Eight point I passed on.

  What would dad think of this wealth of deer at the back door to his lakehouse?  This is the same afternoon at the cam less than 100 yards from where I had him in my crosshairs.  Nice healthy buck.  I just already have a few bigger.  If both of us live through the year and he drops a tine next season we'll see.

  This morning I jumped a buck and a doe at 6:00am when I came around the corner into the pasture.  The buck jumped into the woods.  The doe just stood and snorted.  She didn't leave.  I hunched over and walked around her in the gloaming, pausing only to fish out my Tinks #69 and mist a cloud of doe pee her way. 

  The bent-horn buck came through later.  Alone.

The Alpenflage Bliss and Blues

  Walked into Brady's coffee after the morning hunt still wearing my Swiss alpenflage jumpsuit and looking for a package.  (Alpenflage is the most expressionistic color and pattern scheme I have ever seen.  It's a perfect match for Northeast Texas Fall.)  I walked around a crowd at the door until one of them looked at me and said "Not speaking?"

  "You can SEE me???!!!" I exclaimed?

  

  Sneed drove over and we rattled up an abandoned road across the creekbottom for the evening hunt.  The Doctor hadn't ever seen a good representation of rattling horns.  Nothing showed but he said he could close his eyes and see the two bucks going at it.

  Friday I passed on a large 8-point I rattled up at 8:30 am.  First he stood in a slot I had cut through the thicket, then as he came around the end I got the rifle up and he stepped into my crosshairs 40 yards out.  Wide open sideways shot.  He was big and I had my finger on the trigger with 44 grains of Varget and a Sierra 130 Gameking under it, but I let him go.  He looked about 17 inches inside with eight nice tines, very pretty symetrical rack.  He never made me.  Three years ago I would have shot him dog nuts dead in his tracks.  He looked very wide and square as he cantered away.  Alan's doetags saved his life.

  Friday lunch I walked up a deserted road closed by a couple of huge pine trunks looking for fresh sign.  I was quiet, but moving.  I paused for one step to look ahead and realized there were six deer crossing the road right where I stood.  A fawn was in the lead- she didn't know what to make of me (Alpenflage!) and nobody else believed her.  They got a little cross but nobody flagged or snorted- they just worked around to the right.  My observation is that deer in groups tend to watch each other more than they watch out around them.  Both does were snapping at the fawns.  They are weaning.

  This morning Sneed and I were out of the lakehouse at first light and set up in a chilly 45 degree dawn.  After the sun came up, we saw the biggest buck I have ever seen at the lake walk the fence line.  There wasn't a shot except a couple of quick ones and I was spotting and rattling while the Doctor ran the rifle.  Quite the deer though.  Bigger than Big Ten.  Couple of fawns were bopping around looking lost.  I think their mom had finally dumped them for romance.

  At lunch, we shot our rifles 500 yards at the 31 West range.  We had targets, spotters, walky-talkies and a plan.  One of us stayed at the target and marked and the other shot.  Sneed has some great rifles- Remington 800s and a custom job.  After him I shot some little light Sierra 110 Matchkings and then my hunting load out of my little Ruger #1 with its 16 inch barrel.  If you've never done this with spotters, a good spotting scope and some help at the target, its a trip.  I've shot a lot of 500 and 600 yard shooting but that's unusual.  Funny, with my AR I wouldn't expect to be out of the 10 ring at 500 yards...ever, but with a scoped deer rifle you hardly expect to be on the paper.  I could see a big muzzle flash as the powder burned in front of my short Ruger.  I didn't see any flash at all with Sneed's 24 inch Rem 700.  Most deer rifles don't get shot 100 rounds a decade.  I doubt either of us would take a shot over 200 yards, but we've got experience at it if we needed to.

  When we came out the pistol folks had left and locked the gate leaving us behind it without a key or combination.  It would be a good time to throw a fit: far from home, schedule disrupted, they knew we were back there, et, et.  Instead we just kept chiseling away at the problem until we found a phone number for someone who helped from the other end.  Sneed has life figured out.  He's grateful, and says so, for things done for him and without complaint when life throws a curve.  Good guy.

  If you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans.

  Hunted this afternoon and watched some young deer float around in the tall grass.  Lost them often but it was a 1 1/2 year four point old buck and a little doe who kept trying to entice him into chasing her.  I think the rut is starting.  He just didn't know what to do.  They materialized out of nowhere in the pasture just as a mangy looking possum walked by close enough to touch with a rifle barrel.  Two hours of silent sitting, then sensory overload.

