On Saturday, September 26, Warren Blesh had some hunters come out to his RRR Ranch in Mills County, Texas for a dove hunt. Mickey Donahoo, a softball buddy, and I were two of the lucky invitees. For almost all of the hunters it was a perfect day, not too hot, a few clouds and light wind, but for me it was a challenge.

Two weeks before I had undergone extensive surgery on my nose, including a skin graft, and my doc was hesitant to let me hunt. When I told him that I was using a minimum recoil, twenty gauge, shotgun, he relented and said for me not to lift any heavy objects and be sure to wear a surgical mask. The day of the surgery he had given me a supply of masks to be used when I was doing tractor work and mowing my yard. He never mentioned about hunting!

Here, Warren, sitting in his Ranger, is giving some instructions to Mickey, left, and another hunter.

Mickey and I were assigned spots around a newly planted oat field and I snapped this picture of him walking toward his “hide”.

My first dove came in low and as it tried to gain altitude, I blasted it. Retrieving the bird, I checked myself out, no recoil on my shoulder where the skin graft was taken, no injury to my nose since I was careful not to ram it down on to the stock and I looked forward to a great day of gunning!

On the following birds my great day turned sour. Consistently shooting over the doves, my birds down to shots fired was awful. With the surgical mask and bandages on my nose, I couldn’t put my face down on the stock, hence my over shooting. Therefore, I did decline any dramatic, pictures of me in my surgical mask,

Ending the day with five birds for nineteen shots taken, my misses were more than made up by the other hunters, here shown cleaning the days kill.

We take a lot for granted, our health, our physical well being and excellence in what we do, but this hunt was a wake up call for me. Taking it for granted that I would have a successful hunt, my score and birds per shot was awful, but the hunt was a success for a lot of reasons. I met some nice folks, renewed acquaintances with others and, most important, got to be out in God’s great outdoors!

In 1972, before the TPC and before the area really exploded, there was a big dove roost in the washes on the east side of Scottsdale Road south of the airport, not two miles north of its intersection with Shea Road. This wasn’t far from our house so late one Friday afternoon my family and I decided to go out and visit this spot, shoot some doves, then after the sun went down have a “dove fry” in the desert. For this feast we’d fix doves along with green chilies and onions.

We called the Schroder’s, our local friends also from Texas, to come out with us but they had other plans, so loading up everyone in our “luxurious” camper, atop our Dodge Power Wagon, we arrived at our hunting spot just before the doves started pouring in. Brad, my ex wife and I were shooting and Randy and Suzanne were retrieving.

We had a ball and within thirty minutes, by the end of shooting time, we had three limits of mourning dove. We cleaned, breasted and washed off the birds and built our fire. For the fire, we gathered rocks and made a fire pit with them, then broke up the mesquite and soon had a nice fire going, making coals for the cooking. Putting our expanded metal “grill” on the rocks we were ready to “fry”!

We fried the doves and started our green chilies and onions. The recipe follows:

Two sweet onions, medium size,
One small can of chopped green chilies,
One stick of butter, don’t use margarine.
Peel and slice the onions and put them and the butter in a skillet, cover, place on the fire. Stir occasionally and cook the onions until they turn white then add the green chilies. Cook for five more minutes and then serve.

This recipe fed our family. For larger groups keep the ratio of two onions for one small can of green chilies. This dish goes good with steak, chicken, wild game and fish.

By the time we finished eating, it was completely dark and our fire was flickering and almost down to coals, we heard a horse coming up on us. It was Jake Schroder, mounted on a fine steed that he’d borrowed from one of his neighbors. Dismounting and tying his horse to the Power Wagon he inquired, “Got any grub left?” We did and he finished off the food, stretched out on the desert and told us that they had gotten home early and he decided he would ride out to see if we’d done any good with the birds.

We were enjoying the desert when Jake said he had to get the horse back, so he mounted up, turned the horse in two tight circles and in one motion, pulled back on the reins and hit the horse on its rump with his hat and up came the horse’s front legs, the hooves pawing at the air. Laughing we told him, “Jake, that looked like Roy Rogers and Trigger! Ride ‘em cowboy!” And, off he went into the darkness back towards Scottsdale Road.

Having just p on a new hunting lease near Millersview, the opening of dove season found me standing by myself, with my twenty gauge pump, in the shade of a mesquite tree, the sun on my right and a half acre stock tank to my front. The banks of the tank were sandy/gravelly, just right for doves to use.

