Pulled off another with moments to spare

Waiting on someone to have a baby can take a lot out of a man. We are currently overdue, I tried everything I could think of to get the ball rolling, and ‘surprise fireworks’ did absolutely no good. At 4 days overdue I took Scooter out to a Billy Joe Shaver show to see if we could honky-tonk the baby out of her but even "THE WORD" (Thunderbird for those not in the know) couldn’t jar a baby loose. Finally I threw up my hands and told Scooter if she wasn’t having a baby I was going huntin to try to spur on the labour. I managed to put this one on the ground before the contractions fired up.
As you can see I'm watching the clock these days!

Last Minute Hunting

I went out last night for a bit of last minute hunting before the baby shows up tomorrow or the next day. It was a quick after work run out to Farmer Joe’s #2 with the big boss man. I had been jonesin to get bloody before I became a daddy and it paid off on this little trip.

We hopped up in the tree and were having a beer and talking, not using our library voices. We were busted just about right off the bat by 2 nice 100lbers who paused at about 40yds when we spied them. “PIGS!” maybe a bit louder than necessary…guns up and they scampered. So we hunkered down and the conversation pretty well ceased, words spoken were now at church mouse dB.

The brush and trees have been at mad work putting on their leaves and as such, much of the view was obstructed. I monkeyed my way up the tree with a beverage and a pistol to see what I could see. From the crow’s nest the view changes quite a bit and I felt I could own all I surveyed if only something would show up.

Then there they were. About 10 mins before dark there were 5 pigs standing stock still at about 40yds. I had looked at that exact spot only seconds before and it was vacant, the winds just wisped them in…and there they were.

I began to throw sticks at the boss man to get his attention and used my best improvised hand signals to explain the situation. They began to circle around and I thought he may be soon provided the shot. I had the shot but in the interest of my career I felt I should wait. In hindsight I do see the humour in playing Guide ‘Alan style’ and without a word just blasting them on sight and just saying “Sorry, you should have seen them faster than me”. But I played the nice guy and waited it out while the stars began to take the stage.

I had a varied view through the next several minutes, maybe a few opportunities for some shots but nothing perfect. The darkness is rolling in fast; the bare eye can pick up movement but not clearly discern stationary objects. The 4x is your amigo in these moments while time becomes your enemy, and so we were… waiting.

I found the chance, set the trigger, and asked if I was alone with this opportunity, the response, “Take em”

My little .222 barked and brush erupted as the pig faltered. I shucked another round and tried to pick up a second but the darkness and the heavy brush held nothing but noise. I panned back over to the downed pig to find he had found his feet and was profusely shaking his head. This did not sit well with me so I gave him another dose of the deuce to anchor him.

We celebrated with some 5s and made our way over to the beastie while I recounted the shot and explained I took the smaller of the two as it provided the head shot I needed. The other was a fair bit larger. When we got up on the bruiser I realized I made the right decision as this dude took most of what we had to drag it the 40yds to the fence. To be honest we drug it about 30yds and had a beer break while I got the truck and a rope to pull it the remainder.

Nearly ruptured something below my belt while we were trying to load it and decided that gutting at the fence line was the only logical solution. That helped some but it still took longer than I’d like to recount to get the carcass in the truck.

Good times!

Life in Mozambique

Since it appears that none of ya'll do anything anymore, allow me to share with you some recent fun I have had.....

Fishing with success. No, I'm not in the photos, but that's because I'm picky on who operates my camera. (and because I spent most of my time drinking cold beer instead). There were also bonito, and something that looks exactly like a jack crevalle, tastes incredible, and is called a kingfish locally.

The St. Lazarus belongs to one of my friends, and I have a standing invitation to go pretty much any time I want for $85/hour or $1000 for 24 hours. Ya'll need to come join me on this one.

This is the after shot of one of the 6ft x 2ft x 1.5ft fish holds. No wonder, I was thinking the seas were rougher than normal.

I went to South Africa a couple of days ago, and due to a government holiday, I had to postpone my business for a day. When stuck in South Africa with nothing else to do, what else but go to Kruger National Park and watch this.....

Finally, I have been trying to find a house. This is the one (Subject to Bekki's approval). The first picture is the house. It is still under construction which explains all the junk laying about. The second picture is from the same spot but looking the other direction at the Indian Ocean at low tide.

Now...Ya'll go spill some blood for me. I need to see some pigs, spring turkeys, ring necks, pretty much anything would do so I know ya'll still have what it takes.

Uvalde Area

I got to Go with a friend from College Station to the Uvalde Area. Since my camera was disfunctional we were able to cause the demise of 4 whitetails over the weekend. I was allowed to shoot only ladies but the bucks in that part of the world grow antlers of amazing proportion. I sent a lot of the meat to Snook to be made into Summer Sausage

Sausage Party 0-10

So we loaded up meat, a lot of meat…(and I mean A LOT OF MEAT, the bed of Alan’s truck was nearly smooth level with bags of pig, deer, and antelopes) and pointed the truck north to Muenster to join the grind.



We arrived at about 1 in the AM on Friday morning, grabbed a frosty drink, and set to work. We ran knives and the grinder till sunup then took a brief siesta. We got back amongst the meat by 9Am. We were dragging our tails till the drink began to set in then progress set into high gear. There were several 2nd winds that set in through the day, night and wee hours of the morning.



Woody had a horrible plan at around 2 that morning when everyone’s eyes were drooping: “Lets finish”. It soon became our battle cry as we rallied around that bastard and wrapped up a few hours later. We crawled into our fart sacks, well spent, and got 2-3 hours of hard sleep.

