All posts by Jon Bryan

Ancestry

Rear Guard

Another of my family stories follows and I believe it’s ‘neat’ to have these passed down, even 144 years after they happened.
Rear Guard
During our country’s Civil War, in December 1864, Gen. John Bell Hood commanded the Confederate Army of Tennessee and after their disastrous, and loosing, battles at Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee, as the long, arduous retreat from Nashville back across the Tennessee River began, Gen. Hood ordered Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest to command the rear guard

Among the units Forrest had in his Cavalry Corps that he selected for this defense, was the Texas Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Sul Ross and, in which one of my maternal Great Grandfathers, Levi Sanders’, unit was part. Forrest also asked Hood for at least an infantry brigade, hopefully 4,000 men, to also be assigned to him.

An infantry brigade, numbering 1500 men, mostly barefooted, was quickly cobbled together from the remnants of four brigades. Included in this group was Ector’s Brigade and what was left of the 10th Texas Cavalry Regiment (Dismounted).

Another Great Grandfather, (paternal), Brinson Bryan, was in this unit. By that stage of the war, most regiments that had begun the war with over 1,000 men on their rolls, were down now to less that 200!

One picture remains of Brinson Bryan, taken around 1846, after the Mexican War. Thanks to several house fires, no picture remains of Levi Sanders.

Both men fought side by side from December 17 to the 27th, 1864, and it is not known if they ever met, but the rear guard that included these 2 of my Great Grandfather’s, performed its duty flawlessly and saved what was left of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

The rear guard was in constant contact with Union troops the entire retreat, winning each battle and skirmish. Federal General Thomas said, “Hood’s Army on the retreat from Tennessee was a bunch of disorganized rabble. But the rear guard, however, was undaunted and firm, and did its work bravely to the last.”
After the war ended both men were active in the same veteran reunion groups and I’m sure their paths crossed.

My family strives to keep this heritage intact and something to treasure. These men fought for four years for something they believed in – states rights. They lost the war, but we’ll always remember their sacrifice!

Hunting

All Smiles

Warren Blesh’s Daughter, Jen, is all smiles showing off this fine buck she shot over the Thanksgiving Holidays on her Dad’s,{ RRR Ranch,} southeast of Goldthwaite. The 130 point, B&C, deer was taken at 100 yards with her Dad’s trusty 25.06.
Don’t you just love our Texas women!

 

Sports

High School Football, Dec. 3 2008

The highlight of this past week’s action was my Grandson, Colton Mitchell, being named by the District 25-A coaches as the District’s Newcomer of the year.
Colton started every game and excelled as middle linebacker on a 10 and 2 team, registering over 120 tackles. Last spring in a March 10, post,{Early Spring Bass,} Colton hoped that he would make the varsity the coming football season. He made it with a BANG!
Meanwhile, Sara cheered as her Copperas Cove Bulldawgs scored on a pass play with 9 seconds left to beat Cypress Ridge, from the Houston metro area, 55-48. Cove had built a comfortable lead but Cy Ridge’s, LSU bound quarterback, Russell Shepard, probably the best high school quarterback in this quarterback rich state, brought his team back to tie with a minute left. Needless to say, Sara (and the coaches) were breathless!

Mikayla’s Goldthwaite Middle School, Lady Eagles won three straight games over De Leon, San Saba and Dublin. The win over Dublin, 20-18, erased the memories of a 7 point, opening game loss. The Eagleettes, my name for them, now have a 3 and 3 mark and are playing very good basketball.
Here Mikayla looks beaten to the hoop, but in two steps, caught up with her opponent and deflected the pass.

Hunting

Clayton’s Bobcat

This past Tuesday, Clayton Gist, a Goldthwaite local and a friend, trapped this 27, pound, male, Bobcat on his family’s ranch south of Goldthwaite. Their place is not too far, cross-country, from mine.

Clayton and his Dad operate{RE/MAX Texas Lone Star Properties} featuring prime, central Texas ranch land.

Hunting

Jalapeno Quail

My years of Quail hunting in Arizona, Georgia and Texas have been wonderful and even better is a dish that I accidentally, through trial and error, invented, “Jalapeno Quail”.

