Up and out before sun up on Saturday morning, after repeated calls, no answering gobbles greeted me.  Moving to another spot, still no answering gobbles, so after 9:00 AM I packed it in.  Saturday afternoon was filled with picture taking and poses for Colton’s senior/junior prom.  It’s hard to believe that he will be graduating and going on to Texas A&M, despite 2 all-state years, no football in his plans, just graduating, then going into business.  The first picture is of Colton, MaMaw and me, the second is MaMaw and Mikayla, her group of sophomores will act as servers for the juniors and seniors and the final is a picture of Colton and his date, Darien.
          
Sunday morning, Palm Sunday, was spent in church, Sunday afternoon finishing up with our income taxes, in preparation for another turkey hunt Monday.  Monday morning, big wind blowing, found me on a friend’s ranch, hunkered down in a hide between 2 cedar trees.
    
Calling, calling, still no answering gobbles, then 2 hours later packing it in and heading home.

Maybe the wind has something to do with the lack of gobblers, maybe the hens are all bred and nesting, maybe the toms have moved back toward the river, who knows, but the our local paper said that prospects were good for Mills County and central Texas?  However, I’ll keep after the turkeys, in fact, Mickey Donahoo and I are going out to his hunting lease on Thursday for a 2 day hunt for the big birds.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be hunkered down, camo’d up real good, awaiting a gobbler to show himself.  Previously, having picked our the area, that I’ll be hunting in, it has good cover, sufficient room to set up a decoy or 2 and is sufficiently close to the, sometimes, creek, where, I hope, the big birds are roosting.

Back in 2009 I spent way too much time scouting for turkeys.  Being in the field 4 days before the opener, I had called in a beautiful Rio Grande gobbler, see the picture below, but come shooting time, he was long gone.

Saying, I hope it’s close to where the turkey’s roost, is correct, because I haven’t been out scouting, been trying to catch up on the work around here and doing my income taxes (ugh!), keeping myself out of the woods and not disturb them too much.  However, tomorrow morning will be a different story.

Saturday afternoon I’ll go to a different spot, a good place where I’ve shot 2 turkeys in the past.  Last year, no turkeys, but I did call up a dominique rooster.  See my post on April 12, 2011, “[Rooster Huntin]’”.

Just before the door slammed shut, the last words I heard as I was running outside was my Aunt Myree saying, “Jon Howard, (back then, all young Texas boys had 2 front names), you be careful and don’t play with that dog!”  The dog in question was a terrier mix, on a leash attached to a clothesline in the backyard of my aunt and uncle, Myree and A.C. Turner’s home in Huntsville, Texas.  It was tied up because it had been acting “funny”, wouldn’t drink any water and was trying to attack everyone!  The backyard in Huntsville was one block off of old Highway 75 and Mom, Dad and I had gone up to spend a weekend with them and their two, young sons, Bill and Roy Peyton, known then as “Bubba”.

Once outside, being 5 years old, the first thing I did was go right up to the dog and try to play with it and it responded, not very playfully, by jumping up on my chest and biting me!  Inside I ran bleeding and crying, impervious to all of the “we told you so’s”.

This event occurred on a Saturday morning and the first thing Monday the dog was euthanized, my uncle took its head to Austin, and sure enough, the dog was rabid.  My family got the results on Thursday and Friday morning found me, Mom and Dad in downtown Houston at Dr. Talley’s offices, in the old Medical Arts Building, for the first of 22 rabies shots, spaced around my navel, timed every other day.  It was the biggest needle I had ever seen, and thinking back, it must have held an ounce or 2 of an unpleasant looking, green serum.

The shots saved my life, but by the third morning, I resisted it so bad, that before it could be administered, it took 4 adults to hold me down.  This went on for the next 19 shots and scarred me forever.  And now, whenever I go into a doctor’s office, I have a terrible case of white fright.  My blood pressure goes up 20 or 30 points, my heart rate jumps up 20 beats or more per minute and the past, I have even fainted getting a shot in my arm.

One day while talking to Mickey Donahoo and his wife, Doris, I was laughing about my “white fright” and my rabies shots, when Mickey said, “You know, Jon, I have had rabies shots too,” and then began one of the most bizarre hunting stories I have ever heard!

Below, Mickey and I are pictured at the 2007 Senior Softball World Championships in Phoenix, Az.

