives get all excited and say "Muy Grande" to a 90" buck, you know something aint right! I was lied to and will never hunt that far south in Mexico again. The only good part about my experience down there was glassing up and watching a Jaguar one morning, that was amazing and worth the hassles of trying to develop something down there. The country is beautiful, the further south you go the more it turns into jungle, but I would advise against anyone trying to hunt Coues down that far, it ain't worth it! JIM>

[billrquimby]

That was wild watching those video clips, I was in that same exact spot last summer! We were in a small boat and had to hug the coast on our trip back to San Carlos because of the winds and huge waves and hung out in that same exact cove with those old buildings. That looked like a good sized antler too and they probably never paid any attention to it, that's just crazy!

 

I heard there were Coues right in those hills along the shore but didn't see any myself. I have hunted them further south of Obregon and firmly believe the Coues around there are a different type of deer than what you'll find around Hermosillo. They all had a reddish color, smaller body, their horns were all very smooth around the bases and after a bunch of research I feel the further South you go the smaller the antler potential. We hunted very hard down there, talked to a bunch of folks and the general consensus was that a 70" type buck was big and a 90" buck was huge!

 

I initially thought there was great potential down there because of the size of sheds and skulls in the ranch houses, but later learned those had been brought in from ranches around Hermosillo! Our biggest bucks killed were low 90's and when the cowboys who have lived there their whole lives get all excited and say "Muy Grande" to a 90" buck, you know something aint right! I was lied to and will never hunt that far south in Mexico again. The only good part about my experience down there was glassing up and watching a Jaguar one morning, that was amazing and worth the hassles of trying to develop something down there. The country is beautiful, the further south you go the more it turns into jungle, but I would advise against anyone trying to hunt Coues down that far, it ain't worth it! JIM>

 

There is a "law" (whose name I've forgotten) that biologists quote that says individuals of a species grow larger the farther north they are found. The Coues whitetail is a subspecies, and it provides proof of that theory. Just compare our little deer to the several other subspecies found from Washington State and British Columbia across to Maine and New Brunswick.

 

Cuidad Obregon is located within Coues deer range, but if you hunted anywhere on the other side of the Rio de Sinaloa, you were hunting a different whitetail subspecies and not a Coues whitetail.

 

Mexico has up to seven, and maybe more, subspecies of whitetail, depending upon which expert you believe. All, except for the larger texicanus found in Coahuila, Nueva Leon and Tamaulipas, are reported to be the size of our Coues deer or smaller. Some in Central and South America may weigh 30% to 50% less than Coues deer.

 

Incidentally, the SCI chapters in Mexico present an award to SCI members who have taken all of the various types of whitetails and brocket deer found in Mexico. Only a couple of people have done it, as far as I know.

 

Bill Quimby

[billrquimby]

Funny how the brain of an old man works. I shut down my computer and went to make a burro from the roast we cooked yesterday and between my office and the kitchen the name suddenly came to me: It's called "Bergmann's Rule."

 

Bill Quimby

[daryl_s]

Thanks for the information everyone. Jim, that shed must be a true monster since it is a pretty fair distance south of Hermosillo. What you say makes a lot of sense also, because all the antlers I saw in Obregon in the downtown mercado were very small.

 

I absolutely love going to Mexico. I will be going to San Carlos next year and I will definitely be taking along the binos, tripod and a camera. I know things are rough down there but I would still love to have a place down there when I am older. My wife is from Obregon and her parents still live there. My kids know both English and Spanish and they love spending time down there with their other cousins and grandparents. Makes for a good excuse, huh?

[Tines]

Cool! The "ear of the Puma" in the video looks more like a coyote's, though....

[daryl_s]

Cool! The "ear of the Puma" in the video looks more like a coyote's, though....

 

I thought the same thing.