As the name implies, the ingredients are Quail legs, however, Dove, Bull Frog, Teal or Woodcock legs can be substituted. However, I do find large Duck, Goose or Pheasant, legs too tough.

Depending on how many legs, one or two jalapenos, sectioned into 1/8 inch slices, sliced garlic pods or a copious amount of Garlic powder, ½ to one full stick of butter (no margarine!). You can’t use too much garlic or jalapenos!

Clean and wash the legs and prepare your ingredients. Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after slicing the jalapenos! Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet, and when melted, add all of the ingredients at once and simmer, covering the skillet with a lid, for 10 minutes, then stir and turn the mixture, recover and cook until done.

Feeds as many as you have legs for. Small legs are very good served as an appetizer. Frog legs can be a main course.

Best if served hot, but be sure and eat all of the ingredients, peppers, garlic and all!

Wash your hands thoroughly before the meal to remove any jalapeno residue because it really burns when you get it in your eyes!

Sports

High School Football, November 21, 2008

This past Friday night Sara and her, Copperas Cove, Bulldawgs, won a hard fought game against Garland 21-7, and now, move into the next round of the playoffs against Cypress Ridge, a Houston area team from the Cypress- Fairbanks School District, that features one of the best quarterbacks in the nation. Of course, Texas is the breeding grounds for great quarterbacks! Having lived in the Cy Fair District, the largest in the state, for over 25 years, I feel like I helped build many of their seven, high schools and my son, Randy, even played for Cypress Creek High School.

While the Dawgs continued their winning ways, Goldthwaite’s season came to an abrupt end with a 33-7 loss to a big, and just as fast as us, team from Shiner. One good note is that next year, Goldthwaite returns 15 of their 22 starters, 8 on defense!

Middle school basketball chugged along with Austin being sick and missing the first 2 games. Mikayla and her 7th grade team’s record was 0-3, but the team started coming together against Deleon.

Here Mikayla has her opponent back on her heels, as she begins a drive to her left towards the basket.The Lady Eagles beat De Leon and then edged the good San Saba ‘Dillo team (our bitter rival), and this was the first time since “Little Dribblers” began 4 years ago, they had ever even come close against the ‘Dillos!

Hunting

The Big Time

From 1966 to 1970 Bill Priddy and I were members of an “exclusive” hunting and fishing club south of Danbury, Texas. The club catered to Duck hunters, but allowed fishing and frogging, when it didn’t conflict with the hunting.

My Dad and I show off a Wood Duck we had recently shot over our decoys. Bill Priddy took the picture and we gave him the Duck for mounting.
The club offered a nice air conditioned and heated lodge that slept twelve, a complete kitchen, including a cook and caretaker during Duck season, game cleaning facilities and six, flat bottomed, aluminum boats and, on top of all of that, family members could use the facility for fishing, etc. without the member being present.

Besides the camp house and a hundred acres of thick woods, the club had three, 20 acre, lakes that served as rice field reservoirs. A deep channel was cut all around a square impoundment with the excavated dirt piled up to form a type of dam, or levee. There was about ten feet of shallow water along the dam’s inside, before the excavated channel dropped off to over six foot depth. The channel, the only structure in the lake, was approximately thirty feet wide, sloping up to a large, shallow flat, two feet deep, that covered the center of the lake.
The lakes were over twenty years old and the aquatic vegetation flourished in and around them and provided some excellent hunting and fishing memories for my family and me!
Plenty of snakes but, strangely, no ‘Gators!

Hunting

Big ‘Un

We had been on this lease in McCulloch County, for the past four years and finally, had just the right hunters on it; Bob Baugh, Bill Priddy, Randy Stephens, Hank Schneider and myself. The rancher was glad it was down to the five of us since he liked us and knew that we respected his land, cattle and wild game. Being the ‘jefe’ of our group he passed on to me that he was adding 280 acres, located just outside of Rochelle, to our hunting property. The new place was only a short drive west of his main ranch and brought our total of huntable acres to 2800.
Around noon we drove over to the new place and he told me that he’d seen a couple of really nice bucks hanging around the does. He also told me that this place was overrun with does and he wanted us to eliminate part of the problem, but definitely, try to get a nick buck!
As we drove through the place, glancing out into the middle of a newly planted, winter wheat field, I noticed a buck, not your run of the mill, Texas hill country deer, but a big, heavy racked, guy, just standing there and looking at us. We didn’t stop and kept on driving and the rancher remarked, “That’s a big ‘un, I told you there were nice bucks on this place.” I agreed!

