Early December

We was going to go hunting this past weekend but the weather was really not good hunting weather. Now some will argue that there is not any bad hunting weather and they would be right most of the time. There was over 3 inches of rain which we really needed and we really need for it to rain another year or so, so that the lakes will fill up and the cracks in the land will heal.

Here is a report for the 3 segment hunt that wound up that weekend at Hagerman 

http://www.friendsofhagerman.com/images/userfiles/file/20111206204541_6_Arrowhead2011.pdf

           It is 11/29/11 and we, that is Morgan, Charlie and I have hunted for the first 3 weekends in November at this new lease. I have not seen anything to shoot at, Morgan has seen a few small bucks with nothing in range and Charlie was sitting in the stand and had a little 6 chasing a doe come through his area on the third weekend.  We did see one good buck on the tc’s in the swamp area.

I took a break from hunting the Thanksgiving weekend so that we could do some stuff around the house and I was getting to be a little tired from going out of town every weekend. Me and Morgan have been gone 5 out of the last 6 weekends before Thanksgiving.

I have tried to pattern the rut by reading different posts and I think it is around 11/10/11, which also happens to be the Harvest Moon. Now, for those that don’t know, the Harvest Moon is the 2^nd full moon after the fall equinox and many believe that is the moon that triggers the does to go into estrus.

Deer hunters believe many things and many believe the cold weather triggers the rut, I am not of this camp. I believe it is the amount of daylight combined with the light from the full moon that does this. This is a constant, it is always there year after year, the cold is not. Well some may say that the clouds can throw this theory out the window, but I say when it is cloudy during the day we can see without a flashlight and when it is cloudy during the night of the full moon you can tell there is some light in the sky.

Now we have 7 trail cam's out and there is a lot of anticipation to see what we have on there. A person can spend hours dissecting all the pics on these cams, it seems as though it can be as fun as hunting almost, just another element to the hunt.

Grayson County lease









  Charlie found a lease up in Grayson county with these 2 other guys. It is 500 acs. the majority of the property is pasture, it is split down the center from east to west with a blacktop road which it drains from the road to the north and south, there is a creek at the bottom of the north end that is part of the property line and there is also one down on the south end but I haven't made it down into that area yet.
This past weekend we put out Trail Cams (tc) when we were not hunting, we put out six and they are the ones that have the white pins.
Hunting up here in Grayson County is a lot tuffer than when we were down in Lampasas, down there there was a deer behind every bush it seemed like. Me and Morgan would see at least 6 deer and up to 10 deer a time when we gun hunted out of our blind. I told Morgan that he had been spoiled all these years from getting to hunt down there. but he got to shoot some deer and see what all was involved in a hill country lease.




  

The Crockett Hunt Part 2

We rolled out of Rockwall around 3pm, I had taken off a half a day to load stuff, and since no one was going to be home that weekend I had to pull Morgan out of school because I am not going to leave a teenager home alone.

We got down to the campsite a little after 7pm. When we got into the forest we drove down some roads that we have never been down before and got a little twisted around but I had a new app on my phone that was a topo map and we did ok. The smart phones are awesome when they are loaded with the app's that make life a little easier.

 

We slept in Saturday morning as we were looking for a new hunting site, so after we got up we went scouting for a spot. I had hunted in a spot last year but could not find it until Joe showed me where it was. It is loaded with acorns so we set up there to hunt. We hunted there Saturday afternoon and did not see anything. We feel like this will be a good spot . Last year there were scrapes all around it, but a fire had been there and all the small tree's used in the scrapes were gone, so we will have to do some more recon in the area.


Sunday morning around 4:45am the storm came in, I had woke up and heard the thunder so I went and got my phone from charging in the truck and pulled up the weather app. There was a big storm headed our way. Morgan woke up and asked about the storm so I gave everybody a weather report, and told Morgan that all we had to worry about was getting hit by lightning or a tree falling on us. The tree's were fairly small and the wind was blowing from the northwest  and the tree's did not appear to be affected by the wind, now the one's across the street did not have this look, they were leaning into the neighbors camp, but nothing happened. Sitting in a tent during a thunderstorm gives a person an appreciation for a home, the thunder is louder and the lightning is brighter. Needless to say we did not go out this morning , I went back to sleep and awoke around 8:00am and it was drizzling so we went to our hunting site talked about things and decided to get our stands and head back to camp and roll up things for the ride home.

