Hunters past/passed

Walking back to the truck at dusk a few nights ago I got a little maudlin and thought about how hunting is really about making memories, nothing else. I guess Christmas is just a natural time to think about folks that have gone on before us. And I know there was a recent thread about our departed hunting buddies. 'Just thought I'd revisit it.

I was a teenager and shot this buck on a ridge while I was walking. Dad came and got me at dark. Funny how I don't remember a dam thing about that buck, but I can see him driving that '66 Bronco and sinking it to the hubs in his excitement like it was yesterday. 'Must be about 42 years ago now. We weren't gonna spend the night there, since Mom was about 15 miles away at our place. We had to walk to the LO's house ("house" is a very loose term in this setting) and his attractive, much younger girlfriend (actually just a few years older than me) came to the door. And THAT picture feels like yesterday too. Dad told me to go call Mom and tell her we were gonna be late. The only phone was in the bedroom - a rotary dial and the dial was all busted, I would surmise, from being thrown. The LO showed me how you use a spent casing to dial it. Weird how memories work. (Years later I had dinner, and wine, with this same woman, then the LO's wife, in that same shack, right after I was divorced, and the LO was extremely late with their son coming home. And the marriage wasn't happy at that point. But, that story is for another time and isn't related to hunting. )

What hunting memories/traditions does your mind conjure up?

Dang Creekrunner, what kinda' forum you think this is?

I'm now 57. I was like 9-10 years old with my dad at our long term lease we had growing up. It was great, had it all. About 3,000 acres with the Brazos River on three sides. Fantastic lease to grow up on, had it 20 years. I learned everything there. How to shoot, fish, hunt, cook, build, play poker games that no one had ever heard of and all about girls/women. There was always a fresh stack of "magazines" laying around. Once, we showed up and someone had tore poster sized center folds out and tacked them to the walls. It was great for a 10 year old boy, these things could have been used in medical schools to teach womens health courses. I got caught staring at them, one of my Dad's buddies told me, "Don't worry, those aren't real girls, just dolls that someone forgot to sew up". True story, not a joke, although it could be. I have a million stories from this place. The best ones were when I got old enough to drive and took my high school buddies with me in the off season. Legendary times. Most of those guys are long gone, but I still have my Dad and his best friend who was like a second father.

My grandfather and his brothers, my dad and a uncle had a lease in Mason county. We had a 20’x30’ tin cabin with an outhouse out back.
All the old men were taking naps one afternoon, but I wanted to shoot my pellet gun. Dad had just put a scope on it for me. I went out back and taped a target to the outhouse door and started sighting it in. After about 20 shots my great uncle yelled from inside the outhouse, “stop shooting’ I’m coming out now.” I’m lucky I didn’t shoot him. My dad wasn’t happy with, but the old timers laughed their butts off.
That was 45 years ago, and only my Dad and uncle remain from that group. I sure mis those guys. When we lost the lease 10 years ago, the pellets were still visible in the old outhouse door

Dear Penthouse,
..............................

Nah, if you must know, as the emoji clearly explains...I got the hell outa there when the conversation changed to...lovemaking. I knew the LO pretty well and still consider him a friend. And he was(/is?) a mean drunk. I was dam lonely, but loneliness don't mean nuthin' with a bullet in your posterior. Mother didn't raise no stupid child.

What bothers me more is not hunting buddies who have passed into the next life, but hunting buddies who are still alive yet unable to continue hunting. No matter how much you try to relieve the glory days, that have passed us by and no matter what you cannot get them back.


Big reason I go off and hunt animals far away from home....South Texas will never be the same as it was when I grew up hunting it. Sights, sounds, smells.....just depresses me somewhat.

I’ve gotta agree. The Hill Country is beautiful, but it’s not what I grew up with. I remember Fredericksburg when it was a little German town, not the thing it has become

that area isn't anything like what It started out being. I can't complain as I had my hand in making the area what it is now, but to those that remember it "back when" i'm sure its heartbreaking.


We had a hill country lease for 1 season, north of Utopia. That area is still more or less the same as I remember it being. But ended up being too far from Houston where we lived at the time.

Don't get me started 'bout Fbg. Now Utopia - it was, is, and always will be...our little slice of Appalachia. "You sure gotta pretty mouth."

