Our fine State’s quail season opens up the week before firearm, deer season, so, several years ago, Bob Baugh and I took the early opportunity to have a go at some of the bevies roaming his deer lease. The week before we had enjoyed an early cool snap, but this weekend’s forecast for his lease, not quite in south, Texas, was for temps to be in the mid to high 80’s, a little warm for quail hunting, but just right for rattlers.

Friday afternoon we drove down from Houston, enjoyed a good steak supper at a local establishment near Nixon, had a good night’s rest and kinda’ slept in, since the best quailing was a hour or more after sun up. Bob had his setter, Dixie, and I took along Beachnut’s Augustus of Rivers, better known as “Gus”, my Brittany spaniel. In Georgia I had bred “Rooster”, Gus’s dad, with a descendent of the legendary Brittany, Augustus of Rivers, the only Brittany to ever win the National Field Trial Championship. Gus was a real “go getter” and had as good a nose for quail as any Brittany I’d ever seen. Gus had a personality too! See my posts of September 19, 2009, “[Just A Snack]” and September 9, 2010, “[So Much For Delegating]”.

The cool morning was refreshing to both of us! The dogs hunted hard as we walked through the goat, or dove, weed field and soon, forty yards ahead, Gus pointed, Dixie backed. Bob and I hurried up and being experienced at this sort of thing, walked right in on the birds, up they came, a nice covey of 12 or 15. Bam, bam, bam, we thinned it out, knocking down 3 that the dogs picked up and went back to hunting.

Here’s Gus bringing one in.

Not even two hundred yards further into the field, another point, another good covey of over 15 birds and we knocked down 4 more. We were off to a good start. As we walked further, the goat weed was playing out and the good cover was changing more to grass with a mix of small, mesquite trees and palmettos. We were fixin’ to turn back and cross on to the far side of the goat weeds when the dogs kinda’ pointed. They didn’t look too confident so Bob and I hurried on up to them.

Dixie didn’t hold her point, Gus was kinda’ backing her, but she rushed in on, what we thought, was the birds. Then, in full rushing mode, she stopped in mid air and jumped back. Then we arrived in the area and curled up under a palmetto was an angry, rattler. We unloaded on it, four or five shots and it was done! The rattler was literally shot into several pieces, the rattlers taking the brunt of one, or several blasts.

No pictures, no rattles for the display case, the dogs were unhurt and, like so many times, the “edge” was gone off of what started out to be a great hunt, but a rattler intervened! Looking at Bob I said to him, “Why don’t we go back to the camp and do lunch?”

Leaving the house around 6:00 PM, fifteen minutes later I climbed up into the new, tower blind and sat back and waited for the deer to show. The blind is set in a good place and here’s the main view.

By 6:30, the only thing moving was me sweating and the shadows lengthening, so I sat back and waited. A doe and her yearling showed up first and I waited for a good “shot” that never happened. Then a lone doe showed up and I got this “shot”.

Then another doe showed.

The later it was the more deer moved. Not wanting to risk the flash going off, I didn’t take any more “shots”. The total for the one hour, plus “watch” was 12 deer, one of them being a very nice, big, buck!

There’s a lot of deer sign around my place. Not droppings, but rubs and scrapes. These sign point to the rut starting very soon, even before the November 6 opening. Still, I haven’t seen any bucks chasing a doe, they’re not there yet.

Before the season starts I always check around the edges of the oak trees for scrapes, the first one this year was an accident on my part. Walking the road around the hay field and checking on how much trimming was needed, I almost stepped on the scrape pictured below.

And, sure enough, there was a leafy branch hanging over the scrape. The buck will make, or visit, the scrape, urinate over his tarsal gland on to the scrape ,while licking and nosing the leafy overhang.

Just like the scrape, I’ve discovered one rub line that runs from just past the shooting range to behind the feedlot. Big, dominate bucks make the first rub lines and I bet this is the same buck that I saw, and didn’t get, last year in my 2009 posts, “[Deer Watching]”, November 15 and “[Deer Sighting]”, December 10.

Pictures of the various rubs follow. Lots of sign!

Three weeks ago while over in Temple, Texas to have my right knee examined at Scott & White, I stopped by an outdoors store and acquired a 12’ Tower Blind. My plan was to find a suitable spot on my place and seclude it behind some trees so that I would have a good overlook on deer coming and going.

Last Friday morning, Layla and I finished putting the Tower Blind together and since it weighs almost 200 pounds, we left it on the ground until we could get Colton and a couple of his football boys over and help us raise it.

Sunday afternoon we moved it into position where it could be raised and somewhat hidden and secluded between trees. The spot picked was in a small clearing within the brush line.]

The second picture shows the Tower Blind lined up with the small clearing. And no, the seat back and camo cover hasn’t been installed. I’m waiting until it’s set up and staked in securely. I’ll post pictures of the raising.