We went home by way of I45, it is 52 miles from camp to the highway and 194 miles to the house. We drove the rural route going down it was a little bit longer of a drive but 20 miles shorter, a person can make pretty good time until they get behind the slow movers, now I drive 65 mph in the 70 mph to save gas so I don't consider myself a speeder by any means , but these folks were going 50 mph in a 70 mph, 2 lane road.

The Crockett Hunt



Morgan and Joe at camp.



Don't leave the door open or bugs will invade.



 

Our camp

 




Our camp again

















Me, Morgan and Joe left to go to  Crockett around 1:30 pm Thursday 06, 2011 and Willie came down Friday. It was Morgan's first time to hunt down there. We got down there around 5:30 and got our camp set up bu 6:30 and then went off to our area's where we were going to hunt. Our tent is the blue one, we have plenty of room  for us and all our gear.

 Morgan set up by a water hole in a pop up, this is where Charlie killed his doe the first time he hunted down there. I waited til the next morning to find a place as it was dark after we located his hunt area. I went about a 1/2 mile down in the woods and found me a pretty good tree to hunt out of (I use a climber). I had found some acorns so I thought it would be a good place to hunt, as there were lots of oak tree's, turns out that the only acorns in the area were where my tree was ( I didn't find this out til after the Sunday am  hunt when I scouted more of the area). I will hunt here in the future as there are 2 creeks converging and all the acorn tree's, kinda of a bottom area.

There are a lot of place's to hunt, so it can get to be somewhat overwhelming sometime's. The best thing to do is find the acorn's, they need to be white oak acorn if you can find them as the deer like them better. Then after you find the food source you have to find a good tree to hunt out of if you are using a climber if not then a good place for a pop up, which can be hit or miss as it is so dry there is not a well defined trail to set up on.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

We will go back on the weekend of the 10-21-11 and see what we can do. Joe got a doe last week, so congrats to him. Hopefully it will not be in the high 80's this week.

Morgan and Joe cooking breakfast.

                                                                                                                                                                                A big part of going to Crockett is the camping  and eating at camp. This year due to the drought campfires are not allowed nor are charcoal grills. We had a propane grill and Willie picked up a propane grill at a garage sale.

The Drought of 2011

These are the boat ramps in Rockwall off of 66, they are usually pretty busy, but not today.We got a little bit of rain last night, but Lake Ray Hubbard is 5.5 ft low and it will take a lot of rain to bring it back up to normal pool. You can pretty much walk around the whole lake along the newly created mud beach. My friend has found all kinds of things in the mud, things are showing up that have been covered for 30 years

Moving the Tower part 2

This will be the second year that we have been off the lease and when I first found out that we were off it was a really sad thing. I was sad for the loss and I was sad that Morgan was not going to get to enjoy it anymore. I had watched him grow from a little boy who would chatter up a storm while we played tic-tac-toe in the blind to a young man who was telling me to be quiet. He had shot several deer, I had already decided that he could do all the shooting, give him some fond memories to carry with him, and his last buck was a nice one. And I had planned on letting him do all the driving around the lease. Yes , it is very sad, but life goes on and so must I.

We had left our tripods, a feeder and the tower down there as I was hoping to get on a lease in Coleman Co. with my friend Robert but he had to get off of his lease. Charlie and Morgan and I went down to Lampasas Labor day weekend and picked up our things. I had borrowed a 16' flatbed trailer to load everything on. Taking the tower apart was not as bad as one might think but it did take us 3 hours and there was some rust we had to deal with. After it was dismantled and loaded into the trailer we picked up the tripods and the feeder.

 We left there around 1:30pm and stopped at the Dutchman's place, which is just north of Hamilton, and got a Ruben. We then drove to Whitesboro,  which is about 20 miles west of Sherman to a little place we got on, it is in Grayson County and is a bow hunting only, because Grayson is a bow hunting only county. It was a long drive 535 miles, we left Rockwall at 4:45 am Saturday, picked up Charlie and left his house at 5:30 got to Lampasas around 9:00 am.  and made it to Grayson around 6:30. We set up 2 tripods and put the other one out but did not set it up because we ran out of daylight.