Mickey and Doris were spring, turkey hunting on their lease outside of Ozona, crouched down in a makeshift blind trying to lure a tom turkey into range.  Mickey had a shotgun and Doris her trusty .243 and, with no success, he was calling, making soft clucks imitating a hen.  They decided to move along a nearby game trail and find a new spot, but as they walked down the trail they heard a noise in the brush and were shocked to see a bobcat running down the trail toward them.  Bobcats are normally shy, mostly nocturnal animals, but this one kept coming and was soon almost on Mickey.  As the cat closed on him, Mickey kicked it under its chin as hard as he could, knocked it up in the air.  Then the cat surprised them both, while still up in the air, before it hit the ground, it spun around and viciously attacked Mickey!

Some times, my big, house cat, playing of course, will try to grab me around the knee and wrap his paws around my leg, but this wasn’t playing, this bobcat meant business! It attacked Mickey’s knee area, wrapping its paws around, then planting its razor sharp claws, firmly into Mickey’s leg and then began biting at his knee.  When going for a kill on large game, cats will, almost always, try to disable a leg joint, slowing the prey down. Someone famous once said, “If you want to study lions, but think it may be too dangerous, study small cats first.  Cats are cats.”

Mickey continued trying to grab the cat’s throat, but in the melee he dropped his shotgun.  Afraid of hitting Mickey, Doris couldn’t shoot the cat with her rifle nor could she use it as a club.  Her next choice was taking off her ball cap and whacking the cat with it.  This whacking and Mickey’s continued pressure on the bobcat’s throat forced it to let go and retreat into the brush.

Through his shredded pants, along with the blood, he could see, and feel, numerous puncture wounds and they both knew that he needed medical attention quick, the closest being a clinic in Ozona.  Driving to the clinic and recounting the attack, they thought it strange that the bobcat smelled like a skunk and that it had no fear of them. Rabid animals have no fear of humans!

At the clinic Mickey’s wounds were cleaned and bandaged and the Nurse told both of them, “Based on both your all’s story, the bobcat was probably rabid, you can’t take a chance and should start rabies treatments within 72 hours!”

Today, treatment for rabies consists of 5 shots into a muscle, which he had, just like a normal shot, but in his case, to prevent infection and assist healing, each of his, over 100, puncture wounds were injected with gamma globulin, a thick liquid that doesn’t “spread out” like a normal injection, is painful when injected and remains so for hours.  I hate all shots, but having had a gamma globulin shot myself, I can only imagine what over a hundred would feel like.

Mickey and Doris have hunted big, dangerous game for years, having made, at last count, 10 trips to Africa after lion, tigers, cape buffalo and elephant, but the encounter with the bobcat, and the following rabies treatment are etched forever in their memories!  Do you think Mickey has “white fright” now?

Texas is blessed with 3 types of wild turkeys; the Rio Grande the most numerous and it occupies the central portion of our State, the eastern turkey found in east Texas, south of the Red River and east of the Trinity River and a scattering of Miriam’s turkey found in the mountainous regions of west Texas.  The Rio Grande is the type we hunt around here, but I’ve got plans for a go at the eastern variety.

A little history of the eastern turkey, originally it occupied over 30 million acres in our State with a range of from the coastal prairies, south of the Red River and east of the Trinity, but by 1900 it was virtually eliminated.  In 1927 the State began a wild turkey restoration program and this continued through 1978, all efforts failed and there was no expansion of the eastern wild turkey population.  Beginning in 1979 our biologists, in concert with landowners, big paper companies and the National Wild Turkey Federation, began a program of trapping eastern wild turkeys in states with an excess of birds, releasing them in our eastern Counties and by 1986 this program was considered successful and currently in most areas, the big birds are holding their own.

My grandson, Wesley, happens to live in one of those eastern counties and judging by a game cam “shot” he sent me, 2 gobblers and one unidentified turkey are using one of their feeders.  Eastern turkeys have a dark band at the end of their tail feathers, while Rio Grande’s have a buff or off white band at the end of theirs.

The off white or buff band is very plain on this Rio Grande.  I took this picture from a real “hide” on April 9, 2009 and see my post, “[Counting Coup]” on April 4, 2009.

The season for eastern wild turkeys opens on April 15th and I plan on being over there, snuggled down, camo’d up and clucking away!