Dark comes early on the east side of the McDowell Mountains outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, but it was barely light enough for this picture of Beachnut’s Rooster Cogburn, my first Brittany Spaniel, and the first Gamble quail he pointed and I downed. Rooster is all smiles as he poses!

In October of 1972, Rooster wasn’t yet a year old and Jake Schroder and I had taken him and his littermate, Jake’s Ned Pepper out for some training and a go at some Gambles. Back then there were a lot of birds around there, the southeast end of the McDowells, but now the area is Fountain Hills, population over 30,000 and not many quail now. Back then Jake and I knew a fountain was being built, but when it was finished, it surprised us, because hourly, it sent a stream of water up over 500 feet! Some fountain!

We never took a picture of the fountain, but Wikipedia has a nice one that I “borrowed”!

We enjoyed a good Saturday afternoon hunt, the young dogs pointed fairly well, they kinda’ retrieved the birds we shot bringing them about halfway back, they broke 2 or 3 points chasing the fast running Gambles, but overall it was a successful outing.

Rooster became a very, protective part of our family and hunted with my boys and I for the next 8 years. He overcame a broken hip at 2, suffered, while defending our Georgia home, when he tangled with a collie and both of them rolled down a steep hill. We always said, Rooster was the fastest three legged, dog around!

When our State’s south zone, dove season opened in 1967 my Dad had just retired and I had received a nice promotion from the large computer company that I worked for. Because of the promotion my ex wife and I had sold our old home and bought another. Like so many times happens, our move-in date slipped a month and we had to find an apartment for our growing family; she and I and two boys, one 4 and the other, 11 months old. Storing most of our stuff we found a nice, two-bedroom one on Bellaire Blvd.

As usual, my Dad and I opened the south zone dove season south of Houston limiting out, see my post on November 17, 2008, “[Vacek’s]” and the Monday afternoon following the opener, my family and my Mom and Dad, drove out to see how the construction was progressing on our new home, progressing very slowly, of course! As we drove out Bellaire Blvd and crossed Highway 59 (the freeway was just under construction), south of Braes Bayou, my Dad and I noticed a lot of cars parked along the roadside and out in the cut, milo fields beside the road people were moving around, looked like hunters to me and one quick left turn confirmed this!

At this time, Houston had just passed a million folks and the city limits in our part of town had just been extended out past Gessner Rd. and the hunters were at least two miles out into the “country”. We watched them hammering away at the doves coming in to feed in the milo field, however one problem with this set up, the land was owned by a local oilman and real estate developer and later one of the “powers” behind construction of the Astrodome. He was also one of the benefactors of the Houston Medical Center.

My Dad and I got out of the car and talked to a hunter just going out into the field and asked him if he had permission to hunt in this spot? “No”, he replied, adding as he hurried out to get into the fun, “I was told this was an open spot since the construction would eventually eliminate most of the grain field.”

The next day, 3:30 in the afternoon found my Dad and I hunkered down with fifty or so other hunters in the milo field awaiting the doves. Our wait was a short one, we enjoyed some fine shooting and within an hour we both had our limits. We repeated this, limiting out, for the next three afternoons and after our Friday hunt and we had cleaned the birds, we hosted a tasty, dove, cook out for our apartment dwellers.

This was fine shooting while it lasted, but the road construction moved on, progress came to southwest Houston and today, the grain field is gone and the part of the area south of the bayou is taken up with a shopping center and the other part, to the north, is a nature conservancy.

The State of Texas allows hunters to “bait” or feed deer. Some states don’t allow this practice, but when in Rome etc. Real big, bucks generally will not come into feeders but they draw many doe and spikes, so we do have corn feeders near some deer blinds on our ranch. During the 2008/09 season on the ranch we shot 8 doe, 2 spikes and one 15 pointer, see my November 12, 2008 post, “[Randy’s Big ‘Un]” and last year we added 4 doe and two spikes. The feeders pay off!

The best deer hunting on our ranch is in what we call the back part and earlier this year we decided to open it up for the cattle to graze in. Besides food plots there was one corn feeder near a tree stand and corn feeders and cows just don’t mix because eventually they’ll just turn the feeder over. The solution to this is to put a fence around the feeder and yesterday Layla and I completed this project.

Here’s a pictures of the empty feeder before we put up the fence. Building it wasn’t hard but two operations of the installation require two people. One is holding up the fence posts before they’re driven into the ground and the other is holding up the 20’, hog wire, panels during attachment to the posts.

After a couple of hours work, here’s the finished product.

Being a very tight person, I finally invested in a brand new, digital, game camera and last week on the 15th, installed it in one of my corn, feeder pens. Pens, yes, because to keep the cows away from everything, we’ve built fences around them. This feeder wasn’t my first choice of locations, but will be fine for the next couple of weeks.

After installing the camera, I was careful to move away from it outside of the range finder, so no pics of me slinking away, but the first visitor that afternoon was, not the mighty buck I’d been expecting, but a cow.

