The Shoveling Crew

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It's ain't a bigun, but it's legal

       Took my second deer this afternoon, a decent sized spiked buck.  I glanced out the back window and spotted a single deer alone.  Since I shot the first doe, just about the only deer I have seen are the tiny button and doe that were with the big doe.  They come every morning and every night. It's as if it is there way of saying "hey, this corn tastes great, sure would be better with mom".  I can almost here their conversation.  We have named them Nibbles and Snack after I mentioned that they are barely big enough to be a hundred calorie snack pack. Luckily, if they are big enough to shoot next year they won't be recognizable.

        My youngest kid had a doctors appointment at 2:45 and I shot the deer at around twelve so I had to move my but to get this thing skinned gutted and in the cooler, before I had to go to town.  I never imagined myself driving my daughter to the pediatrician moments after cutting off an animals head.  Fortunately I was able to use the arbor at my wife's aunt's house to skin it which makes it a lot easier.  They have a nice winch hooked up allow the deer to be raised to a good working height depending on what your doing. Even still for me it was definitely and experiment in speed skinning.  I have seen videos of people skinning the deer by hooking the skin around a golf ball, tying it to a truck, and yanking it off, but that actually seems like a hassle.  You still have to do most of the cutting and pulling it off isn't that hard if you can raise the deer high enough.

     I did cut myself when I mere moments from being done as I cut the neck off and I did get stung by a bee, but I managed to get the deer skinned, gutted and in the cooler with a few minutes to spare.  I was very happy to not open any of the intestines or stomach in the process and overall for my third deer skinning it went pretty well. There is definitely a fair bit of work involved, but I am starting to enjoy it. I kept the skin and head in the cooler and hopefully I can scrape the hide tomorrow. 

The Hunting Party

      This last weekend was the beginning of open hunting season in Tyler county.  From a tree stand out behind the house I shot a medium size doe.  The shot went right in behind the shoulder where I was aiming but came out at an angle and punch a hole in the stomach.  Not terribly happy about that, but I was happy to kill something and put up some meat.  The deer was with two small bucks not legal to shoot yet. When I shot the doe they ran off with it as it headed into the woods to die, but the funny thing is that about twenty minutes later, before I went out to track down the doe, they came back and kept eating.  That is how docile and dependent on corn the deer in East Texas have become.  The shame is that hunting should be one way to get out of the corn based agriculture system, but with everyone here pumping corn out of feeders they are almost as corn feed as the beef from the store. 

     Now I know why indigenous people go out in hunting parties.  This thing ran about forty yards out in the woods through thick saw briers and berry vines. We had to hack through the thickets  with a machete, following the blood trail, in order to locate the doe.  Since my wife had surgery she can't lift anything and I had to carry this thing back to the cleared area by myself.  I thought I was going give myself a hernia trying to carry her.  I tied the front legs together and the back legs together which made it a little easier, but I could see how having someone to hoist up the other end of a pole would make this process easier. Once I got to the power line I could load it into the wagon.  Most guys here like to ride haul there deer in there four wheelers, but it takes a real man to use a Radio Flyer.

      After we got it back we took it to my wife's aunts house to cut up. They help show me how to skin and gut the deer since I have only done it once before.  This time I actually managed to get avoid throwing up, although my stomach did twinge a little when I had to stick my knife through the ear in order to tie on the deer tag.  I really have no idea how much this deer weighed or how much meat we will put in the freezer from this one.  I have three more that I can take this year.  According to the hunting rules here I can take one more doe and two more bucks.  The bucks either have to have one unbranched antler or have a rack with a spread of more than 13 inches.  I am not looking for a trophy, so I will go for small deer with unbranched antlers unless something huge wanders up.
    

     While not really sporting the whole thing seems like contest to see who can sit the longest and wait for deer.  After a few hours my ass was killing me and I was ready to be done.  The real work though is getting it out of the woods and cut up which is a good deal of work especially if you don't know what your doing. Unlike most people in Tyler County I don't own any camouflage clothing. This is all I have two camo bandanas I got from Wal-mart for two dollars.  Mostly they just helped keep me warm and the bugs off my face.  I did later change from my early morning black shirt to a olive green shirt, but  most of the deer could clearly see me.  Even the one I shot stared at me for around a full minute before it rambled off down the path to its demise.