Go to Leakey....that's the Texas Hillbilly Capital right there

I thought Bill had posted another excerpt from one of his romance novels.

South Texas is different but still the same in many ways - I am 67 - still a magical place IMO - you get to see scenes like this

Sadly, my chest isn't rippled like a rocky creek.

You forgot to post the picture old timer. Contact us if you need help.

South Texas has been inundated in many areas by Eagleford shale pump jacks, Tanker Trucks and now Wind Turbines.



I miss South Texas circa 1995

After reading an Oxner novel you can almost smell the prairie flowers in the warm spring air

You should have seen it circa 1965. You would have really enjoyed it. Very wild and incredible animal numbers.

Pappy said it best :
" When ya huntso your memories die with ya, so take a Loved one, & share the memories... "

Yes, many parts of it are still magical.

I’m bitter because my home slice has changed so much.


I would like to take a time machine back 15 years ago and hunt one more season

My grandad and another relative went out to go quail hunting in our pickup with a high rack. Apparently they drank more cocktails than they did hunting that afternoon. The shotguns were in the gun racks up top, sticking up in the air. When they pulled the pickup back into the pole barn the clearance wasn’t enough and they then had two shotguns with barrels bent at a 90 degree angle. Hilarious hearing them explain themselves when they got back. The bent shotgun barrel from his gun is around our family’s home somewhere.

Another fun one was when we flooded the same pickup truck trying to cross the San Saba River after a heavy rain. Water had to have been up to the seats by the time the ranch hand got a tractor to pull it back out. Grandfather wasn’t too happy at that one.

what's changed ?

As a kid, I started hunting Zapata County about 1965. What I remember is that the stars extended from overhead to entirely down to the horizon, 360° around you. Even on a moonless night, with a cloud-free sky, you didn't need to use a flashlight to walk to your stand.

There is an excellent book worth reading if you can find it, it is called "Adios to the Brushlands" by Arturo Longoria. He described well what happened to South Texas through the late 60s and 70s. The star-filled horizon burned orange, I remember it. I was a pipeline patrol pilot during the mid-seventies, and as an outdoorsman, one of the worst things I saw was 65K acres in Jim Wells and Duval Counties completely cleared in ten days. The land was some top-notch, old mesquite, country. There was so much equipment working, that the deer stood like statues as there was nowhere to go. I thought it horrifying. The root plows working in formation ripped eight miles of my crude line out of the ground, displacing it laterally about an 8th of a mile. With the mess that made, I doubt the land ever recovered as cleanup then was not as it is now.

Everything about South Texas has changed within the life span represented by those of us on this forum. To me, little about it these days is magical or mysterious.

Was that a Briscoe owned property?


Briscoe loved the root plow

I recall it being Driscoll property. I've purged too many of those brain cells to be accurate though.

I grew up in Fredericksburg and the Luckenbach area. Creekrunner's family were the newbies in the neighborhood but they were the welcomed kind of newbies. They became good neighbors and friends and enjoyed being part of the neighborhood. The newbies now arriving in Fredericksburg move there for the charm of the small town atmosphere and bring their attitudes with them. "Why where we come from, we did things like this. You all are so backward here." I guess my family being here since 1855 doesn't count to them. Fredericksburg was just fine before they got there! I feel like a stranger in my own town.

