billrquimby

Something's wrong here, AZantlerhead: If your grandfather fought against General Francisco Franco's government troops in Spain's 1936-39 civil war, as did Ernest Hemingway, author of a great novel about that revolution, he would have been deemed a hero in some quarters here. However, the feelings of most Americans after Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 were such that if he fought with Pancho Villa against Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico, he probably would have been jailed or shot as a traitor if he attempted to return to the USA. I suspect you mean your grandfather agreed with the revolutionary cause in Mexico. Pancho Villa was just one of several leaders involved in that cause, most of whom (including Pancho Villa) were assassinated later. Bill Quimby Sounds like you know more than me about the history of that era.You gotta understand they don't teach about these"smaller wars in any school i went to, and I wasn't born till 1982. That's all I've ben told, Was that he "Sided with Poncho in the spanish wars or revolution" after comeing home from WW1. You never fail to shine some extra some light to something. You ever play Jeopardy? I'll haggle my grandma for the full stories when I speak with her again. Good excuse to call . My wife and I enjoy watching Jeopardy, but she usually does better at providing the questions than I do. We weren't taught much about the "minor" wars in my school years, either, but I have always done a lot of reading, and Ernest Hemingway's novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," got me interested in the Spanish Civil War in college. I later got to meet Francisco Franco's son, Nicolas, at SCI's conventions and the One Shot Antelope Hunt, and that sparked more interest in his father's reign in Spain. (No pun intended.) As for Pancho Villa and Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico, my wife had a distant relative (he was descended from one of the few Frenchmen who wasn't run out of Mexico) who owned a ranch near Mazatlan, and he was among the vaqueros who took their .30-30 saddle guns and rode their horses onto the pier at that city and -- believe it or not -- kept the U.S. Navy from offloading supplies there. (Pershing was under orders not to shoot at civilians, so the supplies were taken to Guaymas and unloaded.) Then, I also had a uncle who had served with Pershing under Patton in the unsuccessful attempt to punish Villa. I also knew Ben Tinker (he had a ranch in the Sierra Madres in Chihuahua where Villa hid out from Patton) and Felipe Wells (he grew up at his father's mine in Barranca del Cobre during and after the Pancho Villa era. Felipe had loads of great stories about shooting whitetails to feed his father's workers, too). Their tales made me want to read and learn more, which I did. I apologize for rambling, but that "expedition" and the entire Mexican revolution were darned interesting to me because they happened at our doorstep, and people who participated in them still were alive early in my life. Bill Quimby

Thanks for the kind words. I hope you like the book. The last I heard the built pages had been shipped to someplace in Asia for printing. It takes months for shipments by boat, but printed books are expected to be back in the States in time for the SCI convention in January. I, for one, sure would like to see one. Bill Quimby

Here are two photos that qualify as “vintage.” I shot the mule deer buck on my first-ever deer hunt in October 1948 on Lynx Creek near Prescott. On the way home to Yuma, my father and I stopped at the base of Yarnell Hill at what then was a crossroads town called “Aguila,” where a freelance photographer was taking photos of hunters with their deer. (The Black Canyon Highway from Phoenix to Flagstaff had not yet been built, and everyone heading to Flagstaff and points north had to drive through Aguila and Prescott. All the roads from Yuma to Prescott still were dirt, except for the stretch up Yarnell.) I paid the photographer $5, I think, and he mailed me this photo a couple of weeks later. Imagine how disappointed a 12-year old boy would be to see what the sun’s glare on the photographer’s lens did to the only photo of his first deer. Note the 1930s-era cars in the background. The photo with me and my father with a Canada goose I’d killed was taken in about 1951 or 1952, when I was 15 or 16. I don’t remember why we posed for this particular picture because we killed a lot of geese in those days. The limit was five per day, and there were many days that my brother, father and I brought home fifteen geese. This was before the Salton Sea (it was only a fraction of the size it is now) and the farms in the Imperial Valley drew birds into California. Maybe 95 percent of the waterfowl in the Pacific Flyway still followed the Colorado River and wintered in the Yuma region. Bill Quimby

