Spring Gobblers in South Cakalacky

Blogger has a new format that I am trying to figure out so please bare with me. I need to get this whole new layout worked out. It has been a while but I am back with a bang.

Here are two pretty incredible hunts from last spring. Will James from The GarHole was generous enough to help us with editing the video footage we sent him and putting together these clips. Will has a really impressive blog, along with some other buddies of mine, that gets updated much more frequently than this one. Be sure to check them out. You can subscribe to their blog on the right hand side just below the goose if you click on the hyper link above.

This was the first hunt on the first morning of a three day turkey hunting marathon. I drove down on Thursday evening from Richmond to meet Ragsdale and Huston at Ragsdale's family plantation near Georgetown, SC. I got there about 12:30 AM and Rags and Hus got in from Atlanta at about 2 AM. We got up after a couple hours sleep and Rags took us over to a spot they call the 700 acres. We set up near where Rags had seen a big bird go to roost the week before. Right after we sat down Rags let out an owl hoot, and we heard two birds gobble off the roost way off to our left. We sat tight for about 15 minutes and listened to the birds gobble a couple more times before Rags decided he knew exactly where the birds were, and where they were headed. We jumped up and literally sprinted through the woods to be sure we got to the spot before they did. This video starts pretty much right as we sat down. It only took about 15 minutes for these two gobblers to come in and they were talking the whole way. We have it condensed here down to two minutes. I won't name names, but I think the camera man had a little accident in his pants, when I pulled the trigger. I think he was expecting me to let this bird hang out for a while, but I had an itchy trigger finger because I was in the middle of a multiple year slump without dropping a bird. Fortunately for me and Rags the cameraman did not document the excessive man hugging that took place after the shot. Notice also I let that other long beard go so we could chase him another day. I would like to pretend I let that bird go because I am a true sportsman, but it is really because I was fully aware of the beat down I would have received.

Click on the bottom right hand corner of the video to expand to full screen.

After the first hunt we ran to the store, grabbed some breakfast, and got right back in the woods. This time I was on the camera and Huston was the gunner, while Rags called them in. The video pretty much tells the story, but the jist of it was that Huston's gun misfired twice and I could not stand to wait for a third click. Fortunately it was really windy out and we had good cover so the birds did not spook at either misfire and they did not see me reach for my gun. This hunt took a bit longer, we sat for a good while and I was settling in for a nice mid morning nap when the first bird gobbled behind us. It took about 30 minutes, which seemed like forever at the time for these birds to come around the corner and work into range. Fortunately, Will cut the footage down so the video below gets right into the action.

Huston and I are glad this concludes all the action that was caught on film. We came out of the gates hot but the turkey's ended up getting the better of us for the rest of the weekend. We had a great time, and I would like to give special thanks to Thomas, Smith, and Charles Ragsdale for creating such awesome turkey habitat and sharing it with Huston and I.

Last Hunt of the Season

Oakey and I wrapped up the season with a bang. We got to the marsh on Friday afternoon with only about an hour and a half to hunt and #1 creek which is right out in front of our shack was totally jammed with geese that were trying to stay out of the wind. I have seen them sit in the mouth of this creed a bunch but never pile in all the way up in the marsh like they were this time. We decided to hunt double ought which is the oldest blind in the marsh and named that because my grandfather once dropped a deer with double ought buck shot from the same blind. This was the first time we hunted this blind all season and we were not sorry. We quickly killed our limit of geese and swatted 3 wood ducks which was a total surprise. We usually only see woodies in the first part of the season. I sky busted one goose but everything else had its feet down. The next morning we hunted #4 and it was pretty much the same story. We had a group of about 4o geese do it just right and we dropped our limit out of that one group. We ended up scraping out 4 mallards and probably could have dropped a couple more if we were on our game at first light but I think we were both over served the night before and not firing on all cylinders at first light.