We are planning to go back up to Sherman this Sunday and put out 2 feeders and another tripod that is at Charlie's house.

Moving the Tower part 1

I set the tower up in 1993, the second year that I got on the lease to hunt. I kind of married into the lease, by that I mean that my father-in-law was on it for 20 years before I got on it. When I got on it there was Buddy Vass, Micky Vass (son to Buddy) and my father-in-law, I took my f-i-l's spot. There were 3 paying guns, your immediate family could hunt any time and after Thanksgiving we could bring guests down, which I did. In fact this is how I met Charlie, my sister worked for a guy who had never been deer hunting and asked if I would take him, that was in the 94-95 season, I think that introducing anybody to the sport is a good thing. We have since remained friends for 16 years or so.  There was a total of three lease's involved and Buddy got his whole family down there with him. After a time the big lease got sold and the lease to the east went up and that's when they started scurrying around like rats. Several folks had to get off and Charlie was one of them, then the next year I was told that they wanted to make it a family lease as their was just room for 3 hunters, Henry, Micky and Dart (Buddy's wife) Buddy had died the previous year.

Now I think there was some smelly stuff going on. I had kept my mouth shut about a lot of things that were not right, because I loved to hunt down there.  The place where my stand was located was on top of a hill at the nw corner of the property and behind me (west) were ceder thickets, (on another next lease), this was the bedding area, to the south was a little funnel in the trees where the deer would move through to the ceders in the am, and the tin barn,(a little storage shed that was  Buddy's blind) and beyond was the road and my f-i-l's old blind.



187 acs inside the blue.



 

Dart's 8 pt.

There was 187 acre's where we hunted, we always saw deer and we always killed a few. This was the only place where Morgan had ever hunted up until last year, and he was really spoiled, but he will learn and get used to hunting different places and hunting out of ladder blinds, pop up's, tripods and climbers. I am really glad he got a chance to see all the deer and shoot the deer that he did.

It sure is hot

It has been a few months since my last post, lazy I guess. It is now in the middle of July and really hot, been 100 + for  a few weeks and it is starting to show on folks.
We have been fishing  one day a week on Ray Hubbard for the last 4 weeks with my friend Ronnie, and this past week we really got into the sand bass and hybrids, We boated 9 hybrids, a 7.14 lb, 2-5 lb's and

6-4 lb'ers, we also caught around 40 sand bass and we tossed back every thing that was 12" and shorter back. We all had a great time catching these fish and that trip will not soon be forgotten

Ronnie and morgan weighing a 4 lb'er.

                                          Me and my 7.14 lb'er

                                          Morgan and a 5 lb'er he caught.

                         Our catch of the day, they were all filleted, cleaned and bagged in less than a hour.

                                         This was the 7 lb'er just before it was filleted.

It's Time To Fish

When hunting season ends, and all the gear is stowed, and the batteries are removed from all the radio's, flashlights, range finders and other things it's time to fish. We had to wait out the ice and let things warm up a tad and now it has. Not many biting bugs out yet. It is a wonderful time of year.

Morgan and me have hit the creek several times and not yet caught any fish that mattered. We need it to rain a bunch, almost to equal biblical proportions, our lakes are close to 4' low and we are usually full by this time of year.

We will go to the creek at least 2 to 4 times a week for the next month or so, the sand bass should be getting there in a few days to a week then the crappie should come, mind you this is all contingent on some rains.

Hunting out in way West Texas



Cabin in Dryden





Joe with a javalina that he shot.

 Two years ago I was invited to go bow hunting for mule deer in Dryden Texas. Dryden is one of 2 towns in Terrell County which borders the Rio Grande, sitting about halfway between Del Rio and Alpine Texas, it is a hard 10 hours drive from Dallas, and even further if you go down the road where the bridge has been washed out and you have to double back 60 miles.

When we got to Dryden it was close to 1 am, and the only person we saw was a Border Patrol sitting on the dirt road which we had to take and was a hour drive down this dirt road. When we got to the cabin and unloaded and settled down after the drive it was pushing 4 am.


Joe and Greg over looking the Rio Grande 10 minutes from camp.