Arriving at the tank around 4:00 PM, too early for the birds to water, I sat real still and watched the song birds and, of all things, the deer, eight or ten does came into the water. There was a lot of shooting that I guessed was about a mile away on a bordering ranch and I was hoping that the birds would come into my tank.

One hour later, here came the doves! Beginning with just a trickle, I knocked down the first two and they both fell right on the tank damn, just in front of me. Picking my shots, being careful not to splash one into the tank, the doves kept falling and I stopped for a minute and counted up. Eleven birds, then I counted my shots, eleven shots. Never having gone straight on a limit of doves, thinking back, I had run over a hundred and fifty straight on clay birds in trap and downed fifteen straight Mearns quail, but not the diving, twisting and turning doves.

Here came number twelve, right at me, and easy head on shot. Covering the bird, for some reason, I raised my head and missed! The dove veered to the right and, pow, down it dropped into the tank. Chunking rocks and cow chips at the bird, the “waves” brought it to the bank and then it was in my bag.

Twelve for thirteen, still not bad and the new lease only got better.signed u

Trying to find some relief from the hot, September, Texas sun the afternoon of opening day of dove season, we were stationed under shadeless, it seemed, mesquite trees around a stock tank.  The tank was on the edge of a just cut milo field, on our new hunting lease in McCulloch County, Texas.

The afternoon flight was just beginning as a pair of mourners zipped in and bam, bam; they tumbled down into the field. Rooster, one of my two Brittany Spaniels, raced out and picked up one bird, brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. Rooster, right, was a great retriever.
Gus, his son, enjoying his first hunting season, looked kinda silly standing over the downed dove that he went to retrieve. Finally he picked it up, started trotting to me and dropped the bird half way, spitting out feathers and sitting down.

His first dove retrieve proved difficult and for the rest of his hunting career, he never liked to retrieve them. When a retriever picks up a dove, and rolls it into the proper carrying position in its mouth, out come the bird’s feathers resulting in a difficult retrieve. Quail, ducks or geese don’t shed their feathers and are much easier to retrieve.
We continued hammering the doves and both the shooting and temperature was hot! Several birds, when shot, fell into the water and Rooster splashed in and retrieved them. Gus continued fumbling around trying to retrieve birds that fell into the field

Finally, I had just splashed another one, and Gus, pictured left, bounced into the water to bring it back. He picked up the bird, tried to position it in his mouth, and for some reason, began swallowing it. Into the waist deep, muddy bottom, water I sloshed and grabbed Gus. The dove’s tail feathers were sticking out of his mouth as I reached in, before he could swallow it, and pulled it out of his throat .
Gus hunted with me for eight more years and he never tried that trick again!

What is it best called, frog hun, gigging, grabbing or shooting? I’ll choose just plain froggin’. It is the most different of all the hunting sports. Thinking about it, I have never gone frog fishing, as such, but have caught a bull frog on a small, frog colored, popper and was rewarded with quite a battle on my fly rod.

Froggin’ is a nocturnal sport and a must, for success, is a good strong, spot light. I believe that when the light is shined in a frog’s eyes it mesmerizes, hypnotizes or paralyzes them.

My start at froggin’ was in a group of stock tanks on my Uncle Shelton Gafford’s ranch in Falls County, Texas. We would take a light, along with a .22 rifle, and walk slowly around the bank of the tank and when a frog was spotted, pow, dead frog. Shooting .22 shorts into the bank was safe, but we constantly had to be on the lookout for cotton mouth water moccasins. The snakes hunt in the grass around the tanks and when we made noise, they would come barrelling back towards the water. I had one slither between my feet one night! This was a good way to work the tanks, but about a half to one third of our frogs, when shot, would reflexively jump into the water and sink. On a larger lake, this method is not encouraged.

My son, Randy, went a step farther with his shooting of frogs. He found a honey hole for frogs on our deer lease in McCulloch County. He would sneak along the bank, spy a frog, and shoot. He shot five in a row, but each, reflexively, jumped into the water and sank. Randy is a former student at Texas A&M and correctly figured that if he waded out, arm pit deep into the tank, and shot the frogs from the water, the impact of the bullet would push the frogs back up on the bank. His surmise was correct and we had a frog leg feast (after he dried off) that night.

Gigging is the best way to capture frogs on larger bodies of water. A gig is a simple tool, a four foot, or longer, pole with a sharp instrument attached. It helps if the instrument also has a barb on it. If you know the bottom, wading is a fine method to use to sneak up on them, otherwise, a boat, or skiff, is required. Just shine the light in their eyes, sneak up quietly and stick ‘em with the gig and into the toe sack with them.