Heck, two mule deer and three men in a VW is crowded, but let me tell you my story. In about 1959 or 1960, two friends and I jumped a herd of elk on the road that used to connect Mexican Hay Lake with Poole Corral and what now is Winn Campground and shot three small bulls. We were in my open 1947 CJ2a Jeep. We managed to load the elk whole, leaving just enough room for me to sit and drive. One elk was on the hood, the other two took up all the rest of the space in that little Jeep. We had antlers and legs all over the place. My two friends sat on top of the elk all the way down to the bridge on the Little Colorado, where we were camped. I had trouble seeing, so I mostly stood up and drove. There was at least six or seven inches of snow everywhere. Those were the days ... Bill Quimby

Something's wrong here, AZantlerhead: If your grandfather fought against General Francisco Franco's government troops in Spain's 1936-39 civil war, as did Ernest Hemingway, author of a great novel about that revolution, he would have been deemed a hero in some quarters here. However, the feelings of most Americans after Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 were such that if he fought with Pancho Villa against Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico, he probably would have been jailed or shot as a traitor if he attempted to return to the USA. I suspect you mean your grandfather agreed with the revolutionary cause in Mexico. Pancho Villa was just one of several leaders involved in that cause, most of whom (including Pancho Villa) were assassinated later. Bill Quimby

Very accurate. Although I don't think it is done, as far as I know there is no rule against breaking a skull plate. The European system differs from ours in other ways, too. A hunter is encouraged to remove freaks (non-typicals) and inferior animals from the herd, and is considered a true conservationist and great hunter when he does. The best heads usually are reserved for royalty and the wealthiest hunters. Bill Quimby

Great buck! Hunters like your grandfather were a lot tougher in the good ol' days, AZantlerhead, but at my age I'm not certain the forties qualifies for that description. Let me tell you about my uncle, who like your grandfather, survived an altercation with a big mule deer buck. My uncle Wilbur was born in Mammoth and grew up on a horse before he married my mother's older sister and moved to Tucson in 1929. One of the things I remember him telling me was the only time he roped a mule deer. Instead of trying to get away as the bears and javelinas that he roped later did, that deer charged his horse and jumped all over the place. He had to drag the buck off its feet and get it tangled in a mesquite before he could get off and kill it with a little hatchet he always carried in his saddlebag. This took place in the little hills above Cascabel on the San Pedro River in about 1923-24, when Wilbur was only 12 or 13 years old. Wilbur killed a lot of mule deer, javelinas, and whitetails in his long life, but the antlers of the mule deer he roped were the only trophy he kept. They were nailed on a shed behind his house until he died in about 1991. He had a heart attack while rounding up cattle in the Rincon Mountains and fell off his horse dead, just as he had told me a week earlier he wanted to do when it was his time. I lost track of those antlers after that, but I remember them as being heavy, very wide and tall, with four long tines and eyeguards per side. Roping and whacking deer with a hatchet was illegal, even in the 1920s, of course, but hunters then winked and looked the other way when rural folks ate venison year around. Before someone calls a warden, please note that this took place nearly ninety years ago and my uncle Wilbur is long past prosecution. Bill Quimby

In Europe hunters aren't as enraptured about the number of points as much as the amount of water their red deer's, fallow deer's and roe deer's antlers displace, and how it conforms to the standard their record-keeping organization (the C.I.C.) has set. A hunter could shoot a red stag with 14 points per side but without the "baskets" and mass the C.I.C. likes to see on red deer antlers, and his stag might not qualify for even a bronze medal. Judging antlers by weight and "beauty" and not inches (or centimeters) might be okay for roebucks and fallow deer, I guess, but the red deer is a subspecies of Cervus elaphus, making it a very close cousin of our elk. It sure confuses things when a European is talking about his trophy. Bill Quimby