James Walton and I returned from our Saturday hunt near Thomaston and then, the following Monday, got real lucky, being tipped off and apparently being given permission to hunt quail in the soon to be, very exclusive, Chattahoochee Plantation Subdivision, just north of The Atlanta Country Club in Cobb County.  Our luck was compounded because this spot was within a 7 minute, drive of both of our houses

Once across the Johnson Ferry Road Bridge over the slowly flowing, Chattahoochee River, during the last week of bird season in 1979, the first left turn was into the Chattahoochee Plantation Subdivision.  The Plantation, just being developed, was outside of any municipal area, the roads were in, one custom home was being finished and lots were sold by appointment only.

James had been tipped off by a friendly real estate agent that he’d better hurry out to the Plantation and get some of the birds before the building project kicked into gear.  We took this as permission to hunt there and late the next afternoon, Tuesday, found us meeting at the front gate and entering the spacious grounds.

A half-mile into the subdivision, out of sight from the main road, we stopped and let out my 2 Brittany’s.  It was different hunting along paved streets, and soon Rooster was locked down on a hard point.  Gus had, like a young dog, run off to explore the area.  James and I walked in on the point and a dozen birds came whirring up, we banged, twice and two birds fell and were quickly retrieved by Rooster.  Gus came charging up, alerted by the banging, as we marked the remaining birds down in some heavy brush ahead.

Rooster and James swung wide right, Gus and I to the left and I was moving along with my head down, an old trick I picked up in Arizona while looking for arrowheads and at the same time trying to avoid rattlers, I spotted, what had to be, the bill imprints of a woodcock and before I could alert James, whirr, tweep, tweep and up jumped one and I leveled him before he could level off.  Gus ran over, again wouldn’t pick up the bird, so I fetched it.  James yelled, “We’re changing your nickname from Beechnut” to “Woodcock!”  Not 100 feet later this scene was repeated and I folded another timberdoodle as he yelled, “That settles it!”

This pic came from Wikipedia because we failed to record any of our woodcock successes.

As dark rushed in on us, being excited over my success, I promptly banged twice at a single quail, successfully putting holes in the overcast sky.  We each picked up another quail then called it quits.

This was a good tip, but too bad we didn’t find out about it until almost too late!  We agreed to meet here on Thursday afternoon, but when I went into work the next morning I was sent to Chicago to provide some remedial training for a couple of managers not making their numbers.  Funny thing, 4 years later I went to work for one of them!  This was the end of the 78/79 hunting season for me, but not the end of the woodcocks and me!

This season, 1978/79, we’d been having some success bagging a few quail around Thomaston, Georgia, but the entire season had been a wet and drippy!  The ground stayed damp and, in some places, mushy and these conditions led me to find out something that I’d been missing

James Walton and I were out early with my two Brittany’s, Rooster and Gus. Earlier in the year, Crystal, James’s German shorthair had been killed in a close encounter with a wounded buck, see my post of, October 29, 2009, “[Fight To The Finish]”.  Gus, 1-1/2 years old, was learning fast and would prove to be another great one, just like his dad, Rooster!

Our first covey of the morning was caught in fairly open cover between their roost and feeding grounds, Rooster pointed, Gus backed and, walking in, the bevy exploded in every direction.  Picking a cock bird out and firing, down it went, and James bam, bammed twice, knocking another down.  The covey, escaping our onslaught, split into two groups, one cruising across the field into a creek bottom and the other glided 200 yards into a low, brushy area on our right.

After each dog retrieved a bird, we went after the group on the right and followed them into the, we found as we entered, mushy woods.  The dogs were birdy and not saying anything to James, I had noticed several holes, a little bigger than a pencil lead, in the soft ground.  Hmm, these were the same kind of holes I saw last year before that crazy, woodcock took flight.  As I was studying this development, I heard, a “tweeping” sound and wings beating much like a quail, just as James boomed and down the bird tumbled.

Gus was right on it, picked it up, then spit it out and wouldn’t touch it.  Rooster brought it to me and I looked down, surprised, at a woodcock!   It looked like a Wilson snipe to me.  The same snipe that can be hunted with a “toe sack” (ha-ha) and the same one that leaves coastal gunners shooting holes in the sky.

James who had lived in the northeast, said as he bagged his kill, “They’ll be more in here.  Get ready!”   Rooster figured it out and within 50 yards locked down, hard on a point and up wobbled another that tumbled to my shot, my first woodcock!  Rooster retrieved it as Gus was locked down, James walked in on the point and up buzzed a quail that he dispatched.  Gus picked up the quail, brought it to me and I tossed it to James.  Out of this patch of mushy woods we collected two more quail and I knocked down my second woodcock.  Our drippy morning, turned into a rainy day, so before noon we called it quits and drove on home.