The most exciting method of capturing a bull frog is grabbing them with your bare hands. It is a lot like gigging, but without a gig. One thing, for sure, you really check out the bank closely before you grab one. Shine their eyes, sneak up on them, a boat is best, check the surroundings for snakes, then quickly grab the frog, whack its head and into the toe sack with it.

The most unusual capture of frogs that I was ever involved with was after O.H Buck and I were returning, on a Farm to Market Road, from a successful froggin’ trip to a private lake, when it began to rain in torrents. Rice fields and their canals were on both sides of the road, when we noticed, what looked like cow paddies, in the road. Stopping, we saw that it was bull frogs instead and quickly getting our lights and toe sacks, ignoring the foul weather, added another dozen frogs to our “catch”. I still can’t say what the frogs were doing just sitting on the road in the rain? Maybe it was raining frogs?

The best part of froggin’ is the eatin’. Just skin the legs, cut them off of the frog, wash them, dip them in corn meal and fry. Smaller legs are very good grilled and my favorite, are legs cooked in a butter, jalapeno, garlic and lemon/lime sauce – Frog Jon.

But caution! Watch out for snakes! One night, in our skiff, we were easing along the dam of a rice field reservoir, when from out of a tree, dropped, “plop”, a four foot cotton mouth, right into the boat. We both vacated the premises quickly and dispatched the snake with our gig. But that also ended our night’s froggin’.
ting

Three weeks before, we, Tommy Walker, Norman Shelter and I, had returned from the Lake Guerro area, in Mexico, where we had enjoyed a truly fabulous white wing dove hunt! With their twenty gauge, Browning Superposed, shotguns, Tommy and Norman had shot over two thousand birds and since their shoulders had sufficiently healed, we were now after some south Texas mourning doves. Then I was using a twenty gauge, 870.

Before sun up, ten miles northwest of Hondo, Texas, we had just pulled up and parked our Suburban in the shade of a big oak tree, next to a cut, milo field. Soon, within fifteen minutes, the doves would come piling into the field and the three of us would be in ambush positions behind a fence row.

Right on time, here came the mourners, hundreds of them, and choosing our shots, we limited out in less than thirty minutes! Fast action, hot shooting and when it is that good, it always seems to end too soon.

To clean the birds, we moved into the shade next to the truck and as we were breasting them, Tommy looked out over the field and exclaimed, “I’ll be durn, look at that cat in the middle of the field. It’s a wonder that with all of our shooting we didn’t rain some shot down on it.” We guessed the light beige, cat was about three hundred yards away and sitting on its haunches, but it was too far away for us to tell anything else about it.

Jumping up from my cleaning chores, I hurried to the truck and fumbling through my “possibles bag” came up with a small pair of binoculars. Zeroing in on the cat, to my surprise, this was not a house cat but a cougar! Just like a house cat, the cougar was bathing itself, apparently oblivious to our presence. The country around us was a mixture of cultivation and real thick stuff, but we were surprised by the cougars presence and wisely made no move toward it.

We re-estimated the distance from the cougar to us and figured that it was up to four hundred yards away. We finished cleaning the birds, drove off and the cougar was still sitting in the middle of the field, bathing itself.

Two weeks later, Tommy, who had a ranch in Devine, twenty-one miles from Hondo, heard from the Game Warden that a cougar had been trapped, tranquilized and moved to a less “people intensive” area, meaning the Big Bend country, or, other points west!

After the past Saturday’s spectacular dove hunt just outside of George West, my Dad and I decided to accept the rancher’s invitation and made arrangements with him to be there the coming Saturday.

We would be taking one more shooter with us, my ex-wife. It was almost a problem because she was eight months pregnant with our second child, soon to be Randy. But in those days the sex of the child couldn’t be determined until birth. My Dad and I thought, “Why not, one more license would let us get another limit of birds.” Come Saturday morning we packed Brad off to my Mom, and set sail for George West.

Arriving there around 2:30 PM, we met the rancher and paid him a whopping $15.00 for the three of us. An added benefit was that he was going to hunt with us again this week and he was going to take us to three new places. He said the birds were still eating him out of house and home and they were starting to cost him money.