I would call it a three-by-three. Here's how I explained it in my book: "Whenever I mention the number of tines on deer antlers, I follow the western tradition of ignoring eyeguards. A four-by-four buck in the West, for example, is a ten-pointer in the East. With elk, however, we count every tine more than three or four inches long. Many of us count only the best side on elk and deer. For example, we’ll call a mule deer buck with two eyeguards and four tines on one side and three tines on the other a 'four-pointer' and a six-by-five bull elk a 'six-pointer.'” It was confusing to me during the dozen years or so that I hunted the Texas Hill Country to hear people talking about 10 pointers, 12 pointers, 13 pointers, etc. I tried deducting two (for the eyeguards) and dividing by two. That worked most of the time, but I soon learned those Texans were counting every bump they could "hang a ring on" while I counted only prominent points. Their method made no sense to me until I realized that those dumb Easterners knew no better. Guess you should know that anyplace east of New Mexico's eastern border is "back East" to those of us whose family arrived in Arizona close to a century ago. Bill Quimby

Amanda, please tell the rest of the story ... Please tell CW members the Greer side of the mountain is far less scenic and much hotter in the summer than the Show Low/Lakeside/Pinetop side. Please tell them there are furry four-fanged rattlesnakes, man-eating squirrels, attack owls, and extremely dangerous gooby-gozzers around every tree on our side of the mountain. Please tell them all of our elk, deer, bear, turkeys and trout fled to units 27 and 3B many years ago. Please tell them our area is really no place anyone should go for any reason. The closest shopping mall is 50 miles away and TV reception is impossible without a satellite. We have to drive off the mountain all the way to Eagar to find the closest stoplight or buy gasoline and groceries. It is so bad that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to spend April through October among the hundreds of raging, hydrophobic skunks that surround our cabin and scratch our doors at night. (Take it from someone who knows: a big pack of them is what scratched the bark off that tree you photographed. You were fortunate that you did not come across that pack. Rabies, polio, whooping cough, and malaria are endemic to our side of the mountain.) We are forced to stay here as penance for past misdeeds, however. Bill Quimby

Nope. It still was the Stone Age. I used a rock. Bill Quimby

Snapshot: Any books I might recommend probably would out of print. Let's ask Amanda to recommend a few recent ones. I remember one with a title that was something like "Our Wildlife Legacy (or was it Heritage?)" that was a great starter, at least for me. When I first came across it thirty years ago, it was a textbook for wildlife management students at the UA. I'm sure Amanda has more recent titles. Don't stop with one book, though. There are lots of books about deer and deer management. Some of the best-known authors are Rue, Geist, Walker and Whitehead, but there are many others, including our own resident expert Jim Heffelfinger, who have written about the natural history of deer. There are said to be about 40 species of deer -- and many dozens of subspecies -- still found on six continents. If you are like me, you will want to learn more about all of them. Bill Quimby

Try checking www.azgfd.gov a week or so after they start accepting applications. Bill Quimby

