Yesterday morning, when I got up and looked out of our kitchen window, not over a hundred yards away, two bucks had been fighting right out in the field behind our house! The loser walked, dejectedly away, with head down, across the field. To claim the prize, the winner ran up to the fence, but a bigger buck was already courting the doe that had caused the earlier skirmish. The two ran away into the thick stuff and the “winner” resumed his search for a hot, doe.

Of course, my camera was in my office in the old ranch, house!

I’ve heard that the best blind is on your porch, maybe not this morning, because I”m in the “Corner Blind”, at least until 9:00 AM, then I’m off to San Marcos to see a Grandson play football and then back to Killeen (if the game, postponed from Thursday, will be played at all) to watch a Granddaughter, who is a cheerleader.

Maybe I’ll get back in time for the afternoon hunt?

Some, of the many, pictures that folks send to me are really neat! Unusual things from the outdoors, fine trophies and some spectacular game cam “shots”. Today’s post has them all.

Warren Blesh at RRR Ranch sent me this one of a young lady with a trophy buck she shot last Saturday during our State’s youth hunt. She and her Dad had visited Warren to harvest one of his many does, but this fine specimen walked out of the brush and hung around too long and finally Warren told her, “Merry Christmas, take him!”

Dayton House, a Church friend, sent this picture of a hog killed on October 28, 2009 in Mobile County, Alabama. The hog was six foot, eleven inches long, forty-four inches high at the shoulder and had almost four, inch lower, tusks! One of the largest free roaming hogs yet shot!

Everett Simms, one of my softball buddies, sent me this sequence of pictures taken on his low fence, ranch in Jackson County, Texas. The ranch is outside of Port Lavaca, an area not known for monster deer. He’s growing some good ones on his ranch!

This first picture is of “the” ten pointer taken in July with the deer still in velvet.

This picture shows “the” ten pointer with a buddy, a very nice eight.

Everett told me that he’d send me the picture of “the” ten when they shot him!

The weekend before the opening of firearms deer season, our fine, State holds a two, day youth hunt. This past Saturday, my Son, Randy and Grandson, Sean, age 9, took advantage of this special hunt to bag Sean’s first deer. This past week Randy picked up a Youth Hunting License for $7.00 that includes fishing and Sean was ready to go.

Last year Sean tried his hand at shooting Randy’s .243 but the gun was just too big and he wasn’t ready. It was a different story this year. He had made his mind up that he would master the .243 and get his deer. His efforts on the practice range showed that he was ready. Friday night, as he was going to bed, he drew this picture of his aim point on the deer.

At 6:45 Saturday morning, the coolest of the year at thirty-nine degrees, Sean and his Dad climbed into Maw-Maw’s blind and got ready.

They saw a lot of skittish deer, but none came into the feeder and as the morning passed, Sean’s eyelids got heavy and he went to sleep.

Sure enough, with Sean being asleep, here came a spike into the feeder. Randy shook Sean awake and his eyes popped at the deer calmly picking up the kernels of corn. Sean steadied himself and aligned the .243 just behind the spike’s front shoulder, and bam! The deer shuddered at the impact but jumped out of the feeder, ran a few yards then dropped!

Sean’s first deer! No cut off shirttail for Sean, just the bloody fingerprint on his forehead, (a family tradition) denoting a successful, first kill!

During his future hunts Sean will get bigger animals, but he will always remember this first one.

Nothings better than a Son getting his deer on his first hunt!

The quail season in Georgia opened the Saturday before the opening of deer season and John Walton, a hunting buddy, Mark Greenberg, a church friend and also a hunting buddy, and I had arranged a hunt south of Jonesboro. Supposedly this was a good place.
In their kennels Rooster, my Brittany Spaniel, and Crystal, John’s German Shorthair were bouncing up and down with excitement as we let them out and began our hunt. We started patrolling around the edge of a large, cut, soy bean, field.

Not a hundred yards into our hunt Crystal froze and Rooster “backed” her point. We spread out and walked in on the birds and “whirrrr”, a big covey of twelve or fifteen came rocketing out of the brush along the edge of the field. This was classic! Our guns exploded simultaneously and several birds fell. Both dogs began to “hunt dead” and we collected four quail. To us it looked like it would be a good day!

We continued around the field and within three hundred yards, both dogs come down on point and we collected two more. So far our hunt and the selection of this place was definitely looking good as we cut through some swampy woods on our way to another bean field.