Friday afternoon was hot and muggy and before cleaning up to go watch Goldthwaite’s homecoming, football game, I took a quick trip out to check on the game cam. Not thinking about the camera’s range, it captured me driving up in the Jeepster.

Sure enough on the morning of the 17th the deer had found the feeder and, because of the human scents in the fenced area, I was not expecting any “shots” of bucks. Here at 8:29 AM a doe is in the pen and her fawns are outside and at 8:39 another doe has jumped in.
     

Transferring the pics, I even got one of my PC.

At the game Friday night there was a nice rain, the ranch got .3”, but the halftime activities were halted because lightning was detected in the area. Goldthwaite came out smokin’ in the second half and won the game 25-0. This was a hollow victory because three of our starters, my Grandson, Colton included, were held out of the game with injuries. All three were All State last year: a running back that gained over 1900 yards; A middle linebacker, the leading tackler in the State with 211, and a tackle, the team’s second leading tackler!

We always need the rain, but a second bright side is that the human scent will be washed away and when I check the game cam next Friday there should be some buck pics.

In the last days of summer, 1974, Tommy Walker, my friend and former manager, and his wife, called from Houston and said they were coming out to Arizona the next weekend to hunt some doves. This was an exciting event because Tommy, this past hunting season, had been accidentally hit by a blast from another hunter’s shotgun, took several pellets, #8’s, in one of his eyes and, blessedly, was healed now and ready to go hunt some more! My, two part story, January 13, 2010, part 1 of “[Walking Wounded]” and part 2, on [January 15, 2010], describes this event. Also, Tommy assured me that they would be wearing shooting glasses too.

Three, plus, weeks into the dove season, our best bet was to drive down toward Picacho Peak, turn left off of I-10 and drive toward Florence and then follow the signs to the Lake Picacho area, find a flyway and have a go at some white wings. Before sun up, thank goodness no traffic, we left my Paradise Valley home and made the one-hour trip. During the drive down, we discussed the safest method of hunting these birds, only shoot at birds passing over and don’t shoot at low flyers, no matter how easy or great a shot it is!

We didn’t find a flyway, but found a grain field the big birds were feeding in and set up along a line of mesquites. The white wings were feeding then flying over us towards the lake to water. Good action! A lot of white wings and we were the only hunters using this field!

Tommy was to my immediate left about fifty yards away and our wives were on the other side of both of us. We were about half way from our limits and I turned and looked at a low flyer between Tommy and me, just as he turned and let go with his twenty gauge, Superposed. He was using a “hot” reload with one ounce of number 8’s and before I could turn my back to him, my shooting glasses were hit and I felt a sting below my right eye. I was shot, not bad, but thanks to the shooting glasses, my eyes were spared!

Many times I have turned my back to a shooter and been “peppered” with bird shot, but this time it was different. With Tommy’s hot loads and him being relatively close to me, one shot had nicked me, bringing blood and as I rubbed where it hit, I could feel it still embedded under the skin. Yelling over to him, “Don’t shoot the low flyers!” His reply was, “Sorry, the bird came in so fast, my only reaction was to shoot at it.”

Increasing the distance between Tommy and me, soon we had our limits. Back at the truck, cleaning the birds, Tommy looked at me and said, “You have some blood under your eye, did you run into a mesquite. Good thing you had your shooting glasses on!” Under my breath I replied, “Amen!”

In mid afternoon, after the four, plus, hour drive from Houston, Layla, and I pulled up at the house at our lease in McCulloch County, Texas. We had “snuck” away early from our jobs and, as expected, were the only ones there that day. All of our gang would be up the next day.

We changed from our business clothes, slipped into jeans and camo shirts and along with Gus, our Brittany spaniel, happily trotting beside us, quickly headed out to the “secret” stock tank. On an earlier trip up I had found a spring fed stock tank tucked behind a butte, or small mesa, and way off the beaten path.

The “secret” tank lies in the oak trees, just below the saddle in the two hills.

About an hour before sunset, the mourning doves started coming into the water. Our set up was ideal. The tank had a rocky, gravelly bank all around, a couple of dead mesquites at one end and several live mesquites at the other end that we used for shade and concealment.
The doves came in singularly and in groups and were met with our bam, bam, bamming and soon we had neared our limits. It was great sport, and a lot of fun, watching Gus retrieve the birds that fell into the water.

Gus, pictured in one of his dryer moments.

Finally he rebelled. As I knocked another one down into the water, Gus walked over beside me and shook himself vigorously, liberally dousing me, and plopped down beside my foot. “Fetch him up Gus,” I commanded with no response. “Gus, fetch the bird,” more forcefully as he looked up at me and rolled over on his back! He was “done” for the day!

Trying to get Layla to retrieve the last bird for me, she declined also. It was left for me to either jump in, or to chunk rocks and cow patties at the bird to wash it close to the shore. I chose the former and unceremoniously waded out and picked it up.

So much for delegating!