Southern Sportsman Aquatics & Land Management: November 2011

Now that the Allen High football season tragically ended last weekend coming up a yard short of the end zone on the final drive in the playoff game at Cowboy’s Stadium, my son and I spent three days deer hunting at our Abilene, Texas lease.

First afternoon I got to my ground blind about 2:00 PM saw a few deer about 50-80 yards away and none going by the feeder. This was the first time I had seen deer, that didn’t swing by the feeder, but I didn’t think anything of it. Around 4:00 a flock of red-winged black birds invaded the feeder, well over 100. They would land and then all jump up and leave for a few minutes and come back. I noticed about 5 yards to the left of the feeder the birds were appearing to lift a “stick” up off the ground when they flew. I got my binoculars out and after further review I realized I wasn’t the only one hunting the feeder, it was a rattle snake. He was hiding in a depression, coiled up with just his head out of the depression facing the feeder. This went on until dark (6:00) and with binoculars at 16 yards it was like Wild Kingdom “in your face!” I could see him lunge, tongue going in and out and he even yawned twice. He never caught anything though. Unfortunately I did not have my big camera and didn’t get any pictures. I am not sure but maybe the deer could smell or sense he was there and that’s why I saw 5 deer that afternoon and they all kept their distance. Also had a Yote (coyote) barking (at what, I couldn’t figure out) about 80 yards up the hill from me for about 5 minutes off and on.

On Saturday afternoon the wind was 40-plus mph out of north and temperatures were dropping. I dropped Josh off at 2:45 and headed to my stand about 10 min drive away and another 10 minute walk from there. At 3:45 I barely heard a shot in his direction (3/4 of a mile away) and about 45 seconds later got a text that said “It was the big one!” Well the Big One is about a 150 inch class we had seen around, and the day prior I believe we saw him crossing the road as we drove to the stands within 100 yards of Josh’s stand. The next text is “lots of blood at site, but no blood trail.” I said OK, don’t push him I will be back over in 15 minutes and we can start from there. Now I have deer already in bow range and I have to shoo them away and I jump two more big body deer as I walk up out of the gulch to the truck. Before I got too the truck another text, “I found him, he is big, but not the Big One – hurry up.” Although he has a broken main beam (which a lot of our deer already have due to this year's drought) he is a 10-point, palmated on one side, with a kicker off one brow tine. The taxidermist can add the end of the broken side per Josh's request. I went through almost 1,000 trail camera photos last night and could not find one picture of this deer prior to breaking it off. In fact he hadn’t been in any photos until a few days prior to meeting Josh and his 270 rifle. I wanted to be sure the repair is as close to the real deal as we can get, as many of our deer have crab claws at the end, but to no avail, this buck due to the rut had just moved into the area. For those who do not know Josh, he never gets excited about anything, but he was excited Saturday afternoon and even smiled for a few pictures. This is his first buck after taking 4 does between ages of 12 and 17 that he got all on his own without sitting by Dad (after his first deer he told me I was holding him back those first two years!)Looks like you can be a high school kid, get straight A’s, play football, be in the band and still live the Hunt Life!

Here is the deer a couple days prior at a feeder photographed by a trail camera. He is easy to spot in the thousands of trail camera photos we have from this year, as he has a double throat patch apposed to the traditional single.