  Today I finally felt like I am getting into hunting shape.  Climbing trees, rattling horns, sitting upright, still and alert for hours, carrying a slung rifle, bag and binocs around.  Nothing is sore or hurting anymore.  Between rattling on the abandoned road I laid back on the leaves and looked the the fall leaves against the evening sky.  What a November it is!

  Sneed recalled the story of a Turkana tribesman fishing on Lake Turkana in Africa.  The fellow stood on the end of a gravel spit and threw a spear on a string into a wave every time it broke over the end of the jetty.  Then he would pull it back in and wait for the next wave.  There were no fish visible in the wave or in the water.  When asked about his fishing technique, he simply explained that God would send a fish to its fate and his dinner when God decided to.

View from the chair.

  Unbelievable view from the plastic walmart chair across the creek.  Every day the leaves have changed a little.  This is one of the big pluses of hunting at home.  You get to see the seasons change.  Plus I know all the deer from the cams.  I'm the king of all I survey!

Update:  Thursday (very am) morning I can hear the rain dripping.  I'm sure my tree leaks.

1903A3

  Ruger 7X57 hanging next to the Walmart Chair across the creek.

  Just gave the C stock a good wash in Murphey's Oil Soap, dried it and put on a first coat of Boiled Linseed Oil.  It's standing up at the studio.  I THINK I have all the pieces to put it back together in the new stock.  The trick will be tightening the stock cross-bolts.  The nuts have a weird slotted head.

  So: replaced the skinny front sight.  Trigger job smoothing up the worst trigger I ever shot in a match.  Heavier C stock.  That's about all I can do besides shoot better.  Going to take it doe-killing in a month.  I'd take it this weekend but it takes about a month to get the BLO to dry through two coats.

  Carrying my little Ruger #1 presently.  Great little rifle and shoots a solid offhand.  I think I could easily make a 200 yard shot with it and that's about the farthest I would get a shot.  Going back to the vintage pile for doe-killing.  May start with the Garand and the new barrel.

  Absolutely gorgeous in the woods.  Sign everywhere.  Six or eight big scrapes in the pasture at the corner where I hunt.  Perfect position.  Tracks everywhere.  No deer.  I ought to be seeing does running past, little bucks popping out of the woodline and weeds, lost fawns run off by rutting bucks.  Nothing.

  Just have to stay after it.  Rain tomorrow.  Will reset the tracks and sign but they are all fresh.  Saw the doe with two fawns in the dark last night under a tree eating acorns in the middle of the big pasture.  They ignored me parking the 4-Runner and watching them from inside 100 yards. 

  

The End of Racism

  I THOUGHT most of it was BS, it felt like it was BS, my experience was that it was BS, and I was RIGHT.  I didn't think there were enough Klan members in the whole US, (including Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd) to make a softball team, or enough skinheads to hold a car wash.  There aren't.  Americans elected a Black man to the office of President by a considerable margin.  It's over.  Racism is dead.

  I'm very jazzed about this!  All that Million Man stuff and Farakhan stuff and lectures about being kept down, white guilt, the history of slavery, et, et, turn out to be mere shadows and ghosts or at least not applicable any more.  I'm amped!  Martin King asked how long people had to suffer?  Well, not past Nov 4, 2008! 

Big Ten

  Big Ten and his brother, Big Eight were the first deer I got on my cam when I put it out in 2005.  I could hardly tell one from another at first, but I learned.  Big Eight got shot from the road in November of 2005 but Big Ten made it though the season though he tore off an antler fighting in December.  He was 2 1/2 years old.

  The next year he grew a stunted palmated antler out of the ruined socket.

  In 2007 he grew a bigger palmated antler on the bad side.

  

 On the good side he was a solid typical six point.  He'd be a big twelve if he had both antlers.  He's got good tine length and mass.  Quite a buck.  He's 4 1/2 in this photo.

  This year he is 5 1/2 and bigger and burlier than ever.  I haven't seen him on cam but did see him in person.  The ruined side is big, but goes straight up, a lot like in 2007 but as tall as the other side.  On the good side he is a massive six.  

 Great genetics.  I hope he breeds every doe in the watershed.

 

Meet the New Boss...

  In the parking lot at Office Depot.  He may win but not everyone is going to love him.  I especially love the peace sign in the quarter panel window.  Who isn't for peace?  Not me!

  From where I live: the NRA-Competitive-rifle-deer-hunting-East-Texas-Working-Family-taxpayer-coffee-house culture, I have to report that I haven't heard a word, smelled a whiff or felt a chill of anything racist in the whole election.  Folks don't love Obama because of his lying, his politics, or his arrogance, but not one peep about the melanin in his skin.  Nobody in my crowd cares.

