Nov 7 Hunt

Sitting here on a cool, windy morning waiting on a critter to come wandering by, it does not if it is a pig or a deer, male or female. The corn under the feeder does not look like it has been touched in days but then again the acorns are everywhere so not much need for a critter to eat corn.

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.

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.
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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.

Hunting in October

We are in the middle of archery season for whitetail deer in Texas, but so far all we have seen is pigs. Mikko shot a pig tonight and a bobcat last week.

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.

Pig hunting in April

Charlie, Morgan and I come down here to and feed out and do a little pig hunting. Weather is fantastic, now if a pig were to stroll by it would be a great day.
Every thing is green here, and it rained up here thursday night and the ground is a little soggy but nots so you can't drive around.

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.

Sitting in a tripod

Here i am sitting in my tripod Sunday morning at first light, the feeder just went off and scared some birds off, they will be back. There was a hard thunder storm last night here, me and Morgan were going to head up here yesterday afternoon and hunt last night but the weather reports scared us, good thing as it would have been a rough night in the tent. We got up at 4 am and drove up here. We will hunt this morning and evening and in between we will go and scout at Hagerman. We have hunted up here four different weekends, I shot and skinned a pig one weekend and three weeks ago I shot a 85-100 lb pig, deer are scarce as hens teeth around here and now it looks like the pigs have disappeared.

Opening Day in Crockett

Opening day in Crockett National Forest 2013 kinda sucked. The morning was a great day to be in the woods, it would have been better to see a few deer but I didn't. So we leave our climbing tree stands in the woods and head back to camp, eat us a big brunch. There is me, Morgan, Joe, BJ, Greg and Felix there enjoying ourselves and the game warden shows up,which is not a big deal except that Felix gives the GW a old license that does not have a archery stamp and he is going to write him a ticket and says to Felix "Didn't I write you a ticket for the same thing the last time you were down here?"  Turns out Felix finds his new hunting license. Well it turns out he didnt write the ticket this time, but it was a buzz kill anyways. Then it starts to rain, luckly we had a big tarp up for shade  and shelter. Between the heat, rain and humidity, the weather really sucked, but good friends and food helped make for a good time.

Time to get ready

This past weekend (Labor Day 2013) Charlie, Joe and I went down to Crockett National Forest to prepare for the 2013 bow hunting season, and by that we had to find some more trees to use for our climbing tree stands and mark them and the trail to them with tacks that light up when a light is on them, if not it is real easy to get lost walking to and from tree and evening finding the tree in the dark. We also cleaned out shooting lanes, by that I mean cleaning out the dead branches and putting out trail cams.
It was really hot but we left from Mesquite at 5:30 am and was in the woods by 9:00 am doing our thing. We did a total of 5 trees and were on the road by 3:00pm or so.

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 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

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.