Fair Chase in North America

by Boddington, Craig

Parker was the real McCoy—a decorated hero of World War II, rancher, Border Patrolman, prolific hunter. He put more Coues’ deer in all the record books than any other hunter, but he also hunted the world. He was one of very few to take a giant sable in Angola. He collected the Big Five in East Africa, and he hunted extensively in Southeast Asia. His lifelong friend, Colonel Charles Askins, referred to him as “the tough one.” Tough, yes, but always the perfect gentleman. And always on the lookout for big Coues’ deer bucks.

  In Jack O’Connor and George Parker’s era Coues’ deer hunting was pretty simple. George told me they didn’t even use binoculars much until well after World War II. Mostly they’d just ride saddle horses through good country, and when they jumped a buck that looked good they’d “bail and blaze.” There wasn’t much hunting pressure then, and there were lots of deer—especially on the Mexican side of the border where most of O’Connor’s hunting was done and where most of Parker’s big bucks came from. Those were different times, too. O’Connor himself wrote that they interpreted Sonora’s game laws as allowing two or three deer per trip.

  O’Connor eventually moved up to Idaho, and as far as I know that ended his Coues’ deer hunting. Parker continued to hunt them until he died. Bill Quimby, longtime Editor of Safari magazine, hunted with him several times down in Arizona’s Canelo Hills. In later years Parker traded his horse for an open Jeep, but the methodology remained much the same—cruise the open, grassy hills characteristic of that area until deer were spotted or jumped. It doesn’t sound real serious compared to the way dedicated trophy hunters pursue them today, but Parker knew where to look for the good ones and also knew what a big Coues’ deer looked like. His record in Records of North American Big Game speaks for itself!

  O’Connor/Parker-style Coues’ deer hunting can still be done. These little desert deer are thinly distributed over vast country. As O’Connor said, “Even where there are lots of ‘em there aren’t very many of ‘em.” However, hunting pressure is also well-distributed and quite light, especially compared to most eastern whitetail range. Buck/doe ratios are fairly high, and although Coues’ deer are never easy to find, once located they’re actually fairly unsophisticated—again, compared to other “hunter-educated” whitetails. If you cover enough ground, chances are you’ll see some bucks.

  In January of 2002 I took a very nice Coues’ whitetail “the old-fashioned way.” I was technically on a desert mule deer hunt with Ernesto Zaragoza, but I got my mule deer early in the hunt, so my Mexican guide and I headed up into the rocky hills—the same hills O’Connor, Parker, and my uncle hunted for Coues’ deer and desert sheep—to look for whitetails.

  We didn’t have the big binoculars or spotting scopes that have been part and parcel to most of my Coues’ deer hunting for many years, but we found deer. A doe started up out of a canyon and what looked like a very good buck followed her. We were about 400 yards away and they were moving; I didn’t get a very good look, let alone a shot. They topped out and dropped into a little saddle, and we were pretty sure they stayed there. So we climbed the next ridge and approached that saddle carefully.

  Perhaps not carefully enough; we were about 150 yards away and could see most—but not all—of the dead ground in the saddle when the doe scampered up the far slope, tail held high. I was certain the buck would follow, so I looked around for something to rest on. There was nothing but waist-high grass and tall ocotillo cactus, so I did the only thing I could do: I wrapped into a hasty sling, got as steady as I could, and waited.

  In seconds the buck followed, trotting up after the doe. The view I got was exactly the same, from the rear. The buck was wide, heavy, had good eyeguards, and the back points were good as well. I took the rest on faith; as he topped out he turned to the right, giving me a broadside shot just as he was going into a thick cholla patch. The rifle went off and the deer went down.

  He was a very nice old buck, heavy-horned and downhill—but his front points didn’t match the rear, so, in terms of score, he wasn’t the buck I’d thought he might be. He wasn’t a mistake; any old buck like this is a fine trophy. But this illustrates the two problems with the old-fashioned style of Coues’ deer hunting. First, the shooting is generally real difficult. It’s difficult enough with Coues’ deer; the country is huge and the deer are small. But a bobbing, weaving Coues’ buck is a tough target. Add in my offhand shooting position, and it was a hell of a shot, one that I certainly couldn’t do all the time. More importantly, however, is that I hadn’t properly judged the quality of the deer, so I shot out of a general impression of size rather than actual knowledge. I might have been pleasantly surprised, but I wasn’t—and you usually aren’t. Over the years I have come to believe that careful glassing with good optics is far and away the best way to hunt these little deer!

