Volume-50 Number-3 Fall 2005

1

PHOTO: KATE ERNST

Hunting companionsHunting companionsHunting companionsHunting companionsHunting companionsA good bird dogcan make a hunt complete.

See pages 4–5.

5. Down and birdy:Down and birdy:Down and birdy:Down and birdy:Down and birdy:��

�� Fish in a barrel:Fish in a barrel:Fish in a barrel:Fish in a barrel:Fish in a barrel:Action was fast and furiousSept. 28 at Parkviewand Lisboa Springsfish hatcheries.

7. MMMMMaking aking aking aking aking TTTTTracks, Pracks, Pracks, Pracks, Pracks, Pararararart 9:t 9:t 9:t 9:t 9:New Mexico breaksnew ground in findingways to protect andrestore wildlife.

11. JJJJJavavavavavelina harelina harelina harelina harelina harvvvvvest:est:est:est:est:Southwest’s peculiarpeccaries are fun to huntand good to eat.But they’re not pigs.

departments2.

—Valle Vidal’s outstanding waters—Hunter education vital—Monster bull elk— Return of the falcons—and much more …

16.Sensible fish:Learn how fish see, hear,taste and smell – and becomea better angler.

IN THIS ISSUE:

A publicationdevoted

to the enjoyment andappreciation of

New Mexico wildlife.

Published byThe New Mexico Department

of Game and Fish

VOL. 50, NO. 3 �� FALL 2005

www.wildlife.state.nm.us

...continued on page 14

MOST PEOPLE ARE REPELLED by the pungent,musky odor from ferrets’ scent glands—used to markterritory, attract mates and identify family membersin the dark. “You don’t want to get any of it on you,”Long said.

Unpleasant as it is—black-footed ferrets are inthe same family as skunks—that memorable odorwas sweet for Long this past summer. It was an-other sign that his groundbreaking experiment tohelp save the rarest mammal in North America wasworking. He released 15 ferrets into the wild for thefirst time in New Mexico and recaptured 14 of themtwo months later. “I guess I’d have to say it was ex-cellent year for us,” he said.

Long, a biologist with the Turner EndangeredSpecies Fund, has been working with black-footedferrets and prairie dogs since 1998 on a 10,000-acresection of Ted Turner’s 600,000-acre Vermejo ParkRanch in northern New Mexico. State and federalfunding support his research, which is part of theU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s nationwide Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program.

Until this year, Long’s research primarily con-sisted of a captive breeding program. In seven years,he has raised more than 200 ferrets, feeding themprairie dogs and making sure they had very littlehuman contact before sending them to release sitesin other states. The idea is to improve ferrets’ chances

��

��

��STORY AND PHOTOS BY DAN WILLIAMS

(above)An endangered black-footed ferret makes a raredaytime appearance from her burrow at Vermejo Park Ranch.

(right)Black-tailed prairie dogs provideblack-footed ferrets with food and shelter.

of surviving on theirown in the wild. Thisyear, he took the pro-gram up a notch by giv-ing the ferrets somereal-life experience. In a first-of-its-kind experimentnationwide, Long released nine female ferrets andsix kits into a prairie dog colony where he could moni-tor their progress for a couple months, then recap-ture them for release elsewhere.

“This is very exciting—an important step to showthere is a usefulness in using smaller prairie dogtowns as nursery sites,” said Paul Marinari, a biolo-gist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Colo-rado. “Those ferrets are now in a larger release sitein Wyoming—doing what ferrets do. We expect theirsurvivorship to be higher than animals we have re-leased from pens.”

Black-footed ferrets were thought to be extinctuntil 1981, when a population of 129 was discov-ered in Wyoming. Five years later, disease cut thatpopulation to 18. The remaining ferrets were cap-tured and placed into a captive breeding programin an effort to save the species. Since then, more than3,000 ferrets have been bred in captivity and an esti-mated 500 are living in the wild at release sites inWyoming, South Dakota, Colorado, Utah, Montana,Arizona and Mexico.

Dustin Long likes to give his visitors a close-up, personal experience with theendangered black-footed ferrets he raises on the Vermejo Park Ranch southwest ofMaxwell.

“Catch a whiff of this,” Long said, raising a caged female ferret within smellingrange of his latest victim. “You won’t forget it.”

game&fish

Volume 50, Number 32

game&fish

The members of the NewMexico Wildlife Federationbelieve the Valle Vidal Unit ofthe Carson National Forest issomething worth fighting for.To show their support, theorganization had a rally on theValle Vidal in August.

What’s got the membershipup in arms is the potentialdrilling for coal-methane gas onthe eastern 40,000 acres of the100,000-acre addition to theCarson National Forest. Pennzoiltransferred the property to thepeople of the United States in the1980s. It has been managed forquality trout fishing and elkhunting for more than twodecades. It is the only once-in-lifetime elk hunting area inNew Mexico.

Governor Bill Richardson wasamong the rally participants,along with U.S. Rep. Tom Udalland U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson.

Governor Richardson furtherexpressed his support byinstructing the New MexicoDepartment of Game and Fish,the Environment Department andthe Energy, Minerals and NaturalResources Department to preparea petition to list the waters of theValle Vidal as OutstandingNational Resource Waters.

If approved by the state’sWater Quality ControlCommission, the designationwould prevent reductions inwater quality on any stream inthe Valle Vidal. Those include theRio Costilla and its tributaries,waters that are being consideredfor a major restoration project forthe Rio Grande cutthroat trout.It also would cover the streamsand lakes on the eastern side ofthe property, including McCrystalCreek, Beatty Lakes andWhitman Vega. Those waters are

A proposal to returnaplomado falcons to their nativeskies above New Mexico isnearing its final stages as the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Serviceevaluates public comments.

The proposal calls for as manyas 150 captive-raised northernaplomado falcons to be releasedannually in New Mexico for 10 ormore years, until a self-sustainingpopulation is established. Theprogram would be part of alarger recovery effort underwayin Texas that has been verysuccessful.

New Mexico Governor BillRichardson and a posse ofsupporters rallied at the ValleVidal in August, vowing toprotect the area’s waters andoppose oil and gas drilling.

PHOTO: MARTY FRENTZEL

Governor Richardson joins posse opposing drilling in Valle Vidal

Under the proposed program,aplomado falcons found withinNew Mexico would be considereda nonessential, experimentalpopulation, which allows formore flexible environmentalregulations. That status places norequirements on privatelandowners and asks federalagencies to confer with the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service onactivities that might impactthe birds.

The northern aplomadofalcon was listed as endangeredin 1986 under the EndangeredSpecies Act. Sporadic sightingshave occurred in New Mexico,most recently Aug. 27, 2005. Abreeding pair in Luna Countysuccessfully hatched three chicksin 2002, but no nest has beendocumented since then. �

Plan would return endangered falcons to NM skies

Turning in harvest surveyspays off for lucky hunters

Nine New Mexico deer andelk hunters who returned theirharvest survey forms or broughttheir harvested animal’s head infor testing during the 2004-2005seasons were rewarded withquality elk and oryx permitsin the Department of Gameand Fish special “incentivedrawing.”

Two of the 22,433 hunterswho returned surveys won elkhunting permits for the ValleVidal, hunts that are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for hunterswho participate in the regulardrawing. Five hunters won oryxpermits on White Sands MissileRange, also considered once-in-a-lifetime hunts for the regulardrawing. Only about 25 percentof New Mexico’s deer and elkhunters returned their harvestsurveys for 2004-2005.

Odds were better for hunterswho brought in their harvesteddeer or elk heads to be tested forChronic Wasting Disease. Of the74 hunters who participated,Peter Sandoval of Los Alamoswon a Valle Vidal elk hunt, andDaniel Sanchez of Santa Fe wonan oryx hunt.

The drawing winners forsurvey returns were: JoshuaCampos of Albuquerque andSteven Loros of Costa Mesa,Calif., for the Valle Vidal elkhunts; and David Coffelt of LasCruces, Stuart Polen of Milan,Charles Trask III of Los Alamos,Christopher Woodall of Ruidoso,and Claude R. Downs of Truth orConsequences for the oryx hunts.

Details of the Department’songoing testing program andincentive drawing can be seen inthe Big Game & FurbearerInformation Booklet or on theDepartment web site,www.wildlife.state.nm.us. �

Bighorns find new homesin Arizona, Gila Country

Thirty-two Rocky Mountainbighorn sheep have new homes inArizona and five joined an existingherd at Turkey Creek in NewMexico’s Gila National Forestfollowing a successful trapping andrelocation projects in the Pecos andLatir wilderness areas.

Both trapping operationswere accomplished at altitudesexceeding 12,000 feet. Sheep weretransported by helicopter to stagingareas below, where they weretrucked to their new homes. Theoperations involved dozens ofworkers from Game and Fishdepartments in New Mexico andArizona, and the U.S. ForestService.

The Pecos Wilderness sheepwere traded to Arizona foran equal number of desert bighornsheep. The Latir sheep augmenteda small Turkey Creek herd that hadbecome stagnant.

“It’s really a win-winsituation for everyone,” bighornsheep biologist Elise Goldsteinsaid. “Arizona needs more RockyMountain bighorns and we needto thin out our herds, andArizona can provide us withmore desert bighorns, which weneed to build up our herds.”

