Last weekend, Mindy and I visited my deer lease in Kent County for the last time. None of the seven hunters from last year will be returning. At one time, I had thought I would manage the lease and get six new hunters to join me. But after trying for more than a month, I have not been able to fill the lease. So Mindy and I made the trip to get my travel trailer, deer feeders and fencing materials. By the way, Mindy was a tremendous help and made the weekend so much fun!
While we were there, we found this cool Great Plains Skink! At around 9" long, this is by far the biggest skink I've ever caught.
I'm kind of sad to be getting off this lease, but there is a silver lining. Mindy and I will be able to use my travel trailer when she shows at the Zapp Hall Antique Show in Warrenton in the fall!
The area around Rotan, Texas where my deer lease is located is dominated by cotton fields. The first time I took Mindy to the lease, we stopped next to one of the fields so that she could get a close look at the cotton bolls. We even picked some cotton, just so we could say we did. We felt the hard cotton seeds inside the soft cotton. Like so much of the time spent with my sweetheart, it became a fond memory. She truly has become part of the fabric of my life.
By now, you know I like'em viewed on black.
Yet another photo from last weekend's trip to the deer lease. One of my stands is a pop-up style blind. It's sort of like a camouflaged tent. I set it up a couple of months ago so that the wildlife would get used to it. Well, get used to it they did! In fact, some of the wildlife actually took up residence in it. At least four fence lizards have made my blind their home. Now, as you may recall from yesterday's blog, fence lizards are prime food for the Loggerhead Shrike. Roadrunners are also fond of them. Lots of things eat lizards and I suppose my pop-up blind makes a fine refuge from lizard-loving predators. It was kind of comical because they kept scurrying around inside, hiding under the fabric flaps and then peeking out at me! Then they would go out through a window and crawl around on the outside of the blind for a while, peeking into a window from time to time as if to see if I was still there. And, of course, their little toe nails make a heck of a racket on the fabric. Great entertainment! This picture wasn't taken with my DSLR, just my little point-and-shoot.
The Loggerhead Shrike is an interesting little bird of remarkable adaptation. About the size of a robin, it is a songbird that feeds on insects, mice, small birds and especially lizards. Unlike most predatory birds, it lacks talons to hold its prey down while eating. Instead, it impales its hapless victims on mesquite thorns or barbed wire fences to hold them in place. It can then tear off chunks of meat, piece by piece, using its sharp and powerful beak. Because of the habit of impaling its prey for dismemberment, it is sometimes referred to as a "butcher bird."
Click Here to View Uncropped Version On Black Background
Another weekend of bowhunting has come and gone and I came home empty handed again. Well, not exactly. While it's true I have nothing to show for the freezer, I came home with some nice pictures and video footage. And definitely some great memories. The buck in the picture is the best one I saw this weekend. While not a "shooter" in the hunting sense, he was a prime candidate for harvesting with the Canon 30D. I actually shot this picture through the shoot-through mesh window of my blind. Of course, the mesh is thrown totally out of focus, creating a similar effect to a softening filter. I thought it was kind of cool, almost ghost-like. If this buck shows up in another year or two, I might be reaching for the bow instead of the camera.
Well, the much anticipated first hunt of the season is behind me now. I was there for opening morning bright and early. Actually... before bright, which is even earlier! I tried to keep my flashlight turned off as much as possible on the way to the stand. The stars were magnificent! And I saw a falling star, always a blessing from my Creator.
I saw a lot of deer, but the above picture is not one of them. This picture was taken last year and I simply chose it as representational to add interest to this blog. I didn't take my DSLR to the stand this trip, although I did get a lot of video. The feeder area was full of activity. Several small bucks, does and fawns visited frequently. Covies of quail, a couple of roadrunners, several crows, a woodpecker, a nuthatch and lots of dove helped fill in the gaps. There was aways something to see! Although I never drew my bow, it was an extremely enjoyable hunt.
I stayed in the stand longer than I might have normally, simply because I didn't have anyplace else I needed to be. It must have been 11am by the time I made my way back to camp. I shared camp this weekend with Jim, one of the other hunters. Jim does not bowhunt; he was there only to fill feeders and do his preparatory chores for the general season, which starts the first Saturday of November. Back at camp, I tried to heat up a TV dinner in the microwave, but the microwave picked this time to stop working. I suppose there's never a good time for something to break. So instead of eating my lunch, I made the 50 minute drive to the Sweetwater Walmart Supercenter to buy a new microwave, along with some other odds and ends that were needed.
I won't bore you with the details and I don't mean to complain, but several things seemed to go wrong this weekend. My allergies were acting up, but managable. You already know about the microwave that went out. The new one had a dent in it when I opened it and it smokes a little when I use it. I chose to keep it for now, mostly because of the two hour round trip that would be required to exchange it. Plus I was just tired and not in the mood for anymore "fixes." Someone had apparently deleted all the pictures off the memory card of one of my trail cams. One of my feeders wasn't working properly due to a bad battery. The door on one of my blinds wouldn't stay closed. My other blind had been badly damaged by a wind storm or animals. (Haven't decided which; perhaps both.) There were other things too, but for the life of me, I can't remember all of them right now.
Perhaps that's for the best. I don't like to dwell on the negative. I bowhunt for fun. And, although there is often work involved in fun, one must always remember that the whole purpose is enjoyment. Well, somewhere along the way, and I can't put my finger on exactly when, this all ceased to be fun for me. It was as if God was saying to me, "David, you're trying too hard." Or it could have just been my memories of Baloo from the Jungle Book, which my kids loved to watch when they were little. Either way, I decided to stop trying so hard and get back to those Bare Necessities of life. Or was that "Bear Necessities?"
I realized that I had a lot of work to do. Putting all that work off until after my hunt the next morning "felt" rather daunting and I began thinking of the next 24 hours with more dread than anticipation. So, at that point, I changed my plans and my whole outlook and attitude. I made the decision not to hunt that evening or the following morning. But instead to go about joyfully "fixing" the things that needed to be fixed and doing those things that would make my next trip more enjoyable. I filled the feeders with corn, filled my trailer's tank with water, replaced the battery on my feeder, put fresh batteries and empty SD cards in both trail cams, repaired my pop-up blind the best I could and installed a screen door hook on my other blind to keep the door from opening. I gathered up my blind chairs, video camera tripods, put away my bow, arrows and release. I salvaged what was left of my weekend and I turned what was slowly becoming a bad attitude into one of joy.
As a result of the change in plans, I enjoyed the added bonus of getting to spend more time with my sweetheart. I helped her with some work around the house. This too was a labor of love and a source of joy. Work can be fun when you have the right attitude. But remember the words of Baloo, "If you act like that bee acts... uh uh, you're workin' too hard!"
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