Coues World record at Cabellas

[billrquimby]

"Bill, Do you know many people from Arivaca? The Schaffners who lived their for a LONG time and had shot hundres of Coues between the family. They had the big fenced in yard just as you entered into Arivaca on the Left. Richard Schaffner 1st, Jr , III- Frank Schaffner. Richard Schaffner ran and worked for Ed in his honey business for about 10 years. Later hunting with Ed. I think in his later years Ed and Doyle were goit o Yuma alot to hunt. I think they were a couple of 4 or 5 people. Ed always loved the deer in Big Sandy!!!!

Like Kim who had the 3rd largest deer for ahwile but has now slipped to 6th I think. He has an archery shop inside Doyles now. Richard Schaffner taught Kim how to hunt. The people that live in the area and 36b never hunted for trophey game it was for food. That is why some good size antlers were always tossed behind the shed."

 

I knew Ed Stockwell and met his wife Barbara a few times, but that's it. I never spent much time in Arivaca, except to drive through it to get to someplace else down there. I don't think I ever met the Schaffners. I did work with a fellow at Tucson Newspapers Inc. who lived there, but I've forgotten his name. He and his family shot a lot of big mule deer and whitetails, but as you say they were not trophy hunters.

 

The group you mention, I think, were Ed, John Doyle and the Levy brothers, Seymore and Jim. There may have been a couple more.

 

Some of the largest Coues deer taken up to about the early 1980s, when trophy hunting really started coming into its own among a large number of hunters, were never measured. I remember giving a ride to Willcox to a guy whose truck had broken down in the Galliuros. Before we left his camp, he opened up his camper shell and showed us the deer he'd shot that day ... it probably wasn't nearly as large as Stockwell's but I remember it being HUGE! He had cut off the head just below the jawbone.

 

Back when newspapers ran photos of hunters with big deer I photographed many Coues deer that would easily make the book, but the owners had no interest in entering them.

 

I suppose many of these old, record-class heads are gathering dust somewhere, waiting for someone to recognize what they are.

 

Bill Quimby