Duck Hunt November 22nd

First ducks of the year. Walked down to the bottom to try for my limit of Woodies with the intention of getting a hen to finish up a piece at my taxidermist. Saw one group of Gadwalls and lots of Wood ducks. Shot 2 drakes then picked a hen out of a group and got her. Goal accomplished except I sacrificed a pair of waders by ripping a huge hole in one leg on an underwater snag wading out to the hole. Hope there are more ducks and cold weather over Christmas because we have lots of water this year!

Panhandle Hunt November 13th-19th

Took the week before Thanksgiving off to go hunting in the panhandle. The rut was getting started and we were seeing good movement throughout the day. Hunted hard all day long with quick breaks for lunch or to change location. I had seen some great deer and had plenty of action but no mature deer. As always had a great time in camp, but I was there to get a big deer. Evening number 4 ended with a 800 yard stalk that was minutes away from a great deer. My friend Keith was helping with the stalk and bird doggin' but we just ran out of light. I had deer all over me and could not reposition as a mature deer slipped away into a deep draw right at dark.

Morning 5 brought another chance and a big mature 8 point that I was able to knock down from a long distance and finish after closing some ground. This deer showed up trailing a doe on a ridge about 700 yards out. Luckily I was hunting with a buddy that convinced me to give chase and take a long shot (A few long shots actually, Thanks Matt).

We knew the buck was a mature deer. We had seen him last year and have game camera pics from 2 years. This was one of our shooter bucks and although not a giant I was fired up to kill a mature deer and my biggest 8 point ever. My taxidermist, Chris at Alpine Taxidermy aged the deer at 5 1/2 with the teeth.

Fredericksburg 11/01/2009

I've been out to my lease between Fredericksburg and Harper to bowhunt a couple times but have yet to get a shooter buck within range. We have a decent mature 8 that I've had a couple encounters with at 20 and 30 yards but can't decide whether to take him or not. I'm holding out for something bigger or later in the season to smoke him. Have seen a really nice 10 but has a small body and is a young deer. Hopefully he will make it through the year or at least long enough to breed some does this year.

Stuck a 150-175lb boar this evening. Did not get pics or my arrow back as I caught him a little high and there was not lots of blood to follow. We don't see pigs around here very often and shoot them on site so I did not track him very hard or far. Just wish my arrow had passed through so I could recover it. When I hit him he spun around and I could see the arrow on both sides so maybe I can look for him opening weekend and get my arrow and broadhead back ($25). Going up for opening weekend for rifle and will try to take more pics and update.

Panhandle Lease

Spent the weekend of Sept. 11-13 at the Memphis lease. We filled just under 8,000 pounds of corn and protein feeders, but found some time Friday evening to squeeze in some dove hunting. The Mojo Dove was working! We were hunting the recently planted wheat field in the picture above and although there were not tons of birds, the ones that came in didn't leave!

Dove Hunt 9/13/09

Sunday afternoon hunt after watching the Cowboy's game at Dustin's. Great afternoon ending up with 38 birds, white wing, mourning, and a few ringnecks(collared).

First hunt for Arte since Kody's not around. I have never worked her with birds so I did not know what to expect. She did okay but did not want to retrieve the dove and was a little gun shy. By the end of the day, she was at least mouthing and playing with the birds although not retrieving them back to me. She just needs some work and maybe some ducks. Memphis and Gabby were with us to help show Arte the way.

Labor Day Weekend

Spent a couple days filling and repairing feeders. Everything always needs something. One of the feeders had a plastic lid which was destroyed by squirrels and allowed water to leak inside and rot and ferment the corn which destoys the feeder motor and timer. New batteries, corn, weedeating, etc. for the others.

Planted some pearl millet on the wet side of the hill at Delrose and the beaver pond at midway. Put in some small food plots with a blend from East Texas Seed Co. It always takes longer than expected to disc, drag, and throw seed, but should pay off since we got good rain within the next 7-10 days. Back in SA now, I have millet growing in the back of my truck! Hopefully things will be easier (just filling feeders and doing final adjustments for the season) next trip.

Only in East Texas... A fourwheeler at the gas station!!!

