Well I have not been around much in the last few months and lonestarson texted me last week seeing how things were going so I thought I would post some pictures of my recent adventures/projects:

new truck, 2011 eco-boost...


messin with snakes:

messin with vultures:

more snakes:

more pigs:

nice bass on the san marcos

cats on the blanco

Guadalupe on the sabinal

Nice pigs!

complete smoker rebuild

adventures on dad's new lease north of Bracketville

current blind build: 8'x4'x6', more pictures to come

and just got 10 game cams to put up at work, should be having some pics of nice bucks just outside of San Marcos in the next couple weeks once I get them put up.

You have been real busy.

Great photos!

looks like you know how to have a good time. i used to go out like that every week, now i'll be lucky to get out twice a year, nice pics.

Looks like fun busy!

Living the Life

What type of research work you doing with the vultures?

Looks like fun and also like a good place to work

+1

Great pictures. Your pic of you looking out of your fishing rig has me wanting to go do some casting.

Thanks guys, the vultures were for a project by a p.HD student from LSU. Not sure if many would have heard about it or not, but Texas State put a "body farm" at the ranch I work at a few years ago. Basically it is a place where people donate their bodies to science and the forensic anthropology dept. uses the bodies to conduct research on decomp and various other aspects that detectives deal with when solving a homicide or death. The young lady was trying to determine if the body farm kept the vultures closer than normal because of a near constant food supply, causing possible skewed results at the body farm because there are more vultures than normal around. We GPSed 6 and tagged the rest. Those suckers bite hard.

I recognize the house where your truck is parked.

Cool pics.

Interesting story with the vultures. Thanks for sharing the pics.

Life is good around San Marcos. Love this area of Texas. Good to see your taking advantage of all the cool rivers in the area. Looks like a fun job you have as well. Thanks for sharing the pics.

Has the research been going on long enough to have they found out anything interesting so far with the research?
I know from personal work on ranches killing lots of deer that the vultures do stay around much more. At the start of a season it was warmer but they still found the gut piles fast. The more you shoot/farther into the season you are that faster the vulture will appear after a shot. On ranches I have been on they will respond to a single shot very quickly. I have vultures or cara caras on a dead deer in less than one minute from the sound of a shot. Some ranches we gutted in the field and some at one location. The one thing I did notice with the vultures was that if the temps got really very cold for the area, most of the vultures would move farther south. When the temps would return to more normal you could sit in a blind and watch them moving north. Most of the ranches I hunted on had a vulture roost on them or right next to it also.

When I first started putting catfish heads out, the buzzards didn't come for a couple of days. Now it takes about 20 or 30 minutes... They do learn...

cool pics

that would be my house, right next to the frat daddies

stxranchman, from what I know, the vultures gps'd have ranged from austin to san antonio and about the same distance east and west. One got struck by lighting and the gps was recovered, we see many that were tagged on the ranch so I would say that there seems to be some correlation, but from what I know it is all preliminary. If you see a vulture with a pink tag in its right wing, let me know! GPS coordinates and if you can read the letters even better!

How many have they tagged to date?

Cool pics

looks like you been busy