Our deer season, buck harvesting, is slipping away and will end one half hour after sunset, or 6:11 PM, January 3, 2010. Not settling for a young buck, I have held my fire, hoping the big ‘un comes along.

Monday morning, the 28th, just before sunrise, with the outside temperature hanging on twenty-three, too cold for me, I was looking out the kitchen window watching a doe when this young buck, tall rack, eight points with at least an eighteen inch spread, came out. He paid no attention as I dashed out to get some wood for the fire. Calling Layla, she enjoyed watching this fine, young, deer too! He wasn’t the big ‘un I’ve seen twice, but he’ll be pressing him next year.

Monday afternoon I was snuggled down into a cedar tree along a well used, trail when a spike ambled by. Passing on it because starting Thursday, we’ll have hunters (Grandkids), I didn’t see a big one, but maybe tomorrow?

Tuesday dawned cloudy and snowing! Our forecast was for rain all day, clouds, little wind, with the temp hovering around thirty-four. A nasty day! This was our third snow in a month and the deer will sit this out probably until Wednesday.

About this snow, this is central Texas, not Iowa. Am I going to have to get me a snow shovel?

Not hunting on Christmas Day, sure enough at dusk/dark, with the wind calmed, out popped the does and yearlings. It was one of those times that I knew the deer would be moving and feeding. Thursday’s snow had almost all melted, the high winds had ended, temperatures were up to around forty and the deer were hungry.

This picture shows fourteen of the eighteen deer that were feeding in my field. There were four more to the left, but I couldn’t get them in. The closest ones were about a hundred yards beyond the fence, a real easy shot.

Logic says that, based on twenty-eight day cycles, all of these does haven’t been in estrus, so, where the does are, the bucks will be close by and that includes me on Saturday at dusk/dark!

No good, “shootable” buck was seen on Saturday PM!

The mountain lion pictured below, was shot on opening morning of Texas’ deer season just outside of Junction in Kimble County. The big, male was in prime condition.

Seeing the picture reminded me of a story that also took place in Kimble County, told to me by O.H. Buck, better known as “Pa-Paw” or “Buck”. In 1971, he was on a deer lease with a group of his friends. The lease was outside of Junction and was located in extremely rough, canyon country. His blind overlooked a canyon and the trail to it wound around the edge.

This particular afternoon he saw several nice bucks, but not the one he wanted. As he told me, “About dark thirty, I rounded up my gear and slipped out of the blind. The moon was half full giving me enough light to safely walk back to the camp house. Rounding a sharp curve in the trail, I came face to face with a mountain lion!”

“Wow, a cougar”, I exclaimed and he continued, “It scared the hell out of both of us! The cat jumped straight up and beat a hasty retreat and I turned around and ran back to the blind. After composing myself, I got out my flashlight and made a lot of noise going back to the camp house.”

Buck, a tough guy, later told me the cat had scared him so bad that he quit deer hunting for the rest of that season.

In December of 1956 we left our homes in West University, a west Houston suburb, well before first light for the thirty minute, drive to a rice field that we had permission to hunt on. After spending over an hour spreading out our decoys, Will Reynolds, a friend and neighbor, and I were laying along the edge of a levee in an eight hundred acre harvested rice field with a mud road bisecting it. The Katy prairie it was cold, with low hanging clouds and a steady north wind, providing us a day made for goose hunting.

In the far northwest corner of the field, probably five thousand geese had roosted the previous night and they now provided a serious impediment to our decoying efforts. We were doing our best to imitate these sounds and coax the six young snow geese to “come on in” and land with the large gaggle of geese, really our decoys, already on the ground, on our side of the large rice field.

This were not your normal goose decoy spread that you see now days with hundreds of large, full bodied, plastic and foam ones, geese “flying”, wings spinning rapidly, hunters dressed in white overalls, packing heavy, three and a half inch, magnum shotguns; but ours was newspapers, old diapers, piles of mud with goose feathers stuck into them and us with “early” camo parkas, green waders, packing, twelve gauge, pump shotguns with two and three-quarter inch, paper shells. But it worked for us!

