Along the fence line of the field behind both ranch houses, way before sun up, I was thinking that I’d better get busy and clean up the jeep trail along here.  In the dark it was tough going with only a red head light attached to my ball cap, but finally I saw the trail leading to the Corner Blind, called this because County Road 408 makes a sharp turn some distance behind the blind.  The blind is really a tree stand snuggled into a copse of oak called a shinnery around here and I was excited because this was the first morning I was out scouting the blinds for deer, bucks to be specific.

This morning turned out to be almost futile then at 7:45 AM out walked 2 yearlings, both are pictured below, and began to feed in the feeder.

The doe, there hasn’t been any killed along the roads yet so I knew she was around, did not show until the yearlings had fed, then she came out of the thick stuff on my right and headed right for me.  She kept on coming and stopped right below me, both yearlings then came to the doe and all 3 were close to me.  No wind, they never picked up my scent and since this was only scouting, I didn’t have scent blocker on, but finally a puff of breeze, a loud snort and the yearlings ran off about 50 feet then stopped.  Finally they walked on into the thick stuff and I climbed down out of the blind and headed back.

As I walked back to the house it dawned on me that the feeder never went off, it serves as a “call” to the deer that food is available, that’s why I only saw 3 deer this morning.  Usually this feeder is covered up with doe, bucks and yearling!

Last night, with Layla getting over her case of flu, the doc said it was allergies I went out, stayed after dark and waited for a hog, the infamous black hog to show up.  My wait was in vain because it never showed, however one of my food plots bore the damage a full size hog can wreck upon it!

As I waited for the sun to set, with sweat pouring off me, it was 92 around here yesterday I snapped this “shot” of all the undergrowth around MaMaws blind, that means a lot of clean up for me.

Then, a good buck, the young 8 pointer with short brow tines walked up and looked the place over.  As I’ve said before, “If he makes it past this season, he’ll be a good one!”
    
No hogs, but my red hunting light worked just fine, probably Saturday evening, I’ll try again.

Now for something unusual, this past Monday, my daughter Suzanne, who teaches third grade in Paris, Texas, sent me a picture of this bobcat, a male and very healthy, that had caught himself in the school’s soccer net.  She took this picture of the cat just before a maintenance man cut him down. I bet the cat and all scattered quickly when he was cut loose!

Getting up before the chickens, I got to Patrick’s house at 4:30 AM and Brian his neighbor had overslept, however we were on the road by 4:50.  Our drive, except for the dozing was uneventful and we pulled up to the “Honey Hole” an hour before shooting time.

The water was higher than I’d ever seen it, so we loaded our gear into Patrick’s boat and took off on a very slow trip across the pond.  Shooting time came and went, we heard some booming in the distance, but no teal were attracted to our spread.  The picture shows Patrick and Brian in their hide.

Soon Brian’s gun boomed and he knocked down one of the speedsters, the teal coming in low and not flaring until the last moment, this was the first blue wing teal of the morning, Tank picked up the duck and our morning started.

Tank, the Lab, pictured below with a teal he retrieved from the thick stuff behind us,

On some teal we shot holes in the sky, but overall we got half a limit.  Here’s our “strap” of teal, 2 blue wings and 4 green wings.

This past Tuesday afternoon, I went to a friends ranch and had some fantastic shooting, the white wings were plentiful and my new shotgun actually felt comfortable!  The only problem, it was hot, 102, and the shade, even though there was a nice breeze, was hot too!

The small lake was originally about 5 acres, but with the heat, the cattle watering and the lack of rain, it has shrunk to stock tank size.  The picture shows the extent of our drought.  The past year I hunted far to the right of the picture, under the copious oak trees, around the bend of the lake.  The lake is down about 10 feet and our conditions are much worse that last year’s record drought!

Taking up a position, in the shade of course, behind the lake dam, I eagerly awaited the white wings.  Slipping two shells into my shotgun, I cycled the action, thinking there was a shell in the chamber, waited and sweated.  My wait wasn’t long as a group of birds, 8 or 10, came barreling in, picking one out and pulling the trigger, click, nothing happened, no puff of feathers, nothing but the click and later I found out that the chamber should be loaded first, duh!

After about 10 minutes, the doves really started piling in, picking one out, boom, I knocked it down and if it wasn’t for the white stripe on the wing this one would have been very hard to find.  Also, I was shooting gray shells, they were really hard to find!

The second white wing was a head on shot and it almost fell into the water, landing right on the edge.  Close to the edge it was boggy, looks can be deceiving, it will look like good footing, but one step too many and down to the boot tops, so I found a long stick, rolled the bird out until it was clear of the mud and added it to my bag.

Stopping shooting with 8 birds in my bag, 10 shots all told, but I only found 9 gray shells. If you count the failure to insert a shell into the chamber on my first bird, 8 for 11 attempts, still not bad.  Limit shooting would have been easy, birds were everywhere and my shooting was, like the weather, hot, but in the excitement of the hunt, I forgot my water, left it at home and was dry, “spittin’ cotton”, thank goodness it was only a 10 minute drive to my house.