Goldstein said the Pecosbighorn herd is estimated at 275 to300 animals and was outgrowingits range. Statewide, there areapproximately 850 to 930 RockyMountain bighorn sheep, andabout 230 to 250 desert bighornsheep in New Mexico, she said.

Both projects were fundedthrough federal excise taxes onhunting and ammunition, with a25 percent match through a raffleand an auction of two bighornsheep permits donated by thestate Game Commission to theFoundation for North AmericanWild Sheep. �

important to the elk herd and alsoare home to some of the state’smore rare species of fairy shrimpsuch as the knob-lipped andPackard’s.

Municipalities, irrigatorsand those who recreate innortheastern New Mexico alluse the water that comes off theValle Vidal.

The State Water QualityControl Commission is expected toact on the petition in December.For more information visit theDepartment of Game and Fish Website: www.wildlife.state.nm.us. �

PHOTO: JENNIFER ATCHLEY

3

NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENTOF GAME AND FISH

Dr. Bruce ThompsonDirector

Tod StevensonDeputy Director

Luke ShelbyAssistant Director for Resources

Patrick BlockAssistant Director

for Support ServicesMike Sloane

FisheriesR. J. Kirkpatrick

Wildlife ManagementDan Brooks

Law EnforcementMartin Frentzel

Public Information and OutreachLisa Kirkpatrick

Conservation ServicesAlvin Martinez

Information Services

AREA SUPERVISORS

Luis Rios / Las CrucesLief Ahlm / Raton

Roy Hayes / RoswellBrian Gleadle / Albuquerque

STATE GAME COMMISSION

Guy Riordan, ChairmanAlbuquerque

Dr. Tom Arvas, Vice-ChairmanAlbuquerque

Alfredo MontoyaAlcalde

David HendersonSanta Fe

M. H. “Dutch” SalmonSilver CityPeter PinoZia Pueblo

Leo SimsHobbs

Providing New Mexicoand its wildlife

Year-round

Excellent

Services

visit our website at:http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us

New Mexico’s bull elk aregaining a reputation as some ofthe most impressive trophies inthe world, and they’re alsocommanding some high priceswhen hunting permits are offeredthrough the Rocky MountainElk Foundation’s annual auctionand raffle.

This year was no exception,as the foundation’s New MexicoGovernor’s tags sold for $79,000in the auction and $35,320 inthe raffle.

Bill Metcalfe of Clinton, Md.,bought this year’s auction tagand took a very impressive bulloff the Rocky Mountain ElkFoundation’s Double-H Ranchnear Datil. The elk was thebiggest ever taken off the ranch,initially scoring a whopping423 inches.

Carlos Gonzales of NewburyPark, Calif., paid $20 for hischance to win the raffle tag.After he won, he turned down a$50,000 offer for his tag and wenthunting instead. He selected avery nice trophy after seeing 16big bulls during a two-day huntnear Reserve.

Hunting fatalities are alwaystragic—and almost always canbe avoided.

No one will ever knowwhether taking a hunter safetycourse would have saved a9-year-old boy who was huntingnear Roswell this past September.Would he have been more carefulwhen he held two rifles in theback of a pickup? Would he havechecked to make sure they wereunloaded? Would he have bettercontrolled the muzzles? Those aresafety rules that are emphasized—over and over—in huntereducation classes.

According to Department ofGame and Fish records, theyoungster who held those rifleshad not passed an approvedhunter education class in New

The New Mexico GameCommission began providing thetwo tags to the Rocky MountainElk Foundation in 2000. Sincethen, the foundation has raisedmore than $526,278.90 from thetags, with 90 percent of theproceeds going into elkconservation and research. �

Bill Metcalf shot thismonster bull elk on theDouble-H Ranch. He bid$79,000 for the New MexicoGovernor’s Tag in the RockyMountain Elk Foundation’sannual auction.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF

ROCKY MOUNTAIN ELK FOUNDATION

New Mexico’s monster bull elk bring high prices in fund-raisers

Be safe, take a classNew Mexico law requires

anyone under the age of 18 tohave successfully passed anapproved hunter education classto legally hunt with a firearm. Tofind a class in your area:

• Call (505) 222-4731. It’s a goodidea to sign up well beforeapplication deadlines for huntingseasons—as classes fill early.• Visit the Game and Fish Website, www.wildlife.state.nm.usand click on the education tabfor a list of statewide classesand contact information forinstructors.• Duplicate hunter educationcertificates are available on theweb site.

Volunteer hunter educationinstructors are always needed tomeet the growing demands ofyoung hunters and hunters whoneed certification to hunt in otherstates. To volunteer, call (505)222-4722.

Know the basicsof hunter safety

Safe handling of firearmsbegins with four basic rules:

1. Assume every gun to beloaded. Check any firearm youhold. You need to know!2. Control the muzzle—alwayspoint the firearm in a safe direc-tion. Never point a firearm atyourself or others and keep itunder control.3. Keep your finger off thetrigger until ready to fire. Thenatural in-stinct when picking upa firearm is to put your finger inthe trigger guard. DON’T!4. Be sure of your target andwhat lies beyond it. Never pointyour firearm at something youdo not intend to shoot. Make sureyou positively identify what youare shooting at and know whatlies in front of and beyond it. Donot use telescopic sights as asubstitute for binoculars whenidentifying per-sons, animals orobjects.

Fatality highlights need for firearms safety classes Game Commissionadopts newelk-landownerlicense system

New Mexico now has animproved, more efficient andequitable way to manage thestate’s elk population on publicand private lands with theadoption of a new private landselk license allocation system.

The new system, calledElk – Private Lands Use System,or E-PLUS, was approved by theState Game Commission inSeptember 2005 after months ofresearch, consultation with otherstates and landowners, anddozens of public meetings acrossNew Mexico.

The intent of the new systemwas to create a program that ismore equitable to landownerswith small or large propertyholdings. The new system is moreflexible and easier to understand,with priorities placed onproperties that have significantbenefits to elk. The new systemalso clearly defines the distinctionbetween the Department’sWildlife Depredation Programand the annual allocation of elkhunting authorizations tolandowners for sport harvest.Unlike the old system,depredation considerations willnot be resolved with the newsystem, which will go into effectfor the 2006-2007 huntingseasons.

The New Mexico Departmentof Game and Fish issued morethan 40,000 elk licenses andauthorizations in 2005-2006.Of those, about 25,112 licenseswent to hunters throughpublic drawings, and 15,824authorizations were distributedto 2,605 landowners statewide. �

Mexico, although since 1976 statelaw has required everyone underage 18 to have passed such aclass before hunting with afirearm in the state.

The police report said the boyholding the rifles lost his balanceand fell, causing one of the riflesto discharge when it hit the bedof the truck. The bullet struck theboy in the head, making himNew Mexico’s first hunting-related firearms fatality sinceSeptember 2003.

The New Mexico Departmentof Game and Fish encouragespeople of all ages to take anapproved hunter safety course—whether they hunt or not.Knowing the basics of firearmssafety can safe lives. �

NEW MEXICO WILDLIFE is published bythe Public Information and Outreach Di-vision, New Mexico Department ofGame and Fish.

Contact NEW MEXICO WILDLIFE for per-mission to reprint artwork, photographsor articles.

Printed by Hillside Printinge, an R. R.Donnelley Company, Hillside, IL, undercontract with the State of New Mexico.Printed in the United States.

Volume 50, Number 3

Lance CherryChief of Publications

Dan J. WilliamsEditor

The Studio/Janelle HardenDesign and ProductionLetters may be sent to:

NEW MEXICO WILDLIFE

P.O. Box 25112Santa Fe, NM 87504-5112Telephone (505) 476-8004


Carlsbad biologist Doug Lynn explains, “Regardless whatyou’re hunting, dogs are the best conservation tool. Huntingwith dogs reduces the likelihood of losing birds, includingwounded birds. If I’m hunting birds I will not go to the fieldwithout a bird dog.”

Lynn’s 10 hunting dogs include English pointers, Englishsetters, Labrador retrievers and a golden retriever, with therecent addition of nine lab pups.

Bill Dunn recently stepped from New Mexico Depart-ment of Game and Fish game bird management into Univer-sity of New Mexico doctoral studies. He owns a vizsla (Hun-garian pointer), a German shorthaired pointer/Englishpointer mix, and a vizsla/English pointer puppy.

For Dunn, “Watching the dogs is part of the whole pro-cess [of hunting].”

He confesses, “I plan to spend an inordinate amount oftime over Thanksgiving and Christmas vacation on the east-ern plains hunting quail.”

“A wonderful challenge”Pointers, setters, vizslas and pudel-pointers represent

“versatile” breeds—defined by the North American Versa-tile Hunting Dog Association (NAVHDA) as, “the dog thatis bred and trained to dependably hunt and point game, toretrieve on both land and water, and to track wounded gameon both land and water.”

Lynn elaborates on what trained dogs add to bird hunting:“Quail are a tremendous game bird, a wonderful chal-

lenge,” he says. “When you get into an area where you sus-pect there may be birds, the likelihood of finding them issignificantly greater with dogs. Dogs cover more ground thana man on foot, plus have the ability to smell game—makingthem a factor of 10 more efficient than man.”