Setting out the decoys wasn’t rocket science. Spread the diapers over clumps of rice, wrap a full sheet of newspaper so it looks like a goose head, set it on a clump of rice stubble, attach a glob of mud to each in order to hold them so the wind won’t blow them away and now you have a very usable goose decoy! The “mud” decoys were the easiest, just make a pile of mud and stick goose feathers into it, not like a porcupine, but slicked back like a goose.

Young geese make mistakes, and these six did, setting their wings and “falling”, looking like leaves drifting down from a tall tree, right into the decoys. Up we jumped, let loose on them and four tumbled to the ground. We picked them up and unceremoniously propped their heads up with rice stalks and added them to the decoy spread.

Later in the morning, with two speckle bellies down and added to the spread, Will and I noticed that the large gaggle of geese in the northwest corner of the field were agitated, some starting to take off, some up and circling and the entire group filling the air with a noisy cacophony of goose sounds. We snuggled down behind the levee and waited, and soon were rewarded with the sight of thousands of geese taking the air, and heading right for us!

Whispering last second instructions to Will, “Wait until the leaders have passed over us, then pick out a bird and shoot him before you get on the next one.” The noise of the approaching geese and the numbers of them were astounding as closer and closer they came. The leaders passed over us, the sound deafening, I shouted, “Take ‘em”, we both stood, shouldered our shotguns, we both had two additional shells stuck between the fingers of our left hands, and let go on the geese.

Picking out a huge Canadian, not over fifteen yards away from me, bigger than any goose I had ever seen, swinging, putting the barrel of the shotgun about two feet in front of the giant goose’s bill and shooting, the giant kept flying? Quickly shucking another shell into the chamber of the full choked, Model 12, I fired again, nothing? Shortening my lead on the giant, I fired my third and last shell, nothing?

Quickly reloading the two, back up shells, the giant goose being long gone, I acquired new targets, two snows stretching out for altitude and dropped them cleanly, probably forty yard shots. Looking over toward my accomplice, who was standing there shaking, I asked, “How many did you knock down?” He replied, “I shot five shells and never hit a bird. I got excited and shot into the flock on my first three, reloaded and just kinda’ shot twice at another goose. Nothing!”

As we picked up our “decoys”, the diapers, newspapers and goose feathers, I remarked, “Eight birds isn’t bad, but you should have seen the one that I took three shots at and missed. It was twice as big as the rest of the geese. I first thought it was a swan, but it had distinctive Canadian goose markings. I don’t know how I could have missed it?”

Driving home, we thought our eight goose day should have been at least a dozen, but when we got home, my Dad almost lectured us, saying, “Boys, whenever you can go out, on your own and get eight, nice geese, be thankful of that! I don’t want to hear anymore grumbling about it!” I said, “But Dad, I really messed up not getting that giant goose and I still don’t know how I missed three shots at fifteen yards.” My Dad replied, “Boy, that’s easy, at fifteen yards the pattern of your shotgun has probably a six inch diameter and the shot string length is probably ten inches at the most. It’s easy, you led the goose too much!”

Later that day, Wes and I were talking with a neighbor Dub Middleton, who hunted ducks and geese regularly with our Dads. He told us, “The giant Canadian goose that you missed was a Canadian alright, a Canadensis Maxima, the largest of the species and supposedly extinct since1922! However, several sightings of the giants have been reported during the past few years.”

Thinking out loud I replied, “Missing those three shots wasn’t so bad after all.”

In early December 1969, Fred Walters and I decided to visit his lease just outside of Lockhart to try and walk up some quail. Fred’s setter was spending the weekend at the vets, hence, we were dogless, as we pulled up and “hied” ourselves out.

