Dawg

Didn't make it out with the ML'er like I had planned so I ended deer season with a pocket full of tags. 16 days remain until I head south for my nilgai hunt. I plan on arriving in Raymondville on the 18th, hopefully by early afternoon, so I can get a little scouting done before the hunt starts on the 19th.

Nobody is around here anymore. This thread is 17 years old. You bumped this thread back in 2008 when it was 4 years old too. WTF?

Slight change of plans. I'm borrowing my dad's muzzleloader and will be going out this weekend to try for a doe or spike. Not sure exactly where I'll go but I'll be in the woods somewhere.

Sunday concluded my general season and other than the doe permit I drew through TPWD I didn't fill any tags. We have 2 weeks of ML season but I don't own a ML so that's the end of deer season for me. Now I'm focusing on my nilgai hunt at the end of February. Bought the bike trailer (decided to go with one that is rated for 275 lbs) and got it in yesterday. A few tweaks to it and the bike and they'll be good to go. This was a strange deer season for me. The spot I hunted the last 2 seasons dried up. Very little deer sign this season and it was loaded last season. The most deer I saw was Sunday of opening morning and it was scarce after that. I'd like to blame acorns but they were plentiful last year too. Nonetheless, I was able to find a couple other spots for next year so I should be a little better prepared in case I have to call an audible.

Warm weather has persisted since my last post and I haven't bothered going hunting. The lower temps brought in by the cold front Monday won't last long but since this weekend is the last of our general season I will be out in the woods somewhere for one last hoorah. Might even sneak out Thursday morning if I don't celebrate the new year too hard Wednesday night. My homemade game cart didn't pan out how I hoped. I completed it and threw about 100 lbs of junk, pulled it around the yard and the axle bent. I found a bike cargo trailer on Vevor that is rated for up to 160 lbs so I'm just going to buy it. Still have a few things to do to the bicycle to prep the tires for the thorns and cacti down south plus going to install a handlebar mounted gun rack, a rack over the rear tire and a few other odds and ends to help make the pack in/out a little more convenient.

Hunted the different spot I mentioned in my last post. Great looking area but being on public land there was evidence someone else has been hunting in there. It did yield sightings of 4 turkey, 1 small pencil horned 4 point and a crap ton of squirrels. I caught the crud a week ago and tried hunting this past weekend. The wind was blowing out of the NE with gusts over 20 mph. I wasn't as well as I made myself believe I was and only lasted 1 hour in the woods. I'm still fighting off a cough and this weekend is supposed to be another gusty warm one so I've elected to stay home and get some honey-do's completed. I have 64 days before I make my way down to the LRGV region of Texas to hunt Nilgai. I have my homemade game cart almost finished and will be sprucing up a mountain bike to take on the trip. It will be used to pull the game cart if I am fortunate enough to get a Nilgai on the ground. I'm not as young as I once was so the thought of packing out a couple hundred pounds of meat by foot doesn't sound fun anymore.

Not much has changed in the 17 days since my last post. I haven't scored a buck yet and have only seen 2 deer, one was a small 6 point and I couldn't identify the other one as it seen me before I seen it and it was hauling arse the other direction. I did see a very good buck at a creek crossing out on the county road about 3/4 mile away when driving in one evening. I'll be back out there this weekend at a different spot since the wind will be wrong for the area I've been hunting.

I guess they all moved on to greener pastures. I think the forums were down a couple years ago and the few members that were here just never came back. It has been a steady decline for years now. I filled my doe permit last Tuesday morning. Shot her with the 30-30 that my grandfather gave me before he passed away in the late 90's. She makes 2 deer I've killed with that gun. Only hunted Tuesday and Wednesday of last week due to it warming up. The weather is supposed to cool slightly later this week so I'll probably go out Saturday morning and sit until I either get one or it gets too hot.

We are back from the youth hunt with nothing to show for it except more miles on my truck. The girls excitement faded pretty quick so we headed home a day early. I'm off the rest of the week starting tomorrow. We had a cool front blow through last night and lows will be in the lower 30's in the morning but will rapidly warm up starting tomorrow afternoon. I'll for sure hunt tomorrow and Wednesday. On the fence about the rest of the week. Got rain coming Sunday so I will probably go hunt then.

General season kicked off Saturday. I found my way down to my ladder stand at 6:18 that morning. By 10:45 I hadn't seen anything so I decided to move my stand further up the ridge and let it sit Saturday evening, which turned out to be a good move. I returned Sunday morning well before sun up and got settled in. Ended up seeing 4 deer that morning and 1 that evening. No legal bucks and the does were too young to take. This weekend is the youth hunt my daughters drew a tag for so we'll be heading 2 hours north Friday morning to Caddo NWR. Weather will warm some but that shouldn't affect the rut.

Diary, It has been 19 long days since I last updated you. In the time I have been away, I have drawn another hunt. This one is back down in south Texas at the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR - East Lake tract. This is a rifle hunt for exotics (Nilgai) and feral hogs much like the archery hunt I chose to pass on, just no deer. General season approaches quickly, just 11 days away. If the deer, hogs and nilgai cooperate and I shoot straight, I should have a freezer full of meat by the end of season.