With all the heavy lifting accomplished the night before we set it in our minds to get proper stewed and sideways for Saturday. The weather cooperated with us and made for a beautiful day of washers and beers.



All we had to worry about meat wise was to make 100# of summer sausage and an additional 30ish# of liver & heart sausage (which turned out better than it initially looked like it might. Once that was complete, we all got steady in our chairs and began to sample whiskey and tell tails; from there it rose into a high and wide plateau of good times for several hours. Somehow it eventually went downhill, actually, there was no discernable “downhill” to it.

Somewhere around the time Caleb decided to put on his ‘cloak of invisibility’ and pass out while telling a story, there was an arm wrestling contest (in which the boy who boastfully stated he could whip us all, promptly lost to us all),an impromptu solo washers game was started in the house while we were trying to pass out which eventually ended when the boy threw a handful of washers into Alan’s head, this resulted in Alan punched someone in the face, some headlocks and a ruckus ensued and the boy tried to steal Aaron’s truck, he was corralled by a half naked Woody and given a stern talking to. Somewhere around that time this narrators eyelids got the best of him. We woke to learn the boy went to jail, a first for our annual event.



All told we made a bit over 1660lbs of sausage, enjoyed a few drinks. Good times, the 1 TON marker still stands beyond our reach and we may just let it remain as an unattainable goal (for now). Good times.

Bronte, TX F#*% Yea!

Bronte was a success again this year. We braved single digit temps and stayed warm with a few nips of whiskey. Over the course of 2 days we managed to knock down 21 deer.

year in review

2009 is gone, 2010 has only produced 2 pigs so far. However there are some events from the last week of 2009 that have not made the page to date. Thought I might take a moment to recap:

You remember the story of "Puss n Boots", there is a lesser known sequel


The night vision rifle had a few successful outtings


There were actually a few trips out with the Big Bad Wolf where the camera was left behind. None the less the outcome was the same, it huffed and puffed and blew their guts out


Alan got stuck


I got stuck getting Alan unstuck then got Alan unstuck once I got unstuck


Got another pig


and we learned that pigs like porn as much as they like corn.


Steve and I had a quick New Years Day outting that supplied no pork but Steve managed to save the day by taking the first bunny of 2010,and finally the first pigs of 2010.


Hope 2010 is a good year for the page!

All Keyed up

So me and preg-zilla decided we needed to step out and get away from the rat race before this baby comes out and makes grownups out of us. So we got tickets and jumped a flight to the Keys to catch up on some fishin’, him & her style.

We rented a little place on Marathon Key on a canal. We fished our little canal every day and caught quite a few species of grunts, snappers, and pin fish up to 15” and about 1.5lbs, prolly the biggest the world has ever known. Scooter also commented that her choice in ‘knocked-up swimming outfits’ made her look almost exactly like an unripe coconut. But she looks good with a full stringer.


In the evenings we had a 5 ft nurse shark that would cruise by and pick up the scraps from our cleaning table. One night I put the hook to her but she broke the line after about a 5 minute tussle.

We got a charter to take the two of us out after a variety of fish in the most beautiful water you ever saw. We fished cuts and flats, huge bowls over 20ft deep, and channels that ran like rivers. We soaked pinfish for tarpon but got none. We saw them roll and saw someone on another boat jump a nice 5 or 6 footer but none for us. We caught a bunch of cero mackerel, tallow tail & mangrove snapper, specs, and jacks. It wasn’t fish on every cast, but when we drifted over the grassy holes it was.

Preggo flats-jacked this nice little jack and also caught a good spec and snapper dinner for us.




There was also another trip out that involved a bargain basement charter, a leaky work boat, a captain with a pretty substantial case of Tourette’s syndrome, some serious foot stomping and yelling of the phrase ‘BONK’, pregnant woman getting violently seasick, several 10-11 inch yellow tail snapper, and two other old Dicks. Sorry no pictures of the wife throwing up on the chum bag. But that is a story better told than typed. Brian, come to TX and I’ll tell you all about it.

As a bonus picture, I submit this:

9 down and 32 out of the pool

We had another good run at it last night. Put 9 good pigs in the cooler and took another 23 out of the gene pool. We had 3 sows full of kittens.


Pulled up to one of the big traps to find a full house of 6; all running around 150lbs. Loaded them up and ran out to Farmer Joe’s #1 and collected another nice 80lb piggy who had somehow managed to lock himself up in an unset trap. Caleb learned how to use a single action pistol and dispatched him. It was a fun drag to get that dude back to the truck across a few hundred yards of sloppy field. Loaded up and off the Joe’s #2 to have a beer on the tractor and toast the sundown. This somehow seems to draw the piggies in.

Soon the shapes started forming on the edge of the pasture at the base of the tree line and they became pigs. Close to two dozen, we put to the stalk and closed the distance to about 150yds. Caleb informed me he was relying on me to ‘take a right and a left’ and we would be in the double digits. He had the count and we were loosing light fast. Colors were still visible but only for a few more seconds. The shots broke and so did the sounder; I regained the crosshairs and put down another…done my part to put us to 10…unfortunately Caleb didn’t. No problem there, 9 pigs are enough to clean on a Monday night.

VA spike

Went hunting with my brother on our family property in the mountains of central VA. We decided it was time to get serious about killing animals out there. I shot this spike from a tree stand and our neighbor helped us with the skinning and butchering.

When are you rednecks going to come visit. You can hunt squirrels, deer, turkeys and black bears.