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Hunting ‘23/‘24: Bag ‘em and Tag ‘em


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1 hour ago, BabaYaga said:

Just not sure what they'd eat?  I could see them passing through looking for water, but a sounder would struggle out there to keep up their numbers.

They will eat the tunas off of the prickly pears for sure. When we hunted in Aspermont, we leased up 15,000 acres of pasture, not an oak tree on the whole place. We were overrun with hogs, you would probably see 75 a day, each. It was all prickly pear and mesquite, so there is something they are eating, just not sure what it is.

CHIEF

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16 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

They will eat the tunas off of the prickly pears for sure. When we hunted in Aspermont, we leased up 15,000 acres of pasture, not an oak tree on the whole place. We were overrun with hogs, you would probably see 75 a day, each. It was all prickly pear and mesquite, so there is something they are eating, just not sure what it is.

CHIEF

Lest we not forget, the eat each other.

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29 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

They will eat the tunas off of the prickly pears for sure. When we hunted in Aspermont, we leased up 15,000 acres of pasture, not an oak tree on the whole place. We were overrun with hogs, you would probably see 75 a day, each. It was all prickly pear and mesquite, so there is something they are eating, just not sure what it is.

CHIEF

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13 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Lest we not forget, the eat each other.

Yep.  Helping on a ranch years back in the Hill country.  Had a downed cow we had been searching for.  Piglets with inside the body cavity and can tearing out when we started poking around.  They're so damn nasty.  Every time I see "wild boar" on a Texas menu I have to chuckle.  Like all omnivores, pigs taste like what they eat and restaurants buy live trapped pigs from all over the damn place.  

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Yeah I’ve put it in a prior thread. Vernon went from no hogs 5-6 years ago, to a few one spring showing up, to a few sounders, to now we will shoot a couple hundred during the year.

This late spring and summer we shutdown all of our feeders and stuff to see if we could get the hogs to move on away from my property. It has kinda worked but there are still hogs everywhere out there. We turned the feeders on 2 weeks ago and to my surprise no hogs have shown up yet. The deer are going hard like 12-14 hours a day at my feeder…

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5 hours ago, Speedtrucker said:

Yeah I’ve put it in a prior thread. Vernon went from no hogs 5-6 years ago, to a few one spring showing up, to a few sounders, to now we will shoot a couple hundred during the year.

This late spring and summer we shutdown all of our feeders and stuff to see if we could get the hogs to move on away from my property. It has kinda worked but there are still hogs everywhere out there. We turned the feeders on 2 weeks ago and to my surprise no hogs have shown up yet. The deer are going hard like 12-14 hours a day at my feeder…

We have been surprised/pleased to see fewer pigs at our place in Schleicher County.  The deer and turkey look good thus far as we've been doing lots of protein, never turned off the corn, and they had decent rain through June.  Here's to hoping.

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Our place in Bastrop County is actually the opposite trend.  When I was living out there after moving back from Atlanta, I would see sign of them on the easement consistently and would come upon sounders when scouting/walking fenceline.  For the past ~decade or so, I have not seen any personally and my pops indicated the same.  Hope to keep it that way, but I would expect that could change relatively quickly (considering the above replies).

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8 hours ago, 686 said:

You’ve got a great mechanic @deadshank

Yes.  He’s a heck of a guy.  He works on all the toys owned by his well-to-do boss.  The boss man monetizes his addiction by having Doug work on other stuff.  
 

The ATV/UTV operation was once much larger.  Now it’s just a passing thing.  Never any back log.  Just bring it in and he’ll get to work on it.  

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On 8/28/2023 at 12:18 PM, fattyflattie said:

Lest we not forget, the eat each other.

We had a lease out by Throckmorton years ago that was infested by hogs.  One of the guys shot this hog close to dark and we decided to let it lay as it was a Saturday night and a big game was coming on, so we ran back to camp to watch the game (old school days - generator, TV, DirecTV satellite dish in concrete in Home Depot Homer bucket).

We returned to pick up the hog about three hours later and there was nothing but bones.  Picked clean.

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20 hours ago, BabaYaga said:

Group of bachelors out for a wild night on the town.  Hide yo' wimenz.  Hide yo' childrenz.

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Great time of year ! pics of bucks, headed out for dove hunting in a few hours, college football tonight! Perfect!

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Everyone is all cool with each other for now. Had a Doe come by with a Fawn earlier this week. Couple of other Does have found the corn as well.

But 2 hogs came by last night… sent the word to my BiL that he needs to get his hog gear ready to eradicate some of them before my deer season starts

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Pictures have started to roll in.  Still sorting through them but the early returns are pretty good.  Spin feeders have only been running for 4 days so I'm hoping to get some other less eager customers on film soon.  Not shooting any mature bucks last year after that dismal spring was the right decision.

 

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On 8/27/2023 at 9:53 PM, Lat22 said:

Dang. I was about to say “username checks out”. 

I thought the same thing regarding the Weatherby, but Weatherby O/U's have that kind of flared chamber that the Beretta doesn't.  I have my dad's old Beretta that my uncle brought back from Italy when he was in the Navy in the 60's.  Love that gun, but it's seen many days of leaning against a barbwar fence and mesquite trees.  I'd love to refinish the wood and clean up the action, need to find a competent smith in Houston for this type of work.

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5 hours ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Put those Meatheads to work before it gets too hot tomorrow!

These are guest meatheads.  They don’t have to work.  
 

South zone opener will have a smattering of just-graduated Longhorn son’s and friends of son’s down and they will load up the 20 corn feeders, 6 protein feeders and the water totes.  
 

The price paid when you’re young is quite inexpensive. 