     Hunting really doesn't seem like the appropriate term for this process. I watched this show about some guys in Africa who would chase down an animal.  They would all scout around until they found an animal they could separate from the herd, then one guy would chase after it. He would just keep chasing it until it collapsed and died from exhaustion. That sounds like hunting.  I guess it is possible because the person can carry water and drink while they run, but the animal won't stop to drink while it is being chased.  By possible I mean, possible for a guy who is in the kind of shape one gets into when your hungry enough to chase down your dinner.

Great Halloween Flood of 2013

       After the severe drought summer, we have had around ten inches of rain in two days the creeks and branches are flooded, dirt roads are washed out and the kids got out of school early today so that the buses could try to slog threw the mud to get kids home.  Our drive way is completely trashed and it is going to take forever for me to try and repair the erioson.

I went out today and cut channels across the ruts and down into the lower side of the road so that the water could run down the hill towards the branch.  Every hundred feet or so I cut a channel with a pick and a shovel so that the water in that section could run off.  This should reduce the volume of water and slow it down, so it should lesson the erosion.  Some of the ruts have been stripped deep and I will have to keep smashing up concrete to fill them up.

BEFORE

AFTER

 

The Long Branch runs on the side of the property is completely swollen.  It had finally gotten a tiny trickle flowing again after the drought, but this rain has it moving like a little river. The one nice thing is that the water did clear away a portion of the brush I had cut for my new hunting spot.  This will leave me a nicer area with less brush to clear away. Low budget deer hunting tip number 2: have a flash flood clear away your dead brush. 

six dollar hunting blind

       Out here in East Texas hunting is just part of life.  Probably half the people living here either hunt or eat meat that someone got from hunting.  This year I am determined to try an take my limit in deer and fill the freezer.  Hopefully I will be able to make some jerky and if I kill a pig too then I can make some pork / venison sausage.  A lot people fill huge feeders full of corn, spend hundreds on the feeder and a blind, a full set of camo gear, and all sorts of other hunting accessories.  For me hunting has to be an economic plus or I can't bring myself to do it. 
       The first day of open rifle season starts next Sunday and I have been preparing a new spot near a tiny creek, known as a branch, where I know the deer and pigs come to drink on well established game trails.  I started by cutting down as much brush and small trees as I needed to in the area where I hung my small feeder. I had to cut down at least twenty pine trees, but they were all four inches around or less at the very base of the tree.  This will give me a clear view of anything coming into the area as well as allowing the bigger trees to grow larger.

       I thought about going full on primitive and constructing my blind entirely out of the brush and trees I had cut down, but I wanted something with a roof to keep some rain off.  I used some old poles that have been here since we move in, corrogated tin off a rotting pig pen built in the sixties, and some pieces of corrugated Lexan left over from the chicken coops I had to take apart.  The only thing I paid for was the box of self tapping sheet metal screws that I need to screw in the tin.  After putting it together I cover the top with leaves and pine straw and piled the brush I cut down around  the blind.  I need to pile on a little more brush and spray a little paint on the non rusted spots on the tin.

      The blind is just big enough for me to sit in and only has tin on three sides.  I piled enough brush behind it that from the back you can't see it, but the point of that was for me to be able to blend into the  brush behind me through the window.  With mostly my head being the  thing showing I spent two bucks at Wal-mart for two camo bandanas to cover my head and face.  Add in the one bag of corn and my total investment would be 16 bucks, if it works it will be a great investment for a couple hundred dollars worth of meat.

At some point I would consider building a better, more comfortable blind that would keep me warmer and drier, but if this works I don't know if I could bring myself to spend the money.  I would probably be more likely to try going the other way and trying the full on primitive and use only brush to make a blind.

