The Coues deer has been a critical food source for residents of the Borderlands for millennia. In the past, hunters armed with bows and arrows would bathe and then fumigate themselves with the smoke of plants to cover their scent. Using stealth, and sometimes disguised in the skin and heads of deer, they would approach to within just a few yards of an animal before loosing their arrows. Modern hunters armed with rifles or powerful compound bows carry on the tradition of deer hunting today. As the sun starts to rise on the opening day of Coues whitetail deer season in the Atascosas, fingers of light spread across the ground, and a series of shots echo off distant hills.
The first hunt of the year tends to be the most successful; drawing the early tag can take years of applying through the Arizona Game and Fish lottery system. Early in the season, the animals are less wary and more predictable; their patterns can be observed and noted on scouting trips before the hunt begins. Hunters have come to Game Unit 36B, the Atascosa Highlands, from around the country, and every pullout on Ruby Road is packed with the tents, trucks, and RVs of eager people hoping to see the wiry frame of a Coues deer cross the glass of their binoculars. This unit has some of the highest density of the Coues whitetail deer anywhere in the world. Rough terrain, diverse food sources, and scattered water holes make this an ideal habitat for this elusive animal known as the “gray ghost.”
C.B.R. Kennerly Surgeon and Naturalist, US-Mexico Boundary Survey, 1895
In the valley of the Santa Cruz and the adjacent country we found them in such numbers as to influence the belief that a few skillful hunters might have supplied our entire party with fresh meat. During our stay at Los Nogales in the month of June, particularly the latter part, the heat during the day was quite oppressive, and the valleys of the streams with their thick undergrowth affording a good protection from the rays of the sun were the favorite places of resort for these animals. Very early in the morning, they were found feeding on the hills but retired under the shelter of the bushes about ten o’clock, after which time they could be killed as easily as rabbits by the hunter passing through the undergrowth with a gun charged with buckshot.White-tailed deer are widespread in the Americas, occupying habitats ranging from Andean mountain ranges and Florida swamps, to frigid Canadian tundra, and the rugged sky islands of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. Because of their broad distribution and adaptability to local conditions, numerous forms, varieties, and subspecies have been recognized at various times, with one of the best known being the Coues whitetail deer found in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Though numbers vary between periods of drought and relative abundance, there are estimated to be around 80,000 to 100,000 Coues deer in Arizona, roaming the mountains in the pocket where the state borders New Mexico and Sonora. The fur of the Coues deer is ideally suited for camouflage against the gray stone cliffs and shady woodlands they haunt in their search for food, water, and mates.
On winter mornings, Coues deer can be seen making their way down brushy slopes covered in oaks (Quercus sp.) or ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens). Crosslight cast by the rising sun gleams on their gray-brown fur and iconic white tails as they make their down to shady canyons to wait out the heat of the day. Naturally nervous and alert, Coues deer are constantly looking up from their feeding to glance furtively around while swiveling their ears and sniffing the breeze. At the first sign of danger, they will sprint surefootedly across the most difficult terrain, reaching speeds of up to 35 miles per hour as they bound through impenetrable canyon brush, bound up boulder-strewn slopes, and disappear over distant ridgelines, with the white of their tail the last you see of them.
Coues deer use hundreds of different plant species for forage and shelter. These enigmatic creatures require a habitat stocked with a diverse floristic larder of foliage, flowers, and fruits that appear at different times of year. Spreading monocultures of invasive species are a potential threat to these deer, but the rugged and varied topography they inhabit acts as a buffer against the dominance of any single plant species.
One of the primary arguments put forth in favor of hunting is that hunters fund conservation by purchasing licenses and tags while also paying taxes on firearms and ammunition and making private donations to conservation-oriented hunting organizations. In Arizona, the sales of licenses and fees related to hunting and fishing account for over one-third of the budget of the state Game and Fish Department, while most of the remainder comes from money derived from casinos, the state lottery, and federal grants. A large portion of the money that comes to the state from federal grants has been raised by excise taxes, such as those levied by the Pittman-Robertson Act. The Pittman-Robertson Act was enacted in 1937 in response to the precipitous decline of wildlife populations around the United States. Some of the leading advocates for this act were hunters and hunting organizations lobbying to tax themselves to preserve wildlife for the benefit of the hunting and non-hunting public alike. This act taxes retailers that sell items such as guns, ammunition, and archery gear that is necessary for hunting. However, in the United States, the vast majority of people who purchase guns and ammo are not using them to hunt animals, which means that today, over 70% of Pittman-Robertson funds are generated by non-hunters. However, the act specifies that to receive funds, the states must pass legislation earmarking Pittman-Robertson money for the operations of state wildlife agencies, which spend the majority of those funds on conservation activities. So while hunters make up only one of several contributors to Pittman-Robertson funding, the act is crucial to state wildlife agencies’ activities and existence. Hunting-focused NGOs in Arizona, such as Duck’s Unlimited, Southern Arizona Quail Forever, and The Arizona Deer Association, are also players in wildlife conservation in the form of direct habitat improvements and lobbying of state and federal agencies. Drawing on a different funding base, these organizations often have overlapping interests with non-hunting-related conservation groups who also seek to protect habitat. This system of using hunting and angling to fund wildlife conservation on public land through state agencies is commonly known as the North American Model of Conservation (NAM). This system is touted as one of the most effective wildlife management strategies in the world because of the way it invests hunters and anglers in the conservation of the animals they harvest. However, not everyone agrees that the NAM is the best way forward for species conservation.