That afternoon, Brad and I were the only ones on the lease, so we decided to check out our new addition. Brad was in a tree line about a hundred yards north of me and I had chosen a natural depression in the wheat field, almost like a fox hole. By 4:30 we hadn’t seen anything. The same for 5:00, but at 5:15, here came the deer – does, bucks, spikes and yearlings, at least 100 of them. At the east end of the field Brad saw big ‘un.

Big ‘un and a smaller 8 pointer, but still a nice buck, were chasing a doe. Brad couldn’t get a clear shot on big ‘un, but when he grunted, the 8 stopped, bam, Brad shot, and he told me, “Dad, he hopped when I hit him, but he ran 15 or 20 yards and jumped the fence over on to the adjoining ranch. It was getting dark and not having ‘hot pursuit’ permission, or even knowing the next door, rancher, we were in a dilemma.

We walked to the fence and a clear blood trail went from the point of impact to the fence and we were stymied. Our solution was to wait for dark, climb the fence and then sneak the deer over the fence and out. We had one problem, less than a half mile away, the ‘over the fence’ rancher was having a party and there must have been 10 or 15 cars parked there. We still had to get the deer.

As the party ‘roared’ on, over the fence we went, got into a low sneaking position, clicked on our lights and soon found the buck, a nice one with an 18 or 19 inch spread. Still in our sneaking crouch, we drug the buck back to the fence, a standard west Texas one with hog wire for the first 48 inches and two strands of barb wire above that, and it was all both of us could do to muscle the 120 pounder, up and over the wire. The ‘party goers’ never noticed us and the party ‘roared’ on.

We took the deer to a processor in Richland Springs and there, Brad decided not to have the head mounted. Bad mistake, because when we went to pick up the buck, the horns, had somehow gotten themselves lost and we were presented with the horns of a scraggly 7 pointer.

We never got big ‘un and I understand, another hunter shot him, but could never find him.

Hunting

The Unicorn

Brad came over Thursday afternoon to try and hunt, and I say try, because a ‘norther’ had blown in around noon packing 25 to 35 MPH winds. It never dawned on us that this particular afternoon we’d see a lot of deer.

Because of the wind, Brad decided to hunt in Colton’s blind and I thought I’d give the haystack another try.
It had been 8 days since I had hunted in the haystack, in the feed lot, right by my house and 4:50 PM found me ‘schrooched’ down looking over the top of the hay. Nothing happened until 5:30 and then, almost as a group, here came the deer, a total of 3 does and 5 yearlings. Within thirty yards of me, I felt like I could reach out and touch them, they began browsing and watering. It was getting dark, when all a sudden, the deer froze and looked, not at me, but into the thick cover.

Way back in the thick stuff I could see movement, two big deer, couldn’t see horns, but they were big. They came steadily on toward the feed lot and water trough, all of the deer around me were still frozen, and I was caught in a very uncomfortable position, but like the deer, held my ground!

With the wind still howling and the mesquite trees blocking a clear view of them, the two deer came on. In the quickly fading light, I cautiously raised my rifle and scoped them and could barely make them out. The does began moving off, warning the yearling with hisses that sounded kinda’ like a buck’s snort/wheeze, without the snort. Still no luck with the scope, it was just too late, but there’ll be another time!

In the dark, driving out to Maw-Maw’s blind, I picked Brad up and he told me that around 5:20, after the feeder had gone off, he saw a total of eight deer, including a spike with just one horn. He said, “Seeing movement near the feeder, I looked around and there was the spike. I noticed he was limping and had only one horn and by the time I got my rifle up to shoot he was back into the thick stuff. Maybe I’ll get him tomorrow?” Laughing, I replied, “Maybe it was a unicorn?”