In 1972, before the TPC and before the area really exploded, there was a big dove roost in the washes on the east side of Scottsdale Road south of the airport, not two miles north of its intersection with Shea Road. This wasn’t far from our house so late one Friday afternoon my family and I decided to go out and visit this spot, shoot some doves, then after the sun went down have a “dove fry” in the desert. For this feast we’d fix doves along with green chilies and onions.

We called the Schroder’s, our local friends also from Texas, to come out with us but they had other plans, so loading up everyone in our “luxurious” camper, atop our Dodge Power Wagon, we arrived at our hunting spot just before the doves started pouring in. Brad, my ex wife and I were shooting and Randy and Suzanne were retrieving.

We had a ball and within thirty minutes, by the end of shooting time, we had three limits of mourning dove. We cleaned, breasted and washed off the birds and built our fire. For the fire, we gathered rocks and made a fire pit with them, then broke up the mesquite and soon had a nice fire going, making coals for the cooking. Putting our expanded metal “grill” on the rocks we were ready to “fry”!

We fried the doves and started our green chilies and onions. The recipe follows:

Two sweet onions, medium size,
One small can of chopped green chilies,
One stick of butter, don’t use margarine.
Peel and slice the onions and put them and the butter in a skillet, cover, place on the fire. Stir occasionally and cook the onions until they turn white then add the green chilies. Cook for five more minutes and then serve.

This recipe fed our family. For larger groups keep the ratio of two onions for one small can of green chilies. This dish goes good with steak, chicken, wild game and fish.

By the time we finished eating, it was completely dark and our fire was flickering and almost down to coals, we heard a horse coming up on us. It was Jake Schroder, mounted on a fine steed that he’d borrowed from one of his neighbors. Dismounting and tying his horse to the Power Wagon he inquired, “Got any grub left?” We did and he finished off the food, stretched out on the desert and told us that they had gotten home early and he decided he would ride out to see if we’d done any good with the birds.

We were enjoying the desert when Jake said he had to get the horse back, so he mounted up, turned the horse in two tight circles and in one motion, pulled back on the reins and hit the horse on its rump with his hat and up came the horse’s front legs, the hooves pawing at the air. Laughing we told him, “Jake, that looked like Roy Rogers and Trigger! Ride ‘em cowboy!” And, off he went into the darkness back towards Scottsdale Road.

Having just p on a new hunting lease near Millersview, the opening of dove season found me standing by myself, with my twenty gauge pump, in the shade of a mesquite tree, the sun on my right and a half acre stock tank to my front. The banks of the tank were sandy/gravelly, just right for doves to use.

Arriving at the tank around 4:00 PM, too early for the birds to water, I sat real still and watched the song birds and, of all things, the deer, eight or ten does came into the water. There was a lot of shooting that I guessed was about a mile away on a bordering ranch and I was hoping that the birds would come into my tank.

One hour later, here came the doves! Beginning with just a trickle, I knocked down the first two and they both fell right on the tank damn, just in front of me. Picking my shots, being careful not to splash one into the tank, the doves kept falling and I stopped for a minute and counted up. Eleven birds, then I counted my shots, eleven shots. Never having gone straight on a limit of doves, thinking back, I had run over a hundred and fifty straight on clay birds in trap and downed fifteen straight Mearns quail, but not the diving, twisting and turning doves.

Here came number twelve, right at me, and easy head on shot. Covering the bird, for some reason, I raised my head and missed! The dove veered to the right and, pow, down it dropped into the tank. Chunking rocks and cow chips at the bird, the “waves” brought it to the bank and then it was in my bag.

Twelve for thirteen, still not bad and the new lease only got better.signed u

Trying to find some relief from the hot, September, Texas sun the afternoon of opening day of dove season, we were stationed under shadeless, it seemed, mesquite trees around a stock tank.  The tank was on the edge of a just cut milo field, on our new hunting lease in McCulloch County, Texas.

The afternoon flight was just beginning as a pair of mourners zipped in and bam, bam; they tumbled down into the field. Rooster, one of my two Brittany Spaniels, raced out and picked up one bird, brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. Rooster, right, was a great retriever.
Gus, his son, enjoying his first hunting season, looked kinda silly standing over the downed dove that he went to retrieve. Finally he picked it up, started trotting to me and dropped the bird half way, spitting out feathers and sitting down.

His first dove retrieve proved difficult and for the rest of his hunting career, he never liked to retrieve them. When a retriever picks up a dove, and rolls it into the proper carrying position in its mouth, out come the bird’s feathers resulting in a difficult retrieve. Quail, ducks or geese don’t shed their feathers and are much easier to retrieve.
We continued hammering the doves and both the shooting and temperature was hot! Several birds, when shot, fell into the water and Rooster splashed in and retrieved them. Gus continued fumbling around trying to retrieve birds that fell into the field

Finally, I had just splashed another one, and Gus, pictured left, bounced into the water to bring it back. He picked up the bird, tried to position it in his mouth, and for some reason, began swallowing it. Into the waist deep, muddy bottom, water I sloshed and grabbed Gus. The dove’s tail feathers were sticking out of his mouth as I reached in, before he could swallow it, and pulled it out of his throat .
Gus hunted with me for eight more years and he never tried that trick again!