A little after 3:30 we arrived at out first stop, a fifty-acre milo field that had just been cut, and as we walked to our hunting areas, birds were coming and going, flocking, to the field. Pop, pop, pop, pop, four guns barked and two doves fell. More shooting, more birds going down. The shooting was fun, but the retrieving was hot work. Soon, my ex-wife got too hot and took the first of her several breaks. So three of us were shooting, pop, pop, pop, and more birds falling.

We checked and we had our bag limit, forty-eight birds, in about forty-five minutes. Our bag and possession limit was ninety-six, but after last weeks hunt we still had plenty of doves!

Hot shooting, in more ways than one. Shotgun barrels were too hot to touch, the heat was staggering, and thankfully we had our limits and could go on home. But the rancher said, “We need to go try to this new stock tank and see what’s there.” “But we have our limits,” my Dad and I exclaimed! “Limits? Let’s go shoot”, grinned the rancher.

I guess we thought that this guy really wanted to shoot some doves and we sure were the right guys to help him, so, off the four of us went to this new stock tank complete with several dead mesquite trees standing around the bank. The tank was about one acre and its banks were gravelly and smooth right down to the waters edge. A perfect set up for doves.

Taking our stations behind some buck brush, pop, pop, pop, pop, and one dove fell – a little different shooting than an open field. Soon we were in the groove and the doves started falling in the water and around the tank and we had four more limits.

No afternoon swim this week so handing my wallet and watch to my Dad, I unceremoniously waded out and picked up the birds and told the rancher, “We have our bag and possession limits and really should stop shooting and head on home.” He replied, “I have one more spot, a roost, that we need to try.” Drying of as best I could, the rancher and I left for the roost. My two hunting partners decided they had had enough and would sit this one out in the shade around the rancher’s house.

Arriving at the roosting area with about thirty minutes left to shoot, birds were already coming in. The roost was a large chunk of South Texas brush country with a clearing surrounding a small rise, a miniature hill. The birds were guiding on the clearing. Mourning doves will guide on a tree, telephone pole, house or any outstanding feature in the landscape to assist them in flying the most direct route to food, water and a safe place to roost.

We were in their direct flight line, and pop, pop, pop, pop, we unloaded on them and birds started falling. By end of shooting time we had well over two more limits. A quick tally told me that we faced cleaning over one hundred and thirty doves, then driving home. We faced a terrible fine if a Game Warden caught us!

Back at the ranch house, behind his patio, the rancher turned on every outside light he had. I thought, “We may as well go to the local high school stadium, turn on those lights and clean our birds.” The four of us start cleaning them and saw headlights coming down his drive. Maybe it’s his wife? Fat chance. We could tell it was a truck, a green truck with a grayish seal on the side – A STATE GAME WARDEN!

We were in a heap of trouble. Fifty birds over the limit at $5.00 per bird is $250.00 and probably loss of our licenses and our guns. Ouch! Maybe this was all a scam, a set up to get an easy collar for the Game Warden? He walked up slowly, nodding to the rancher. The rancher stood and shook his hand. We died! The rancher said, “This is Warden so-in-so.” The Warden smiled and said, “Hidee. It looks like you folks,” we died again, “need some help cleaning these birds.” He added, “I know you all shot a lot of ‘em, but we just have too many on this place and they need thinning out.”

Alive again, before the Warden changed his mind, we hurriedly finished up on the birds, piled into the car and headed home (with all of the birds).

There were so many birds the answer was more hunters not over limit shooting! After that “near miss”, we adhered strictly to game laws. Randy was born three weeks later and remains a dedicated hunter

The late summer of 1969 the opening of Texas’ first preseason teal hunt on September 20th, coincided with Fred Walters, a close friend and neighbor of mine, and Iacquiring hunting rights on a three hundred acre rice field that included a small pond. The lease was in the middle of the Katy Prairie, four miles due north of Katy, Texas. This was our first “go” at a hunting lease and for the next two years provided both of us, and our families, with a world of enjoyment. Using the back roads, before sun up, it was a twenty-five minute drive from our home’s in Sharpstown, to the lease.

We took the opportunity the new lease and the new teal season afforded by being hunched down opening morning behind a levee in the rice field, beside our small pond. Awaiting the morning flights, with the sun coming up over our right shoulders, to entice the little ducks, we had a“spread” ofthree mallard decoys bouncing in the water. Several flights of doves buzzed by, but we held our fire since, at the time, our State’s season only allowed dovehunting after noon.