  Not a racist to be found.  On the Right at least.  The left is all about it.

  Voted early last week.  Wonder what would happen if I wandered into my neighborhood polling place with just my Tx Drivers license and tried to vote again, just for the hell of it?  McCain is going to win Texas so it doesn't matter.

Update:  Polls just closed.  I don't hear any gunfire.

Big Bucks: no cam

 Here's a one frame record of a nice buck from last year.  Reminds me of Big Ten, who grew up being photographed and now won't step in front of a camera.

  Notice he has a dropped tine on the right side toward the cam.

  Saw him running from the road once.  Other than that and this file: Never.

  Even with cams you don't see them all, especially the big smart ones.

Double Copperheads

  Ran over one with the 4-Runner Saturday when I drove up to see what the neighbors had shot across the creek from the lakehouse.  I took a flashlight and looked around the road- usually there are two together.  Yesterday evening I ran over another one in virtually the same place at nearly the same time of day.

  He should have set his clock back an hour.

First evening deerhunting

 And the first deer seen during hunting season: a doe and fawn crossed the far sunlit end of the field at about 5:30.  Nothing but mosquitoes where I was, though there were lots and many varieties.  I was wearing an Alpenflage  jump suit so they concentrated on my bare hands.

  It's not that quiet in the country..there are layers of sound from the overhead airplanes and sizzling traffic on surrounding roads to the thrushes and squirrels.  I heard three separate Horned owls, plus a couple of Barred Owls.  Right at 7:00 they shot across the creek and I drove around to see who they had killed.  Turned out they shot a little spike buck.  Pitiful.  I didn't mention the bucks I have been seeing on cam.  One buck county.  We are safe for a bit.

Update:  Saw Big Ten this morning for only the second time with my own eyes.  He's a 5 1/2 year old 12 point buck, very massive except that when he was 2 1/2 he tore his whole left antler off at the socket fighting.  The left side has been ruined since.  Saw him on the deercam once last year and once the year before.  This year nothing.  Too smart to go to the cam.

  He looked good.  Six points on the big side, a nice long-tined heavy-beamed typical.  He was with a doe and the doe spooked.  I hope he breeds every doe in the watershed.  I had a clean and open shot for about six seconds.  Didn't even put my rifle up.  He's the oldest buck I have in my deercam files.

Holding serve

  Ricks 10X group at 300 yards on his way to a club record 495.  Nice shooting!

 
  Today at Panola we had 16 shooters, typical for the first day of deer season.  We made two relays and scored ourselves.  

  Big day at the range.  Rick Crawford shot a 10X clean at 300 yards.  That's ten shots all in the X ring in 70 seconds with a mag change.  He used his match rifle.  I walked down the pits to take a look at the group.  Very impressive.

  Rick finished with a Club Record 495.  That's also his personal best.  Panola has some good shooters so it's quite an achievement to hold the club record.

  I shot my AR for standing: 97X5, sitting rapid: 99X3 and 300: 97X2.  Medium good shooting.

  At 600 I have seen shooting so badly with my rifle and it's new barrel that I decided to switch to Andrews TSRA-issued DPMS rifle.  It's got an A1 buttstock, a skinny front sight and a web sling but I had a box of my standard 80 Sierra load for 600 so off I went.  The first sighter was a low 7.  I adjusted up and shot a 9 on the same line.  Starting with the first shot for record I shot a 194X7 and never had a round go anywhere that I didn't think it should go.  That's a very different experience from shooting donuts around the 10-ring and having weird off-call shots in the seven and eight ring.  I never had a good string at the Service Rifle Championships at Swift shooting a 95, a 188 and a 185 which crashed my scores.  The sensation was that I was breaking good shots, but they wouldn't go where I thought they were going.  Today that situation was reversed.  Everything went in, or went close to where I thought it would be.

  I've been looking at everything from my eye prescription to the seating length of my bullets, but what I now think is happening is the Douglas 1/8 twist barrel on my rifle won't stabilize 80 grain Sierras.

  Finished with a 487X16.  I've had the up-close scores but been crashing at 600.

TSRA Service Rifle Trophy.

  Here's the top of the Trophy, donated by two generous, handsome, intellectual, Renaissance men.  It's a John Chalk statue from Sgt Grit.  Based on a famous photograph of a Marine Pfc Ison running across an area known as "Death valley" on Okinawa during WWII.