What is it best called, frog hun, gigging, grabbing or shooting? I’ll choose just plain froggin’. It is the most different of all the hunting sports. Thinking about it, I have never gone frog fishing, as such, but have caught a bull frog on a small, frog colored, popper and was rewarded with quite a battle on my fly rod.

Froggin’ is a nocturnal sport and a must, for success, is a good strong, spot light. I believe that when the light is shined in a frog’s eyes it mesmerizes, hypnotizes or paralyzes them.

My start at froggin’ was in a group of stock tanks on my Uncle Shelton Gafford’s ranch in Falls County, Texas. We would take a light, along with a .22 rifle, and walk slowly around the bank of the tank and when a frog was spotted, pow, dead frog. Shooting .22 shorts into the bank was safe, but we constantly had to be on the lookout for cotton mouth water moccasins. The snakes hunt in the grass around the tanks and when we made noise, they would come barrelling back towards the water. I had one slither between my feet one night! This was a good way to work the tanks, but about a half to one third of our frogs, when shot, would reflexively jump into the water and sink. On a larger lake, this method is not encouraged.

My son, Randy, went a step farther with his shooting of frogs. He found a honey hole for frogs on our deer lease in McCulloch County. He would sneak along the bank, spy a frog, and shoot. He shot five in a row, but each, reflexively, jumped into the water and sank. Randy is a former student at Texas A&M and correctly figured that if he waded out, arm pit deep into the tank, and shot the frogs from the water, the impact of the bullet would push the frogs back up on the bank. His surmise was correct and we had a frog leg feast (after he dried off) that night.

Gigging is the best way to capture frogs on larger bodies of water. A gig is a simple tool, a four foot, or longer, pole with a sharp instrument attached. It helps if the instrument also has a barb on it. If you know the bottom, wading is a fine method to use to sneak up on them, otherwise, a boat, or skiff, is required. Just shine the light in their eyes, sneak up quietly and stick ‘em with the gig and into the toe sack with them.

The most exciting method of capturing a bull frog is grabbing them with your bare hands. It is a lot like gigging, but without a gig. One thing, for sure, you really check out the bank closely before you grab one. Shine their eyes, sneak up on them, a boat is best, check the surroundings for snakes, then quickly grab the frog, whack its head and into the toe sack with it.

The most unusual capture of frogs that I was ever involved with was after O.H Buck and I were returning, on a Farm to Market Road, from a successful froggin’ trip to a private lake, when it began to rain in torrents. Rice fields and their canals were on both sides of the road, when we noticed, what looked like cow paddies, in the road. Stopping, we saw that it was bull frogs instead and quickly getting our lights and toe sacks, ignoring the foul weather, added another dozen frogs to our “catch”. I still can’t say what the frogs were doing just sitting on the road in the rain? Maybe it was raining frogs?

The best part of froggin’ is the eatin’. Just skin the legs, cut them off of the frog, wash them, dip them in corn meal and fry. Smaller legs are very good grilled and my favorite, are legs cooked in a butter, jalapeno, garlic and lemon/lime sauce – Frog Jon.

But caution! Watch out for snakes! One night, in our skiff, we were easing along the dam of a rice field reservoir, when from out of a tree, dropped, “plop”, a four foot cotton mouth, right into the boat. We both vacated the premises quickly and dispatched the snake with our gig. But that also ended our night’s froggin’.
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Three weeks before, we, Tommy Walker, Norman Shelter and I, had returned from the Lake Guerro area, in Mexico, where we had enjoyed a truly fabulous white wing dove hunt! With their twenty gauge, Browning Superposed, shotguns, Tommy and Norman had shot over two thousand birds and since their shoulders had sufficiently healed, we were now after some south Texas mourning doves. Then I was using a twenty gauge, 870.

Before sun up, ten miles northwest of Hondo, Texas, we had just pulled up and parked our Suburban in the shade of a big oak tree, next to a cut, milo field. Soon, within fifteen minutes, the doves would come piling into the field and the three of us would be in ambush positions behind a fence row.

Right on time, here came the mourners, hundreds of them, and choosing our shots, we limited out in less than thirty minutes! Fast action, hot shooting and when it is that good, it always seems to end too soon.

To clean the birds, we moved into the shade next to the truck and as we were breasting them, Tommy looked out over the field and exclaimed, “I’ll be durn, look at that cat in the middle of the field. It’s a wonder that with all of our shooting we didn’t rain some shot down on it.” We guessed the light beige, cat was about three hundred yards away and sitting on its haunches, but it was too far away for us to tell anything else about it.

Jumping up from my cleaning chores, I hurried to the truck and fumbling through my “possibles bag” came up with a small pair of binoculars. Zeroing in on the cat, to my surprise, this was not a house cat but a cougar! Just like a house cat, the cougar was bathing itself, apparently oblivious to our presence. The country around us was a mixture of cultivation and real thick stuff, but we were surprised by the cougars presence and wisely made no move toward it.

We re-estimated the distance from the cougar to us and figured that it was up to four hundred yards away. We finished cleaning the birds, drove off and the cougar was still sitting in the middle of the field, bathing itself.

Two weeks later, Tommy, who had a ranch in Devine, twenty-one miles from Hondo, heard from the Game Warden that a cougar had been trapped, tranquilized and moved to a less “people intensive” area, meaning the Big Bend country, or, other points west!