The opening of our State’s firearms, deer season was Saturday, November 6, 2010 and for us at the Bryan Ranch, there was a lot of huntin’ and not much gettin’.  To start it off, the folks that Mickey Donahoo and I were going to get a deer for were sick and didn’t want to commit to one at this time.

Tim Albee, aka, SFC Tim Albee, had 2 shots at a big doe, at 80 yards, one shot was between her legs and the other was just over her back, both clean misses!  At lunch time we checked his rifle and, lo and behold, the scope was loose!  In the afternoon he used Layla’s .270, but, seeing a lot of deer, didn’t get a clear shot at anything.

Saturday morning, 20 minutes before shooting time, I got out my binocs to see, one, if this early I could see through them and two, if anything was moving.  Right out in the open was a beautiful buck, big rack, stately, just looking around.  If he would only stay there for 20 more minutes, he would be mine.  I looked and looked, but finally he turned and walked back into the thick stuff.  Old bucks become nocturnal I mused as he disappeared into the brush.  Hoping the big one would come back, I passed on a spike and so many does, I lost track of counting them.  At least I had an excuse.

My afternoon was different.  Climbing up into the new, tripod stand around 4:15, nothing showed except this mockingbird.  The mockingbird is our State bird and I snapped this “shot” of it.

Later, two does came by and then a nice, 8 pointer.  This buck was a year away from shooting, so watching it and trying to get a clean, “shot”, while barely clearing the stand railing, the only pics taken were of the brush.

Then, a little later, noticing movement on one of the game trails, here came two, gray foxes.  Gray foxes are “cute”, but, around here, they are the leading carriers of rabies, so crosshairing one, I let fly, bam, jacked in a new shell, acquired the other, bam. Thinking to myself, Now I’m down to one shell, so I sat in the stand for 15 more minutes, climbed down, took this “shot” of one of the foxes, and came in early.

My alterior motive was to watch the Texas A&M, Oklahoma, football game, that surprisingly, the Ags won!