  My own introduction to Coues’ deer hunting was with Warner Glenn and his dad, the late Marvin Glenn, of Douglas, Arizona. Warner hunts pretty much the same way he did back then, with riding mules. It isn’t pure O’Connor-style jump-shooting, but a mixture of glassing, covering country, and even some mounted drives. To this day the Glenns’ guided hunts are pretty much 100 percent successful, so I don’t conclude that Coues’ deer have gotten more difficult over the past 20 years. Possibly they’ve gotten more plentiful now that we’re several deer generations into 100-percent limited permit situations in Arizona.

  The first time I saw “postgraduate glassing” was with Duwane Adams, a highly successful Coues’ deer outfitter out of San Manuel, Arizona. This was a long time ago; Duwane wasn’t an outfitter back then, just a Coues’ deer nut who knew how to find them. He had 15x60 Zeiss binoculars, an almost unknown product 15 years ago, and he set them up on a sturdy camera tripod and dismantled the hillsides piece by piece. Using this technique, Duwane glassed up the biggest Coues’ deer buck I’ve ever taken—but he’d made me a believer long before we ever found that deer.

  Regardless of where you hunt them—Arizona, old Mexico, southwestern New Mexico—I am convinced that pure, serious, concentrated glassing is the best way to get a big Coues’ deer today. O’Connor and Parker never hunted this way, but this is the method used by the modern-day Coues’ deer gurus. I always thought I knew how to glass, but not like this.

  I don’t know who came up with the idea of putting ultra-powerful binoculars on a tripod, but Duwane Adams should get a lot of the credit for popularizing the technique. It’s ideal for Coues’ whitetails, where you’re looking for small deer in big country—but it works equally well for virtually any game in big country. Jay Gates, of Kingman, Arizona, probably America’s top “all-around deer hunter,” uses this technique exclusively today—and he’s taken several real bomber Coues’ deer. This is the same hunting method used by custom rifle maker David Miller, one of the top modern Coues’ deer hunters, and also by outfitter Kirk Kelso and his guides. Kelso hunts mostly in Sonora, where there are lots of Coues’ deer. On average, hunting down there is more successful than north of the border. I believe this is because, on well-managed private lands, the deer are more concentrated, more accessible, and are subjected to less hunting pressure. A number of outfitters, both Mexicans and Americans operating with Mexican partners, are wonderfully successful at hunting Coues’ whitetails—but, uniquely, Kirk Kelso does an incredible job at producing big Coues’ bucks for his clients.

  In Mexico Coues’ deer are plentiful enough that you can hike or ride through the hills—or even cruise ranch roads—and find deer. Kelso, however, hunts them “Arizona style.” He uses powerful tripod-mounted binoculars, and he glasses endlessly from vantage points until a suitable buck is located. Then he plans a stalk.

  Although I’ve known Kirk for years, the first time I hunted in his Sonora camp was in 1999. Coues’ deer movement is funny. The weather is generally cool or cold in the morning with sunny middays, and usually one day doesn’t seem much different from another to we humans—but there must be differences to the deer. One day you’ll see bucks all over the place, and on anoth
er day that seems exactly the same you’ll see very few deer. My first hunting day in ’99 was one of those days when very few deer were seen. With this in mind, I guess I messed up on the second day. We glassed several bucks right away, and I probably should have understood that this was a different day. But it didn’t click. There was a very nice buck ‘way up on a ridge, and I didn’t hesitate. We made a stalk, got in a good position at about 300 yards, and I shot him. He was a nice, clean eight-pointer green-scoring right at 100 inches, a very nice Coues’ buck. Except, as the week went on, he eventually became the second-smallest buck in camp!