He follows that scientific explanation with thoughts onthe bond between hunter and dog:

“You get excited when you see an old veteran have agreat day, or a young one have its first success. If peopleknew how much they could increase the quality of the huntby having a dog, they would never hunt birds any other way.”

He recites names and breeds of all 10 of his bird dogs,from Jake to Clifford to Hickory.

“There’s a breed of hunting dog for every style of hunt-ing and every personality, and you’ll never regret owningone.”

Lynn says training is a matter of personal preference.He recommends that occasional hunters get one dog thatsuits them, and find training books and videos that give thema prescription to develop a dog that fits them like a glove. Hecautions hunters to pick one training style and stick to it. Hebelieves that a patient person can make any dog a good hunt-ing companion in no more than 10 minutes a day.

Praise for pudlepointersFormer New Mexico Game Commission Chairman Jamie

Koch has three German pudelpointers, a cross betweenpoodles and pointers bred since the 1800s and introducedinto North America in 1956. Koch says he trains smart dogsthat are his friends, live in his house and go hunting whenhe does.

“It was the grouse of the Pecos... that seduced me into alifetime avocation of breeding and training hunting dogs formy own use,” he wrote for Gun Dog magazine in 1998.

Koch hunted with Brittanies, labs, German shorthairsand Chesapeakes until he found the pudelpointer. He andothers consider pudelpointers the most talented versatilehunting dog. Koch adopted his first pudelpointer in 1980,and dove into the breed’s history, international connectionsand unique qualities. He specializes in German-registeredpudelpointers, and his dogs, Caesar, Darth and Juana, havepedigrees going back 60 years.

��

EAGER HUNTERS SURGE INTO BIRD HABITAT,kicking brush, breathing hard, watching for sign. It’s quailseason. Some human hunters follow trained dogs into thefield. Their dogs point the birds, flush the birds, and afterthe shots, retrieve the birds.

Pudelpointers, a cross between poodles and point-ers, are considered by some hunters to be the bestupland bird dogs.

PHOTO: PAUL EVANS

With the help of atrusty retriever,few birds are lostin the field.

PHOTO: KATE ERNST

Watching atrained dog workis part of the thrillof upland birdhunting.

PHOTO: MARK GRUBER

Trained dogs bring companionship,conservation to bird huntingBY KAREN MEADOWS

5

Pudelpointers are bred for hunting ability, and they alsoare gentle, friendly companions, Koch says. His dogs’ train-ing involves a huge time investment. When not hunting, heruns them during the week and rides horseback for milesevery weekend while the dogs chase rabbits and point birds.

“Do your homework,” he warns. “Find out about a dog’sparents and grandparents and what the dog has done. Oth-erwise it’s a shake of the dice. There are associations for ev-ery breed that inform potential owners and provide oppor-tunities for dog training.”

Birdy bloodlinesAll agree that a dog has to be “birdy.”Dunn proposes, “The foundational lesson for getting a

good bird dog is to get a puppy that’s birdy and comes froma good bloodline. Training is controlling and directing natu-ral instinct and abilities—which they have to have.”

He says puppies with birding instinct have insatiable cu-riosity about and desire for things that fly. They will point onmoths and butterflies. Beyond instinct, his dogs are so wellbonded with him that they want to do what’s right. Thatmakes them easy to direct and train.

“Gently nudge them along,” he says. “Heavily praisethem for what they do correctly; and gently admonish themwhen they make mistakes.”

Dunn trains Annie, Milnesand (named after the easternNew Mexico ranching town the dog came from) and Luke, 5to 10 minutes every evening, five nights a week. He meetswith other dog owners to train on weekends. Dunn advo-cates repetition and patience, and working with experienceddog handlers.

“Go hunting with someone who has a trained dog,” hesuggests. “There’s a multitude of dog clubs that take ownersand dogs out for training.”

He joined NAVHDA’s New Mexico chapter, headquar-tered in Albuquerque.

New Mexico NAVHDA representative Mark Kruegeragrees that, “Hunting with dogs makes the whole experi-ence a lot more enjoyable and is a responsible way to hunt.”

Krueger says he has built great friendships with otherdog trainers, which led to great hunting trips.

“You’re not sitting in a blind being quiet,” he reminisces.“With dogs along there’s camaraderie among the hunters.”

New Mexico NAVHDA has monthly meetings and dogtraining for members every Sunday.

Conservation mattersHighlighting the big picture for quail hunters, Dunn re-

veals that only New Mexico and Texas offer hunters theGrand Slam of Quail—bobwhite, scaled (also known as Texasblue or cotton-top), Gambel’s and Montezuma (Mearn’s).

As an ecologist, Dunn’s underlying target is the healthof New Mexico’s landscape and animal life.

“We all need to work toward common ground,” Dunnsays. “I enjoy hunting and know people who don’t. The bot-tom line is that there’s wildlife and wild lands for futuregenerations to enjoy.”

Trained bird dogs may help. Dunn and Lynn are mem-bers of a stakeholders’ group working to protect and restorepopulations of another game bird, the lesser prairie chicken.Lesser prairie chickens are a “species of concern” on NewMexico’s eastern plains, not currently hunted.

In 2004, Lynn was asked to take his dogs into historicprairie chicken territory to help establish their range and dis-tribution.

“Lo and behold,” he says, “my dogs pointed 18 birdswhere humans thought that population had blinked out.”

Without Lynn’s dogs, those birds would not have beenfound.

KAREN MEADOWS is a writer and educator who loves dogsand lives in Santa Fe.

Jamie Koch,an avid birdhunter andformer NewMexico GameCommissioner,takes a shot overone of his threepudelpointers.

PHOTO: PAUL EVANS

A “softbite” is aninstinctivetrait ofgoodretrievers.

PHOTO:MARK GRUBER

Trained bird dogs allow hunters toflush game within gun range every time.

PHOTO: MARK GRUBER

Learn more about hunting dogs• Join New Mexico NAVHDA. Call Mark Krueger, (505) 269-4693,

or visit www.zianavhda.com.• Find organizations representing breeds you’re interested in.• Check Internet sites such as www.fielddog.com, www.akc.org,

or www.gundogmag.com.


The cliché goes, “A bad day fishing isbetter than a good day working,” butthere is no cliché for an amazing day offishing. Gigantic stringers of rainbowtrout and a lift on fishing licenseregulations were the catches of the day atthe Parkview Fish Hatchery on Sept. 24.

In an effort by the Department ofGame and Fish to make good use of thehatchery’s whirling disease-positive fish,Parkview staff opened the raceways andallowed the masses to fulfill many anglers’greatest dreams: unlimited fishing, andunlimited fish.

A similar event at the Lisboa FishHatchery yielded similar results and amultitude of smiles for that hatchery staff.Both hatcheries will undergo a rigorouscleaning process and renovations toimprove environmental control. Theyshould return to normal operationsometime next year.

“I’m catching a fish like every 3seconds,” one girl yelled at her mother atParkview. “I wish fishing was like this allthe time!”

By day’s end, more than 1,500 fishwere filleted and more than 150 childrenand adults participated. Most of the fishranged from 12 to 16 inches long, but afew reached lunker status – up to eightpounds. The Parkview crew workednonstop keeping the nets swimming andlines wet.

“We just couldn’t see dumping a loadof fish in a landfill when the fish still hadvalue to the public,” said Mike Sloane,Chief of Fisheries for the Department.“Other states offered the fish to the publicand we thought we would try it, too.”

Participants at the event whereencouraged to catch, fillet and cart off asmany fish as they desired. The onlyrestriction was that all the bones stay atthe hatchery so the Department couldcontrol the disease source.

“I’m going to have to call some familyto come help,” Los Ojos resident GilbertMartinez said. “My son Christopher haspulled them in all day. I have enough fishto last all winter.”

Even though a small percentage of the15,000 fish at Parkview had confirmedwhirling disease, the departmentdetermined it was necessary to remove allof the fish from the stocking program andwork to protect the state’s watershed fromthe continued spread of the disease.

“It’s all kind of bitter-sweet,” said BillySands, Fisheries Specialist. “I’ve pouredmy heart and soul into raising these trout,only to have to start from scratch. At leastthe smiles on the kids faces help make iteasier.”

Whirling disease is caused when theparasite, Myxobolus Cerebralis, attacksthe cartilage in young trout and salmon.As the parasite reproduces it damages thecartilage in the skeletal system causingdeformities and neurological damage. Theinjuries create an appearance of a “whirl”or spin in the fish when they swim. Thedisease, thought to be carried by birds thathave eaten infected fish, is transmittedthrough spores. �

No limitson

fishing,fillets,

and funHatcheries

open racewaysfor public

trout-fishingfrenzy

BY LANCE CHERRY

PHOTOS BY DAN WILLIAMS

Big rainbow trout inspiredbig smiles Sept. 24, whenParkview Hatchery openedits runways for one dayof public fishing.

One problem with trout fishingis that sometimes you have totouch what you catch!

Action was nonstop Sept. 24 atParkview Hatchery in Los Ojos,where about 150 adults and childrencaught and filleted more than 1,500 trout.

LANCE CHERRY is assistant chief of the Public Informationand Outreach Division of the New Mexico Departmentof Game and Fish.