Mandy Culbertson Wildlife for All
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, or the NAM, is a set of principles that essentially apply to wildlife conservation and management, in the United States and, usually Canada, too. And depending on who you talk to, the NAM is either a historical account of how wildlife has been conserved in North America, or a prescriptive model for how wildlife should be managed and conserved in the future, or both. The problem that we see at Wildlife for All is that the NAM falls short as either thing. It is an incomplete framing of history, which always downplays the contributions of non-hunters and glosses over the fact that the model doesn’t actually address the crisis we’re facing. The mass extinction crisis and the loss of biodiversity, and it’s an inadequate set of guidelines for even just a good definition of conservation, in my opinion, for preserving ecosystems and species. Nonetheless, it has been very widely embraced within hunting and traditional wildlife management communities.AZGFD has staff dedicated to non-game animals such as reptiles and amphibians, but critics argue that the Department is overly focused on managing animals for hunting and fishing rather than for their intrinsic or ecological value. In its original form, the Pittman-Roberston act didn’t define what species were covered by the term “wildlife”, but the federal Fish and Wildlife Service eventually stated that funds were to be used specifically for the conservation of mammals and birds. Freezes on federal conservation spending under the Trump administration highlight the importance of dedicated funding sources to insulate these agencies from the vagaries of political regime change. However, it also incentivizes these agencies to cater particularly to those groups that provide much of their operating budget. The decline in numbers of hunters and anglers nationally is a funding liability to state game agencies and the populations of animals they manage.
AJ Lander Arizona Game and Fish Department
We use hunting as a conservation tool, right? Sometimes it happens where maybe a species is overpopulated or underpopulated and we can adjust tag numbers. We can adjust take opportunity for hunting to adjust wildlife numbers and impacts. There are a lot of areas that are protected and conserved because of the wildlife resources there, right? And it’s important not just to hunters, it’s important to people to protect these areas. So we have so much public land, we have so much back country and beautiful areas like we’re in now that people don’t want to mess with, don’t want to go in and industrialize, because of the wildlife resources.Mandy Culbertson Wildlife For All
Relying on these licenses and these taxes actually creates a financial incentive for state wildlife agencies to just prioritize game species over non-game species and broader ecosystem health. And that, I think, is a deep failing of the North American model that gets me to this point. We just have a lot more understanding of holistic ecosystem-level science now. We understand how biodiversity is so important not just to the intrinsic value of these species but also for our survival on this planet as humans. That kind of single species focus, the bias towards financially valuable species can often lead to management decisions that prioritize those species over actual ecosystem health decisions that would prioritize biodiversity protection and you see that play out a lot with the loss of funding and attention for non-game species and the demonization that is applied to carnivorous species, for instance, right? Coyotes, mountain lions, et cetera. And, you know, these models, these ways of thinking are so outdated, and they’re absolutely failing at the base metrics of what modern science is calling for.Organizations such as Wildlife For All (WFA) advocate for the "public trust doctrine," which states that all animals should be given equal consideration in state and federal management decisions and that wildlife should be managed as a public trust for all members of the public, not just hunters. WFA argues that the North American Conservation Model’s focus on game animals limits funding for other species, threatening other animals that are critically important to the same ecosystems that support commonly hunted animals. Aside from a lack of focus on animals such as reptiles, amphibians, and non-game mammals, critics contend that an obsessive focus on game animals has led to ill-informed and cruel predator eradication programs that have had a negative impact on both predators and the prey animals these actions are supposed to protect.