When I got up the next day we were surrounded by mountains which Greg told me were in Mexico. After he showed us the feeders, we got to choose where we wanted to hunt. We had brought our pop up blinds with us as there are not any trees to hunt of in that part of the world. Everything has a spike on it and will prick you when you walk by it.

This was a very secluded part of Texas, we left Dallas Thursday and stayed until Monday morning, we saw a border patrol driving one day and a guy with 2 boys that were dove hunting. This is not a place where you go to town and have lunch or if you forgot the milk you run to the store, when you leave you will be go a minimum of 6 hours, so luckily we did not forget anything, but after 3 days we were running short on water and Diet Dr. Peppers so I was kinda glad to pack up.



Wayne and Joe over looking the Rio Grande.



I seen, shot and could not find a javalina the first day, deer season did not open til the next day but we could hunt the javilina's. I seen a spike and a doe the next evening but they never came in close enough for a shot. I did not see anything after that till the Monday am hunt when I hunted the feeder about a 1/4 of a mile behind the cabin. That morning I had a group of 9 mulies (3 spikes and 6 does) come out of a canyon (around 8 am) to the north and they were moving south, they were about 40 yds on the other side of the feeder. One of the spikes was coming to the feeder but a doe started stamping her feet and blowing before he got into bow range and spooked him off. I sat there for another hour till around 8:50 and did not see anything else so i started packing my stuff up. I was on the back side of my pop up loading my chair on the back pack when I stood up to stretch and look to the south past the feeder and saw a wide set of antlers walking south through the cactus, this rack was every bit of 24" wide, he was a trophy in any one's eyes.

Greg posing with his bow



Joe and Greg chunking rocks in the Rio Grande





This was a awesome place to hunt and felt very blessed to have been invited.



Greg and the Rio Grande



Wayne and Joe

Joe and the Rio Grande

Morgan The Hunter

I have been taken my son hunting with ever since he has was 4 yrs old, I took him when he was 2 but he liked to pick stuff up off the ground to eat ,so... I had to wait a few years before he could go back to the lease.

Now we would go and sit in the blind and play tic tac toe for hours, he would bring a game and play or he would fall asleep, but what ever the case he was there. He was not the quietest hunter and when a father takes his son he should expect this, so as the years went by I just expected the noise because I was making more noise shushing him and I was not creating a fond memory.

He shot his first buck when he was 9 and has been shooting every year since. I was just as happy letting him shoot as I was shooting a deer myself.

Now I have got him climbing tree's with a tree climber and using a crossbow.

My Hunting Son

This year I outfitted my son with a full set of archery gear, he got a Parker crossbow among other things , I had given him a bow (diamond razor edge) 2 years ago but he has not practiced and not able to hunt with it. So in order to get to hunt during bow season i had to do something drastic.

Hunting on the cheap.

When we go hunting, I try to save as much money where ever possible, whether it is gear, groceries, gas or places to hunt. The easiest is using coupons for the food I buy. I started clipping coupons a year ago and have learned several things. It is best to use the coupons when the food is on sale, that way maximized savings is realized.

 Well here lies another problem : the food we want is not on sale at the time we need it. So what needs to be done is to start stockpiling the food, an by that I mean, through out the year when the stuff goes on sale I buy as much as I can with the coupons that I have, so come hunting season I have most of the food except for the milk, eggs and bread products that can not by stock piled. The meats go on sale during the summer for the BBQ cooking season, so I buy the meat and freeze it, as does other BBQ foods that I can store in the pantry for later use.

Since I started couponing I have come to realize that there is a bunch of money to be saved and I have become a better shopper, always looking for the best deals, which is easy when I have access to 5 different grocery stores within 3 miles of my house.

Hunting at the LBJ Grasslands

First time me and Morgan went  hunting at  LBJ was 12/22/10. We met Troy and his son, Jason there. We set up our camp and scouted for a hunting location. The first time I go to a new place it takes time to scout and try and figure the deer movement and the human movements. This was mainly a scouting trip. It was really cold that night, Troy and Jason slept in the back of their truck, Troy froze, me I got a good sleeping bag and did just fine, Morgan froze also. It takes freezing a couple of time to figure out what you need to have when camping in the cold, they will  be better prepared next time out.