It wasn’t long before, zip, zip, two teal whizzed over us, made a wide swing, caught the wind, set their wings and plopped down beside the bouncing decoys. Up we jumped, the teal flushed wildly, our shotguns boomed and splash, splash, we claimed the first kills on our lease. As I sloshed out and picked up the little ducks, four more buzzed our “spread” and with my hands full and Fred standing up we passed on any shots.

Sitting back down, before I could get set, a lone single buzzed in and Fred splashed him. After that we took turns shooting, the teal kept piling in and before 9:00 AM we both had our limits ofblue wing teal.

During the morning we heard a good amount of shooting and it sounded like the hunters liked this new season, now, forty years later, the “special” teal season is still eagerly awaited by the “short sleeved” hunting group.

In September 1964, the hot spot for mourning doves in Texas was George West, a small town southeast of San Antonio. Grain fields abounded and there were miles and miles of the famed south Texas brush country for roosting.

To sample some of this reportedly outstanding shooting, my Dad and I had decided to go ahead and pay for a “day hunt”. We called the local C of C and they gave us the name of a rancher booking hunts. We called him and set up a hunt for the coming Saturday.

Arriving in George West, after the three and a half hour drive from my home in southwest Houston, we greeted the rancher and paid him a whopping $10.00 for the two of us. An added benefit was that he wanted to hunt with us, three limits now, and then he took us a to a special place to shoot. He said the birds were eating him out of house and home and were a nuisance. We said, “Fine with us. Lead on!”

This particular late September in South Texas was unusually hot and by 3:30 PM, no daylight savings time, everything was either wilted or too hot to touch. The only wind was hot and every footstep would stir up tiny dust devils. Some may say, “Too hot to hunt”, but both of us, being tight, had paid our money and would take our chances.

We crammed into the ranchers pick up, this was before king cabs, and he drove us to a half acre stock tank. The tank was surrounded by light brush, just enough for some cover with smooth banks down to the waters edge. At one end was a dead mesquite tree and the tank was right beside a fresh cut milo field. Perfect!

Taking our stations in the brush, and this brush didn’t provide much shade at all, we didn’t have to wait long for the doves to come to the water – pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and three birds fell, two into the brush and were quickly retrieved, the third fell into the water. The rancher said, “Don’t worry about that one, there will be a lot more fall in and we’ll get ‘em later!”

The birds continued to pile in on us and the shooting was fun, but the retrieving was hot, hot work. We quickly learned to shoot a bird, mark him in the brush and go pick him up before taking the next shot. Those that fell into the water, we just let them float.

As the doves continued zipping in, we took a quick count and had forty-two birds in hand and twenty-one in the water. Bag and possession limit was seventy-two for the three of us. We picked our next shots carefully and made sure the retrieve was an easy one. Soon we had our limit, with twenty-three still in the water.

Unloading my gun, I started looking around for loose rocks or cow chips to chunk at the birds in the water. The rancher stopped me with, “Jon, how about a swim” as he kicked off his boots and peeled down to his shorts? My Dad and I followed his lead and soon there were three grown men splashing around in the cool water and chunking the doves back on to the bank! Not a bad ending to a great hunt!

As we dressed the rancher said, “This sure beats working up a big sweat chunkin’ those birds out!” As we were driving back to our car he said, “Why don’t you two come back next week?”

My wife, Layla, and I had arrived at our lease in McCulloch County, Texas in mid afternoon, after the four, plus, hour drive from Houston, and found that we were the first ones there for the weekend.
We changed from our “business executive” clothes and slipped into jeans and camo shirts and quickly headed out to our “secret” stock tank with Gus, our Brittany Spaniel, happily trotting beside us. I had found a spring fed stock tank tucked behind a butte, or small mesa, and it was way off the beaten path.

The “secret” tank is hidden 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 oak trees at the other end. We used the live ones 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, great shooting and a lot of fun watching Gus as he retrieved the birds that fell into the water.
Pictured is Gus in one of his dryer moments.
Finally he rebelled. After seven or eight retrieves, he walked over beside me and shook himself vigorously, liberally dousing me, and plopped down at my side as I knocked another one down into the water. “Fetch him up, Gus”” I commanded, and he didn’t move. “Gus, fetch the bird” more forcefully as he looked up at me and rolled over on his back! Gus was “done” for the day!
I tried to get Layla to retrieve the last dove for me, but she declined also. It was left for me to chunk rocks and cow patties at the bird to “wash” it close to the shore, where I unceremoniously waded out and picked it up.
So much for delegating!