  The next year, the winter of 2000-2001, was an exceptionally good year for antler growth. I went back, and took the best typical Coues’ buck I have ever taken, a beautiful heavy-antlered five-by-five (a typical 10-pointer by eastern count). In that particular year this was not only not the largest buck taken by Kelso’s clients, but just one of fully fourteen bucks that topped Boone and Crockett’s minimum score of 110 points for inclusion in the all-time records! It take a good year for antler growth to produce that kind of success, but it also takes optics and technique. Kelso uses big 15X binoculars from Zeiss and Swarovski, tripod-mounted and backed up with a big spotting scope—and he tries not to move on a deer until he’s absolutely certain what he’s looking at.

  There are just four places, at least in terms of political boundaries, to hunt Coues’ whitetails: southern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua. Coues’ deer are discontinuous within this vast area, but they’re found in most mountain ranges and hills generally between about 4,000 and 8,000 feet in elevation. Far and away the least hunted and least known of these areas is the Mexican state of Chihuahua. I’ve been down there twice and have taken two nice bucks, neither monsters, but Chihuahua has yielded some dandies for both David Miller and Kirk Kelso. After several years of studying it my overall impression is that Sonora has more deer, so overall success is higher. However, in Chihuahua there are very few outfitters and thus has been very little trophy hunting, so there are some great bucks.

  Wherever you hunt them one of the things you can generally expect is beautiful weather in absolutely gorgeous country. The desert mountains are spectacular and—so long as you don’t get too close—the dozens of varieties of cacti are dramatically beautiful. But don’t bet the farm on good weather! The first time I hunted with Duwane Adams, in Arizona’s Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, we ended the hunt huddled under an oak tree in cold rain and fog! The first time I hunted in Chihuahua we were in high country west of the rugged El Nido range, still locally believed to be the last stronghold of the Mexican grizzly. We had several days of high winds with little deer movement—and then snowed like crazy! On the last day we woke up to nearly a foot of the soft white stuff!

  This is always rare, but it can happen almost anywhere in Coues’ deer country. Our outfitter, Ernesto Beall, took us into some new country a bit farther south, and when we separated and headed up ridges in the dark the stars were out. But not for long. Shortly after dawn a fresh system came in and visibility was obscured by thick, wet flakes. My guide, Anselmo, and I worked along the edge of a rimrocked butte, glassing down into timbered pockets far below. That’s where the deer were, and with the weather getting worse all the time I shot a very nice eight-pointer—and was glad to have him!

  There was a time when I hunted Jack O’Connor’s deer almost every year, and I still would if I could. These days, quite honestly, Coues’ deer have gotten so popular, and there are so many doggone writers hunting them and writing about them that I can no longer place stories about them as easily as I once could. So these days I lay off for a year now and again, and when I do I always miss the desert mountains. Sonora is definitely my favorite place, but I’d like to hunt in Chihuahua again, and it’s been too long since I’ve hunted them in Arizona. The wonderful thing about Coues’ deer is there really aren’t any bad places to hunt them. The traditional ranges in Arizona produce well, as does Sonora. Chihuahua is very good, and New Mexico’s herd seems to be growing and expanding. I haven’t hunted them there yet, so I’ll have to do that one of these days!

  I can’t say that Coues’ deer hunting is my absolute favorite; I’m very much a generalist and I enjoy—almost equally—a wide variety of hunting. But I can certainly understand why folks get so hooked on Coues’ whitetails. They are a uniquely beautiful little deer, and their desert mountains are (usually!) a wonderful place to be in the fall and winter. It might have been a mistake to classify Coues’ whitetails separately from all the other “Virginia deer”—but I hope it’s a mistake we never correct!

  Nearly 20 years have passed since I took my first Coues’ deer buck—and I’m still enthralled by these pretty deer.

  Duane Adams spots while I get ready to shoot an Arizonan Coues’ buck. These spooky little deer live in great big country, and offer some of the most difficult shooting in all North American hunting.

  Coues’ deer country in Chihuahua. There’s wonderful country in Mexico’s interior; that’s the El Nido range in the background, last known stronghold of the Mexican grizzly bear.