Adding a note about picking up the shells, cattle will chew up any shells left on the ground, the brass can’t be digested so all shells should be picked up!

It’s here, dove season has opened and Mickey Donahoo and I are welcoming it in again down in San Saba and I’m sure we’ll be banging away at the gray ghosts!  Tomorrow, September 2nd I’ll have the story, great shots, great misses and all.

Our targets will be mourning dove, white wings and European collared dove.  The last, Europeans, are classed by our State as non game birds and they can be hunted year round and there’s no limit either and we should see a fair amount of them.

Two days this past week the game cams took 2 “shots” of interest and I just had to show both.  The first was of a feral pig, the second was of a large buck.

Monday evening, something showed up on the game cam, a hog, or a feral pig and this is the first one we’ve ever seen on the ranch, 10 years with no hogs, but they’ve been reported all around us. Late Saturday afternoon looks like I’ll be sitting in MaMaw’s blind with my .243 hoping the pig comes around again. There must be a hole in the fence somewhere, or else, the pig made a new one, based on the pig showing up, looks like a trip around the fence for me.

Also, on Wednesday morning a new buck showed up at the corner feeder, this one is 4-5 years old, well formed and quickly established his dominance over a young 8 pointer, but I’ll have this story on another post.

During my business career, except for my start with the large computer company, I always had people work for me and I got used to giving orders and having them obeyed.  This one time it was given back to me in spades!

Layla, and I arrived at our lease in McColloch County, Texas in mid afternoon, after the 4, plus, hour drive from Houston, and found that we were the only folks there that day.  We changed from our business executive clothes, she was a VP at a large rice company, then slipped into jeans and camo shirts and quickly headed out to my favorite place to hunt dove, a “secret” stock tank.  Following is the picture of the house we used at our lease.

After the long drive, Gus, our Brittany, was anxious to get to hunting.  We let him out and on the walk to the stock tank he took care of his business, then happily trotted beside us.   The stock tank was spring fed and tucked behind a butte, or small mesa, way off the beaten path, as the picture shows.

About an hour before sunset, the mourning doves started coming into 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 that we used for shade and concealment at the other end

The birds 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 plus getting to watch Gus retrieve birds that fell into the water.

Finally he rebelled.  After 7 or 8 retrieves, he walked over beside me and shook himself vigorously, liberally dousing me, and ploped 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!  Trying get Layla to retrieve the last dove for me, I asked her nicely, but she declined also.

It was left for me to chunk rocks and cow patties at the bird to wash them close to the shore, where I unceremoniously waded out and picked them up.  So much for delegating!

Whitetail deer molt 2 times a year and the first on the ranch that started this summer was this nice 10 pointer that got a jumpstart on his winter coat.  It began on his head, moved down his neck, to where in the “shots”, it’s almost to his shoulders.  At first I didn’t understand what was happening to him, I thought he had some type of chronic wasting disease, but since he’s almost 4-1/2 and, obviously, he’s quite mature, and naturally he’d be molting.

These other 2 “shots” show the 10 pointer on the 19th and then again on the 23rd, both times showing that molting had started.  The 8 he’s running with, a very nice 3-1/2 year old, hasn’t started yet.

Looking this change up on “Bing”, I found a real good article written by the Forest Resources group at the University of Georgia that appeared on Tinks blog, Tinks supplies different kinds of deer scents and the article readily identifies the different stages of the molt.

Summarizing the article, whitetails keep their summer coat for about 4-5 months before they shed again into their winter coats. While the summer coat provides protection from the sun and helps keep the deer cool, the function of the winter coat, with it’s hollow hair, is to insulate against the cold.  It’s a fact that the insulation will provide such good protection against the cold that snow can accumulate on a deer’s back without melting.  Although the coarse, hollow guard hairs of the winter coat provide good insulation, it is the finer, wooly underfur that provides the greatest insulation, these shorter, finer, twisting hairs trap layers of warm air close to the skin.

The buck’s thick winter coat keeps him warm and to help keep dry, deer manufacture their own water repellent. Associated with each hair follicle is a small gland called a sebaceous gland that secretes an oily or greasy material called sebum. This oil then coats the hair to keep it from becoming brittle and also help shed water.

Now you know all that I know about deer molting, frankly I’ve not had the game cams on the feeders except during the fall and winter, but will be interesting to see how the deer herd begins their molt and changes to their winter coat.  Just think, soon, the bucks will start loosing the velvet on their horns and soon deer season will roll around!

No turkey hunting Wednesday afternoon, having just driven to northeast Texas from my place in Goldthwaite, however, Wesley, my grandson, was playing Pony League baseball that evening, he’s 13 now and one of the stars on his team (and in the league too)! The team is blessed with good coaches, young guys that really know their stuff, they put this all together for a win Wednesday and Wesley was scheduled to pitch on Friday night, but that’s another story.

Thursday morning, a very beautiful morning, Paul Culbertson and I went out to his place for a try at an eastern turkey, “a try” was the key words. We arrived about 5 minutes late, the sun was just peeking over the horizon and the big birds had already left their roosts. Hurriedly we built a ground blind, settled in it and even though we were a tad late, let out 3 crow caws, but no turkey response!