Snapshot: I am not a biologist, but I do read a lot and have spent more than my share of time chumming around with people who understand the dynamics of deer populations. I think Amanda might agree, too. It's always been my understanding that when hunters are taking a preponderance of spikes and forked-horn bucks that this is indicative of a healthy deer herd with good reproduction and survival occurring, especially when there are safe havens for older deer nearby. The opposite is often true when most of the deer taken in a general season are older bucks. Most hunters are not trophy hunters. They shoot the first legal deer they encounter, and if the majority of deer taken from an area are three to five years old it probably means there is a scarcity of younger deer. It would be interesting to see what the age status might be on those private lands near where you hunt. Take where I've hunted mule deer the past four years, for example. This is on a friend's farm that is surrounded by larger posted private properties with better mule deer habitat than our friend's farm. We see one or two herds of 60 to more than 100 mule deer in his fields at sunup and sunset, each with good numbers of spikes and forked horns. There obviously are plenty of older males impregnating all those does, but so far my partner and I have seen only one mature buck in all the time we've hunted there -- and we couldn't kill it. I continue to go there because it's an easy one-day hunt for an 73-year-old man with a health problem, and I shoot the first forked-horn that presents a shot. I outgrew trophy hunting when I realized my walls were covered with heads and there were boxes and barrels of skulls and antlers in storage. I still love to eat venison, though, and I expect to kill another forked horn buck again in October. As for ranchers and the State Land Department selling land to developers, you're correct, especially in southern Arizona's mule deer country. Even if all of Arizona's state-owned land were to be sold and every acre of privately owned land were developed, we still would be blessed with more public hunting lands than most states, though. We just need to be able to reach it. Bill Quimby

My point is it does not always have to always "boil down to a few animals" if good minds get together and work on the real problem. Instead of worrying about bonus points and methods to decide who gets to hunt, we need to learn why reproduction and survival rates on Arizona's deer are so low and then do something about it. As for the "lots of hunters wanting them", twice as many hunters as we now have (or more) would be no problem in a state as large as Arizona if all the locks and no trespassing signs that block our entry to state, BLM and forest service land were removed. Forget "how they rig up the draw." A lottery wouldn't be needed if we had more deer. Other reasons to get outdoors are fine, but deer hunting itself is threatened if we continue to tell thousands of would-be hunters to stay home. Bill Quimby I agree with Bill. I would love to see more focus on trying to improve deer numbers. That is one of the reasons that the AZ Deer Association funded a fawn mortality study in the 3-bar. As well as funding research to improve monitoring and survey methods of deer in the Kaibab. Access is another issue and AGFD has staff dedicated to trying to keep gates open for hunters. The AZ Deer Association is just beginning an adopt a ranch program where we hope to help ranchers with projects they need so that perhaps they are not so likely to close a gate when/if they encounter a problem with some hunters. Amanda Ranchers and private landowners are not alone in denying us access to public land. Public land managers over the past two decades have been closing perfectly good two-track roads that used to disperse us across the national forests and BLM lands. The trend has been if a road is not "maintained" (bulldozed and graded) and seemingly goes "nowhere" it should be closed to vehicular traffic because it is difficult to "manage." Congress and various administrations in recent years also have created budgets for "outdoor recreation" that ignore hunting and fishing while spending millions for hiking, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling and wildlife watching. The recreation managers of these agencies use the funds to create expensive paved roads to parking lots and drop toilets, then erect berms and pile boulders at what they now call "trailheads," transforming primitive 4x4 roads that once spread hunters' camps over hundreds of square miles into "trails" for these "special users." Not long after this happens, a wildlife manager and the area's forest manager drive up the only road still open on that side of the mountain, see hunters' camps every three or four hundred hundred yards, and tell each other that the resources they are responsible for protecting are being threatened by overuse. The wildlife manager recommends a reduction in deer tags while the forest manager suggests that his superiors consider new rules requiring that hunters camp in designated campgrounds. Meanwhile, we hunters ignore road closure proposals and debate how drawings should be conducted to distribute a shrinking number of deer tags. Will we wake up after the last non-maintained road is closed? I doubt it. We'll still be trying to figure out how we can draw tags for ourselves and out of the hands of those who aren't "serious" about hunting. Bill Quimby

My point is it does not always have to always "boil down to a few animals" if good minds get together and work on the real problem. Instead of worrying about bonus points and methods to decide who gets to hunt, we need to learn why reproduction and survival rates on Arizona's deer are so low and then do something about it. As for the "lots of hunters wanting them", twice as many hunters as we now have (or more) would be no problem in a state as large as Arizona if all the locks and no trespassing signs that block our entry to state, BLM and forest service land were removed. Forget "how they rig up the draw." A lottery wouldn't be needed if we had more deer. Other reasons to get outdoors are fine, but deer hunting itself is threatened if we continue to tell thousands of would-be hunters to stay home. Bill Quimby