Chasing the Rio Grande Turkey

One of the few Rio Grande turkey hunts I did this year was with friend and client John who brought his daughter Kali. Hopefully it would be her first opportunity to take a gobbler. We had limited days to hunt as the season was coming to an end and neither of our schedules would match up. We finally decided to make it work the second to last day of the season. Luckily, my buddy Dave, who donated the hunt at a DU Banquet, gave me the skinny on the birds the night before.

We got out of the truck, geared up, and John hit the box call to see if we could get a bird talking. No answer, so we continued to hike to a couple spots I thought the birds would be hanging around, stopping to call every 100 yards or so. After going well over ½ mile, we finally got a gobbler to answer John on his box call. The turkey was way across and field and lake so we tried to hustle and sneak around to the side he was on. Well, we got busted, and that bird was gone! Plan B. Keep looping around the backside of the property to find another bird. 30-45 minutes later we’ve got another hot bird. We cut through a thick stand of cedar, down a little cut, and up a ridge to get set up. After only a few minutes of calling once we are ready, here he comes to check it out. John worked his magic on the call and got this bird within 45-50 yards. Kali is shooting a lever action .410 so we wanted a closer shot. This bird would not commit and finally eased off down the road. We decided to pursue and cut him off. There is a lone peacock on this place and that’s when it started giving us attention. It would come close to check out our calls and was messing the turkey up. Although not helpful with the turkey hunting, it was incredible to be within 10 yards of a wild peacock. It was very tempting, but not what we were after, and I don’t think Dave would appreciate it!

It was almost lunch time now and we thought our day was over. As we started hiking back to the trucks, we turned a corner to find a monster gobbler in full strut in a little cleared area. Our game plan this time was to split up and give chase. I snuck around a thick patch of cedars to corner and push the bird back to John and Kali. I was able to get within 30 yards and waited for them to close in. As I watched the bird walk down an embankment towards the lake, John and Kali came walking up. I stopped them with hand signals. They had not seen him slip below the ridge so I motioned to where the bird went. I had a great seat to watch it unfold. They were able to sneak up to the ridge, peek over, and Boom. Kali got her first gobbler and it’s a great one! 10 ¾ inch beard, 1 ¼ inch spurs, and over 25lbs. When you think the hunt is over, it can just be getting started. She definitely earned this one with all the hiking through thick cover and up and down the ridges and draws. Congrats Kali and John!

Hogatha Beast

I’ll be telling stories from some previous hunts until hunting season rolls around this fall. I had a buddy of mine from Oregon, Greg Schmidlin, recount one of his trips from a couple years ago. His posting is below. It’s a little long, but worth the read since he interjects some humor and sarcasm.

Hogatha Beast, Dec. 2006

Being from Oregon, hunting in a box blind was a little out of my element. Jonathan was losing his patience with my lack of it. Needless to say, I do not do well when I have to sit for countless hours waiting for the hogs to come to me. After 5 days of deer and hog hunting, lots of luck on the deer, not so much luck on the hogs, I was really beginning to wonder if it was going to happen for me on my trip to East Texas.

Longview, was our third stop on a trip that covered more of Texas than I ever want to see again. However, after striking out in Wimberley and Palestine, Jonathan promised me Longview would come through for us. We arrived to thundering showers, followed by lightning and buckets of rain. Did I forget to mention NO sign of hogs? The feeders hadn’t been touched for over a week; there was enough corn on the ground to raise a market steer for the county fair. We sat through the rain and thunder for 2 days. Not even a sign of those plentiful creatures. The weather finally broke on the third day, the last day we had to hunt before I had to go back to Oregon. As the sun finally broke through the clouds it was nearly gone in the sunset when we heard crashing in the brush. Jonathan whispered one word “hogs”. In a matter of a few moments they came out single file, first a bunch of piglets followed by adults, one after another. My heart began to race, I was ready to shoot the first pig that stepped out, Jonathan told me to relax, they weren’t going anywhere till that corn was gone. With light slipping fast, I was running out of the little amount of patience I had, I wanted a boar, so I finally found a big red boar, Jonathan said to take him. As I flipped the safety off, we heard more crashing, a snort from the brush and all the pigs were gone! My expression was “WTF”. Jonathan said “Just wait, they will be back”, seconds later he was right, a monster of a black hog walked out! We immediately named it Hogatha Beast. The others slowly came into view, not getting too close too this over aggressive eater. It would run each pig off as it got close. Jonathan and I both knew which one I was going to shoot then. I asked if he was ready, he once again said “take him”. I shot and the monster hog dropped in its tracks! Jonathan quickly said we needed to get the hog and get out of there before the others came back. We snapped a few pictures and quickly loaded the biggest pig ever taken at the ranch. As we field dressed the hog we decided to weigh it. The shoulders were still on the ground when the cable broke and the hog came crashing down, breaking the cable rated to 330 lbs. Our best educated guess was 350+lbs. Jonathan and I have both loaded plenty of deer and elk, this hog was a true Beast. Not too shabby considering after all was said and done it turned out to be a big dry sow. I would like to thank Lilly Creek Outfitters for an amazing hunt; I challenge anyone who books a hunt with Jonathan to break the record I have set. The first person to do so will get a bottle of Jack Daniels, courtesy of yours truly.