Hunting season in the Hill Country was more important then your birthday and almost Christmas The anticipation of opening day which was November 16 at that time was almost unbearable. We didn't have box blinds or feed pens. We hunted out of brush blinds placed around an old Live Oak tree with a heavier log on top of the brush for a steadier gun rest. Our "tower" stands were old lumber nailed to the trunk of a tree and a wooden board seat in the crook of a limb. We didn't have scopes on our rifles. We would get into our blinds well before twilight and wait. The wait on icy cold mornings was excruciating. We didn't have insulated underwear or the warm clothes we have now so you shivered and shook. You couldn't feel you feet because they froze first even with two pair of thin everyday socks. In spite of being frozen, my focus would be on the shadowy figures I knew were deer but couldn't tell if they were a buck or a doe. In my mind, it was a buck. Maybe the biggest buck in the pasture. The shivering would get worse because buck fever was worse then the cold. When I could tell it was a buck, I would ever so slowly raise my rifle and try and see my sights. Not enough light to see the sights yet. By the time there was enough light to see the sights, the buck had wandered off and I didn't get my trophy. I would then settle back and enjoy the smells and sounds of the morning waiting for the next opportunity. Depending on the wind direction, I could smell the home made bread from the wood cook stove that a neighbor's wife was baking. I listened to the shots in the neighbor's pasture noting that was a good hit or the sound of a gut shot or multiple shots meaning no deer.. Each time I heard a shot I thought someone probably got my buck. Around 10 o'clock or so, I could hear the sound of the old 1952 Chevy truck start up and come rattling my way. I couldn't wait to see if my Opa or my Dad had gotten a buck. I would wonder how big it was and if it was my buck that got away. They would arrive and I would run to the back of the truck to see what they had shot. It was always a good sign if there was blood on the tailgate. We would stand around and talk of what we saw, missed opportunities and I would learn from each of them what they did to be successful or not successful. We then would go to the hunter's camps and see what they had on the game pole and listen to their stories. The hunters were from Brenham and Houston. I was always in awe of their deer rifles. Savage 99's. Pump 30-06's with SCOPES. We would eat breakfast with them and then go do the ranch chores and get ready for the evening hunt. Hunting consumed my young impressionable life. I know this isn't one memorable moment but the recount of many memorable moments of a your man growing up in the Hill Country. The lessons I learned growing up like that, made me a better hunter no matter where I hunted.

Now we hunt in box and tower stands overlooking a feed pen and feed pens on oat patches. The grandkids can't be still. Their head movements are like the bobble headed dolls in the back deck of the old cars and their whispers and giggling are loud enough to be heard 50 yards away. They wander how come the deer heard and saw all of the commotion and why they ran off. I explain to them how I used to have hunt and they look at me like I'm really old to have to hunted like that. Different generation. I take some of the older ones to hunt like I had to. They like it better then sitting in those box blinds now. I'll just drop them off where they can overlook a draw or canyon until they hear my old pickup come up the road to pick them up. They look for blood on the tail gate, and we stand around and talk about what they saw, what they learned about wind direction, etc. My Opa and Dad are smiling from up above.

I'll never forget my first night at deer camp. I couldn't have been more than 16 or 17 and it was the first time I had ever been around knowledgeable hunters. The camp house was an old farm house with no water or electricity. A single fireplace provided warmth for a group of bunks built on each wall. One of my future wife's uncles asked me to put some wood on the fire so I put some of what turned out to be lighter knots. It was after the fire soon turned into a blaze that I was instructed on the difference between lighter knots and hard firewood.

Yes, those were the days when kids learned a lot through simple trial and error. Not sure that happens today as much as it did back then. I know my early days in the woods included many trials and a lot of errors.

I remember your dad telling me that your great-grandfather, while riding home on his horse, came across a Comanche. Now THAT's a memory! He just said his horse was faster. Am I remembering this right?
Man, that's a picture that'll stick in your head the rest of your life. Makes you realize that not really too long ago it wasn't all wineries and touring Harley-Davidsons.

You are correct. A faster horse and a cap and ball Navy Colt kept him alive. The Navy Colt is still in our family's possession. I don't know if he told you the story of the great grand mother hiding the kids in their smoke house while the Indians were going through the house. She had them covered with blankets to keep them quiet. I can't go into that smoke hose without thinking of the terror they felt while that was going on.

I’m assuming y’all’s two places were close together?

Neighbors at the old place. He cleared all the cedar on both. His dad was one of the happiest, most neighborly gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

We often forget that such now tame county as Gillespie County is today, just a few generations ago it was quite the opposite.

Those early settlers really took their lives in their own hands living out there

Went and had dinner last night with our neighbors family ( we are also close friends ). Next November we are going to go to his dads farm in Wisconsin to hunt for deer and duck. It’s been in his family since his great great grandfather ( legend has it he took it from the native tribes)

Anyway, we can get off on some tangents as we were talking about his farm and local history and the like. I made an off hand remark about Ed Gein.


Well, turns out his great grandfather and Ed were good friends and he used to come over to the farm all the time. Said everyone though pretty well of gein and it was a shock when all his goings on came to light.