7


WHEN Warden Gable kicked the gate opento release those elk into the wild, he kicked off acentury of big game management practices thatgrew far beyond the early game managers’ triadof law enforcement, predator control and gamerefuges. As years passed, the tiny territorial gameand fish agency’s successors worked incessantlyto restore and replenish big game mammals andbirds. Along the way, they pioneered some tech-niques that made the agency an innovativeleader in wildlife management, learning throughtrial and error, sharing and borrowing ideas andmethods from other state agencies.

Among the tools the agency developed werewing traps to capture large numbers of ante-lope, drive nets for trapping deer and elk in sub-stantive numbers, and use of tranquilizer dartsfired from helicopters to capture individual ani-mals. It introduced the use of net guns fired fromhelicopters, a method developed in Australia,and was a pioneering user of radio tracking te-lemetry and computer modeling.

Significantly, Gable funded his elk projectby revenues from hunting licenses, first requiredin 1909 and a core funding source for the self-supported game department and its wildlifeprojects ever since. The license buyers themselveslent the social and political impetus to thatproject and the host of others that brought crea-tures such as elk and Rocky Mountain bighornsheep, both completely eliminated from NewMexico, back into the state.

Although not extirpated from New Mexico,other native species such as antelope, desert big-horn sheep, turkey, quail, prairie chickens, ducksand geese, black bear, javelina, beaver, even cou-gar, also benefited from the funding and man-agement mandates dating to the late 1800s. The

wildlife agency and private landowners also setabout bringing in species altogether new to NewMexico—exotic big game animals such as Bar-bary sheep, ibex and oryx in mid-century, butgame birds from other parts of the country andworld early on.

Upland game birdsWarden Gable, in his 1909-1911 report,

writes about some of those early attempts to es-tablish new game birds in the state. Game birdhunters clamored for pheasants, for instance,and he tried to accommodate them. Althoughblanching at prices of $40 a pair for Mongolianpheasants, $5 for English imports, Gable “byway of experiment” purchased 31 pheasants andgave them to a deputy game warden, CaptainM. S. Murray of Roswell, to tend to. Murray re-ported back that all the birds were alive and ingood health, and had produced 50 young, butrequired more range than he had available inhis pens.

He suggesting turning them loose in “themountain country, as feed is abundant and shel-ter good.”

New Mexico’s mountains may not havebeen the best choice. Rancher William Frenchof Cimarron, around 1900, freed 50 pheasantsinto bottomlands along the Cimarron River andPonil Creek. Ten years later, he wrote to Gable,“There are still quite a number around thisneighborhood… Of course, they have a greatmany enemies, both human as well as wild ani-mals, but they have done well enough to showthat when they are protected for a time theywill increase and do well in this country.”

Subsequent releases into river bottoms and

A Century of Wildlife ManagementPart 9: Bringing back the game

Ambitious, innovative actions restore and protect wildlifeBy John Crenshaw

croplands eventually built a small populationof pheasants in the state, and the state had itsfirst public hunt in 1936.

Perhaps most significant was how Gableacquired the birds. His swap of scaled quail forbobwhites unveiled another key managementtool for cash-strapped wildlife agencies—wild-life trades between the states quickly became andremain commonplace, often forming the coreof restoration efforts.

Waterfowl and shore birds“It must be admitted that many of our mi-

gratory birds are fast disappearing, some ofthem being almost extinct. Among these are thewild goose, canvass back duck and snipe, ofwhich there are numerous varieties. Thereshould be a national law enacted, protecting allmigratory birds during their mating and nest-ing time, with a closed season, on some of them.This, I believe, will be eventually accomplished,”wrote Warden Gable in his report of 1909-1911.

It was, and with refinement and modifica-tion as conditions changed and science im-proved, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1934protects and helps propagate waterfowl andshorebirds to this date.

Earlier laws afforded some protections, buthabitat, as with all wildlife, is the key.

The Pittman-Robertson Act and MigratoryWaterfowl Hunting Stamp (duck stamp)pumped money into habitat salvage and resto-ration. New Mexico’s most visible contributionis its string of waterfowl management areas—wetlands and farms that shelter and feed win-tering waterfowl—along the Rio Grande andPecos River valleys.

“Realizing the importance of stocking our forests with these superb animalsand recognizing the natural conditions so manifest here, I purchased with monies derived

from the game protection fund, 12 head of 3-year-old elk, in Routt County, Colorado.”—State Game Warden Thomas Gable, report of 1909-1911.

The New MexicoDepartment ofGame and Fishwas the first stateagency in the nationto use wing trapsto capture largenumbers ofantelope.

PHOTO: DON MACCARTER


ElkThe last Rocky Mountain elk in northern

New Mexico was down by 1910, perhaps ear-lier. The southern herd, comprised of the Mer-riam’s subspecies, had gone extinct a decade ear-lier. The state felt the loss, although its early, inef-fectual efforts to stop the market and subsistencehunting that brought it about came too late. Theonly way to bring them back was to bring themin from elsewhere and turn them loose.

It worked.Gable’s 1911 operation was New Mexico’s

first government-sponsored elk restockingproject. It was one in a series of similar projectsby public agencies and private landowners,such as the Bartlett Ranch (now Vermejo Park),which stocked 15 head that same year; the herdgrew to some 500 in just 15 years.

The State Game Commission commissionedJ. Stokley Ligon, a pioneering game biologistwith the U.S. Biological Survey and conserva-tionist Aldo Leopold’s highly respected peer, toresearch and report on the status of NewMexico’s game or potential game species. Ahighly valuable book, “Wild Life of New Mexico,Its Conservation and Management, 1926-1927,”was the benchmark result. In it, Ligon estimatedthe state’s elk population at 712 in 1926.

Gable had split his tiny herd into thirds—one bull and three cows—and released them inRed River Canyon (present-day Canadian River)northwest of Raton, Gallinas Canyon west ofLas Vegas, and on the Urraca Ranch inCimarron Canyon west of Cimarron.

The Gallinas stocking failed, but the otherstook, establishing what today is one of NewMexico’s most outstanding recreational and eco-nomical resources.

Former Game and Fish Department Direc-tor Bill Huey, then an assistant director, pickedup the pace markedly in the 1960s.

“I was fascinated by the availability of elkand how it fit the demands of our hunters,” Hueysaid. “We had a good little elk population andhad drawings for a few elk licenses. Then I foundout I could go up to South Dakota, pay rent ona truck, and they’d bring them down to us. Weplanted elk in the Gila, in the Capitans. Webacked trucks up to a snow bank and kickedelk out at Los Alamos Ski Area; now they’re es-timating 4,000 to 7,000 head in the Valle Grande.And all we needed was just enough money torent a truck,” he recalled.

The hunting public fully backed the restock-ing efforts, looking forward to a hunt, and theagency successfully encouraged U.S. Forest Ser-vice logging practices that favored the species,said Dan Sutcliffe, former chief of the GameManagement Division.

“The Forest Service made changes in tim-ber and grazing management in the ’60s andearly ’70s, with us egging them on, that favoredelk more than deer, and it worked. The depart-ment pushed them to do habitat manipulations,to do (logging) cuts to benefit elk. The changesreally started kicking in in the late ’70s and ’80s,and the numbers really started increasing.”

As the elk population increased, proposalsfor liberalizing seasons met resistance.

But against some opposition, the State GameCommission opened the Pecos high country tothe first elk season in 1934. Now, different con-figurations of weapons types, season dates, baglimits, units, subunits, public land and privateland hunts produce an astonishing number ofhunt choices.

With an elk population now estimated at72,000 head, a reputation for trophy bulls andhigh hunter success rates, New Mexico’s citi-zenry continues to reap rewards while the stateand private landowners work on ways to bal-

ance profits with proper wildlife management.“Today, our vast amounts of public land,

along with landowners who appreciate elk as anatural and financial resource has made NewMexico the best state in the country to hunt tro-phy elk,” said Steve Kohlmann, the Depart-ment’s chief elk biologist. “Where else in thecountry can someone draw a permit on publicland to hunt record-book trophies like ours? Be-cause of that, everyone profits—the wildlife, thehunters, the landowners and the communities.”

From license and equipment sales to guideand landowner fees, lodging, food and otherexpenses, elk hunting contributes more than $100million a year to New Mexico’s economy, ac-cording to one recent study. Non-hunting ac-tivities involving elk, primarily wildlife viewing,injects another $1 million or so into mostly ru-ral coffers each year.

AntelopeThis is a uniquely American species, “the

fleetest and among the most interesting inhab-itants of the North American plains,” wrote Li-gon in Wild Life of New Mexico.

“Formerly antelope were abundant on prac-tically all of the open plains country of New

Mexico, but because of exposure to their mostfatal enemy, civilized man, they have beenshamefully destroyed.”

He pinned the blame on homesteaders,“confronted with extreme poverty but with anexcess of idleness,” for eliminating most of thestate’s pronghorn population. A few remnantherds remained, however, mostly on large pri-vate ranches where the owners protected them.His population estimate was 2,957 head, “a suf-ficient number of antelope so distributed thatre-establishment of the species is possible.”

Capturing the antelope and moving themto suitable grasslands around the state was the

logical thing to do, but no one had ever done iton any sizeable scale and a decade passed be-fore anyone did.

New Mexico was the first.As Elliott Barker related it, the State Game

Commission Chairman, Judge Colin Neblett,told him to trap and move pronghorns to re-stock depleted ranges. Barker told him it couldn’tbe done, and Judge Neblett told him to find away.