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1 hour ago, deadshank said:

These are guest meatheads.  They don’t have to work.  
 

South zone opener will have a smattering of just-graduated Longhorn son’s and friends of son’s down and they will load up the 20 corn feeders, 6 protein feeders and the water totes.  
 

The price paid when you’re young is quite inexpensive. 

Ahhhhh.....The infamous, annual F.F.P. Invitational.  We used to have one of those.

(Feeder Fillin' Party) 

 

 

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12 hours ago, deadshank said:

The best time of the year is upon us.  College football, hunting season and a 4 day weekend to start it off with all the meathead buddies showing up tomorrow. 

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I’m jealous.  Both my kids have us knee deep in high school sports activities, so no opening weekend for me.  Hopefully I’ll make it back down to Shackelford County to bust some of my buddies culls or does in Nov-Dec.  Plan on hunting Osage County in Oklahoma gun season.

Living vicariously through you guys until then…

I miss the old prickly pear and mesquite country.

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16 hours ago, MalibuSheriff said:

I’m jealous.  Both my kids have us knee deep in high school sports activities, so no opening weekend for me.  Hopefully I’ll make it back down to Shackelford County to bust some of my buddies culls or does in Nov-Dec.  Plan on hunting Osage County in Oklahoma gun season.

Living vicariously through you guys until then…

I miss the old prickly pear and mesquite country.

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I brought home a bunch of prickly pears weekend before last -- my son is doing some kind of tequila brew with them.  IDK how that will turn out, but if I don't die, I will let y'all know about it.

 

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@Buzzrock morning doves predominant in most of the state, white wings more predominant in the southern part. Invasive Eurasian ring necks spotted occasionally and don’t count towards your limit.



I had a good evening tonight, but not as good as last night, knocked down 6.

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Also filled all the corn feeders, put out three cameras, and did some long range work with my elk rifle and spotting scope arrangement. Went 3/3 on the gong at 515yds.

Nice having real-time feedback on impacts.

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Most significant kill was a big black widow under a rocking chair on the porch.

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Hogs running wild on my place.  Needed to get some work done.

This is one of at least three sounders I’ve caught on camera.

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They came back by on Saturday evening.  Got the one on the far right; DRT:

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Got a quick follow-up shot on one of the others and it dropped after a 5 yard run… just to get back up and disappear into the thickest brush on the property.  I tracked it to where it had settled in.  Could smell it and hear the flies that had already started to do their thing.  No way I was digging it out.

Driving back to the campers, a big sounder crossed the road right in front of me.  10+.  Didn’t have a chance at a shot.  Later that night, spotted a small sounder about 250 yards out from the camper on the thermal monocular, but didn’t have my NV rig with me.  Need to clear these things out before deer season.

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On 9/4/2023 at 12:24 AM, 686 said:

@Buzzrock morning doves predominant in most of the state, white wings more predominant in the southern part. Invasive Eurasian ring necks spotted occasionally and don’t count towards your limit.
 

Best part about the collared doves is that as long as you're absolutely sure what you're shooting at, you can shoot them all year long, just like hogs and coyotes. It's pretty easy to tell since they have black wingtips and are about 30-40% bigger and fatter.

But take a shovel with you just in case. 

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I had read that those are invasive but what's the problem with them?

I haven’t read up on these doves in particular, but any invasive makes things harder for the native competitors by consuming resources the natives could use. I think that is tpwd’s main impetus to keep their numbers down.
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18 minutes ago, 686 said:


I haven’t read up on these doves in particular, but any invasive makes things harder for the native competitors by consuming resources the natives could use. I think that is tpwd’s main impetus to keep their numbers down.

Yep, originally thought to be more aggressive and competitive than native mourning and whitewing dove.  That seems to be less clear now as their populations have mostly stabilized or declined.

Airgunners do a lot of pesting and collared doves have been a favorite target.

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8 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

Yep. We used to sit on the porch and shoot them out the driveway.  

They're tough suckers.  Not afraid to take a low brass 8.5 and keep right right on trucking.

Taste pretty good too  - flavor profile somewhere between red tailed hawk and whooping crane.

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Been traveling so missed opening weekend - but I can say I might have taken my first dove of the season in the most unique way.  I killed it with a ceiling fan and a salt gun.  Two fuckers have a nest on the TV on the back porch.  They were sitting on the TV, shitting all over the deck so I had the fan on high, walked right up and shot one in the face with my Bug-A-Salt, it freaked and flew right into the fan.  Feathers everywhere.  It drops.  The dog gets it and races off to finish the job.  I breasted it out, fired up the grill, and she got to eat her spoils.  Happy dog!

 

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14 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

I had read that those are invasive but what's the problem with them?

They live in mostly the same habitat as the native species - especially mourning doves - but since they are bigger and (supposedly) more aggressive, the collared doves consume more resources and displace them. Just like any invasive species, the environment evolved without them, so their sudden presence can be damaging to the local ecology. Think about how hogs tear up pastures and fences and consume food meant for livestock and deer, then scale it down and think about the same thing happening to the native doves. 

They generally are very easy to identify (big and fat, black tipped wings, fly in pairs) and are somewhat slower fliers than mourning doves, so they can be controlled pretty easily. Like I said previously, the only issue is if you accidentally shoot a morning dove. Then that's technically poaching, even if it's inadvertent. 

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On 8/28/2023 at 10:14 AM, CHIEF said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of people in this World, those with hogs, and those that will eventually have hogs.

CHIEF

I guess we are both at our place.  We used to have them, but the one guy that is on the lease only for pigs says he hasnt seen one on camera or in person or any hint of them being here.  Which to me is juuuuuust fine. 

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