Mandy Culbertson Wildlife for All
So the public trust doctrine is basically an alternative framework to what we would call the status quo philosophy of wildlife management. And it’s more compatible with, I would say, modern ecological and societal goals. It is a legal doctrine with its roots in Roman and English common law, and it holds that nature, including wildlife, is a public trust that the government has a fiduciary duty to protect, for the benefit of its citizens, including those people who are not yet born. And when we talk about fiduciary duty, we’re saying a duty to prudently manage and preserve the trust solely for the benefit of those beneficiaries. When we talk about public trust in the U.S., we’re talking about the beneficiaries being all people, not just the people who are outdoor recreation users, who are hunters, who are fishers, anglers, you know, wildlife is a public trust for everyone in this country, whether they care about wildlife deeply or not.Anna Prescott Hunter
I think it’s probably the prettiest unit of all the 36’s. You know, I see in my head, like, I see the rolling hills, big mountains in the distance. And then you think, Mexico’s right over there. That’s pretty cool. It’s got a lot of really fun vegetation that I love. It’s less prickly, and you know, full of wildlife. Full of mule deer, Coues deer. I saw a mountain lion last time I was there. He just ran in front of the truck.Concern that declining numbers of hunters will lead to future budget shortfalls, many state wildlife agencies have turned to efforts called R3 (Recruit, Retain, Reactivate) to cultivate the next generation of hunters and reach new demographics. AZGFD and other independent groups fund recruitment efforts such as women’s and youth hunt camps, but retaining these hunters can be particularly challenging.
The allocation of Pittman-Robertson funds to R3 efforts is controversial, in that it diverts funding from direct wildlife conservation, but advocates for the system contend that it ensures a stable source of funding for the future. The majority of the hunters in Arizona, and nationwide, are overwhelmingly male, white, and increasing and middle-aged. This lack of diversity in the declining population of hunters is seen as the most immediate threat to the future of hunting in Arizona. The percentage of Arizona’s population that purchases a hunting license is around 4-5%. With such a small minority of the population hunting, the concern is that the remaining 95-96% of Arizonans may develop an antipathy towards hunting that could precipitate anti-hunting legislation and initiatives.
Anna Prescott Hunter
For me personally, it’s also been, being a woman, you know? I did have a good community of people in California, but you’re still very much the minority, and the politics can be a big issue, I should say. Because people tend to think that you agree with them when you may not and they make a lot of assumptions and are often very vocal and I think that alienates especially a lot of women, people of color, that sort of thing. So I think that’s definitely a challenge for not just me but, you know, women in general. I mean, pretty much anytime I go into a gun store with a man, they don’t talk to me, they talk to the man. Whoever I’m with. You know that comes to mind immediately because, it’s just like, I don’t understand why if I’m looking to buy something, why don’t you just, you know, treat me like a customer who wants to buy stuff. I don’t want to get too much into politics, I guess, you know, it can be very, very awkward, especially, you know, I have, LGBTQ, I have lots of friends in that community. And a lot of the older people, older men, specifically, tend to just speak their minds without any regard to like who might be around them and they just say really pretty crude things like about people that are different from them and it makes people not want to continue to do these things.Pierre Mondat Hunter
I would say if you’re hunting whitetails, you’ve got a challenge all the time, okay? And like I said, 36B is just amazing because of the, you know, lack of cattle. And, you know, before white men came here this was unbelievable land. Okay. You know, they cut the hay for the military and everything. It would take 100 years of above average growth to get this land back to where it was when the white men got here. And, you know, my father was a rancher and all that. And I guess I should, uh, you know, but, I hate fucking cattle. Well, you can edit that I hope, but you know, if they would just turn everything back into a rangeland and sell permits to hunt, it would be a lot more money than raising cattle, cause, what, one and a half percent of the beef sold in the United States is raised on our land?John Henry Davis IV Hunter
Because of that public misconception about hunting, the idea that it’s a bunch of gun-toting rednecks out there tearing up the place, shooting at everything that moves, we can’t allow that to be our misrepresented image. You know, if you want to party around a campfire and things like that, that’s fine, but respect the land, respect nature, respect the animal, and respect the other people that are out there. Show them what you’re doing. Introduce them to what you’re doing. Don’t leave them with a bad taste in their mouth because you were doing something wrong. And it’s important to remember that those rules are there for a reason. If we don’t follow those rules, then we can be over harvesting animals and ruining opportunities for other people in the future. Not just ourselves, but other people in the future. Probably the most dangerous thing for the hunting and fishing public is we could easily lose our privileges to go and do this because of misconceptions.Daniel Kozlak Hunter
Hunting is so difficult. When people say it’s like unfair to harvest an animal with a gun, I sort of laugh because I know if I handed that person my rifle and told them to go kill a Coues deer, there’s almost no chance, right? That they’re actually going to get one. Success rates for people who hunt and actually try to get a Coues deer hover around, you know, 25%, you know, 15 to 30%, depending on the unit. So, you know, one out of four people get a deer, three out of four people do not. So hunting just teaches you resilience.Anna Prescott Hunter
