deer camp hijinks

Drip took an old mule deer mount to the hunting camp near Guthrie. Found out Cottonwood was gonna hunt a particular blind Drip went out the night before and using a T-post, he put the mount a pretty far piece away from the blind, but where you could see it alongside a brush line. Yep, it got light and poor Cottonwood spotted what he thought was a beast of a deer. He shot and the deer did not move. Being a good shot, Cottonwood was taken aback, but chambered up again and shot. When it was over, that mount had three holes in it. Cottonwood is reminded of this event quite often.

I am sure some of you guys have better stories.

'Always wanted to do that with one of those concrete yard deer, and add a little to his rack and paint him more realistic. I had the perfect spot picked out on an old lease that we took our customers to, about 200 yards out from a bend in the road going over a saddle and looking backwards under the trees. Of course I was only gonna pull it with the good-natured guys. 'Never got around to it.

I have bought plenty of large, decorative forks off of ebay and have always put one at "the fork in the road" on any place I've been on for any amount of time.

I've also been looking at large, rubber rattlesnakes on Amazon lately.

You and your damn rubber snakes

Had a dozen or so hunters come in to dove hunt. Dunkster, the ramrod, had a "special" scratch off ticket. We went into Raymondville for something and stopped to buy additional scratch offs. Passed them out to the hunters when all of a sudden one stared whooping and hollering. 50,000 DOLLARS! There was jumping, there were high fives and he called his wife. When off the phone, Dunkster asked him where do you redeem it and the "lucky" guy turned over the ticket where it read, among other things, "Redeem at Joe Mama's".

Jubilation turned into unadulterated anger while the group was laughing off their you know whats. The "winner" steamed off to his bunk, packed his crap and was never seen again.


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Years ago I was on a lease with a guy who had previously been on a Mule Deer hunt in Colorado where had shot "at" the buck of his life and was sure he had hit it. At the location of the Buck, he found half an Antler where he had shot it clean off the deer. It was an animated agony of defeat story I heard him tell many times. One Saturday morning on our lease I heard a shot from the direction of his stand. Well later that morning back at camp he said he had shot "at" a "huge" Buck. He found no blood trail so assumed he must of missed it clean. Being the good friend I am and knowing his mule deer buck experience, I immediately responded with a made up story that just after that shot a "huge" buck had run past my tripod stand like a bat outa hell coming from the direction of his blind that morning. I of course added that it looked to have one of it's antlers missing as if it had been shot clean off. I thought he would have got the joke, but instead he took it serious and went back to the stand to look for the antler. Next time I saw him, he drove right past camp without stopping and did not come back that weekend. He went home. At first I figured he must have really taken the joke personal. I found out later, in looking for the antler he found the buck he shot. All I can figure is it must not have been as "huge" as he told it when he was sure he had missed it.

Same lease as my last post, snake story. There was a west texas lease and we had some new guys on the lease from east texas coming opening weekend who we had never met before. They had on a previous weekend dropped off a camper trailer. Our group found a big rattlesnake shed and I got the great idea that I could feed the snake skin into the camper through an opening under one of the windows. The idea was when they show up opening weekend eve they would open the camper and find a rattlesnake had shed "in" the camper and like anyone would do, freak out. I of course planned on owning up to the prank before they tore their camper apart. Welcoming them to the lease, right of passage kind of thing. That Friday night 10pm, still had not arrived. 11pm, nope. 12am, still not there. 2am, still not there. I had no way of getting the rattlesnake skin out of the camper and figured they were just not coming, so I went to bed. Turned out they showed up at 3am that opening day morning and for the next two hours while we were sleeping, those east texas boys pulled everything out of that camper. Stuff was strewn all around it. They had tore that camper apart looking for that rattlesnake.

Technically not "hijinks", but when I was a little kid, the service manager at our shop got invited on a west Texas mule deer hunt, I think by the sales manager. He didn't own a hi-powered rifle, so he asked Dad if he had one. I guess Dad didn't want to loan him his newest rifle, a cutting-edge Marlin 336 with the micro-groove barrel, so he loaned him his..."sporterized" .30-40 Krag. Off he goes. A mule deer buck is spotted and Bob proceeds to shoot - fourteen times. Apparently it was far enough that the poor thing couldn't figure out where the shots were coming from. It did, somehow, die. There was more than one hole, including a couple nicking his antlers. Bob's "friends" on the hunt saved all the spent cartridges. The guys in the shop wired all 14 casings to a very nice plaque that hung below the unfortunate creature's mounted head, in Bob's office, until it went home with Bob when he retired. Dad just shook his head whenever the subject was brought up.