Barker cheerfully admitted delegating thetask to Paul Russell, who adapted wild horsehunters’ techniques, and in 1937 the NewMexico Game and Fish Department became thefirst state agency to trap and restock antelopein substantive numbers. Although the whop-whop of helicopter blades has replaced thewhoops of early horsemen, the basics remain.The game department’s trapping and movingof more than 1,000 head in one massive opera-tion in the early 1990s stands as testimony tothat.

Because it is a highly visible plains species,antelope are relatively easy to manage—aerialcounts and fawn crop surveys provide solid basenumbers, and managers set hunting licensenumbers according to the data.

Rocky Mountain Elk, gone from New Mexico around 1910,have been restored to a healthy population of more than 70,000.

PHOTOS: DON MACCARTER

Although the state’s deer herd has declined in recent years, the statewidepopulation, estimated at between 50,000 and 90,000, still exceeds that of the 1920s.


9

Mule deer“Taking New Mexico as a whole,

mule deer are by far the most important biggame at the present time,” was Ligon’s assess-ment. The popularity and rapidly growing elkpopulation notwithstanding, his statement is ar-guably still true. Although mule deer numbersin New Mexico and throughout the RockyMountain west have continued to decline forseveral decades, even now the state holds moremule deer than it did in Ligon’s day and quitepossibly more than in pre-European times.

Working with U.S. Forest Service, Biologi-cal Survey staff, Game and Fish Departmentofficers and others, Ligon estimated the muledeer population then at 41,000 head in 1926.Today, it is estimated at somewhere between50,000 and 90,000.

Early European explorers in the West, in-cluding New Mexico, often remarked on thescarcity of deer, which they found in pocketsbut not in widespread abundance. Closed sea-sons, law enforcement, game refuges and natu-ral process of plant habitat succession that fol-lowed fires and logging helped the populationgrow during the first half of the century.

Then a combination of factors created anastoundingly large jump in the West’s, and NewMexico’s, mule deer populations after the endof World War II, an irruption that still colorsthe public’s and managers’ perception of whatthe deer population should be but which, it be-comes increasingly clear, was an anomaly un-likely to be repeated.

Former game department director Bill Hueywas in the early wave of college-educated wild-life biology majors to join the agency, andcame on just as the deer population growthwas becoming fully apparent in the late 1940sand early ’50s.

“We had a super abundance of deer at thattime; why, I don’t know and I don’t supposeanybody else did either. They did find a seriousproblem of over population in the herds, though,and the only way to address that was througheither-sex hunting, to cut down the excess pres-sure on the forage supply,” he said.

Intensive predator control was also a fac-tor in the population growth, he said, althoughnot widely acknowledged at the time.

“We all resisted the effects of coyotes, butduring that period there weren’t any coyotes tospeak of,” he said, attributing that to the wide-spread use of Compound 1080 (sodium fluoroac-etate) a highly effective and easy-to-use predicideintroduced into the United States in 1945.

“I couldn’t say that that was the primaryreason for the increase in the deer population,but it contributed to it. We were also in a richperiod of high-quality forage production,” hesaid.

Tightening or loosening bag limits, seasonsand hunter pressure can be effective when gamepopulations are burgeoning but can be frustrat-ingly inadequate when populations decline forreasons outside of an agency’s, or even humans’,control.

Dan Sutcliffe, a former Game ManagementDivision chief with the agency, empathizes withtoday’s managers.

“The real power for managing any ofthose deer herds is habitat management,which we (game managers) have very littlecontrol over. Our end of it was pretty limited;we can deal with time frames, the numbers ofhunters we let out there, harvest levels and thosetypes of things. But if you really want to growthe deer, you’ve got to work with the habitat,”he said.

Bighorn sheepThe post-Civil War rush to New Mexico

doomed the bighorn sheep throughout the West.Stokley Ligon attributed the extirpation to hunt-ing, but diseases transferred from domestic sheepto wild bighorn sheep may have played an evenlarger role in the wild sheep’s decline. Presenceof domestic sheep also stalled later reintroduc-tion efforts.

Elliott Barker wrote that the last RockyMountain bighorn in New Mexico was killed in1902 near Lake Katherine, east of Santa Fe Baldy.

“My first restoration project (as StateGame Warden) was to try to re-establish RockyMountain bighorns in the timberline countryof what is now the Pecos Wilderness,” he wrotein Ramblings in the Field of Conservation.

After considerable searching, he finagledtwo rams and four ewes from Banff, AlbertaNational Park in Canada and released them inthe Pecos Baldy/Truchas Peaks area. They livedfor several years, “then mysteriously disap-peared,” Barker wrote. The sheep likely werekilled by diseases transmitted from domesticsheep grazing in the area.

Barker had seeded a small herd in theSandia Mountains near Albuquerque by 1941,and a second transplant from Banff into thePecos in the late 1960s also succeeded. The Pecosherd is thriving and has enough sheep for lim-ited hunting and to furnish a supply for trans-planting to other areas, such as the WheelerPeak-Latir area, Manzano Mountains and theGila National Forest. The Sandia herd eventu-ally succumbed, probably to pressure frommountain lions, people, feral dogs and other haz-ards of being near the state’s largest city.

Today, the desert bighorn herd containedand protected in the 2.5-square-mile Red Rockarea has provided brood stock to help restorethe state-endangered desert bighorn herds in theBig Hatchets, Peloncillo and Alamo HuecoMountains in New Mexico’s boot heel area, andin the Sierra Ladron near Socorro.

Pheasants were first releasedin New Mexico in the early 1900s.

PHOTOS: DON MACCARTER


A captive herd of desert bighorn sheep at the Red Rock Wildlife Areahas helped restore wild herds in southern New Mexico.


PredatorsHowever controversial elk and deer man-

agement may be, predatory animals stir evengreater emotions. As humans, we haven’t beenable to reach consensus on them at all.

Early on, perhaps, there was more clarityof purpose: Kill them. The first wildlife-relatedlaws in New Mexico were not about preservingbison or elk or deer, but provided for bountieson the heads of predatory animals that did orjust might prey on livestock. Killing predatorsto protect prey species, such as deer, elk or big-horns, was an afterthought at first but later tookon significant importance and commanded sub-stantial resources.

An early sign of changing attitudes camein 1971, when the New Mexico Legislature, atthe behest of then-State Representative and laterState Game Commission Chairman Jamie Koch,gave the mountain lion status as a protectedgame animal. That removed its varmint statusand gave the commission authority to limit takethrough closed seasons, bag limits and restric-tions against traps and poisons.

The Mexican wolf restoration project nowunderway in southeastern Arizona and south-western New Mexico is an even more vivid signof evolving perceptions about large predators.Although still strongly opposed by stockmen andsome hunters, a much more urbanized citizenryas a whole supports the action. The current StateGame Commission voted last year to supportthe effort, as well.

A few wildlife advocates suggest a similarproject for grizzly bears. That would be evenmore controversial. Grizzly bears, whose aggres-siveness and livestock depredations were nottolerated, were gone in the early 1930s; the lastone was taken out of the Black Range.

Lobos and grizzlies were eliminated, andthe federal government, state wildlife agency,ranchers, farmers and hunters kept the pressureon mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats and goldeneagles. Predator bounties were common, and thestate agency employed or contracted with trap-pers and hunters to pursue predators.

The agency’s 1941 annual report is typical:It lists 29 mountain lions, 464 bobcats, 1,745coyotes, 439 skunks, 113 foxes, 168 eagles, 161hawks, 52 owls, and 388 “miscellaneous” astaken by employees and contractors during thefiscal year.

“The outstanding feature of our predatorcontrol work was the payment of a $3.00 bountyon coyotes and a $2.00 bounty on bobcats takenin Catron County and a part of Sierra andSocorro Counties,” Warden Barker wrote.

Mountain lions nonetheless survived in re-mote areas, and coyotes were never endangeredby the trapping and shooting—there are in factby far more of the opportunistic canines across

a much wider range than in pre-European times.Predator control was part of virtually all

transplants and restocking efforts through mostof the agency’s history. It fell out of favor tem-porarily in the 1980s, but has now been rein-stated under limited circumstances. Mountainlion depredation on 31 desert sheep stocked inthe Ladron Mountains in 1992-93 accounted fora dozen of 16 documented deaths among thesheep. The choice was to abandon the restora-tion project or remove lions, and the agencychose the latter. A high, almost predator-prooffence protects the desert sheep at Red Rock, andany mountain lion or coyote that works its wayinto the enclosure will be killed.

Predator control’s use as a tool, however, islimited, focused, monitored and reviewed; pre-vailing public and agency attitudes would notallow a reversion to the broadcast approach ofthe past.

Exotic big gameNew Mexico’s varied experiences with im-

ported “exotic” game species began in the 1950s,when Elliott Barker traded a dozen pronghornantelope for a dozen Barbary sheep from south-eastern New Mexico rancher Joe McKnight’sprivate game park and turned them out in theCanadian River Canyon near Roy. Supple-mented by subsequent plantings, the Barbarysheep did fairly well and are still hunted, butthey also got into places where they are unwel-come. Their presence in the Guadalupe Moun-tains, for instance, precluded restocking of na-tive desert bighorns in that area.