I haven't kept current on its book, but the last I checked, B&C lumped all of the 11 subspecies of mule deer into just three categories: Mule deer, Sitka black-tailed deer, and Columbia black-tailed deeer. In the 1980s and 1990s, when I was a member of SCI's Trophy Records Committee, the panel decided to add "desert mule deer" records, mostly because of the huge antlers SCI members were taking in Sonora. Jack Schwabland of Seattle wrote the record book text that MRL1984 quoted. Because I lived in Arizona and edited the record book, I was asked to research and draw the boundary between desert and Rocky Mountain mule deer in Arizona. I began by drawing an arbitrary line across our state based on my experience and opinion. I then ran my proposal by someone in the AZGFD's big game branch, who said something like, "It's as good as anything." Someone from New Mexico did the same. There was a gap between his line and mine when they reached the AZ/NM border, so I simply moved my line to meet his. There are two mule deer subspecies (some biologists used to say there were three) in Arizona, but exactly where the line dividing their ranges occurs is anyone's guess. As for physical differences that a hunter might detect, desert deer typically are paler and weigh less than Rocky Mountain mule deer. Note that I said "typically." There are exceptions. The same applies to Schwabland's descriptions. Although the antlers of desert mule deer typically are wider and not as high, and their forehead masks typically are smaller than those of the Rocky Mountain race, there always are exceptions. As for introducing Rocky Mountain mule deer from the northern Arizona into southern Arizona, SunDevil is correct. They did not die because of a lack of water, however. The genes they brought to southern Arizona simply were bred into oblivion over time by the resident deer. Early in the 20th century, a few live Rocky Mountain mule deer from the Kaibab were released into the Tucson Mountains and perhaps elsewhere in the region. The reason? Misinformed but influential hunters believed the reason desert mule deer were smaller than northern deer was because they were "inbred." There were not that many of the northern deer translocated, and it has been so long since it happened that any effect on genetics today would be minimal. It would be like breeding a poodle and a spaniel, and then breeding the successive offspring of that mating to poodles for the next 80-100 years. For the first few generations there might be a few "pooniels" and "spanoodles" born, but the spaniel's traits eventually would be lost. No one would ever know there was a spaniel in the woodpile way back when by merely looking at the descendants of that original mating today. Bill Quimby

Bullwidgeon is correct about the antlers on Stockwell's buck. I would bet my favorite straw hat that IF the Stockwell record is broken, the buck will be killed by someone who isn't an avid trophy hunter. He will come upon it, as Stockwell did his deer, by chance encounter and be lucky enough to collect it. As for where it will come from, it is possible that it could come from any unit in Arizona, New Mexico or old Mexico. A freak whitetail buck need survive only a mere five hunting seasons to reach optimum antler growth, and despite how deadly a predator we mere humans believe we are, I am convinced there are bucks of that age and older in every unit -- including the most heavily hunted units -- that have never been shot at by hunters and never will be. Bill Quimby

I was twelve years old when I shot my first big game animal, a 4x4 mule deer buck. It was outside Prescott near what now is Lynx Canyon Lake and the year was 1948 -- 61 years ago, but who's counting? Bill Quimby