Finally Rain

           The long dry summer has turned into a tough drought for Tyler County.  Even though the mornings have become cool and the beginnings of fall are barely visible, the damage from the lack of rain is apparent.  Everything around is us brown and crunchy, but yesterday we did have about a half inch of rain out here.  The clouds and rain feel like manna from heaven as it breaks up the heat.  My tomatoes have been wiped out, unable to hold out against the unrelenting sun.  Many of my other plants have actually thrived in the sun, merely requiring more water to grow, but have been stifled by the lack of bees.  I have no way to directly link the drought to the lack of bees, but just by observance it seems pretty clear.
            For one thing it is not just bees that have taken a loss in the new dry climate.  The first few summers we spent in East Texas were filled with mosquito bites from the never ending swarms that feasted upon us and our kids.  I remember rushing the kids from the car into the house and still finding several bites on their legs.  Both kids were mildly allergic and the bites would swell and drive them insane.  One year it was so bad we had to hang a mosquito zapper inside the house by the front door. Every time anyone opened the door the house at least a few of the ravenous critters would get in.  The kids would wake up covered in bites that they had scratched into open wounds.  We practically had stock in Benadryl those years.  Besides the mosquitoes, another benefit is the number of garden pests which has dropped dramatically.  
          No matter how nice it is to not have the mosquitoes and garden pests, the lack of bees is disturbing and directly effects the productivity of the garden.  This year I will have to looking getting my own bee hives. I will almost certainly try to use mason bees because they are supposed to be easy to manage. I don't know how many dry summers will follow this one and the effects may only be get dramatic if the weather continues.  I know of one home owner in Tyler County who already has pine beetles destroying a tree in their yard.  Since pine beetles are most likely to effected damaged trees or those weakened by drought they could spread quickly if this continues. The economy of this area revolves around pine trees, the combination of drought and infestation could be tragic.
           According to the us Drought Monitor many parts of Texas are in the extreme drought range, while we fall between moderate and severe. It is frustrating since we moved here in part to escape the long dry summers of Las Vegas. In the seven years we have lived in Tyler county we have had two hurricanes and three years of drought.  Both of which are uncommon for this area.  As the weather drives up food prices, the need for a productive garden becomes more apparent and more challenging.

La Aventura Cigarbox Guitar

        There are a few things you have to have to live peacefully in the country; a shotgun, a dog and a cigarbox guitar.  I made this a while ago, but I finally got a great old bridge off a busted up guitar and now my guitar is almost complete. I still need to spend about five bucks at radio shack to get the transducer so I can soder it to a 1/4 in jack and turn this sucker electric.  There is however one slight problem in that I don't exactly know how to play guitar,  ok so I don't know how to play guitar at all.  I am going to the music shop in town tomorrow to talk to the guy who gives guitar lessons to see if he thinks he could teach me to play slide guitar. I am actually more into making these than I am into playing.  I just want to get to where I can build a nice one that any guitar player could enjoy. That's all I want,  just to be able to play a little bit so I can sit on the front porch and play once in a while. Of course if ya have the porch, the shotgun, the dog and cigarbox guitar well then you gotta have the mason jar full of moonshine.  Guess I better start working on the still.

East Texas Black Panther

        Around the the end of the school year my two kids and I were headed out to school, near the end of our 1/4 mile crumbling dirt driveway I had to stop the truck and sit quiet for a minute.  My oldest daughter saw the same thing I did a large black cat about fifty feet away.  This is no house cat.  Our drive way has two ruts separated by a grassy patch down the middle. The cat was crossing the road and had  the grassy patch between its feet, but what really jumped out was the long waving tail that seemed like it was three feet long.  The cat paused for just a second, looked at us and then darted in the woods.  My youngest was fiddling with her school stuff in the middle of the truck and didn't see it but my oldest had her eyes fixed on the cat.  I couldn't believe my eyes I hadn't seen anything like it before. 
       According to some of the old timer that I have talked to these cats were more common thirty or forty years ago and that they them-self had seen on or that there father or uncle had seen these while deer hunting.  According to the ol' internets there are no black panthers in Texas and much of what I found was related to cryptozoology, which according to my spell check is not even a word,  and the study of the Bigfoot.  After a quick internet search I just put it out of mind and went about my day.  What brings this back the front this morning is my wife saw the cat last night.  This time the cat was down the county road a couple miles, between the deer hunting camps and main county rd. SHe was headed back form work and saw the cat about 7:30.
       Last night I began looking again and considering if there is some sort of wildlife agency that we should report it to just in case someone is studying large cats in East Texas.  After reading a little more the probability is that this is a Jaguarundi, an endangered species that does exsist in this area.  If I ever happened to get a chance to shoot at this fellow, then it will be personally endangered,  although in all fairness I am not that good a shot so it might have nothing to fear.  There is an interesting blog relating to these things Texas Cryptid Hunter, which I will definitely be reading.