billrquimby

Over the 67 years I have hunted in Arizona, it has only been in the last few years that I have noticed that some hunters quote live weights for the javelinas they kill. They never say "about 40 pounds." They say "it weighed 52 pounds" or "it weighed 47 pounds," etc. Are hunters carrying scales now? Incidentally, I have never heard any hunter quote a live weight for the deer or elk he shot. Bill Quimby

Remove the entrails, hide, head and lower legs of the typical mature javelina and you'll have only 20-25 pounds of meat and bones ... if you're lucky. Bill Quimby

You guys must be talking live weight, not weights after field dressing. In the mid-1970s, the University of Arizona's wildlife unit and the Arizona Game and Fish Department had weighing stations for several years along all of the major roads leading to Tucson. They weighed literally thousands of gutted javelinas, and determined that the average boar weighed a few pounds less than 40 pounds dressed. Sows were slightly lighter. At about the same time, Jensen's Custom Ammo and George Medina's Sporting Goods held big "pig" contests and gave rifles and other prizes to hunters taking the heaviest javelinas each year. A 42- to 45-pound field-dressed boar won almost every year. The two largest gutted javelinas I photographed for the Tucson Citizen were freaks. One was shot on a farm south of Willcox, the other was killed off a small dump behind the Tucson Rod and Gun Club's gun range in Sabino Canyon. They obviously had been eating well. They also were the only two javelinas that actually weighed more than 50 pounds on certified scales that I heard about in nearly three decades as a reporter "covering" javelina hunts around Tucson. Bill Quimby

Has anyone tried sucking on the back of their hand to make squeaks and squeals? Many years ago, I called in a couple of foxes, a coati, and a coyote that way. I also had some luck by blowing on makeshift reeds made from small pieces of cellophane from cigarette packs (I still smoked then) that I held tightly with both thumbs and forefingers. Bill Quimby

There have been beavers on the Little Colorado River and its tributaries around Greer for the 70 years I've been going there. There also were beavers in the Gila and Colorado rivers (as well as along many of their drainage canals) as I was growing up in Yuma in the 1940s and early 1950s. (There also were miles of cottonwood forests.) The reason we don't have more beavers now is because of water rights. It's been said that there are three owners for every drop in this state. When beavers show up and build dams in places they haven't occupied in years, water flow decreases downstream and farmers start looking for the problem. It isn't long before those beavers are removed. For example, a pair of beavers moved onto Badger Creek where it runs along our cabin in Greer and began building dams a couple of years ago. I was looking forward to their creating a trout pond on our property until someone either killed or trapped and took them away. Bill Quimby

I voted no, but only because there was no option to vote against on-line applying. If hunters still had to pay cash up front the odds for being drawn would improve slightly. My personal peeve with the present on-line draw system is AZGFD does not accept American Express, probably because it charges a business (and a game department) more per transaction than other companies. In my experience, American Express stands up for their cardholders, while the other companies make us jump through hoops when things go south. Bill Quimby

I'll take the rangefinder. PM me, please. I'm in Tucson. Bill Quimby

I doubt that there would be more packrats over the long term if every venomous reptile on Earth suddenly became extinct. As Aristotle said, nature abhors a vacuum. There are non-poisonous species that would step up to control rodent populations. Bill Quimby

I'm sorry, guys. I know it is politically incorrect and I fully expect to be called ignorant and uncaring, but I detest all snakes and find nothing interesting or enjoyable in being near or observing them. I have had many encounters with rattlesnakes in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and have come across green and black mambas, spitting cobras, pythons, puff adders, and a gaboon viper in 22 trips to Africa. If there were a vote to exterminate every poisonous species on the planet, I'd vote early and often, and work to get that issue passed. I have stepped on rattlesnakes and been threatened by them too many times to talk about it. We've found them in our yard in Tucson, but the final straw came last year when my wife came mere inches from being bitten at a townhouse we own in Green Valley when she leaned down to pick up something that bast@rd was hiding under. Bill Quimby

The reason we cannot hunt in Sahuaro National Monument is because its status (and name) was changed to Sahuaro National Park. I remember the change happening swiftly with little public input or controversy. Those who believe placing the federal lands on the Arizona Strip under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service (even if only as a monument) will keep public land open to hunting in the long term are only fooling themselves. Bill Quimby

