Monthly Archives: February 2009

Hunting

Hogs

  1. Wednesday morning a neighbor told me that part of my fence along the county road was torn up and it looked every bit like hogs, feral pigs,Sus scrofa, were the culprits. Checking right away, sure enough, a ten foot piece of the fence was torn up and tracks flooded on to my ranch.

There was no rhyme or reason to the tracks, they fan out, spreading across my place. Wednesday evening, found me sitting up against a mesquite tree, facing the wind, 50 yards away from my torn up fence, but the hogs didn’t show. Some of the tracks headed toward the water trough, where I’ll be sitting the next few evenings. Since water is scarce around here and hogs are mostly nocturnal, this may be my best chance.

There’s not much sign of hog rootings and because of our drought, the ground is like rock, but during deer season we did put the “cleanings” in a trash hole and that evidence is gone now. Hogs have great noses, will eat almost anything and maybe the rotting entrails attracted them?
Having multiple litters each year, the hogs are taking over our State and fixing the fence is a given, but you can rest assured that trap ’em, shoot ’em or whatever, I’ll try to reduce their numbers!

Random Thoughts

A New Toy

In 1971 while I was on a trip to Mazatlan, Mexico, thieves entered my house and stole all of my long guns, a brand new TV set and loaded them into my brand new Buick Electra 225 and drove off with everything. Telling the story about the robbery in Arizona Ducks, I said at the time, “I Should’a engraved my SS Number on everything. Making a point to get me an engraving tool.

Never having been a procrastinator, I suddenly became one, or else it just slipped my mind. One of my daughters, Suzanne, fixed this for me and for Christmas 2008, gave me an engraving tool, pictured below. Just think it only took 37 years for me to get one!

Having been very lucky these past years and not having experienced another theft, I can proudly announce that my Social Security Number is now engraved on each of the multiple long guns and pistols that I own. Better late than never!

Politics

The Stimulus Package

Being a Christian, a hunter and a fisherman is my choice of ‘things’ I prefer, not politics. But at times like this, especially this ridiculous Stimulus Package, our great silent majority needs to stand up and be heard. Saturday I sent the following e-mail to one of my Texas Senators, John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. I also sent a very similar one to our other Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

“Subject: The Stimulus Package
I know that I don’t have to tell you that the bill passed by the Democrats in the House this past week provides very little stimulus to our economy! However, it does stimulate the various special interests groups that were crucial to the Democrat Party’s win this past November. The Wall Street Journal calls it the list of forty years of pent up Democrat demand!

Senator Cornyn, in your position on the Senate finance Committee, I certainly hope you can ‘drum’ it in the rest of the committee members heads, that we don’t need a stimulus package like this one, we need meaningful tax cuts. Tax cuts like the elimination of the capital gains tax, the reduction or elimination the business tax, the making permanent of the Bush tax cuts, all coupled with an elimination of wasteful spending (that last item is kind of an oxymoron).

Thank you for being a conservative voice for our Senate and thank you for all you have done for the State of Texas!
Jon Bryan
121 County Rd. 406
Goldthwaite, Texas 76844″
Everyone should ‘burn up the internet’ with e-mails or faxes to their Senators about this farce of a Stimulus Package and we, perhaps, can bring some sanity to this ‘astute’ group. Maybe that’s an oxymoron too!

Politics

A Trip To Cabela’s

Our new President said that he wouldn’t come after our guns. He never said anything about using taxes to inhibit ammunition sales. I wonder why ‘the media’ never probed for this? I did find out what Texans are doing about it!

Living in a small town, like Goldthwaite, far away from the traffic and congestion of a big city, has many benefits, but there are some things missing – some things like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and Gander Mountain. Keeping a running list of items needed from Cabela’s, I got to stop by there this past Monday and was I surprised.

Brad and I had traveled down to San Antonio to meet with his doctors and after lunch with my youngest son, Randy, in San Marcos, we stopped by Cabela’s, in Buda, to pick up .22, .22 Mag and .17 HMR ammo and stock up on reloading supplies. Buda, for the uninformed, is 16 miles south of Austin on I-35.

It was mid Monday afternoon, but where everyone should have been out working, they were in the gun/ammo department. It looked like a Saturday! We found and picked out the items we needed, loaded them into our shopping cart and then went over to the gun cases to get some small pistol primers and Unique gun powder.

The salesman did a perfunctory look under the counter, but we could see that the powder stocks were woefully low and that they were out of Unique. He added that there were shotgun primers, but no small pistol ones and that their stocks had been pummeled since Christmas.

Looks like everyone is trying to beat the big tax increase on ammo and reloading supplies! For sure, it’s coming and we won’t have anything to say about it, so stock up all the ‘stuff’ now and let’s hope we can roll it back in 2 years!