Well, I won't rub it in, but for those of you who backed out this year...you screwed up!!! :D So how was that for letting you down easy?
It really was a shame that only the four of us (Curtis Kellar, Eric Zuniga, Chris Kinslow and I ) made it to the "Texas Sweat". Next year will be bigger, better, with more laugh packed action than ever before. Over 20% more!!
Enough of that... on with the nut cuttin!
As I said earlier, I arrived in Texas to anything but warm temperatures. It's a real good thing I brought warm clothes or I'd have had to have huddled in Curtis' house, a quivering lump of frostbitten Missouri bowhunter, for the first three days of my planned hunting time. I'd about rendered down on my last trip in October so this was definetatly a shock to my system. I'd left near 0 degree temps in Missouri and had been looking forward to some heat!
There was rain early on, but it cleared out quickly. Temperatures dropped correspondingly and we were greeted by stiff north winds carrying colder temperatures. The second morning of the hunt there was a hard frost on the truck windows.
What a difference a couple of months makes...even in south Texas!
I spent the first couple of days hunting Javelina on Curtis' lease. Every plan I could devise went for naught with the little collared buggars. I never saw a hair... ok, there was the hair that Curtis picked up to show me, but that doesn't count.
Javies aren't exactly thick in Curtis' part of Texas. When you do find them, it'll be a little family group comprised of 5 or 6 animals.
CK and I had talked it over and I'd decided to take a small one from the group and not shoot the patriarch or matriarch. That would be better for the herd.
It turned out that I didn't have to make that choice at all as it turns out.
As it turns out, I spent a midday stand at the ambush spot and a late day stand and had narrowed it down to thinking the Javies were coming through early in the morning.
The last day of Javie hunting I went out early (9 a.m)and stayed until noon. Sign in the area indicated that they had made a VERY early visit that morning. Dammit, dammit, dammit!!
I was trying to maximize everything I did while out in the brush, so at each stand I'd sit real still for a couple of hours and then open up with my varmint call a little bit before I was ready to leave.
Well, I've never been what you would call a great varmint caller. Oh sure, I make all the noises, make them pretty convincingly too, but as with almost all my past calling adventures these drew a blank also.
I guess I was pretty sure that anybody could call droves of varmints in Texas. Hell, last time down there I'd squeaked in a coyote. Curtis had a bobcat AND a coyote respond to rattling antlers the last time. Must be something else I'm doing.
So in between running around DeWitt County doing errands, and hunting Javelina, I was also sitting a prime spot at Curtis' ranch for hogs in the evening.
He'd told me repeatedly by email and again in person when I arrived, that hogs often visited his place at last light. Of course the rub was that it hadn't happened since a week earlier.
Curtis is one of those wired characters who's constantly moving and doing something. I think he sleeps that way too. He's often up in the middle of the night and will hear the hogs carrying on when they come on his property. He hadn't heard them in days.
I looked at it like an opportunity waiting to happen. Every evening they didn't show up increased the likelyhood that they would!
I kept that attitude for the first two evenings there, but except for a couple of rabbits and four racoons, not a squeak was heard from the piggies.
Curtis had assured me that when they came, they'd come with gusto and I'd hear them for hundreds of yards, squealing, oinking, grunting and otherwise being pigs on their way to dinner.
I had in my hearing aids (fairly new to me) and could hear a mouse sneeze at 50 yards. Still didn't hear pigs coming.
The rabbits would have been easy to get shots on if I'd wanted to. So would the coons. Wish I'd have know Curtis' wishes on the coons.
After the first evening with them crunchin and munchin around the stand he issued the edict that the coons must die. Wish I'd have known that before!
As soon as I had the go ahead, the little masked varmints quit coming.
Chris Kinslow arrived around noon on my third day and it was good to see him again. It was good to see that he brought the sunshine with him and warming temp. The weather looked like it was gonna give us a break so I'll give Cris credit for bringing it. Chris and I live at opposite ends of the state back home and go back a ways as deer hunting buddies.
Chris' is fairly new at this trad bowhunting thing and even newer at doing "away" games. I was looking forward to breaking him in right on this trip. What Curtis and I couldn't teach him about hunting the "brush", Texas would!
We spent the afternoon getting gear ready and visiting different spots I knew of while Curtis was at work.
CK would show up early in the afternoon and get a little BBQ going...south Texas, pig hunter style. We'd all chow down on the great meal and then Curtis and I would put Chris on stand for the evening pig parade.
I guess it's some kind of unwritten rule about taking new guys hunting. Ya just gotta mess with their heads a little bit. Know what I mean? We didn't go as far as the whole snipe hunt thing or regail Chris with stories of the hook man or fleeting glimpses of big hairy two legged things that skulk through the night. That wouldn't have been right!
We might have mentioned that the occasional rattler might slither up the ladder on the stand and snuggle around a still bowhunters feet. If I remember rightly, we might have alluded to giant angry hogs hiding trailside in the tall grass as a hunter walked home in the dark. You know? Just little hints of things to give him something to occupy his waiting time.
(mo lada)
Topic: Texas Radio and the Big Beast 2 (Read 16451 times)