Let's carry that thought a bit farther. How about $1,000 each per bonus point for residents and $5,000 each for non-residents? At $250 each, one of your really well-to-do applicants wouldn't blink at having to cough up $10,000 for 40 bonus points and a guaranteed bighorn or prime-unit elk tag. No way do we need this. I've said this before: we need to quit worrying about the petty details of a failed lottery system and concentrate on the real problem, which is we don't have enough deer for everyone who wants to go deer hunting. Other states with a heck of a lot less deer habitat than Arizona have no problems accommodating their hunters. In fact, a large number of small states have a problem with too many deer. If you want to debate whether management-through-a-lottery-system has failed or not, just ask yourself why Arizona issues fewer tags today than it did twenty or thirty years ago. After just one year short of four decades of permit-only deer hunting, we should have more (and not fewer) deer and deer hunters if permit-only hunting were a valid method for managing deer. And please don't say it's because the advance of civilization and a growing population has caused a dramatic shrinkage of Arizona's deer habitat. Only 18 percent of this state is in private ownership. The remainder is managed by state, tribal and federal governments and most of it remains open to hunting (although it costs more to hunt on reservations). We have lost some land because of the expansion of national parks, granted, but our real problem has been a huge loss of access to many thousands of acres of public lands. Access is just one of the things we need to address, though. Predation, disease, drought, and a dozen other things may or may not be factors in the poor survival rate of deer here, and all need to be addressed. Worrying whether longtime residents should get extra bonus points is like putting Band-aids on our problem. Bill Quimby

I was bitten by the Africa bug, too, Scottyboy, and as you do I also lament that India's hunting ended before I reached the point in life where I was hunting internationally. Some of the people for whom I've written books got there in its heyday, though, and their stories are something else. If I were younger and in better health, I'd be all over Asia now, hunting its many types of deer -- especially a white-lipped stag in China and a hog deer in Pakistan or Tibet. Incidentally, Amanda, when India shut its doors to hunters it was not because of a scarcity of wildlife -- that came later as the country's population exploded out of control. Bill Quimby

"funny that the 7mm came up... I've heard alot of good things about it too except that some said its too small for elk, just like the 300 because of the added power over the 7mm rem mag. How is the 7mm with elk?" It reaches out there and kills them dead, and there is only one degree of that status. My 7 mm Rem Mag has gone all over the world with me and taken a great many large animals up to the size of 1,200-pound eland (including a number of elk in Arizona, New Mexico and Mongolia), and I have never felt undergunned. I load 140 grain Nosler Partitions for animals up to 300 pounds or so, and 175 grain Nosler Partitions for everything above that. The .300 Winchester Magnum is a great caliber, too, but it is at the very top end of my tolerance for recoil and I get the same results with my 7 mm mag without getting banged around. If I had to choose between a traditional magnum or a short magnum, though, I'd stick with the tried and true. Imagine yourself running around and trying to buy a box of short magnum ammo in Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Madrid or Auckland after an airline lost the only supply you packed. You may not plan to hunt in those countries, but you never know what opportunities might pop up someday ... Bill Quimby

"That being said, I feel the only way to change any State department is to allow the voters to decide on how things are going to be run. Allow the hunters to vote on who gets elected as G&F commissioner instead of the Govenor, allow the hunters to elect the G&F commission, allow the hunters to vote on the issues that effect all of us in the long run. Force the commission to make decisions that affect game animals based on sound scientific fact and evidence and not on biased decisions that may or may not be financially driven. There are ways to change the entire system, including the draw, but it makes the system more complicated, and of course ends up costing more in the long run. The only way any Government department or agency will ever change anything is, if they are forced to do it, or they can get more money from it." Be careful what you wish for. If game commissioners were elected by voters, the chances of ever having another hunter on that panel would diminish greatly. By law, the game and fish department and commission exist to preserve and enhance Arizona's wildlife for all Arizonans. Like it or not, we hunters are a minority. Bill Quimby

I was born in Tucson 73 years ago. Although I would not turn down the three bonus points, I am afraid the concept might spread to other states that I hunt. Instead of getting bogged down with the details of the failed lottery process, why don't we hunters and the game department use our combined energy and creativity to search for solutions that might allow us to hunt when and where we want without damaging Arizona's deer herds? Bill Quimby

Best of luck. I had an email from friends in Pretoria today who said they have never experienced such a cold winter as this one in South Africa and both are in their 70s. Bill Quimby