Although Barker met little resistance at the

time, a subsequent and larger-scale projectspearheaded by Dr. Frank Hibben, chairman ofthe State Game Commission, created quite afirestorm in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Some of the resistance came from agencybiologists, but Hibben over-ruled them, said BillHuey, assistant director at the time.

“If we (the staff) had had the prerogative,we never would have had them, but Frank’s theone that had that prerogative. He ordered themand bought them, and when they got here itbecame our responsibility to identify what ef-fect they would have on other native wildlifeand what effect they would have on domesticlivestock on privately owned land,” Huey said.

The department evaluated seven species—oryx, Persian ibex, Siberian ibex, greater kudu,Armenian red sheep, markhor, and gazelle—at the Red Rock Wildlife area.

“We discarded the kudu. They couldn’t ac-commodate the cold. We discarded the Arme-nian red sheep because of the potentially ad-verse effect it would have on other sheep,” Hueysaid. Markhor and gazelle were also unsuitable.

Ultimately, the department released oryx onWhite Sands Missile Range, Persian (Iranian)ibex in the Florida Mountains and Siberian ibexin the Canadian River Canyon near Roy. TheSiberians apparently died out; the other twospecies thrived.

Both species, Huey believes, still providechallenging sport and can be contained andcontrolled through sport hunting.

JOHN CRENSHAW is a writer, outdoorsman, andretired chief of the Department of Game and FishPublic Information and Outreach Division.

(left)The New Mexico Legislature gavethe mountain lion status as aprotected game animal in 1971.

PHOTO: SCOTT BROWN

(below)A $3 bounty was offered for everycoyote killed in Catron County in 1941.


(below)Oryx, an African antelope,were brought to New Mexicoand released at White SandsMissile Range in the 1960sand early 1970s.


11

When I was growingup in Silver City in the 1970s,some kids there would brag aboutgoing far away into the desertbrush of the Bootheel to hunt jav-elinas. Now, because the kids madethe critters sound like fast, short-tempered man-killers, and becauseI’d never seen one, I figured javeli-nas were mythical, sort of like thosesnipes some guys tried to get me tohunt once.

Well, javelinas are real, butmany of the tales are not.

“They won’t charge you onsight. That’s a myth. The killer boar,that’s a myth,” said Pat Mathis,southwest area game manager forthe New Mexico Department ofGame and Fish. “They’re lots of funto hunt.”

“Most of the time they’re try-ing to get away from you,” saidGary Webb, a guide and outfitterat Lake Roberts, north of SilverCity. “People think there are wildpigs out here in New Mexico.They’re not even pigs, not in thesame family.”

A few years ago, when javeli-nas trouped through my parent’sland on the north end of Silver City,and when I darn near ran oversome while driving through theBlack Range, I learned they hadlousy eyesight and were increas-ingly common across the state.

“Through exaggerated tales ofthe peccary’s (a.k.a. javelina’s) fe-rociousness, it has been chargedthat peccaries will kill or injuredogs and that they are a menace to deer hunters in the dense brush,” the“Mammals of Texas” said. “It is true that encounters between peccariesand untrained dogs usually end with dead or crippled dogs, but it is alsotrue that in these battles the dog is always the aggressor, and any animalwill defend its life to the best of its ability when attacked. The peccary isabsolutely harmless to the range, to livestock and to people.”

Some gardeners and ranchers around Silver City and Portales mightdispute whether they’re harmless, because javelinas do root up gardenssometimes.

Scientists, hunters and guides have said javelinas are spreading north-ward and higher into the mountains. That’s good news for hunters, be-cause more javelinas means more opportunities to hunt them with bows,rifles and handguns. Javelina hunting is growing in popularity becausehunts usually are successful, and because the javelina season is duringthe off-season for other game. Guides say finding them is tricky but stalkingthem is easy.

Looks like a pig, acts like a pig, but…Now, javelinas do have big, spear-like canine teeth or tusks, hence

their name, and they do look like skinny, furry pigs. But they are notpigs. Javelinas are commonly known as collared peccary, and scientifi-cally known as Tayassu tajacu. The most obvious differences between ajavelina and a pig are that a javelina has three toes on its hind fee, whilea pig has four; it has straight canine teeth while a pig has curved ones;and it has a scent gland while a pig does not. Javelinas and pigs alsohave a different number of teeth, different kinds of stomachs; and unlikepigs, javelinas don’t sweat. According to the National Park Service, anadult javelina weighs between 40 and 60 pounds and its coat is a grayishblack, except for a whitish collar over the mane and shoulders. Males

and females are about the samesize and color.

Javelinas eat mostly plants,such as roots, fruit, cactus pads,acorns, grasses and other greens.They will eat small animals if theopportunity arises, according tosome reports. They eat pricklypear cacti for water until rain fallsor other water is available.

Javelinas can breed anytime,but most often give birth aroundthe rainy season, in May, June orJuly. Twins are common, butbroods vary from one to five. Theyrun in loose herds of six or more,and each herd has its own terri-tory of a few hundred acres. Likemany hot-climate animals, javeli-nas start browsing about day-break, seek shade in canyons or inbrush as the day heats up, thensearch for food again as the sunsinks. In the worst heat, they mayfeed at night.

Javelinas communicate withbarks to bring the herd together,woofs to alert the herd to danger,grunts to their young, andgrumbles and teeth-clicks in fightsor aggression.

“I heard them approachingseveral minutes before they ap-peared at the (stock) tank,” an ob-server in Arizona wrote in 1956,“their grunting and clicking ofhooves on the trail carrying for agreat distance.” Seventeen of thecritters appeared at the tank, ac-cording to the observer’s report inThe Mammals of Arizona. “Some

went to drink while others went for the salt lick, and still others keptwatch. Drinking and salting seemed to be an orderly activity, whereasthe individuals feeding in the environs of the tank were often quarrel-some and fights were frequent though of short duration. The sight andsound of javelina drinking, gnawing salt, rooting, crunching and rub-bing against trees reminded me of domestic hogs in a barnyard.”


��Peculiar peccaries are fun to hunt, good to eat

BY STEVE SHOUP

Lora Federici hiked and glassed for several hours before makinga perfect shot to bag her javelina in southwestern New Mexico.

PHOTO: DAN WILLIAMS

If a javelina’shair isstandingon end,it is eitherangry orstartled.

PHOTO:ANDREW

SANDOVAL


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Range expanding northJavelinas live all over

Mexico and Central Amer-ica and as far south as Ar-gentina. For a long time, thenorthern limit of their rangewas believed to be southernArizona, southwestern NewMexico with a patch nearHobbs, and within a hun-dred or so miles of the RioGrande in Texas. Evidencesuggests their range hasbeen expanding north sinceabout the time Europeansarrived in the Southwest.Studies of archeologicalsites and Native Americanstories show no evidence of javelinas in Arizona until about the 1700s,according to the Web site, JavelinaHunter.com. Some evidence places thejavelina in a few spots in Texas in the 1600s, but they didn’t becomecommon until the 1700s.

Now scientists say the critter has spread over the Texas line into Okla-homa, and up the western side of New Mexico, with repeated sightingsand even carcasses found on the Zuni Indian Reservation in McKinleyCounty, according to the December issue of the Southwest Naturalist.

State game officials and hunting guides also say the range has ex-panded. The Department of Game and Fish has received reports of javeli-nas around Quemado, near Roswell and just south of Portales, said JimStuart, a department mammalogist in Santa Fe. A rancher near Clovisreported javelinas tearing up land there early last year, but that couldhave been a feral pig causing the trouble. Escaped pet or farm pigs havebeen reported in nearby Texas, but javelinas may be around there, too.

“They seem to be on the move,” Stuart said. “I think that’s the inter-esting aspect of it. They may be occupying more and more of New Mexicojust over the last decade or so. It looks like they are at least occurringintermittently across the eastern part of the state.”

Stuart said a department employee reported finding a road-killjavelina near Emory Pass, which is more than 8,000 feet high alongthe Sierra-Grant county line. That’s not far from where I saw a couple afew years ago in the fairly high-up pinon-juniper-ponderosa transitionnear Gallinas Canyon.

Webb, down in the Gila National Forest, said he found javelinas inhis chicken coop once. They didn’t get any chickens but, “They’re kind oftough on gardens. They root like a pig.”

“They keep getting farther and farther north and higher in elevationwith all these mild winters we’ve been having,” Webb said. “You seethem in places you didn’t see them 10 years ago. We’ve seen them up inthe aspens just in the last couple of years.”

By the way, if a javelina is causing trouble on your land, you can’tshoot it as you can a destructive coyote, Stuart said. It’s a regulated gameanimal, so contact your local game officer to handle a nuisance critter.

Fun to hunt, good to eatHunters find javelinas to be challenging game that also can be good

eating. Bagging a javelina can be a bit tricky, but a weekend or three-dayhunt usually pays off.

“They’re actually easy to hunt because they have real poor eyesight.But they have a good nose,” said Tom Klumker, owner of San FranciscoRiver Outfitters near Glenwood. The groups he’s guided have close to a100 percent success rate over three days, he said. Even kids have goodluck.

“It’s gotten more popular. We’re seeing abig increase in the number of people wantingto hunt,” Klumker said. “We had an 11-year-old boy who shot one with a bow, basically atpoint-blank range.”