We had a general idea as to where the birds would be feeding and after tromping around in the knee high, harvested, milo field, all at once, an explosion of fifteen or more quail erupted out of the stubble. Because of no dog, we had agreed on just one shot each, or two birds down on a covey rise. Bam, bam, and two birds fell, luckily, both were dead and easy to find.

The covey, minus the two birds, had flown straight into the thick cover of a wooded patch, bordering the milo and we “crashed” in after them. A hundred yards into the real thick stuff, some prickly pear on the ground, on my side, up came a single and my shot plowed into an oak tree, with the quail escaping. Fred shot at one and missed too.

Another single, a cock bird, catapulted into the air and my shot reached him before he got behind another oak. Down he dropped and flopped around next to a clump of prickly pear, an easy find and I hurried over to pick it up.

Bending over, I reached my left hand down for the bird; heard a buzzing, unmistakable sound, a rattler, coiled up under the cactus, not eighteen inches from the quail and not much more from my hand! I was in a pickle so I just froze and yelled to Fred, “Rattler!”

Slowly rising up, keeping my feet planted, I took off the safety and, from the hip, blasted the snake. My aim was true, the shot tore the snake into several pieces, as I reached down and pocketed the bird. My best guess was that the snake was loafing in the cactus and from nowhere, a shot, and down plopped supper. My noise and proximity to the bird caused the snake’s defensive/offensive reaction. Anyway, scratch one rattler!

It’s always unnerving to run into a rattler, and this was no exception, so we called a break and headed to town for an early lunch!

Tuesday morning, waking up at 5:00AM, it was raining, so I crawled back under the covers. One hour later, the same story, so back under the covers. Finally getting up at 6:40 AM and slipping into my lined, house shoes, I ventured outside to replenish the firewood.

There was still a misty, foggy drip, not rain or drizzle, just a drip as I looked out over my hay field. There, not noticing me, on the far side, two hundred yards away, loping down the fence line, was a buck, probably on the trail of a hot, doe. Cupping my hands, I issued a low grunt. As expected, the buck stopped in his tracks and turned toward the sound.
Horns were wide, probably twenty inches and tall, over twenty, a big, big, buck! This was the second time I’ve seen him along this track, the last being five days ago. The buck doesn’t know it but I have a hide right along his path and will be waiting for him next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

No, the hide isn’t on my back porch.

In 1953, the early December opening of goose and duck season, was hailed by hunters for the rain and high winds that back, to back, to back, weather systems had fostered. Blow from the southeast for two days, then blow from the northwest for a few days, the cycle repeating itself continuously. Me, and my group of hunters, using the term loosely, “sneakers” would better apply, took full advantage of the weather to try the patience of many of the rice farmers and our parents.

The area west of Highway 6, along FM 1091, all the way to Fulshear on the Brazos River was prime goose country. All of this area now is subdivisions and shopping malls and the geese have vacated it. Back then, after a driver passed Post Oak Rd. street signs changed from Westheimer to FM 1091. Now, Westheimer extends for miles, out past Highway 6 and is the center of commerce for west Houston!

Four of us were heading home around 11:00 AM from a reasonably successful goose hunt, success being measured by; a vehicle not being stuck beyond retrieval, none of the hunters injured, not being stopped by the law and, maybe, a few geese. We were coming in, heading east, on FM 1091 and wishing we could get permission to hunt on Cinco Ranch, a large ranch, twenty sections or more, laying north of 1091, all the way to Highway 6. The ranch now sports country clubs, shooting ranges and some very, large subdivisions.

Probably four hundred yards north of the road, inside the fences of Cinco Ranch, we spotted a huge gaggle of geese. Immediately, one of our group said that we should sneak ‘em. A quick uwey and we stopped on the soggy shoulder, donned our hip boots, hooded parkas and grabbed our shotguns. Going over the barbwire fence, hitting the ground, we started our sneak.

