TB you could have waited until I got home before you 86ed the link

Oh, I'm sure somebody will PM it to you.

But I got a very polite PM from the mod squad about changing my sig links for awhile. And I can certainly understand their position.

Your right they sure did!!! You could see the writing on the wall with that one.

Fair enough, I will check out your stuff.

I went to SMU, too. The block between Mockingbird and Lovers from Hillcrest to 75 are some extremely fertile hunting grounds for two legged deer.

Good luck this season.

LOL.

I actually drove the "Blue Angel" for DPS for 2 years trying to cut down on the predators who might try and poach those deer at night.

That was a pretty good gig for a kid on a scholarship who couldn't afford to out partying every night! Paid $16/hour even back in the 80's, chicks did a guy in uniform, and riders were about 95% female.

FYI, duck hunter competition out here in the desert is actually pretty darned high. Think about it: not much water, huge Army post with displaced duck hunters from all over the country, NO public marshes or lakes, drug war along the south shore of the river and it's a foreign country where you can't carry a gun without spending years in a Mexican prison if you don't get killed first. So the comp is for what little PRIVATE access there is or what few holding spots there are on the US side of the river WHEN there's water in the Rio Grande...and winter isn't usually that time.

It's a different sort of competition, but it's stiff. It's also not about the guy w/the fattest wallet. For some reason, the landowners out here don't care about that. They care about personality, respect, trust, etc. It's very "old school." I like it! Deer hunting out here is about $$$!!! But bird hunting isn't. Most of the guys on our ranch are military, federal law enforcement, firemen, and all family men. The few who aren't public servant first responders are local business owners who do a lot of community service. And we don't advertise the leases and conduct all of that by referral and in person interview w/the rancher that takes all day at the ranch. It's quite interesting. I've been through it and participated in 3 others now. He's a sly old fox and he's really testing these guys at every minute...getting to know them. He'll pull up to a locked gate and just sit for a few seconds to see who offers to get out and open it. Then he'll watch to see whether or not they know what they're doing, or if they fumble around with it. He'll stop by the well and ask one of them to turn it off/on and watch to see if they know how. He'll tell crazy stories/ask weird questions just to see how they react or answer. He's judging their character. One fella said something about being uncomfortable in the middle of the desert with a bunch of armed strangers without a gun and he said, "Well that's your fault, hoss. This is Texas!" That guy didn't make the cut.

In the past 2 years at Campo Grande, a hunter had a herd of Javelina cut down his dog and a bull killed another's horse. Opening day of dove season, I almost stepped on a rattlesnake. And we always have at least one confrontation with trespassers that gets tense at some point during the year. We're at least an hour from emergency response. The ranch is over 50 square miles and sits in the middle of a bunch of other ranches of simmilar size. The nearest hospital is an hour away at 80 mph.

All of the above is why I named the blog "Shooters of the Campo Grande Ranch." It's a throw back to the image of the Old West days of the Regulators of West Texas and New Mexico...when ranch hands enforced most of the law and property rights. That's sort of how the rancher sees things. He wants guys he knows will see the place as their own, care for and protect his property from abuses, and whose judgment he can trust when he's not around.