Klumker said it’s best to aim for the chest.A well-placed shot can drop a javelina in itstracks, but one that’s a bit off can mean a hiketo retrieve your trophy. The javelina the boyhit with an arrow ran about 80 yards beforedropping, while another one hit by an arrowwent 120 yards.

“We’ve taken them with a .22 Magnumhandgun, but that’s when you get close,”Klumker said. “It’s a challenge to find them.You have to do a lot of glassing; their num-bers are scattered. It takes a lot of hunting.”

Some javelina hunters use muzzle-load-ers or larger-caliber handguns with success,Mathis said.

Drew Olmsted of Albuquerque is also abow hunter who has gotten antelope, deer, elkand turkey with arrows over the years, buthasn’t dropped a javelina.

“They’re not as easy as some people leadyou to believe,” Olmsted said. “They’re start-ing to become my favorite animal to hunt.They’re just intriguing animals. They’re con-stantly bickering at each other, tusking eachother. I really enjoy watching them. I thinkthese things survive on blind luck. They runaround with their heads down to the groundand they don’t pay attention. As long as youdon’t do anything to startle them, you shouldbe able to get one.”

��, continued from page 11

(above)Javelinas occasionallywill feed at night,especially during thehot summer months.

PHOTO: CHARLIE PAINTER

(right)Javelinas movearound in familygroups, looking forroots, bulbs, grasses, and cacti to eat.

PHOTO: WHITNEY SHOUP

13

1�� 2�� Names: Javelina, Spanish for javelin or spear apparently for their razor-sharp tusks, aremembers of the Tayassuidae family. They also are often called collared peccary or muskhogs. Peccary is believed to be a native Brazilian word meaning “many paths throughthe woods.”

Description: Adult javelinas weigh 35 to 60 pounds and measure 20 to 24 inches inheight and 40 to 60 inches from snout to tail. They have large heads, thin legs and thick,black and gray fur with a whitish “collar” and a mane that extends down the crown ofthe head to the rump. They have lousy eyesight, good hearing and have been clockedrunning up to 35 mph.

Not pigs: Although they look similar to pigs, peccaries are classified in their own family,Tayassuidae, while pigs are classified as members of the Suidae family. Peccaries aresmaller than pigs and have only three toes on their hind feet, while pigs have four toes.Unlike pigs, peccaries have a potent musk gland on the top of their rump, which theyuse to mark territory and identify members of their packs.

Food: Agave and prickly pear cacti, roots, fruits, insects, bulbs, beans and berries.

Habitat: Mostly desert country with an abundance of cacti, but they also occur in moun-tain foothills, canyons and cliffs. In New Mexico, javelinas most commonly are found inthe southwestern part of the state. In Central and South America the chaco peccaryand white-lipped peccary are found in tropical rainforests.

Behavior: Peccaries normally form herds of six to 12 animals, although herds of asmany as 50 have been seen. They can’t avoid overheating by panting, so they tend tofeed and travel in cooler times of the day during the summer. They are very territorialand will fend off intruders by clattering their teeth, charging, biting and sometimeslocking jaws. The dominant male does all the breeding, which occurs year-round. Fe-males reach sexual maturity at 8 to 14 months and give birth to 1 to 5 young after agestation period of about 145 days. Main predators are coyotes, mountain lions andbobcats.

Say what? Peccaries snort, squeal, bark, growl and rattle their teeth.

Field dressing a javelina is much like dress-ing any other game mammal, but there’s no needto hang and bleed the carcass as the huntingwound and gutting will drain most of the blood.Watch for the musk gland on the back rear, anddon’t cut it to avoid spoiling the meat, hunterssaid. The gland comes off intact during skin-ning. Don’t nick the bladder, and be aware thatjavelinas sometimes carry parasites such asroundworms, tapeworms, lice, ticks, fleas andmites. Take care to avoid contaminating your-self.

Opinions on javelina flavor vary. “I don’t like to eat it,” Webb said. “Maybe

I’m particular. I get a lot of elk meat given tome.”

“To me, it’s marginal,” Klumker said, “butsome people like it.”

“I like to barbecue it,” Mathis said. “Itmakes good stew meat; I like to fry it up. Thehams and shoulders are good, but the ribs areso-so.”

This year’s javelina hunting seasons gener-ally occur between Jan. 15 and March 31. Thestate issued 2,000 licenses, including youth li-censes. The deadline for license application wasApril 9, so if you’re interested, try next year.Meanwhile, there’s nothing stopping you fromlearning more about the beasts and improvingyour stalking and weapons skills.

STEVE SHOUP is a hunter, fisherman and outdoorwriter living in Albuquerque.

(above)A full-grown 60-pound peccaryis a heavy load through therocky canyons and hills ofNew Mexico’s boot heel region.

PHOTO: DAN WILLIAMS

(right)There are three types of peccariesin North and South America:the collared peccary (above),the white-lipped peccary and thechaco peccary.

PHOTO: NM DEPARTMENT OF GAME AND GISH


sired to sustain ferrets, but recent thinking is that ferrets maybe able to persist on smaller colonies.” Vermejo Park cur-rently has 3,000 acres of black-tailed prairie dog colonies onthe prairie and about 1,500 acres of Gunnison’s prairie dogsin the mountains.

Long and the Turner Endangered Species Fund are work-ing to change that. Long insists that his main challenge as aferret biologist is to raise and look after prairie dogs. AtVermejo, he works primarily with black-tailed prairie dogs,once candidates for listing as threatened or endangered un-der the Endangered Species Act. He catches them to feed tohis captive ferrets. He protects them against the plague andother diseases. When he needs more prairie dogs to augmentor build colonies, he traps them on neighbors’ property andbrings them home. Neighboring ranchers don’t mind at all.

“We’ve allowed Dustin to live-trap prairie dogs for hisoperation for the past three years now, and we’re happy tohave him,” said Roy Sauble of the 5,000-acre SL Ranch. Hesaid Long trapped about 400 prairie dogs last year from threecolonies that need thinning out now and then.

“I don’t mind having a few prairie dogs around, but Ilike to keep everything within reason,” Sauble said. “I’vehad some people out here shooting them, and I have at timesdone some poisoning. I enjoy seeing them, but we’re also

trying to run a ranch.” The ferrets, he said, don’t worry himmuch as long as their status as an “experimental” popula-tion doesn’t change. That status allows biologists like Longmore flexibility in their endangered species research and re-moves the possibility of harsh restrictions should a ferret turnup in a neighboring rancher’s pasture.

“The challenge for us is to ensure that ferrets can coex-ist with other land uses and not impose restrictions onlandowners,” said Mike Lockhart, the U.S. Fish and WildlifeService ferret recovery coordinator. “We don’t want ferretsimposing any hardships on landowners who don’t wantthem. The reality is that the ferret recovery program wouldnever have gotten off the ground without partnerships andcooperation with states and local folks.”

Bright green eyesFrom April through September, Long spends most of his

time at night in the field, living among the prairie dogs, fer-rets, foxes, rattlesnakes and other critters that populate theshortgrass prairie of northern New Mexico. His tent over-looks an 800-acre colony of about 10,000 black-tailed prairiedogs guarded by an electric fence powerful enough to dis-courage a bison and knock a grown man to his knees. “Itsort of keeps everything contained,” Long explained as hecarefully opened the gate to his experimental ferret “nurs-ery.” “It also helps keep me from getting lost in the dark.”

On this night, Long’s objective was to use a spotlightand an ATV to find the ferrets, which had mysteriously van-ished a few days before. Worst-case scenario: a family of swiftfoxes had been hanging around the area and might be preyingon the ferrets—either to eat or to eliminate as competitors.

“Look for bright green eyes,” Long said as he swept hisbeam over the colony, spotlight in one hand, steering wheelin the other. “The ferrets are hard to miss – if they’re out.”But after a dusk-to-dawn search, the results were discour-aging. The only green eyes spotted that night belonged tofast-moving foxes, which also like to ambush prairie dogs intheir sleep.

Long inspected a prairie-dog burrow that had been takenover by ferrets a few weeks before and noted that its en-trance had been plugged with dirt. “The prairie-dogs do thatduring the daytime,” he explained. “They don’t like ferrets,so they plug their holes. Usually, the ferrets just dig them-selves out at night. Tonight, maybe they decided to stayinside.”

A few nights later, Long found the ferrets a few hun-dred yards away, “moving around, being ferrets.” For awhile, at least, they were the first black-footed ferrets to roamwild and free in New Mexico since 1930, when soon-to-beState Game Warden Elliot Barker trapped one near CastleRock on the Vermejo Park Ranch.

Ferrets in New Mexico?With its sprawling 60,000 acres of contiguous shortgrass

prairie, Vermejo Park might appear to be an ideal location asa permanent release site. Chuck Hayes, an endangered spe-cies biologist with the New Mexico Department of Game andFish, said such a project could contribute to ferret recovery.The major question is whether even that much property couldsupport enough prairie dogs to accommodate a viable popu-lation of ferrets.

“It’s not out of the question to think we could one dayhave self-sustainable populations of black-footed ferrets inNew Mexico,” Hayes said. “The challenge is finding prairiedog colonies that are large enough. We won’t meet the 10,000-acre threshold that was initially established as what is de-

Partnersconservingendangeredspecies

Black-tailedprairie dogscomprise 90percent offerrets’ diet.