Greg Schmidlin
Cornelius, Oregon

Golf and Fishing

Been a while since my last post. New baby Jake keeping me up all hours and after taking care of him, working for clients, and keeping things up around the house, been too tired to put together even a simple post. The good news is that he is almost 8 weeks old and starting to sleep 5-6 hours straight at night and more quiet during the day.

To keep sane, I have been able to play a couple rounds of golf with friends and clients, and even shot the low gross score of 56 with a 4 man scramble at the Travis Lynch Memorial Golf Tournament. I was a late entry and got grouped up with another single and a pair whose partners could not make it. Unfortunately it was scored with the "Peoria", or "Bankers" scoring so our net score after adding strokes for being bad asses was 65. Can't win them all. We called it "Pelosi" scoring since they were trying to make everything equal by redistributing the strokes. Next year there will be a bracket for the low gross score, not just the handicapped system. We played well, had a great time, and plan to play again next year on the same team.

My parents came down to help with Jake so we took him on a small road trip to the deer lease in Fredericksburg for the first time. We had some good German food at The Auslander in town, then met up with my buddy Ian and his son JB to fill feeders and do some general maintenance. Been getting decent rain so there is lots of forage for the deer to feed on. That with our new protein feeders should help antler growth this year.

Fishing - Finally got out and did some fishing on the power plant lakes Southeast of town. Caught a whole mess of catfish, which have a made a couple great meals. Good eatin! My brother came in town so we went two days in a row. In addition to the cats, we found some Stripers and Redfish. We found one area that was holding lots of small Reds. We tied on rattletraps and caught over 50 in about an hour. No keepers, but lots of fun.

New Addition to LCO

Our first child was born Friday May 22. Jake Jetter weighed 6lbs, 9oz, and was 19in long. I've been busy being Dad or learning to be Dad better describes it. I can't wait for him to grow up enough to be my fishing and hunting partner. We aren't waiting too long as he already made the trip to one of my leases this past weekend. That's right, barely a week old and I took him out to Fredericksburg with the help of my wife and my parents who have been in town helping out. I was going to meet my buddy Ian to fill the corn and protein feeders and make sure everything was still running, so the family tagged along. It was great to get out of the house for an afternoon and we had a great time. I've heard its easy to take them places when they are this young and it was. I'll let you know how the next trip goes! Well, its feeding time again so gotta run. I'll be busy with this guy for a while and we are in between any good fish and game seasons so I'll post some stuff over the next few weeks and month to remember the hunts this past year .

Scouting

I named this post "Scouting" because I find myself doing a ton of research to find and gather information how to accomplish this idea of blogging. So far, it's been the Internet surfing equivalent to looking at topos, walking and glassing fields and bottoms, checking game cameras, following rub lines, checking the weather, and making phone calls to find out where the fish are biting or what areas the deer, ducks, dove, or turkey are using. Not unlike many nights before opening day of any hunting season or a fishing trip, I find myself staying up late making final preparations over and over again since sleep is the last thing on my mind. But tomorrow brings no opening day, or fishing trip since we are now into the post-spawn. Interesting, considering I live in The Great State of Texas where we can hunt and fish virtually year-round. That, and its also a Friday so I'll be in my office taking care of my clients. I do have a "real" career running my own independent financial planning firm. My outfitting service is a hobby, fun, and probably helps keep me sane! That being said, its now very early Friday morning and time to check some financial markets then get horizontal for a few hours.