My Senior Softball buddy, Ev Sims, has a ranch in Jackson County, Texas, but for some quick afternoon hunts he keeps a small place west of Houston, outside of Hockley. This is part of the Katy Prairie and the location of me missing 3 shots at a greater Canadian goose. See one of my original posts of February 3, 2007, “[Canadensis Maxima]” for the story. This is the same area I hunted for almost 50 years and once it was prime goose and duck hunting, but now, like most of our State, it has a lot of deer. Ev bagged this buck on November 14th.

On November 12 after I shot the big, buck, I moved the game cam to a new spot along a game trail, much closer to the tower blind and just after midnight this bruiser ambled by.

Then later in the morning, after sun up, two 2012 bucks stopped for a picture.

Later the afternoon of the 13th, just before dark, this whopper showed up.

Saturday evening, this 2011/12 buck was heading the other way.

Monday morning found me posted in the tower blind, but with the nice buck “in the bag”, my interest wasn’t there so I decided to go change out the 2mg memory chip in the game cam, but, looking and looking, I couldn’t find it. Finally I did and if anyone would have seen me walking around lost, looking for the camera, they’d thought that I wasn’t all there!

It was interesting that I shot the big, buck early on Friday and all this activity occurred late that evening on into the morning. The wind had laid and the rut was smokin’! In fact, Tuesday night Layla and I were returning from a Goldthwaite, ladies basketball game and one buck, an 8 pointer, that we hadn’t seen before, had two, obviously hot doe, cornered against the fence along the County Road. The buck wouldn’t move, we didn’t push him with the Suburban and we sat for at least 5 minutes. Finally, with the buck standing not 15 feet from the hood, both doe chickened out and high tailed it! Over the fence the buck went and so much for our standoff.