  I took this last-day Chihuahua Coues’ deer in a blinding snow storm—not your typical Coues’ deer hunting weather. I’m pictured here with Ernesto Beall.

  Desert Sheep — Thirty Years Later

  There was a Time Within Living Memory when the Desert Variety of the Bighorn Sheep was the Easiest of the Four North American Wild Sheep to obtain. Until the 1940s it was a Simple Matter to Cross into Mexico and Hunt Desert Sheep in the Many Small Mountain Ranges that Rise out of the Great Sonoran Desert.

  There were permits and licenses, after a fashion, but northern Mexico was still wild country in the early years of the Twentieth Century, and much of this hunting was done in the absence of law rather than under its blessing.

  In those pre-jet airplane, pre-float plane days, it took a long and arduous journey to reach the last stronghold of the Rocky Mountain bighorn in Alberta, or, farther north, the nearly untouched ranges of Stone’s and Dall’s sheep. In Sonora it was possible to drive to the base of the sheep mountains just a few hours south of the border, but such hunting was not for the faint of heart. There were real bandits, not Hollywood characters, and there were vast, uninhabited stretches with no water at all. In the late 1930s my uncle, Art Popham, then a student at the University of Arizona, made this journey with his English professor, Jack O’Connor, and the famous old desert rat and sheep guide Charlie Ren. I am very pleased that my uncle’s story about this historic hunt, “Ram from Inferno” (originally published in Outdoor Life a half-century ago) is included with this volume. Note that Art took his ram in August—in the Sonoran Desert, no thanks! As had been the case with his mentor, O’Connor, the desert ram was my uncle’s first “leg” toward his Grand Slam of North American wild sheep. It took him nearly 20 years to finish his “slam,” and at that he was among the early hunters to accomplish the feat.

  These days the desert ram is usually the last ram on the road to the slam. Unless, of course, one gets lucky and draws a permit. I have been faithful in applying for desert sheep permits since I was in my twenties, but I never got lucky. In fact, after more than 20 years of rejected applications I had come to believe I might never hunt the desert bighorn.

  Partly, admittedly, it was my fault. By the time I was old enough to dream about such things legal sheep hunting in Sonora had long since been closed down. But during the 1970s and 1980s there was a superb hunting program in Baja, California, on the other side of the Sea of Cortez. The hunts were expensive, but not so much so that I couldn’t have done it if I really wanted to. I had other priorities at the time, I guess… and by the time I got interested northern Baja, always home of the largest desert rams, was closed.

  So, for some years, my options were to apply, and apply, and apply. For a long time I honestly believed I would draw a tag someday. The late Jerry Hughes, a great Nevada outfitter for sheep and mule deer, got me started applying in Ne
vada in 1978. At that time Jerry told me that he had never had a nonresident applicant put in more than seven years without drawing. By the time seven years passed Jerry was gone from a heart attack, peacefully in his sleep in his deer camp—and three times seven years came and went without me drawing in Nevada or anywhere else.

  There are actually more desert sheep today than when I started applying, and there are permits available in more states: Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Texas, California, Colorado. National organizations like the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep and local groups like the Arizona Desert Bighorn Society have done a great job of putting more sheep on the mountain. A few Indian Reservations also have excellent programs. The problem is there are more hunters, and more sheep hunters applying. So although the number of permits have increased over the years the chances for winning one of these permits in a public drawing have decreased substantially.

  There are other options, but not for the likes of me! Most states that have “high profile” animals like desert bighorns have offered permits for auction by the various conservation organizations. This is a wonderful program that has raised a lot of money and put a lot of sheep back in the mountains. I support it wholeheartedly, but I could never afford that kind of permit! However, if you want something bad enough and keep your eyes, ears, and imagination open, sooner or later there might be a chance.

  Eventually Sonora reopened limited sheep hunting with the permits available through a poorly understood and badly managed drawing system. This wasn’t my chance, but a few years later Sonora privatized those permits, allowing landowners to sell their permits. At first, understandably, the prices were astronomical—for the first time since Baja had closed about a decade earlier it was possible to book a desert sheep hunt through a reliable outfitter. Also understandably, after a few years the prices dropped considerably. So I started saving pennies and exploring options.