My story doesn’t end there. Not knowing how to prepare a woodcock, my ex-wife and I decided to cook them just like we cooked Wilson snipe.  We put the quail in with the woodcock and seasoned all with salt, pepper and garlic, added some cubed potatoes, onions and little carrots, covered it all with some “fair to middlin” white wine and then cooked them real slow, until the potatoes were done.  As usual, the quail were wonderful, but the family agreed that the woodcock was good beyond belief!

After supper we consulted the family encyclopedia (no Google or Yahoo then) and found out that woodcock migrate yearly from the eastern part of our country and Canada, to the wooded, coastal prairies along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores.  This late in our season, these birds were headed north. There was one week left in the bird season and it certainly would be nice to get a crack some more woodcocks!

If you are a quail hunter, there is a tendency to name all of our coveys of quail after a significant landscape or man made feature that corresponds to where, over time, we usually find the birds. However, we only found “The County Road Covey” once.

James Walton and I were heading to another likely quail spot and slowly cruising along a county road in south Georgia, cruising in his “Quailmobile”, a, 1979, 280Z with a matching 3 dog trailer. We’d even cruised to Arizona in it! What a blast and how many funny looks did we get during the, almost 3,000 mile round trip? However, this time we were looking for a sign that would locate our next hunt for us.

Driving slowly along, ahead of us, we both noticed what kinda’ looked like a sloppily, coiled snake. As we got closer, we stopped and it was, of all things, a covey of quail, coveyed up or roosting, in the middle of the road! For both of us, this was a new one, this was a first, this was something we’d probably never see again, so we stopped the Z and sat there stunned!

Getting out of the car, walking within 20 feet of the covey and looking closely at the birds, they were roosting, probably a midday snooze prior to their afternoon of foraging. But here came the alarm call and they exploded off the road, flew about 200 yards, then lit, along a fencerow behind a farmhouse.

Without our guns, we walked up and knocked on the door of the house. We explained what had happened and inquired, successfully, if we could go after the birds. The farmer thought this was one of the funniest stories he had ever heard, and followed us after the quail.

Good dog work by Rooster and Crystal, James’s German shorthair, helped us to bag 4 birds and as we, dogs, farmer and hunters, walked back towards the farmhouse, I began to notice some big, doodle bug looking holes in the mushy ground. Then, tweep, tweep, flutter, flutter and a strange bird got airborne in front of us. “Shoot him, that’s a woodcock,” cried the farmer as James and I fumbled with our guns and missed our first two shots. Then as the bird reached it’s best flight attitude and altitude instead of flying away, it circled us once and we missed our second shots too!

This event getting our attention we hunted back to the farmhouse, but with no results. The farmer told us how to get to the land we were looking for. We scored on some more quail, but didn’t see another woodcock, until almost one year to the day later.

In my area of Mills County, Texas, bobcats abound, especially in the spring when the sheep and goats are birthing.  Spring being right around the corner, driving along our County roads, we are seeing more bobcats, in fact, I’ve seen 2 young ones since the end of deer season and had one come by the feeder this year, but for all we see, many more avoid us!  These 15 to 40 pounders even have 2 scientific names, felis rufus or lynx rufus, the latter name is generally accepted.  James Crumley’s son shot this one on January 20th.  James is my neighbor to the west.

A little over 2 years ago, the last day of deer season in 2009, I shot my first bobcat.  See my post of January 3, 2010, “[Wesley Breaks The Ice]”, for the rest of the story.  The male bobcat taken that day is displayed in our great room and the floor mount is by Mickey Donahoo.

Yesterday, a neighbor on my east, R.C. Edmundson, stopped by all excited, because he had just lured a female bobcat into his trap.  Last month he had released 6 or 8 turkeys, 2 guinea fowl and 2 dominicker hens on his property trying to establish a free range, turkey farm, but because of, probably this female, bobcat, his plans failed!  The cat, or cats, ate all of the birds except one hen that he used for bait in the trap.  The pictures show the bobcat and the one remaining hen and the bobcat ready to pounce on me!

My neighbor, Fred Walters had earlier signed on to a 600 acre quail/dove lease outside of Lockhart, Texas, then late in the season had asked me to join him on a quail hunt, and reminded me to bring along some heavy shot for, maybe, a passing duck.  Following his orders, along with 20, 8’s for quail, I slipped 5, 6’s, into my hunting coat pocket.