It's a nice 3x3 (or three-point) Arizona white-tailed deer. Bill Quimby

It shouldn't be much trouble to get a permit to cut an aspen tree. The problem with aspen is that it turns grey, then black, and its bark gets loose in no time at all after it dies. Bill Quimby

I heard from a friend today that Game & Fish was threatening border patrol agents with citations if they continued to help hunters. This was from a friend at the Nogales Station. I would think Game and Fish would have better things to do. Agents were told not to give any information to hunters from now on. ---------------- Really? You might want to have your friend at the Nogales Station put in writing what he was told (and by whom) so you could send copies to the Game and Fish director and the five commissioners. Bill Quimby

Agreed. Heber is not Greer. However, my point is that those four acres with pine trees, electricity and water on the site will prove to be a better investment than any IRA or Roth plan when Arizona's population doubles over the next few decades as it certainly will. Only 18 percent of our state is in private ownership, and only a tiny portion of that private land is forested. The six million people who will call Maricopa County home one day, along with another two million from Tucson, will be looking for mountain retreats and the principle of supply and demand will drive prices out of sight. ===== Bill Quimby

Keep it. Land prices are down now, but four acres with pine trees in the White Mountains will only appreciate in value over the years. When we bought the land for our cabin in Greer, we thought we were paying too much, but we liked that it was in Greer with lots of pines, firs and aspens and a year-around creek on it. Those two acres cost me $7,500 in 1964. Today, you might pay ten times that (or more) for just one acre in our little village. As Will Rogers said, "Buy land. They don't make land any more." === Bill Quimby

The late Wes Bramhall, one of the founders of the Record Desert Whitetail Club, made a bolo tie from a tiny three-point Coues whitetail shed he found somewhere. I always wanted one like it. Bill Quimby

"Working my way through Bill's 60 Year a Hunter and loving it. My grand-pa was the only one in my family for the two generations before me who hunted and he died long before I was born so I never got to sit on his knee and hear his stories. He drove from the middle of Kansas to Colorado to hunt elk to feed the family every year back in the depression so you know there were some good ones. Reading Bill's book is a great replacement for not having a living hunting heritage in my family. Thanks Bill." ..................Thank YOU, Marc! I greatly appreciate your comments...............Bill Quimby

I've had a Pioneer license for 8-1/2 years. It was free. For me and other codgers, it's also a lifetime license. Bill Quimby

In the late 1950s, a character named Lynn Cool was frequently mentioned by Arizona Wildlife Sportsman magazine editor Bob Housholder as taking whitetails near Gila Bend. How far "near" might be was anyone's guess. However, in the early 1960s, soon after they widened Interstate 8 through a pass just south of Stanfield, I stopped at a new gas station in the pass and noticed whitetail antlers and a fresh whitetail skin on the wall. The guy at the station said he had shot a couple of whitetails in the hills around there, and had salvaged the antlers off whitetail bucks that had been hit by trucks and cars on the new highway. This was in unit 40, not 41, though. Bill Quimby

I wrote the memoirs for a hunter in New Brunswick and when we ate lunch at a cafe in a little restaurant up there, I talked with a Mexican national who was cleaning tables. He told me that he had crossed our border in Texas and worked for a while in Denver and Chicago where he had family, but wound up in Canada because his girlfriend was offered a job up there. Bill Quimby

The .257 Roberts definitely is a fine caliber. I had two of them until burglars took them away. I shot several Coues and Texas Hill Country whitetails, a Wyoming angelope, and a couple of javelinas with them, as well as a Himalayan tahr, a chamois and maybe three dozen feral goats on a cull in New Zealand. I don't remember anything needing a second shot. --- Bill Quimby

Perhaps $250, or maybe less, depending upon the design and workmanship of the stock and whether anything was done to slim and shape the triggerguard. There were a lot of Bubba-worked Springfields after the DCM sold them for virtually nothing years ago. Bill Quimby

T.J.: Glad to know you'll be in shape for your annual summer trip up the mountain. Jean and I look forward to lunch with you and Peg at the Rendezvous. Bill Quimby

"TJ's a tough old bird - chases wounded piggies into catclaw thickets on hands and knees. He's also the kind of man that would give the shirt off his back, or his last dime to help someone in need. The news that he's OK aside from some bruising is just awesome to hear. TJ, my best thoughts and prayers to a speedy recovery." As usual, Coach is absolutely correct. My thoughts and prayers also are for T.J.'s speedy recovery. Bill Quimby