Ahead in some honeysuckle I saw Rooster on point and picking up the pace toward him I shouted, “Point up here,” as John came up on my right and Mark on my left. Crystal, honoring Rooster’s point froze next to John’s right leg. Right behind Rooster, I stepped past him into the honeysuckle expecting the customary “whirrrr”, and, of all things, up jumped a buck!

All at once, literally all “hell” broke loose. Crystal rushed in between John and the deer; the buck lunged at me and I unloaded three number eights at a three, foot distance, straight at the deer’s head, in the excitement obviously missing! Rooster charged the deer and the deer hooked Crystal and threw her to the side; James yelled “Crystal,” and as he moved to his right to reach for dog, the deer hooked him with his horns and ripped his left pants leg.

Then, the deer turned toward Mark and tried to hook him. Quickly searching through my pockets, I found the two double ought bucks I always carried and finally fumbled them into my twenty gauge pump as the deer, head down, lunged at Mark. Mark, all five foot seven of him, calmly “high ported” his Browning Superposed, right into the buck’s horns and the deer began shaking him like a rag doll.

While the deer’s attention was focused on Mark, John drug Crystal away. Rooster was now posted strategically behind me as I finally got my shotgun loaded and up to my shoulder. The buck was still shaking Mark like a rag doll and my two double oughts at three feet dropped the deer in its tracks.

Whew! This battle lasted for less than thirty seconds. The longest thirty seconds imaginable. As we loaded up Crystal and hurried to the nearest Vet’s office, we took stock of our situation. Except for John’s torn pants, no hunters hurt; one dog down and seriously injured, Mark “all shook up”, one dead deer, and deer season was still one week off. In fifteen minutes we pulled up to a Vet’s office in Jonesboro and ten minutes later we found out Crystal was dead. John was crushed!

Returning to the scene of the battle and looking closely at the deer, we saw that it was a nice, seven pointer, probably close to a sixteen inch inside spread, that, at least three days before, had been shot by a poacher in the left hindquarter. The wound was festering and gangrene, or the deer equivalent, had set in and the buck must have been in great pain. Checking out the area, we found a large quantity of corn spread around the honeysuckle patch. At least two game laws had been broken. One, shooting deer in Georgia over bait was illegal and, two, the deer had been shot at least ten days before deer season opened.

We found the local Game Warden and told him what had happened, but don’t know if any action was taken or if the perpetrator was apprehended. Three weeks later we returned for another hunt at this spot and discovered that someone had come in and cut the deer’s horns off.

As a sidelight, some may not know what “high porting” is. It’s a term applied to hand to hand combat training with a rifle, expensive shotgun in this case, where the weapons weight is evenly balanced in both hands at shoulder height and used to block and parry an opponents thrusts with a bayonet or butt stock. Mark, a Viet Nam veteran, former Air Force Officer and Navigator in a B-52, had used the technique perfectly!

October 15, the opening day of quail season, I stopped by Brad’s school, Cocopah Middle/Elementary School in Scottsdale, and told the Principal that Brad had a doctors appointment that afternoon and he wouldn’t be back. It was an easy OK for the principal, one less kid to worry about. At the time, Cocopah, besides being an open school and unbelievably noisy, was the largest school of its type in the U.S., with over 3,000 students.

Brad’s appointment was really a quail hunt on the southern slopes of Sombrero Peak, two hours northeast of our home. Jake Schroder and Candy and Ned, his Brittanies, accompanied us. The week before, during one of our quests for Indian artifacts, we had scouted this place and knew that it was loaded with birds!

It was hot, well over a hundred, as we parked our 4WD truck, unloaded Candy, Ned and Rooster, my Brittany, on a road that overlooked a mile long sloping hill that ran toward the upper part of Tonto Basin. Within a hundred yards the dogs were down on a hard point. The three of us walked in, up came the Gambels and our guns erupted, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam and five birds fell.

We held our ground as the dogs ran down the cripples and then moved ahead for the next covey. This scenario was repeated six times and before sundown we had three limits of Gambel Quail. The coveys were huge, fifty to a hundred birds each, and even after chasing the singles and taking out forty-five birds, there were still over four hundred left! The dogs and all three of us were worn out, but what a great hunt!

On the way home, Brad told me, “Dad, this was a lot more ‘funner’ than school!”