Texas Independence Day

We celebrated the weekend with some beer, BBQ, and bonfires!

 

Elan ear holed another hog Friday night.

 

It had a messed up lower jaw/mouth that we imagine was from a failed assassination attempt earlier this year...

We caught 10 little crappie Saturday afternoon.

I took out a couple more raccoons Saturday night.

Sausage, boudin, and ribs for dinner.

Now that's a bonfire!

Remnants from making things go boom.

I did some post season scouting and came across the usual, trees on the road.  I did find a nice scrape and a rub line I can watch next year.

The pines that burned last year were replanted this week.

Presidents Day 2/18/13

We had some guys out from the bank since everybody was off for the day.  Did some fishing, some riding, and shooting.

 

A day or two after brought a little rainstorm and this was my view during lunch on the porch.

 

Upshur County Hog Wild Tournament 2/9/13

Weigh in your heaviest 5 plus big hog jackpot.  We took one hog to weigh in and came up short but had a heck of a weekend!

Prep work...

Long story but I had a misfire that might have cost us a pig.

We cooked a big pot of chili and had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

We also squeezed in a few minutes to see if the crappie were biting but only caught this one.

Our only pig recovered.  2 others were shot Saturday night in the rain but we never found any sign or pigs even after looking the next morning after the storms blew through.

First place team weighed in 5 (800lbs) plus the big hog (200lbs).  It stormed and rained Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning and I'm sure hampered everybody's efforts.

Sand Pond Last Ducks 2013

The good lord showing me the way!

We got in early enough Friday to sit in blinds and try to take some doe out with MLD tags.

I really wanted to take out these coons but Dan made me wait on the deer.

I saw one rag horn buck early, then an old doe and yearling came out right at dark.  The 300 SAUM made her into table fare and Sam also dropped one with his bow!

Saturday morning was the duck hunt.  It was a great morning with plenty of action.  Most birds weren't dropping into the hole so we had quite a few flybys and did our fair share of missing but ended up with about 14.  The slough eats ducks and we didn't have a dog so we only recovered 8.

Sam's artistic touch.

Tim got out and did some recovery work even after being "slightly" hungover and providing some good entertainment before and after we cooked the in-blind breakfast.

Tim, Sam, and Dan with more dead beers than ducks...(We hunted till noon and Tim shot the last bird at 11:58)

Dan and Sam dragging trees off roads.

Two shots, two pigs. One jaw recovered, good blood on the other but no recovery.

This pic doesn't look that bad but I am on my knees here crawling through a giant thicket tracking the hog.  Had great blood for 300 yards then nothing.  Decided to call off the search once we were lost in the woods.  Thanks to cell phone GPS we found the way back to a road.

 

While we were tracking, TJ was getting a truck stuck in the sand!  It's called "Sand Pond" for a reason!

A great weekend!  Here's a video of some of the duck shooting.  I didn't carry a video camera so the phone footage is not the best but you will get the idea.  Everybody was missing so I finally had to put the phone down and miss along with them!

 

 

No Ducks In The Slough - Bonus Hog 1/18/13

We hunted the camp slough now that it has plenty of water but we only saw 14 wood ducks and they were cruising the creek and didn't drop in the hole.

 

 

I spent some time clearing roads and checking cameras and filling feeders.

I did sneak up (they snuck up on me) on 7 pigs and around 20 piglets (see game camera pics in a previous post).  I burned through all six cartridges in my Ruger 357 mag!  First two dropped this one then I was just slingin lead.  The 10 round mag in my Glock would not have even got me started so here's my reason for large capacity mags!