Hunting

Publishing My Own Book With Createspace

Today, January 20th, outside it’s cold, 32 degrees and the wind’s blowing 25 with gusts and, after successfully planting my Vidalia and Texas 1015 onions, I have started on a new project. This project is self-publishing my second book, a saga of many of my hunting exploits, appropriately named, “Why It’s Called Hunting”.

My choice of publishers is Createspace, the online publishing subsidiary of Amazon.com. Knowing that Outdoor Odyssey is a blog that primarily focuses on outdoor happenings and expecting many trials and tribulations during my publishing experience, it is my plan to chronicle these on the blog as I go forward.

Why, I ask myself, would chronicling this project be of interest to others? Maybe someone who reads this blog would want to write and self publish a book? Maybe it would be a help to others? Maybe the process would be interesting? At least, it will be a new experience for everyone!

My objective is to self publish a 50,000 word book, with pictures, of many of my hunting experiences and the first thing to accomplish is the development of a plan that covers from concept to the finished product. My first cut at a usable plan follows:

1. Study Createspace’s offerings, be familiar with them and during the process, chose the ones that I’ll use.

2. Organize, rewrite (as needed) and arrange in chronological order the best and most interesting hunting stories from my blog.

3. Write, or rewrite, one word, one paragraph and/or one story per day.

4. Touch up, and if necessary, rewrite the Foreword, Acknowledgments and Prologue.

5. Organize pictures and change to 300 DPI.

6. Figure out the best way to change the entire book from MS Word to PDF.

7. Edit, Edit, Edit, Edit! If possible, have the book professionally edited.

Well, that’s my plan and I’m stickin’ to it (I hope)!

Pictures

More Outdoors Pictures, January 22, 2011

When I was looking through the pics from the game cams there were several that were quite unusual.  The first one was “shot” on January 6th and showed a doe and a ‘coon both inside the wire of the feeder.

In Texas, we can hunt game over bait either cast out by hand or in a stationary feeder.  Most of us fill our feeders with corn, however many have switched to high protein pellets.  One very unusual pic the game cam caught was the feeder actually feeding and casting out the corn.

A lot of game is drawn to the feeders; deer, ‘coons, feral pigs, rabbits, squirrels and birds.  On the 17th a bunch of doves descended on the feeder, 18 of ‘em, guards were posted, in this case a dove and a squirrel and then they put on the feed sack.  The funny thing about this feeding picture is that it takes place at 1:48 PM.  Generally, doves feed early in the morning and later in the afternoon.

The next day, the 12th, the doves showed up around their normal, early morning feeding time.  This time the guards weren’t posted and all 18 of ‘em chowed down.

It was much too early for the squirrel to stand his post!

Pictures

More Outdoors Pictures, January 20, 2011

Putting a game cam near the feeder that is close to the tree stand, I didn’t expect much, just a lot of doe.  When I picked up the game cams and shut them down for now, there were pics of several bucks, a couple of them that had survived the season, were pretty good ones.

First there was a six pointer, a 2-1/2 year old that had picked on a bigger deer and got a couple of his tines broken off.  He kinda’ took over the feeder.  He showed up before midnight on Christmas day and since then has been a regular customer.

 

Then on January 11th, the motion sensor worked and these good, long horns appeared.  It was a good one, a shooter for this past season          and for next year too!

Thinking the one spike that I saw opening morning had been shot during the past season, all of a sudden, it turned up on the 13th.  We’ll get him next season, but I hope he hasn’t gone nocturnal.

On the 16th a new buck, another survivor, showed up.  It’s a young one, but with another years growth, should be a shooter and have much better horns next year.

Including me, this past season, hunters that I had talked to, within a couple of miles of my ranch, shot 5 nice bucks and I was worried that next season would be a little light on the buck side.  However, seeing the pics from the game cams and with the 1 buck limit our fine State has hung around our necks, I bet that next season will be a good one too!

Within a month, I will place one game cam along a well used trail and see what comes along and the other will be on a feeder, hopefully, checking for turkeys.  Maybe, I “need” one or two more?

 

Hunting

Bekah’s First Deer

On Sunday afternoon, my Granddaughter, Rebekah, now 13, shot her first deer, a doe.  This feat was accomplished on the last day of our State’s Special Late General Season that ran from January 3rd to the 16th.   She went hunting with me in 2007, see my November 26, 2007 post, [“Rebekah’s First Hunt”] and we didn’t get a deer, but we had good memories..

She took this doe, pictured below, at a friend’s house, near San Marcos, where her Dad, Randy, is a Baptist Pastor.

After the deer was moved by tractor back to the cleaning station, Bekah helped her friend gut it.  We definitely have another hunter in the family!