Four hundred yards is long crawl, shotguns cradled in our arms, military style. Keeping our heads down we inched along, with each inch, the noise of the geese grew louder. No alarm calls so we were doing OK. Inches turned into feet and feet into yards as we reached the hundred yard, mark, only sixty or so, more to go. Then raise up and let fly!

Hearing a strange peeping sound, I knew it wasn’t a rattler, then the whirring of twenty or more quail bursting into the air startled me so much that I leaped to my feet and shouted a few choice expletives! That’s all it took for the thousands of geese to spook and get airborne. Standing, we could only watch as they gained altitude and “honked” their way to safety.

That was our first, and last, “sneak” on Cinco Ranch!

We had been on the Brady Lease, for four years and the membership had been reduced (by choice) to four other hunters and their families. During the deer season of 1991, our rancher said that because he liked us and knew we wouldn’t abuse the property, he was throwing in another six hundred acres, at no increase in the price. The only catch was that it was on two sides of Highway 190 and bordered the city limits of Rochelle. The south side of the property had one big “L” shaped field bordered with very, thick brush and this area was the deer magnet.

The rancher and I went to visit the acreage, and to say the least, I was impressed because as we bumped along the rutted, dirt, track, the first animal I saw, less than one hundred yards away, was a massive buck, tall rack, heavy horned, with at least a twenty inch spread! The rancher said, “I’ve named that buck,’ Big Boy’. I see him all the time and I believe it’s time to shoot him.” Of course, not expecting to see any deer in the middle of the warm day, so close to the highway, I wasn’t armed, so I just looked on in awe!

There is nothing that could have prepared me and the other hunters for the great number of deer that we would see on that property, right in town, although not a big town, and bisected by 190, a busy east west highway. But one hunt stands out in my memory.

Brad and I were out to get “Big Boy” and by 3:00 PM we were in our “hides”, mine was nestled into a brush pile overlooking the short side of the “L” field and his was on one end of the long side, in a twisty, four foot, deep, dry creek bed.

Approaching 5:00 PM, we hadn’t seen anything but a few crows, and then, all of a sudden, coming out of the thick, brush, deer were everywhere. Brad was masked from my view but we both could see the far brush line, and there, looking out from behind a mesquite was “Big Boy”!

Almost dusk, the big deer moved to our right, two hundred yards away he was joined by another buck almost his twin and they moved down a fence line, passing from my view. Brad’s M1A roared. And in his words, “Dad, the two deer were side by side and I hit the one closest to me. He hopped once and took off, jumping the fence. He’s down somewhere over the fence! Let’s go find him.”

It was almost dark, our flashlights showed blood spattered on the ground where the buck was hit and climbing over the fence, more blood. One problem however, not three hundred yards east of us in a nice, ranch house, a party was just getting started. Cars driving up were casting their headlights out across the field where we were looking for the deer. Here come headlights, drop down, get back up, follow the blood trail, more headlights, drop down and finally, deer horns reflected in the headlights.

Not a hundred yards from the house, we found the deer, it was a nice one! We each grabbed a leg and ran (slowly) back to the fence. Somehow, we ‘rasseled the hundred-twenty pounder over the fence and finally, could admire the buck, not “Big Boy”, but a real trophy, a perfect eight pointer, good mass and we guessed a eighteen to nineteen inch spread! At the party no one noticed us, and they partied on without a hitch.

We loaded the deer in the Jeep and headed for the closest processor, Richland Springs, twenty miles away. Brad decided not to have the head mounted, (big mistake), told the attendant to just cut the horns off and (bigger mistake), he’d pick them up with the meat. The next week when we stopped at the processors, the fine set of horns had disappeared!

Two weeks later, the best deer hunter of our group shot “Big Boy”, knocked him down, he jumped up, ran off, the blood trail petered out, the hunter never found him and “Big Boy” was never seen again!