PHOTO: LANCE CHERRY

Biologist Dustin Long inspects a female ferretat the Turner Endangered Species Fund’scaptive breeding facility.

��continued from page 1

15

All about prairie dogsOn the Vermejo, prairie dogs are never shot, never poi-

soned. Long said they are Ted Turner’s favorites, and theyshare the shortgrass prairie with bison, antelope, deer, elk,burrowing owls and dozens of species of native predatorsand other wildlife. Long would like to see ferrets added tothe mix.

“But really, before you can take care of the ferrets, youhave to take care of the prairie dogs,” he said. “They’re thekeystone species; they belong out here. They’re good for thesoil, the grasses… and just about everything out here eatsthem. There’s one example now.” He pointed to a ferrugi-nous hawk patiently sitting next to a prairie dog mound.“That’s how most of them hunt,” he explained. “Instead offlying overhead where the prairie dogs can see them andsound the alarm, they just stand there next to the hole. Whenthe prairie dog pokes his head out for a look around, thehawk grabs him.”

Large colonies of prairie dogs are essential to sustain ahealthy ferret population. Prairie dogs comprise 90 percentof a ferret’s diet, and provide ferrets with homes. That de-pendence, Long says, is the greatest threat to the ferrets’ sur-vival as a species. One large outbreak of plague or caninedistemper can wipe out entire colonies of prairie dogs – andferrets along with them.

“Our whole program is touch-and-go, always has been,”Long said.

Ferret biologists hope a new $8 million Black-footed Fer-ret Conservation Center, a breeding facility in Wellington,Colo., will help bolster efforts to increase wild ferret popula-tions and eventually take the animals off the endangeredspecies list.

“But we have a long, long way to go,” recovery coordi-nator Lockhart said. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’rerunning out of suitable habitat in North America. It takesvery large tracts of land to sustain viable ferret populations,and we just don’t have the huge expanses of public landsthat can be used.”

Lockhart and Marinari said they see potential in large,privately owned properties like Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranchfor future ferret releases, but most don’t have enough prairiedogs. For now, Marinari said, Vermejo’s biggest contributionto ferret restoration is Long’s successful experiment.

“Using a small prairie dog town as a nursery site pro-vides a new spark, a new slant on ferret reintroduction,” hesaid.

��Names: Black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes) aremembers of a group of carnivorous mammals knownas mustelids. Relatives include the mink, weasel,skunk, badger and otter. All mustelids have scentglands under their tails.

Description: Unlike domestic ferrets, which are ofEuropean origin, black-footed ferrets are an endan-gered species native to North America. They are 18-24 inches long, weight up to 2 ½ pounds and haveshort, sleek fur that is pale yellow to tan to white,with nearly white faces, black face masks and blackfeet.

Habitat: Historically, shortgrass prairie from south-ern Canada to the U.S.-Mexico border, wherever prai-rie dogs were found. They eat, sleep and raise theiryoung in prairie dog burrows. Today, they have beenreintroduced to the wild in Wyoming, South Dakota,Montana, Arizona and Mexico.

Behavior: Ferrets spend 90 percent of their time un-derground and are primarily nocturnal. They are lessactive in winter, but do not hibernate. They eat oneprairie dog about every three days, can run 5 to 7mph, and usually only live three to four years in thewild. Their predators include coyotes, foxes, badgers,bobcats, owls, hawks, eagles and rattlesnakes.

Breeding: Black-footed ferret babies, called kits, areborn in the spring and stay below ground for twomonths. By 100 days, they are independent enoughto establish their own territories. Male ferrets play nopart in raising the litters, which average three to fourkits in size.

Say what? Ferrets chatter, bark, hiss and squeak. Maleferrets “chortle” to females during breeding.

Source: Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program,www.blackfootedferret.org.

(left)Black-footed ferrets spend90 percent of their time underground.

(below)Adult black-footed ferrets are18 to 24 inches longand weigh about 2 ½ pounds.

(below)Black-footed

ferrets eat oneprairie dog

about everythree days.


Making sense of fish...

IIIII Fishy eyesVision is not one of the strongest senses for

fish. Most fish are nearsighted and can see onlyabout 10 to 20 feet. Fish may be able to see onlya few inches away if the water is murky. Theeyes of fish are on the sides of their heads. Theireyes cannot open or close because they have noeyelids. Fish are able to use each eye on its ownand can see almost all around them, includingabove. A good angler will remember this andtry not to be seen by the fish. Fish such as blue-gill, trout and minnows that feed during the dayhave fairly good vision and can see a range ofcolors because there is sunlight in the water.Night feeders such as walleye and crappie can seewell when there is not much light, partly becausethey have very large eyes that can capture morelight. However, they cannot see colors.

IIIII Hidden earsFish have tiny ears that are buried under

the skin on both sides of their heads. Fish earsare made up of bones called otoliths. The earbones vibrate with pressure created by soundwaves in the water. The vibrations wiggle smallhairs in the fish’s ears, sending a sound mes-sage to the brain of the fish. Otoliths can be dis-sected out of a fish and put under a microscope.White rings are visible and the number of ringscan tell you how old the fish is.

IIIII Something smells fishy!The sense of smell is very important for fish.

Fish nostrils are called nares. Fish have super-sensitive sensors that lie just behind the nares.These sensors can smell even the slightest odor.Fish use smell to find food, to sense danger andto find their way to distant spawning areas,where their eggs are laid and hatched. Millionsof smell receptors inside the nostrils pass smell

signals to the brain. Salmon of the Pacific North-west travel long distances from their birth sitesin cold mountain streams to live as adults in theocean and then return to the same streams oftheir births. They use their sense of smell to findtheir way to the same spawning grounds wheretheir lives began.

IIIII Tasty bitesFish can taste using tongues that are cov-

ered with taste buds. Some fish have taste budscovering other parts of their bodies, such as fins,faces, even areas near their tails. These fish cantaste food before taking it into their mouths.Most fish have taste buds on their mouth, lipsand tongues. Walleyes have taste buds in theirfaces, so they do not have to open their mouthsto taste. Snapping or biting at tasty bait is anautomatic reflex in most fish. This is becausetheir taste buds are wired to areas of the brainthat operate reflexes, or physical responses andmovements.

Catfish win the prize for tasting becausetheir bodies are covered from head to tail withtaste buds. We could call them swimmingtongues. Catfish have whisker-like barbels ontheir faces that are covered with taste buds. Theyhave 100,000 taste buds, while humans haveonly 10,000. Catfish drag their barbels along lakebottoms as they search for food. Catfish can findfood that is far away even in murky water.

IIIII “Magic” touchFish have a receptive system called the lat-

eral line that detects vibrations and pressure.Humans can sense things through touch. Thelateral line provides a kind of touch sense forfish. The lateral line begins just behind the headand runs along each side of a fish’s body. Thelateral line is covered with tiny, sensitive hair-like nerve endings known asneuromasts. As fish move throughthe water, the water is pushed,causing the hairs of the neuro-masts to vibrate. A signal is sent tothe brain, aiding the fish’s sense ofhearing. Fish can detect somethingin their way as the hairs sense un-derwater sounds, the speed of wa-ter currents and pressure wavesthat build up as the fish movesthrough the water. The lateral linehelps fish travel through murkywater, find food, travel at night,stay together in a school, or group, avoid enemiesand even sense water depth and temperature.

Project WILD Aquatic activities for teachersand students that correlate to this topic in-clude the following:

· Fishy Who’s Who· Fashion a Fish· Seeing is Believing!· Sockeye Scents

For more information on Project WILD work-shops, contact Colleen Welch, New MexicoDepartment of Game and Fish, (505) 476-8119, or Kevin Holladay, (505) 476-8095.

LOOK! THE FISH ARE JUMPING. Thinking of the easy catch,you run around, shouting to your friends as you grab your fishing rodand cast a big, juicy worm right into the center of the pond. Fifteenminutes have gone by… 20, 30 minutes. You have not caught a fishafter many casts. What is wrong? Why didn’t the fish bite? Did thefish see you or hear you?

Want to catch a fish? Knowing how fish see, hear, taste, feel andsmell can help you become a better angler—a person who goes fishing.Eyes, ears, nose and mouth—how do fish sense their watery world?

Now that you have a sense of fish senses,remember that it is important to be as quiet aspossible when fishing. Fish can hear you scrapeyour tackle box along the deck of a boat. Fishcan sense your heavy footsteps along the bank.Some fish can see you and hear you before youeven cast your bait out into the water, so be care-ful where you stand and shout. The fish youwant to catch will sense the vibration of thewiggling worm on your hook and just mighttake a bite. Happy fishing!

COLLEEN WELCH is Co-coordinator forConservation Education and Project WILDfor the Department of Game and Fish.

Crappies’ large eyeshelp them find food at night.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: LANCE CHERRY

Catfish “whiskers” or barbels, are sensitive to touchand covered with taste buds.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: SCOTT BROWN

A “lateral line” of sensitivenerve endings along their sidehelps fish feel their way throughmurky water, find food, and swim

together in schools.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: LANCE CHERRY

C

Sensible fishA watery world of sight,

taste, smell, touch and soundBY COLLEEN WELCH

Documents

Volume-50 Number-3 Fall 2005