I am very pro hunter for the most part. I think you do still sometimes meet some jackasses that kind of validate your preconceived notions. But there’s so much good in the hunting community. You know, there’s so much good that we do for animals. Everyone I’ve met so far loves animals. And that’s like, such a big thing to me because I love animals. You get to get so close to them, you can touch them, you know, you shoot them, you touch them respectfully. It’s just an experience you don’t get otherwise, you know, other people don’t get to go through this.Mandy Culbertson Wildlife for All
When we talk again about that North American model, this is an example of a prized game species, right? That really fuels that narrative that hunting is the primary way to value and conserve them. But when you only talk about it from that perspective, it overlooks their ecological role. And frankly, the broader conservation needs of the Sonoran ecosystem. These deer are naturally adapted to the desert environment in which they live. But they live in a finely tuned kind of healthy ecosystem with the mountain lions and other animals that live there. And really the challenges facing them, the broader ecosystem health challenges, are around our use of the land and our use of the water. You know, they need protection from habitat fragmentation from climate change and from extractive land use policies.Mandy Culbertson Wildlife for All
I would say that while the story of the gray ghost is powerful. It’s only one way to see the Coues deer. To us, their value goes far beyond hunting. They’re key players in the Sonoran ecosystem, you know, shaped by a millennia of evolution. And so I think it’s important when we talk about these deer to say that, you know, we have to move past the idea that hunting is the only way to respect these animals or to talk about protecting them because conservation should serve ecosystems first, not just the interest of a species or the interest of a user group who’s interested in a species.Daniel Kozlak Hunter
Most non-hunters, you sort of assume everyone that hunts is like a trophy hunter, whatever that means. Like generally, when you think trophy hunter, it’s someone that hunts just to take the horns or the antlers off of an animal and leaves the carcass to waste and then goes home and that’s it. And just brags about killing the animal. That couldn’t be further from the truth when you actually hunt. I don’t know of a single person in my life who has ever gone out and killed an animal only for the antlers or something like that. Like in Arizona, it’s illegal, right? To leave a carcass to waste. Like most hunting is complicated, there are many different reasons people hunt, not just because they want to brag about the antlers of an animal.John Henry Davis IV Hunter
A lot of people are focusing in on what they call the locavore movement. And the idea is you’re providing your own locally sourced food. So, it reduces your carbon footprint. You know where this animal came from. You know what it’s been eating. You look around here and you’ll see what it’s been eating. There’s no chemicals being sprayed on any of this. It’s not being injected with hormones or anything like that. It’s as close to organic as you can truly get and people like that.Armando Amada Jr. Hunter
Cause my family, my grandparents, I mean, they were poor, you know? Like I said, they didn’t have no money to go to the meat market and stuff like that. I mean, they were brought up hunting because, you know, that’s what Yaquis did. We hunted, Indians, Native Americans, you know, we hunted off our land. So that’s what I’m doing, I’m returning the favor. I’m hunting off the land that Mother Earth had, you know, created for us. Not just me, just for all of us.The gray ghost passes noiselessly between stunted oaks and rough-barked junipers. Somewhere in the hills nearby, a hunter’s breath catches as the deer appears, as if out of thin air, in the glass of a spotting scope. Over the millennia, this dance between humans and Coues deer has played out innumerable times. But in the era of climate change, habitat fragmentation, and changing cultural values, the tune must change to ensure the survival of both dancers in a drying land. When it was initially launched, the North American Model of Conservation was a radically progressive approach to wildlife management in a rapidly industrializing world. With new challenges arising, this model must be critically examined and reimagined to respond to changing realities. Like birdwatchers, hikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts, hunters have a vested interest in opposing the privatization of federal and state lands and the destruction of habitat by development and extractive land uses. At a time when federal and state lands are threatened by politicians and business entities who see these spaces as little more than sources of profit and tax revenue, it is more crucial than ever that conservationists of all stripes join together to preserve the ecological riches of the Borderlands. In the partnership of hunters, conservationists, and the deer themselves may lie a solution that allows all these groups to coexist and continue a practice dating back to the arrival of the earliest humans to reach the Atascosa Highlands.
Armando Amada Jr. Hunter
You know, I see the Coues deer, the Coues deer sees me and like I said, every time I do harvest an animal, I take tobacco from mother earth and I put tobacco on the deer as a thanks that the Creator had blessed me with this animal to feed my family. Once you start hunting them, I mean, they call it the Gray Ghost ‘cause once you see ‘em, you find, you try to find ‘em in the binoculars, they disappear like a gray ghost. They’re really good eating and it’s just the habitat that they live in. I mean, it’s just challenging to get to them. And it’s a beautiful animal. To the Yaqui culture, it represents the flower land, you know. So when you pass on, it’s kind of leading you to the right path to go to the flower world. That’s what my grandfather and grandmother had told me about that. It’s kind of like, hey, follow the deer, the deer is going to take you where you’re supposed to be.