First 2015-2016 hunt

Charlie and I got to stands around 5 pm and that gives us about 2 hours of daylight left. Now had we known that it was going to cool down then we would of got here sooner but its still in mid 90's so we didnt see any sense in sweating and stinking.

It is the second week of the 2015 - 2016 and we didn't make it up last weekend due to being ill.

Spring Turkeys 2015

Been turkey hunting now for 2 weekends in a row. The first weekend we heard them gobbling but could not draw them in. 

Now on the second weekend (4-25-15) Morgan, Nick and I went up there. The ground was still saturated from the rains of the last two weeks. I set up by my self and Morgan and Nick set up together, around 7:00 am I heard a shot followed a few seconds by another shot. I called Morgan and asked what they were shooting at and he told me that Nick shot and missed and he shot and connected and was at the truck needing a knife. Several minutes later I heard another shot and called the boy back and he said that Nick had connected. It was the first time either boy had shot a turkey. Congratulations on a successful hunt! Nick's turkey had a 9" beard and Morgans which is on the tailgate had a 5" beard. 

You can see our decoy in the pic and both birds were in the process of attacking it when they were shot.

The bugs were not bad but then again i had a thermcell and i did not find any ticks on me. 

So all in all it was a great hunt. And i am very proud of these two young hunters.

Hunting

We are back at the lease the day after Xmas 2015. We got into town last night and came to lease ro pull tc cards and we didnt see any deer that had been around the feeders within a week or so. The feeders are low on corn and so we decide to hunt feeders with corn. The weather is 53 with a saw wind at 15 mph and overcast

Back at the lease

We are back at the lease this weekend. And the wind just stopped blowing and the feeder went off at same time. We didn't have any luck in the east Texas Piney Woods but we tried, we were there for 5 days. Had a great time and ate good. You can never beat the fellowship of hunters in the woods.

Crockett 2014

We went bow hunting in Crockett National Forest later in the month than usual hoping o catch the rut and hoping that it would be cooler. We were down there Wednesday thru Sunday, Joe, Charlie, Morgan and I, Greg showed up Friday night. We all seen deer but no deer were taken. The weather was perfect up until Saturday when it got hotter.
.
,

Lazy morning

We got here Friday night and we slept in Saturday morning. I get up at 5 am most mornings and sleeping in  is a comfort that rarely happens. Morgan was practicing shooting at camp and his string came off the top wheel so we hopped in the truck and went to bullseye archery just west of sherman. Well they put it back on and said the string was streatched so bad that it would come off again and it can pose a danger to him, the shooter. So we opted to not shoot it till he gets a new string. Joe finally got up here to hunt. He hunted the southeast last night and he's  .  In Charlie's this morning, Mikko got here this morning and is hunting the north stand and I am at the treestand with morgan at camp. The weather is great for hunting and living in Texas for that matter. Now if a pig or a deer would come to my feeder then I would be happier.

Morning hunts

Sometimes hunting in the morning can be one of the most relaxing things to do. You gear up for your hunt and sit in peace while the new day gets ready to start. You can see the darkness giving way to daylight and the birds will wake up, the crows are the loudest, then they all seem to be moving and sounding off at the same time. I hear the woodpecker then look for him then I hear the geese and they are headed south and the dove are some of the earliest birds to the feeder. And then sometimes the sound of turkeys will echo not far off. By now the squirrels are moving in the tree's and barking, making their presence known. I am sitting in a tree 20' off the ground and hunting deer with a compound bow yet I have always been good with watching birds since thats what I seem to be spending most of my time doing.

Deer season 2014-2015

Opening morning and I hunted in Charlies stand, Morgan hunted at the treehouse and Mikko hunted in Mikko's none of seen any thing except for squirrels.  Weather was perfect, no wind and in the mid 60's. We did have anice breakfast of tatars, eggs and hot links scrambled with tortilla's. Maybe it will be better this evening. We got down here yesterday with enough time to hunt but I just chilled although Morgan did dove hunt.

A good hunt

Charlie, Morgan and I went pig hunting Saturday evening (4-5-14). It was kinda slow till I got a text from Charlie saying he shot a big pig that was on the way to the feeder and he was solo. I hunted another 20 minutes or so till I went to pick up Morgan and look for the pig. Charlie had already located the pig and it was about 50 yds south and downhill in the thick stuff. Charlie and Morgan drug the big boar up to the trail and we backed down, loaded him up and we were outta there.

Dreary Day

Here we are in the latter part of January and yesterday it was a beautiful day and today it is cloudy, windy and a cold 28 degree's.

We are going up to our lease this weekend to corn out, set out camera's and to scout some.

Hunting at Hagerman

This us Sunday 11/17/13, it is Sunday afternoon, which is the last day of the segment B hunt. I been in a climbing tree stand fo 2 1/2 days archery hunting. I have yet to see a deer within range that i had a shot at, I had a doe running by me at 20 yds yesterday afternoon but no shot. Overall it has been really slow hunting for the whole segment. There are about 75 hunters hunting segment B.

The deer get really big here, big racks that is, several of the Texas bow record bucks come from here. The place is mythical. The bucks grow to world class size and the average joe bowhunter can harvest a Pope and Young deer for a small fee.

Last day of 2012-2013 deer season

This is the evening hunt on the last weekend to hunt for whitetail deer in Grayson County,Texas. We didn't kill anything this year, we only seen a few and only one was in bow range for me. We seen pleanty of activity on our cams but the majority of movement was at night. The acorns from the white oaks were as big as a thumb nail and as plentiful as fire ants so I think the combanation of that and the warm weather kept the deer from having to roam for food. It can be frustrating at times not seeing any animals but I guess thats why they call it hunting and not killing. We don't seem to have many hunters around us and that could be another reason for not seeing deer. We have discussed planting food crops for the next season and more scouting so we will see.

Beautiful weekend for a hunt

We got up to the lease last night, which was black Friday and for the hunt this morning we had perfect weather. There wasn't any wind and thank goodness as it was in the low 30's. My coke was slushy after i opened it till i finished it. Seen a lone deer walking to my north about 150 yds or so, then as we were going to meet Charlie at the barn, he was walking towards us and pointing to one of the ponds and there was a buck on the tank dam, him and Morgan tried stalking. It is the afternoon hunt and there is a slight breeze from the south and the temp is in the high 50's. I added a little burlap to help conceal my stand, I was feeling a little exposed.  

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

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.

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.

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