Stache's Blog: 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.