This past week was a good one for your old outdoor scribe. I’ve enjoyed some red-hot catfish catching, spent time setting up a corn feeder on my little place in hopes of keeping a sounder of hog from ripping my heavily laden pear tree apart and wrapped things up with a trip to Nacogdoches for a deer hunting show presented by the East Texas Chapter of the Dallas Safari Club. So come along, let me recap the week, I think you might enjoy backtracking my trail with me.
First, the hogs....
Let’s begin with the hogs. I live about a quarter mile from some remote bottomland that connects to a 15,000-acre ranch on one side and a 2,000-acre wetland on the other. It seems most of my good friends own tracts of land they often refer to as "my little place," most of which I have the pleasure of spending time on hunting and fishing.
These ‘little places’ are tracts of land ranging from 45 acres up to over a thousand. Not exactly little in my estimation. Now I live on a bit less than 4 acres and thanks to a thick strip of woods along the property line and the ability of wild hogs to smell pears from a great distance, I too now have “my little place” on which to hunt... well, sort of! Let me explain.
Early last week, I noticed a couple of patches of wild onions in my lawn freshly rooted by wild hogs. I’m a hog hunter from way back and can spot hog sign as quickly as a Dallas commuter hits the gas when the light turns green. The scored ground was made by none other than Mr. Porky and friends. I called this area of my property ‘lawn’ but that isn’t exactly the best word to describe the 3 acres that is comprised of every species of grass and weed known to North Texas.
I intentionally leave a 40-yard strip of trees and brush along the fence line that connects to another strip of cover that eventually leads to the big ranch and the wetland. Some of my friends ask why I don’t clear the brush and leave the trees and I explain I leave this for wildlife. Raccoons, possums, skunks, squirrels, an occasional deer and wild hogs from time to time take advantage of my little wildlife refuge.
We have a big pear tree near the wild onions on the edge of the wooded strip and it’s loaded this year. Squirrels knock a lot of the immature pears down during the day and the wild porkers were quick to smell them and begin a nightly visit to feed on the fruit. This tree is about 70 yards from our house. The temptation was way too much for me. I have a corn feeder that I pulled off a ranch I hunt in the shed and decided to hang it from a low hanging limb from a big oak, just a few feet from the pear tree. I put a trail camera on it and noted about 20 hogs eating first the pears and then the corn.
Bottom line is I now have two big sows and 18 pigs coming to the spot on a nightly basis. My story is that I placed the feeder there not to attract hogs to my yard but to keep them from breaking down the low handing limbs of my pear tree. I have a very accurate Seneca 50 caliber Dragon Claw air rifle topped with and AGM Rattler thermal scope that I’ve used to harvest many hogs.
I’ve been losing a bit of sleep each night because of the porkers. I turn in pretty early but wake up about 10:30 p.m., grab my thermal monocular, and quietly ease out the front door and video the pear-eating pigs. We will see what develops the next few days. There might just be a big Fourth of July pig roast in the near future thanks to a porker taken on my ‘little place’!
Cattin' with a friend
We outdoor folks make friends and bond quickly, especially after spending time together hunting and fishing. Glenn Miller from Millers Grove has been reading my column for the four decades I’ve been writing about the outdoors. Glenn invited me to fish with him a couple months ago and we became friends instantly.
You’ve met folks like that I’m sure; people you felt you knew all your life. Well, the channel catfish bite over holes baited with soured grain (or not) is red hot at many lakes now and Lake Fork is no exception. Glen invited me to join him for a few early morning hours of fillet procurement. I was there at the dock bright and early.
We fished his lethal homemade punch bait on #6 treble hooks in water about 15 feet deep and boated a couple limits of some of the best eating in fresh water. With plenty of fresh fillets in the freezer, that Fourth of July pig roast might just have to be complemented with some freshly caught crispy fried catfish!
On to the deer show...
To wrap my week up, I traveled to the deer show in Nacogdoches this past weekend hosted by the East Texas Chapter of the Dallas Safari Club. I travel alone quite a bit but absolutely love making trips with good friends. When David Cotton and his dad Edgar invited me to ride along with them, I was all in. We cruised through the beautiful green East Texas countryside with never a break in the conversation.
Edgar owns some prime bottomland in Kaufman County that is on a whitetail management plan under the expert supervision of our mutual friend Larry Weishuhn, aka. “Mr. Whitetail”. Through the past few years, Larry, our friend Jeff Rice and I have become great friends with the Cottons and enjoyed many hunts and evenings around the campfire on their ranch. The event included a sit-down dinner in the evening, silent and live auctions and a couple of seminars by Weishuhn and Dr. James Kroll was a big success.
Matt Hughes, an official Boone and Crockett scorer, also gave a seminar on how to score whitetail deer using the Boone and Crockett system. Our friend Jeff Rice had the video camera rolling to cover the event which will be seen on our weekly TV show “A Sportsmans Life” on both YouTube and Carbon TV.
My part was minimal during the event but I was able to supply a bit of levity when asked about my interest in turnips as a food-plot staple. The Cottons always plant a large quanity of turnips in their food plots for deer and David recalled the time he drove to pick me up from an afternoon hunt and I had my pack loaded with fresh turnips!
Email outdoors writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio.org