Dex did great as usual but he let one cripple get away that he definitely would have caught up to two years ago. The old man is starting to slow down a little bit but is still no softy as you can tell by the ice in his coat. He still has the fire in his belly

2nd to last hunt of 2010/2011 season

Bob, Dad, Taylor, and I all headed down to the marsh for the second to last weekend of the season. I was pretty psyched because it looked like the weather was going to cooperate. They were calling for 10-15 mph winds out of the west and the temperature was suppose to dip down in the twenties. The last time Bob came down it was bluebird and we only killed 1 goose and 1 scaup, so I was hoping we could show him a better hunt. Unfortunately the weather only cooperated partially. It got cold but as you can tell in the sunrise pic below it was dead still until about 1:30 in the afternoon. We also had a low ceiling which was nice but the wind would have helped a ton with the ducks. Dad and Taylor hunted the point blind and limited out on geese almost immediately. They had a big group do it just right and 3 birds did back flips, and then they filled their limit on a single. It took Bob and I hunted #4 and it took us a little longer but we had our limit of geese by about 9:30 and we snuck in one green head which was nice because he did it just right. We saw a bunch of ducks fly early but they did not even give us a look. The water was like a mirror and our dekes looked ridiculous. The whole crew left me after the morning hunt and I had to call in the reserves to hunt with me in the afternoon. Mase, Duncan, and Merrick joined me for an afternoon hunt and the wind finally showed up and the tide got full. We killed 4 more geese and 3 greenheads. All the ducks we killed and one of the geese decoyed perfectly. We had one green head drop straight down from at least a hundred yards up with his wing tips almost touching. All in all it was a good day I just wish that wind had showed up sooner. As is becoming pretty standard this season we all could have killed 10 geese per gun in the morning. They are every where.

Cash came down for his first trip to the marsh to get a lesson in Duck Doggin from Dex.

We had a beautiful sunrise those ripples are wake from our john boat. We had absolutely no wind

La Paloma Sola

Over new years we went to visit our family in Texas. We have been down to Austin a bunch of times now, but this was my first trip to the ranch in South Texas. The name of the ranch is La Paloma Sola(Lonesome Dove) and it is about 3,000 acres of white tail heaven about 3 hours south of San Antonio. Although I have been deer hunting a handful of times in my life I have never actually killed one, and my brother in law John is literally a pro so I was super excited to learn what it was all about. We got their pretty late on Thursday so we just had an evening cocktail cruise while spreading corn around the main loop. I was completely blown away. These deer were all substantially bigger then any other white tail I had ever seen in real life. I think this place is where Field and Stream comes to get those cover shots that I always assumed were fake. The next morning we hunted a blind they call pin wheel. There was heavy fog at first light but as soon as the fog lifted there were at least 20 deer within range. About 6-7 of those were all really impressive bucks. They were impressive to me anyway but I think most of them were pretty run of the mill for the ranch. Anyway the morning was action packed we saw two 10 point bucks fight until one got its butt whipped and took off. We also had a young (2.5 year old) 10 point walk right in front of the blind. I got some really cool video that I hope to post soon.

John explained that my first deer should be a doe so we waited for the action to slow down a little bit and then he picked a nice size doe that he wanted me to shoot. Fortunately despite my shaking I dropped it like a sack of potatoes which was kind of surprising. I just assumed it would run a little bit. That afternoon John and I went over to another part of the ranch where John had seen some cull bucks(4-5 year old dear with what Texans consider unimpressive antlers). The idea is that you get these guys out of the breeding population and leave the bigger deer to enhance the gene pool. That same afternoon we hunted a blind called W7 and there was a lot of action but John did not see the deer he wanted me to kill. I must admit that I was feeling pretty trigger happy and it was hard to lay off the handful of really nice deer that we saw. The next morning we went back to the same spot and to my relief one of the deer John wanted to take out of the population showed himself. Despite the fact this deer was only an 8 point(but with several tines broken off from fighting) he looked like a bruiser to me and had a much bigger body on him than a lot of the younger deer we saw with massive racks. He also was covered with scars from fighting and had a really pronounced dark red forehead. Here are some pics



This is Bob trying to help John get rid of his hiccups. We were all pretty well lubed up at this point. I think there is video of this as well.

This deer let us get pretty close in the truck and Bob got some great pictures.

This is a gang of 5 long beards all running away from us. We saw a gang of about 50 birds in another field and of course did not have the camera with us. We will have to go visit in spring sometime soon.

This is the whole crew

This shows most of the buildings on the ranch. We stayed in the white buildings off to the right.

The first night we got there we had an incredible sunset and Bob got these amazing pictures.

More from La Paloma Sola coming soon as soon as I can get my video editing software working again.