Notice the steep grade! Candy is pointing, Rooster is backing and Jake and Beechnut are closing in awaiting the covey of Mearns quail to explode from the deep grass. Mearns quail season in Arizona opened yesterday. Mearns quail are hard to find and hard to hunt preferring rough country, so rough, that this very secretive bird wasn’t identified until the 1850’s by a Lt. Mearns of the U. S. Cavalry.

Mearns quail, Cyrtonyx Montezumae, or fools, harlequin or more properly Montezuma quail are the largest of all the varieties – bobwhite Colinus Virgianus, blues or scaled quail Callipepla Squamata, Gambel Callipepla Gambelii, California Callipepla Californica and masked bob white Colinus Virginanus Ridgewayi. They are found in southern Arizona, New Mexico, the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas and in northwest Mexico. Overgrazing of cattle has eliminated most of their habitat in Mexico.

The Mearns country of southern Arizona is beautiful. This area is where the “last” Chisolm Trail ended. John Chisolm, himself, moved his entire cattle heard here from Texas in the late 1800’s. The country remains much the same today, buck brush, native grass, mini mountains and rolling hills, dotted, with small oak trees, much like our post oak in Texas. This is not the Arizona of deserts and saguaro cactus, but reminds me more of north-central Texas, along the Colorado River, near Lampassas and San Saba.

Having hunted all of the species of quail, I believe Mearns are the hardest to hunt and hardest to shoot. They are a very specialized breed living at four to six thousand feet elevation and requiring good stands of grass and oak trees to be in their habitat. They “root”, or dig, acorns, tubers or grass roots, with their feet, larger than other quail’s, and they hold better for a pointing dog than any other quail. I have had a covey rise while I had been standing in the middle of it, the birds coming so close I could feel the wind from their wings.

The hunting is all walking, all “up and down” with very few flats, so the hunters and their dogs must be in good shape. On an average day Jake and I would walk behind our dogs for five to six miles, up and down the hills, carrying our shotguns, shells, two or three canteens of water and food. By the end of the day add a limit of big, fat, Mearns quail to our loads and quitting time was a welcomed event.

Candy is all smiles while Jake and Beech show off the results of a morning hunt for Mearns quail. Notice the rocks, small oak trees, steep grade and long grass that are all prerequisites for good Mearns hunting. Good bird dogs that will hold a point are also required!

Darrell had gone to north Georgia to help one of his girlfriends move to a new trailer park leaving Dwayne (pronounced Deewayne) home at their place between Cartersville and Kennesaw Mountain. During the past week, Dewayne had called my hunting partner Craig Harmon, now deceased, and said that he had found a couple more coveys of birds along a creek we had frequented the past season and Craig had immediately set us up for a hunt the coming Saturday afternoon.

Ready to shoot some birds, on time Saturday, we arrived at our designated “meet. After the one plus, hour ride from Sandy Springs, Rooster, my Brittany, was ready to hunt and we began along a flowing creek, lined by harvested soy bean fields on both sides. We were soon into the first covey, Rooster hard on point, and dropped two quail, the balance of the birds high tailing it into some thick cover on the other side of the field. Dewayne, ever the gentleman, said, “I’ll go root those birds out of the cover. Both you all want to come with me?”

Dwayne in the lead, we didn’t find the flushed covey, but clearing the thick cover, there standing before us and looking right at us, was a turkey. No fall season in Georgia, so I yelled at Dewayne as I saw him raising his shotgun, “Dewayne, don’t sh,’ bam’, oot! He had just dispatched a domestic, hen turkey
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Happily, lifting up the bird, he exclaimed, “How about taking a picture for me?” We declined explaining, “A picture of this illegal bird could really get you into trouble!” Two weekends ago his twin brother Darrell had shot a rooster out of a tree and now Dewayne shoots this turkey. As Dewayne was taking the turkey back to his old truck, we took this opportunity to end our hunt.

Craig, or I, never went back to hunt with the twins, Darrell and Dewayne (pronounced Deewayne).