Hunting

Escape

Our host had declared war on the numerous feral hogs that were on his ranch. He was hunting and trapping them, but it seemed his efforts were all futile. The more he killed, it seemed, the more he saw. Finally, he made a deal with some locals to trap and eliminate the hogs, once and for all!

On this particular late, January morning, after quailing for a while, the rancher and I were admiring three nice hogs that overnight the locals had trapped. Somehow, as the hogs were being unloaded from the trap into the cage on the back of the truck, one big, boar hog, a 200 pounder, wriggled free, and all ‘Hell’ broke loose!

Onlookers scattered, everyone looking for a suitable tree. As a note, most mesquite trees, of which there was a copious number of them on the ranch, offer little in the means of protection. Two of the locals, showing great ingenuity, jumped up on to the hog trap. Running was out too, since a hog can run faster than a man. Maybe it was just better for me to stand my ground?

While standing my ground, the rancher yelled for me to shoot him and unlimbering my .357 Mag. revolver, my first shot at 20 yards missed! The hog hesitated, stopped, and my second shot hit him dead center, rolling him! The third shot, in the ear, finished him. Two of the locals hefted the hog into the back of their truck and probably made ‘puerco’ tamales out of him!

Finally, a strong, hog proof, high fence and lots of trapping (and a lot of tamales) actually eliminated the hog problem.

Pictures

More Outdoors Pictures, January 14, 2011

Cleaning up some game cam pics from last year, I came across a few unusual ones.

The first is of buck and a doe.  She’s jumping out of the feeder pen, obviously going to chase after the buck!

The second one is of a squirrel climbing to the top of one of the feeder’s fence posts.  He must think there’s some corn on the top, or else it enjoys the scenery from up there.

The third is of the melanistic deer.  It showed up around noon of the 29th with a doe and another yearling.  Then, later that same afternoon it showed up with a doe and 4 other yearling.  Next year it will be much harder to keep her from being shot and, of course, I’ll tell all my hunters not to shoot her, but if she strays to another ranch, that’s another story.
    
Finally, Billy Hill, a new Senior Softball teammate who lives on Lake Travis outside of Austin, sent me this picture of a coyote that on December 16, 2010 was nosing around his backyard feeder.  Yes, the feeder is in his backyard, and yes, Billy hunts and has a hunting lease outside of Richland Springs, 35 miles southeast of Goldthwaite.

But if I had to guess, he doesn’t hunt deer off of this feeder.

Fishing

Really Hammerin’ ‘Em

Sometimes it seemed to me that there were too many ways to fish for speckled trout. One mid winter night back in the late 50’s, my Dad and I were heading down to the mouth of the Colorado River to meet a neighbor, Dub Middleton, and expose me to another way to catch Mr. Spec, fishing under the lights.   We were headed to a nondescript, bait camp, near Matagorda, Texas, close to where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf of Mexico to fish for specs at night under some bright, flood lights.    This is the same Colorado that is in my post of May 11, 2009, [“The Salt Water Barrier”].

The principle was that the reflection of the lights on the water drew small fish and shrimp in to feed on the minute sea life and the abundance of small bait drew the larger predators, the trout. The action can be fast and furious, and finally, it was!

Starting about 8:30 PM, the three of us beat the water to a froth and to show for the effort, had only caught and released 4 small ones. At that point, Dub and I choose to take a nap on the couches inside the bait camp and two hours later, my Dad rushed in and woke both of us exclaiming, “Get up quick and come see all the fish!”

All the fish was right. The tide was beginning to come in and with it, bringing in stained, almost sandy, water, and in the reflection of the large lights, the water was dimpled by hundreds of specs slashing through the thousands of bait fish that were carried in by the tide!

Savoring the spectacle for maybe 5 seconds, our primal urges kicked in, and we began casting into the melee. Using a Tony Acetta #5, silver spoon, with a yellow buck tail attached, every one of my casts resulted in a hard hit and a spirited fight and resulted in a 1-1/2 to 2 pound trout flopping on the dock.

Left is my old Tony Acetta, #5, silver spoon, with the original, yellow, buck tail. This spoon is lighter than a Dixie Jet, and worked slow to medium, has a better flash. It was a perfect imitation of the bail fish the specs were feeding on. Over the years, the hook has been replaced several times, but his spoon is over 50 years old and has been used countless times, just be sure and wash them thoroughly in fresh water, and they will last a long time.

This action continued for about 30 minutes. Then, the tide changed heading back out toward the Gulf and with the change of the water movement, the bait and predator fish followed. As hot as the action was, it was all over now. Nothing remained except for us to ice down the fish, collect our tackle, bid adieu to the camp operator and start our 2 hour drive, back to West University.