I have the Krag still. That is a neat magazine, box thingy on the side. If necessary, I will use it as a club during one last stand, a la the famous Davy Crockett painting, if all other ammo of all other calibers has been spent.

I’ve posted this before, but will repeat - hunted with the same group for many years. One of our group usually went to bed just after dinner, while the rest of us stayed up late. One night, after many cocktails, we changed all of the clocks to wake up time, threw some biscuits on the stove, and woke the guy up claiming he had overslept. He was and is still pretty gung-ho- he flew out of bed, dressed, came through grabbing a biscuit and coffee, and jumped in his truck heading toward the blind. He was gone for about thirty minutes before he realized it was only about 12:30. Guess he finally looked at the clock or his watch and immediately knew we were pranking him. He was good natured, so only a bit peaved, but swore revenge - still waiting...

This is truly a great one and remains a goal of mine.

We have a guy on the lease that was good sport kind of guy. He is serious about anyone hunting his blind without permission, and very outspoken about a 223 not being a deer gun.
So one day when we knew he was coming we went to his blind and opened all of his windows and left the door open. We also left a bunch of beer cans and about 30 .223 casings laying everywhere.
We were very disappointed that he saw right through our little prank. We were hoping for some kind of reaction and we got one, he called us laughing.

Many years ago we had a problem with a ranch hand hunting from our blinds so they were all locked up.
One day I showed up and there was a pair of underwear on the floor of my blind. I figured someone was messing with me. I never figured that one out.

A battery powered clock radio was placed on top of a guy's tower blind the night before opening morning. It was pretty funny hearing it go off in the distance at the crack of daylight with it set to a Brownwood rock station. It took him about a minute to get it shut off. He shot the biggest buck of his life about 10 minutes later so he wasn't interested in revenge. Over the years that clock made the rounds and I think everyone got it done to them. The funny thing was the deer didn't seen to care about it much when it went off.

We have done the mounted deer routine on one ranch I hunted. It fooled 4 people and a couple were epic to say the least. Was in a camp in Webb county in the late 90's where they had a pic on the trophy wall of one. It was between an Aggie and UT grad ongoing annual pranking. The pic was from Thanksgiving Weekend when the UT grad papered the Aggie grads feeder and pen with orange and white crepe paper. Even made and orange and white bullseye in the feed pen. Another I heard about way back in the late 90's when trail cams were first catching on. One guy on the lease was a bit leery of walking in the dark with a flashlight to his blind for some reason. So the other two guys got a Gorilla suit and tested walking in front of one of their cams then walked in front of his in the background of the feeder for a few pics. They knew that the guy had seen the pics but never once said anything about it to them. IIRC they knew because he adjusted how and when he went to or left the blind for a while.

Hunted in Putnam years ago with a guy I worked with. He was deathly afraid of snakes. We shared an old cab over camper on jacks. I had killed a 3' rattle snake earlier in the day and tied it to the door handle of the camper. Well Brian came in about dark Friday evening ,we watch from the corner of the cook shack has he open the camper door with dead snake coming at him. Never seen a grown man run backwards in air till that day.

Every year this topic comes up just before season. This wins by far, everyone gets a laugh.

Year back a guy on our lease had a few too many beers and decided to “wash” my tires on my truck by pissing on them. I laughed and waited till he passed out that night. He was heading back home the next morning and had packed all his stuff so he could jump in the truck and leave early. I went and pulled a two day old dead hog out of the gut pile and stuck it directly behind the drivers side in the bed of his truck where it wasn’t very easy to see. He made it back to Arlington from the hill country when he realized it was there.....never had that guy mess with me again.

One of the guys on a lease had an old ratty looking full body mount of a coyote that ended up with quite a few bullet holes in it. It was a tradition if we had any new hunters get on the lease to set it up in the brush behind the camp house where you could just barely see it from the kitchen window. It was also tradition not to point out that cheeky coyote to the new guy until everyone made it back to camp on opening morning so we could all see it play out.

We got one of those fake raccoon tails and used it to plug up one of the feeders. There was just enough hanging down to see it twirling when the feeder went off but no corn came out. Ole boy showed up at camp with an, I'm going to kick someone's arse look and a fake raccoon tail in his hand.

The old motion sensor skeleton in your deerstand chair is pretty dang funny too.

My favorite is the predator call in a dark deer blind bit.

Or the live chicken in the bbq pit was funny too. (that one happened to me) Opened the lid and out flies a chicken. I might have fallen but I didn't spill my drink.