Having no dog, we had busted into a couple of average sized coveys and had reduced their numbers by 4.  Luckily we found all of them, and as we looked for the last quail, in the brush some 300 yards ahead, we spotted the damn of a stock tank.  Fred hollered over to me and said, “While I look for this bird, why don’t you walk on up and see if there are any ducks on the tank?  If there are, go ahead and shoot ‘em.”

Shuckin’ out the 8’s, I slipped 3, 6’s into my pump and clipped the other 2 between the fingers of my left hand.  Quickly, but quietly, I walked up behind the damn, eased my eyes over the edge for a look and to my surprise there were many, many different varieties of ducks swimming and feeding in the small tank.  Quickly ducking back down, my mind racing, I tried to wave for Fred to come on up, but he couldn’t see me through the thick stuff, so I decided to tie into them by myself.

Taking a deep breath, I eased over the tank dam, and the surface of the water exploded as the ducks took to air!  Up they came and boom, boom, boom, my 12, gauge barked!   I had picked out a duck for each shot and as they caught the wind and swung back over me, 40 yards up, I quickly slipped the 2 shells that I had jammed between the fingers of my left hand into the pump and let fly, boom, boom and 2 more fell.

Glancing back into the tank, I counted 11 ducks down and counting the 2 that had plopped near me, 13 ducks in total.  On each shot I was careful to pick out just one duck, but the spread and pattern of the shot had knocked down 8 more.  Dreading retrieving them, because I knew we’d be over the limit, I started picking up the ones close to shore and then started “chunking” the ones left out in the middle.

Fred ran up, having heard the shooting and correctly figuring I had gotten into some ducks, we counted, 2 greenheads and 2 pintail drakes along with 9 other of ducks, a mixture of teal, gadwall and widgeon!  We each had a lot of ducks in our freezers back in Houston, so we were over our daily bag limit by 3.  Having shot too many ducks, I was crushed, but Fred assured me there would be no problem.  He said, “We’ll just clean ‘em all and leave 3 big ducks with the rancher.  Hopefully, then we’ll be OK!”

The rancher happily took the ducks we gave him and then he said,  “Don’t forget that I like quail too!”  We got him some quail the next week!

Quail season ended on February 15th, Monday a week, so Layla and I were driving out to Millersview, a short hour drive from our ranch, to have a go at some birds. Sonny and Red were snuggled up in their kennels in the Jeep being pulled by our Suburban and we were all ready for some bird action!

We always stopped by the ranch house to visit before we went out to hunt on the lease and this trip was no different, but the rancher cautioned us not to hunt his near trap. In his vernacular, that meant, the field closest to the ranch house. He added that the State Trapper hadn’t picked up his traps out of that one, but he had removed all of the cyanide traps for the coyotes. The coyotes played “hob” with the rancher’s goats, wantonly and indiscriminately killing the young ones, just for the fun of it! The cyanide traps were baited with rancid meat and would draw a dog to them too, especially a far ranging bird dog, but again, the rancher assured me that, by physical count, all of the cyanide traps had been picked up.

Feeling better, we began our hunt one trap removed from the near one. Scenting conditions were near perfect and the first dog out was Red. Not over 10 minutes later he locked down hard on point. Hurrying up to the point, we walked in expecting a bevy, but only 3 birds exploded out of the knee high grass, our guns boomed 3 times, 2 fell and were quickly retrieved by Red. He hadn’t run over a hundred more yards, when he spun around and locked down. We hurried on up to the point, walked in on them and 7 or 8 birds were in this covey. We boomed 4 times, 2 more fell, were retrieved nicely, this was a good start, 4 birds out of a covey of 10 or 12, we’d better not shoot anymore and leave these to seed for next year.

We kenneled up Red, drove to another trap and Sonny was next out. Out he came like a rocket, he was hyper because of our shooting, so I whistled him back and we got down to serious hunting. He was working cross wind about 50 yards ahead of us, when he yelped and jumped into the air, my first thought was rattler as we both broke into a run toward the dog.

Sonny kept flopping around, yelping to high heaven! Running up to him, we quickly saw the problem – the trapper had left one of his traps and Sonny had, literally, run across it. It was no problem unlocking the trap from its hold on the dog’s front leg then digging up the spike anchoring it in the ground.

Fuming, we stopped hunting, loaded up Sonny, hurried to the ranch house and I’d cooled off by the time we showed the rancher the trap we “found” and was in no mood for any more quail hunting until the trapper had removed ALL of his traps from the property. If he could remove them by next weekend, maybe we could get one more hunt in?