My daughters both were drawn for a youth hunt at Caddo Lake NWR. Now I'm really happy I didn't pay for that hunt down at Laguna. Caddo is a couple of hours north of us, we'll be staying at a RV park close to the refuge. They are both allowed 2 deer each....a doe and a buck. Bucks must meet antler restrictions of 1 unbranched antler OR an inside spread equal to or greater than 13". They are also allowed to take unlimited feral hogs.

I wasn't able to make it out scouting this past weekend like I wanted to. This weekend is out of the question too as I'll be out of town Friday to late Sunday evening. I'm not mad about it....temps are still in the low 90's with 1000% humidity here. Very doubtful I'll get the bow out for our opener next week. I'm not mad enough at the deer to sit in a tree sweaty and swatting mosquitos.

Dearest of Diaries, I drew a doe permit for the Moore Plantation WMA. This gives me an additional tag to use for the entirety of general season or up until I harvest a doe. Outside of bow season, where doe can be harvested by regular tags, it is limited to 1 buck on the WMA. I'm thankful for the additional tag and hope I can fill it this season. If time allows I will do some scouting tgis weekend in the few areas I hunt in Moore.

Dear Diary, I've decided not to buy the permit for the hunt I was drawn for. I'm skipping it in hopes that my daughters are drawn for one of the youth hunts. Limited vacation time and a tight budget were the determining factors after I studied on it for a few days. Hopefully the kids are successful in getting drawn. The drawing for those hunts will take place within the next few days. I also have applications in for several more hunts but they are pretty much all coveted hunts that have thousands of applicants. Odds of drawing are slim but we'll see.

I was drawn for an archery hunt at Laguna Atascosa NWR. Hunt will take place in mid-December. This will be a first for me in a couple of different ways. 1. I've been out of the archery game for about 10 years so I've got some brushing up to do on my shooting. 2. This gives me a chance to take my first south Texas whitetail with a bow and at the same time gives me tye chance to take a nilgai. 3. I'll get to see a part of this great state that I've never seen before. It's a little intimidating but I'm excited for it. Totally different terrain than what I'm used to hunting.

Hope you're doing well Shaun!

Figured I'd give the forums a little life. Those of you who still slip by, ride along with me as I hunt public land around East Texas for the 2025-2026 season. I'll post updates as often as I can. I now primarily hunt in the Moore Plantation WMA in south Sabine County, Texas with a couple of hunts in the north part of Sabine National Forest up around Huxley, TX and down on the Neches-Angelina WMA. I also have applied to several draw hunts around the state, from the panhandle to far west Texas down to the coast and south Texas. Odds are low that I'll draw any of them but there's always hope! Last year on the Moore was good as far as deer sightings go. I janked shots on 2 different bucks and ended the season with tag soup. I'm hoping those bucks made it through the year and I get another shot at one of them at least. They should be a couple of dandies this year. 2019 saw the last of my private land Colorado mule deer hunts. Some of you followed along on several of my live hunts over the years on those. The landowner we leased from got on up in age and moved to Utah to be closer to his daughter. Most of the land was divided up and sold with what was left handed over to an outfitter who in turn jacked the prices up to stupid levels. Those were good times but they are just memories now. We typically had 10-12 guys go up every year and hunt. 5 of those guys have passed on. 4 of which happened in the last few years. One of these days I'll make it back up to Colorado to hunt public land. But here's to a successful and safe '25-'26 season for all of us!

Good luck to you as well this season!

Awesome stuff! I haven't chased turkeys in a long time.

Good to see you guys checking in. It's hot, humid and down right disrespectful outside.......come on cooler weather!

With the golden days behind us, the chatter and chaos now silent, we cannot return the forum to what it once was. But time has granted us something else: memories, friendships, and stories that still live here....buried, but never forgotten. We remain, scattered across the internet, but a few still return... watching... remembering... hoping. I have seen what this place once meant to so many, and though the world has changed, like us, there’s more to this forum than meets the eye. I am Dawg, and I leave this message to any old members who may one day find their way back: I am here. I am waiting.

Congrats Frank! I don't have anything to report. I've seen a lot of deer but nothing I want to put a tag on yet. I have an doe permit for one of the WMA's I hunt that is good until Jan. 7. I'm going to do my level best to fill it this weekend. I can't upload pictures either. Not sure what's up with that. I'll check back in later on to see if there are any other updates. If not, its been a good run here at RT. Hate to see the site in the state it is now but there's no sense in crying over spilt milk. Hope you guys and gals have many more successful hunting seasons in the future.

Made my first sit this past Sunday on some of the public land I hunt. Had a buck with about 8" spikes walk by right after I got settled. Beings the WMA I was on has a 1 buck limit, the spike got a pass. The wind swirled and another deer caught my scent, never seen it but heard it blow.

Saturday was the bow opener but with temps reaching the mid 90's I elected to stay home. We have a cold front moving in Thursday and temps are supposed to be in the low 50's Sunday morning. I'll be in the woods somewhere, just not sure exactly where.