New correspondent Thomas McIntyre tells us a crackjack Arizona deer guide has just locked up some interesting Coues deer properties South of The Border. He writes: "Since Jack O'Connor first popularized the little Coues white-tailed deer in Game in the Desert 60 years ago, hunters have prized it as one of the premier game animals of the Southwest, if not the whole of North America. This has created an extreme demand for tags for these deer, particularly during the December rifle season in Arizona, coinciding with the deer's rut. More and more hunters, shut out in the draw, are turning to private-land hunts in old Mexico. This in turn has led, in some instances, to severe exploitation of the deer, particularly trophy animals, by the rancheros and outfitters operating South of The Border.
Now, one of Arizona's best young deer guides, Tucson-based Dan King (who although only in his 30s has had over 15 years professional guiding experience) has gotten the hunting rights to three large ranchos in northern Sonora, two of which have never been commercially hunted before and one that was hunted for the first time only last season. King has guided, and taken himself, a serious number of Boone & Crockett record-class Coues deer over the years in Arizona, but his long-standing goal was to discover the right properties in Mexico that had an abundance of trophy bucks, as well as being properties that he would be able to manage over the long-term for trophy quality. These three pieces of land may be just what he has been looking for. A good, reliable friend of King's hunted the one ranch last season and took two bucks, one grossing over 103 B & C while the second went a whopping 124. This hunter tells me he glassed 19 bucks one morning, mostly from along the ranch roads. He says it would have been no problem to take a buck scoring over 100 points on any day of the hunt. As anyone who has ever hunted with King knows, though, he is not one to leave anything to chance or hearsay, so as........(continued)