We saw, nor heard a turkey and sat in the blind until around 9:30 AM, then went back to his cabin for a bite of breakfast. Our hunger satisfied, at 11:30 we went back out to the ground blind, the turkeys usually coming to the feeder around noon, but again, no turkeys, they picked this morning not to come around. However all was not lost, we still had Friday morning and our plans were to be out before sun up, improve our blind a little, then entice a bird to come in.

Thursday afternoon and evening were spent watching my grandson, Will, play Little League baseball, Will’s 9, really just learning, but he has a lot of fun and he will be a good one too! Friday morning, 5:30 AM, thunder blaring, Suzanne woke me with, “Dad, it’s raining, thundering and lightning. What about today’s hunt?” “Wake me at 6:30 and we’ll see”, was my sleepy reply. The thunder rumbled, rain poured down, then down came dime size hail, this ended our mornings hunt, north wind blowing 15-20 MPH, almost 2 inches of rain, this also rained out Wesley’s game.

All was not lost, because Suzanne, Paul and I, ate Mexican food for lunch, spent Friday afternoon shopping and the boys and I packed up and headed for Plano, where Layla was running a Senior Softball tournament. Both boys will work and help her with the tournament and Sunday afternoon Suzanne will pick them up.

No turkeys Thursday, rain, hail and lightning Friday, a definite bust, but there’ll be other chances too!

This past Thursday, Mickey Donahoo and I drove out to his hunting lease 35 miles south of Sonora, Texas and as soon as we got there, we ate a sandwich, unloaded our gear, changed into our camo and headed out for a go at a turkey, all of this by 12:30 PM!  We used a ground blind that Mickey had made the week before, the turkey hunting season opened a week before ours, north zone, south zone you see, then we set up our decoy, got into the blind and proceeded to wait for some action.

The blind was under a cedar tree, it was almost hot except when a breeze came through, it was hard to keep our eyes open, we each nodded several times, but about 1:00 PM a hen showed up, just nibbling along, walking toward the decoy.  She passed up the water trough shown in the picture and came on toward the decoy.

Another hour, nothing, this blind, made for Doris, Mickey’s wife, her being all of 4 foot 11, at the most, was really uncomfortable to me, no way to stretch my legs out and yesterday I had gotten a shot in each knee, really uncomfortable!  Around 4:00 PM, 2 gobblers came up to get water, since they were both shooters, no pictures.  Right away I hefted my shotgun to my shoulder, ready for a shot, but the 2 big birds were more interested in getting a drink. It seemed like an hour, my shotgun ready, then I started getting the shakes, never having had them before shooting, the more I held the gun, the more my heart started beating, faster, faster, I thought I would hyperventilate, finally the one with the best beard separated from the other.  Boom and down the gobbler went!

The picture shows me with the Rio Grande gobbler, my shotgun and a big smile.  Right after this picture, we went back to the camp, got my rifle and headed out to the blind where I shot the javalina in January, see my post “[The Shortest Hunt]” on January 17, 2012.  At this spot, we had the opportunity to take some great pictures that I’ll post on April 11th.

Lucky for me the skunk, 10 feet up wind, didn’t smell or see me, lying prone on the ground patiently waiting in ambush between a small turkey roost and a freshly plowed field. Hoping that both the skunk would move on, which it did, and some turkeys would move our way, which, minutes later, 4 hens did, made this apparent foolishness worthwhile. Lucky the skunk missed Rick Haney too, who was in ambush about 40 yards to my right.

We were enjoying the opening morning of spring turkey season on Rick’s ranch, near Abilene, Texas. We had scouted the roost the previous evening and guessed it held about a dozen birds. It had been eerie, in the pitch dark, walking along a ranch road and listening to the night sounds and then hearing the unmistakable sounds of the turkey’s “snoring”, a peculiar sawing or sighing sound, difficult to describe.

Lucky, because the hens, as we lay still as rocks, walked within 30 feet of us! We hoped they would draw a tom, or 2, close enough for us to get a shot. They walked on to the edge of the plowed ground and began nibbling away, and always, at least one would have its head up alertly scanning for danger or maybe a boyfriend, and they all were making soft, purring, hen sounds. Sure enough, from our right oblique we heard the gobbles of several toms announcing they were off the roost, and soon, still gobbling, we saw them and they were an exciting sight, gobbling and strutting, wings dragging and tension building in us!

They came to within 60 yards of us and stopped for a moment, then came on and about, 40 to 50 yards, laying down, it was hard to tell exactly, Rick jumped up and boom, boom, his 12 gauge barked twice as the turkeys took wing, luckily, right over me. Picking one out, swinging and covering the bird’s head, boom and it crumpled. Then acquiring another, putting the bead on its nose, boom and down it went a double on turkeys, both of them flying! Having hunted for a long time and many times, having doubled on doves, quail, ducks and geese, this was a first, and probably, a last for me too, a thrilling, unusual situation!

Rick scored once and we got a lot of mind pictures, but of course, no cameras or pictures of this feat, but at least, I didn’t lead the big, birds too far!