At the time, my family didn’t have a freezer, so all of our friends and relatives enjoyed the fish we happily gave to them.

Hunting

Wounded Warrior Hunt – Success

Mills County, Texas did itself proud on Saturday, January 8, 2011 and successfully completed its first Wounded Warrior Hunt!  It was a success from the start at noon, the weather was nice, there was a terrific lunch of beef stew, biscuits, peach cobbler, coffee or sweet tea and the soldiers loved it!  After dinner we matched up the guides, the landowners and the hunter-soldiers and moved the festivities out to the various ranches.  All told over 30 ranches and landowners participated and over 50 soldiers with various wounds hunted.

A little after 2:00 PM, when we arrived at our place the hunters were anxious to get on with the hunt, but being too early we watched football until 3:30. Then I told them we better have some weapons familiarization training and we heid out to the range.

First to go was Phillip, a vet with experience in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  He was using my .270 and his shots were right on.  Tim Albee was guiding Phillip. Next, was Ted, but because of his severe wounds from an IED on his last day in Iraq, his Son was taking his place and his shots were true.  My son Randy was guiding Ted and Howie.

Here’s Phillip shooting from a squatting position.

 

Onlookers watching Phillip shoot.

Next up was Tim, with his black powder rifle, the same  one he used to shoot a nice buck on November 23 in “[Gruntin]”.

After the smoke cleared, the hunters and their guides headed out to their assigned spots, Tim and Phillip were hidden in the brush behind the Porta Potty Blind and Randy and Howie were in The Tree Stand.  At 6:30 PM we were to be at the fried fish supper provided by the Texas Games Warden School located in Mills County.

Five minutes before the supper was to start, in came the hunters.  Phillip had shot a doe and Howie hadn’t scored, but in the rush to get into the fish fry I didn’t get a “shot” of  the deer.  Arriving at the supper all the troops were excited.  The total harvest was 30 doe and spike, 1 black buck and 1 coyote, overall a very successful hunt.  Talking to one trooper in a wheel chair, I found out the he had scored on a nice doe, their wounds not preventing them from having fun and getting outdoors!

Supper was a roaring success, fried, cat fish, hush puppies, French fried potatoes, slaw, jalapeno peppers and sweet tea – a feast fit for a king!  The troopers loved it, the guides loved it, the ranchers loved it and I kidded the Wardens frying the fish that it was probably confiscated fish and the fryer’s reply was “Of course it was confiscated, because that’s the best kind!”

For everyone it was a very rewarding experience!

Hunting

Wounded Warrior Hunt, 8 Jan 2011

Coinciding with our State’s Special Late General Season Deer Hunt, today, many ranches in Mills County will be hosting our first annual, Wounded Warrior Hunt. It’s for U.S Army troopers from Ft. Hood, the Warrior Transition Brigade and shows our County’s appreciation for those that have been wounded in combat. It is my understanding that this hunt, organized by Steve Bridges, Editor of The Goldthwaite Eagle, will be the biggest one in our Country for these wounded troopers.

Each ranch participating in this event will supply a hunting guide; an appropriate blind, either a ground blind for those will mobility problems or an elevated one, a good deer rifle and The Eagle will provide a goodie bag for each participant. Also, there is a State, Game Warden’s School in our County and the students and instructors will be participating and providing a fish fry after the hunt. My Son, Randy and Tim Albee will be coming up to offer their services and Tim is bringing along 2 volunteers to help with the video of the hunt.

It’s a big deal for our County and there will be lots of pictures, pictures of the deer harvested and pictures of the fellowship before and after the hunt, but keeping everything in perspective, it’s the least we can do for those that have given so much!

Hunting

The True Definition Of Grit

It is said that in the things Texans do and the way they accomplish difficult tasks that they have grit.  This grit was shown to all of us this past weekend on the RRR Ranch in Mills County, Texas where Dale Allen, Mickey Donahoo and Warren Blesh, the owner of RRR, combined to shoot a doe.  What makes this a showing of grit is that Dale Allen, the shooter, is BLIND!

Previously Mickey had rigged up a .243 rifle with a laser sight and Dale had been hesitant to try and bag a deer, but on this past Saturday afternoon, he and Mickey went out to Warren’s, RRR and harvested a doe.   Dale shouldered the gun and on Mickey’s instructions, moved it up, down, to the right or left.

Out came a doe and it was moving and lasing it was difficult, then Warren gave out a whistle, it stopped and when the laser dot was centered on the doe’s shoulder Mickey said, “Fire” and the results are shown in the picture below, Dale is on the left and Mickey, right.

This is an outstanding achievement, almost miraculous and displays a lot of grit!

Bits and Pieces from Jon H Bryan…