Hill Country Taxidermy

http://www.hillcountrytaxidermist.com/

Check this link out. I know the owner pretty well and this is the taxidermist that has preserved some of the wildlife I have posted on here. Rob and his wife Jane Ellen do some fantastic work and I highly recommend them. If you get a chance go to the gallery page and look at the 3 hogs he has mounted. Do you recognize the large one on the left. That's the brute that I wrote about last year, and have some pictures of him hanging on my blog in May 2006.

First & Second Bow Kill

I left the house very early on Tuesday in hopes of getting my first deer with my bow. I picked up my Bowtech Patriot at Sportsmans Warehouse last year and have been practicing with it as much as possible so now’s the time that the practice should pay off. After I arrived at Elliot’s place I walked to the big oak tree and using the foot pegs that have been put in the tree, climbed up the tree. After getting settled in at 0600 everything got quiet and it was nice and peaceful with a clear sky and all the stars shining. The wind was blowing and it was in the upper 40’s, and I’m glad I took my jacket, because I wouldn’t have lasted long without it. I’ve written in the past about what I feel is the best time of the day, which is at this time. I love it. Everything is quiet. No sounds of birds flying, or chirping, or singing. No grasshoppers, no leaves being stepped on by squirrels or by any other critters. Just plain ole quiet, then the day slowly starts. As the sun rays start to break the horizon and light ever so slowly arrives, the critters also come out. Finches with their small wings flapping in the wind flying very close to me since they can’t see me. As long I don’t move and since I have camouflage on they’ll continue. Small grasshoppers flying around and they too have small wings but when they start flying their wings also crack loud enough to distinguish their movement.
As I’m standing there in the tree I catch movement underneath the feeder. It went off about 0650 and sprayed corn everywhere and now 15 minutes later there’s movement under the feeder. I start to turn and reach for my bow which is hanging on a peg very slowly and that’s when I see it’s a rabbit. It’s a cottontail just eating away at the corn on the ground, and next to it coming out of the cedar trees is a doe which isn’t more than 10 to 12 yards away. As I continue reaching for my bow, my peripheral vision catches movement also to my far left. Slowly I turn and see 3 move does and 2 fawns coming in slowly. They’re very cautious and at times they even look in my direction trying to catch movement from me. To make a long story short lets just say I goof up. They catch me moving and they run.
Later that morning when I see there are no deer around I get out of the tree and cross the open field about 30 yards away and position myself in the cedars. I spray myself with scent killer spray and that stuff is real good. Elliott told me which one he uses and he said the deer do not smell him. The bad part about it , he said, was they get real close because they can’t smell you and it’s very hard to pull a bow with them that close. It’s about 10 am and I see movement to my left. It’s a doe, sneaking out of the cedars walking in my direction along the tree line. To my right are more does and fawns and a spike also exiting the tree line walking towards the corn that was dispersed on the ground. The doe walks right by me, and couldn’t have been more that 7 steps away from me. That scent killer stuff is REAL GOOD. Right about now I’m telling myself “self they are looking at the tree and they think you’re still in the tree, and they can’t smell you”, this could be real good. This doe was so close I could spit on it. Well it didn’t happen. I couldn’t take the shot since there were too many (around 13) and they were too close. You’re right Elliott it’s good stuff but it could hurt you. So I watched them eat and after an hour they left and they never even knew I was there. So I walked to my truck on the hill and drove it back to fill up the feeder with more corn since I hadn’t been out there since I killed that turkey. That’s when I started to think about another spot.
Since they were all looking at the tree where I was originally standing and they never saw me sitting in front of them, why not make my own ground blind. When Jay and Malissa were visiting a few weeks ago the guys went to Bass Pro Shop. Jay mentioned about a Gerber saw he had which works real good on cutting small trees down. He said Jacinto (his son) used it with ease, so I picked it up that day and it pretty much stays in my truck. So I cut some long branches from some of the cedar trees and positioned them about 15 yards from the feeder around another set of cedar trees. It was a perfect blind. I got inside and found my shooting lane and made sure I could pull my bow without hitting anything. It looked perfect since I could see through the cedars but the sun would be in the west and they would be looking into the sun and I would be in the shade. If any deer came from the west they would never see me and once they got to where the corn was at, they would be beyond me and in the shooting lane about 20 yards away, which is a shot I was very comfortable with. The only way they would see me is if the walked in from underneath the big oak tree which was directly in front of me about 25 yards away and I’m sure they won’t be coming in from that direction since they think something is in the tree because they keep looking at it every time they walk up.
After sitting for about an hour I decided to stand up and stretch and as I slowly stood, I saw a nice buck about 20 yards to my right. Somehow I hadn’t seen him walk up. But that’s ok I see him now and apparently he hasn’t seen me. It wasn’t long before there was a very impressive display of horns in front of me. There must have been 7 or 8 large racks in front of me. Some were very nice wide 8 pointers and some 10 pointers. As I got ready I watched them for about an hour but they never got into the shooting lane. I could have moved to the left but I would have exposed myself and they would have surely seen me. Oh well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
They left and it wasn’t long before a group of 15 deer strolled in to eat. A couple of them walked by me and didn’t even look in my direction and as they went beyond the cedars I had set in front of me I got ready. A nice 6 pointer started to graze off to my right about 15 yards in front of me and he was getting ready to stroll into my shooting lane. I drew my bow back and sure enough he walked in front of me and I released the arrow and it hit him hard. He ran towards the oak tree and up on the hill and as he was running I could see quite a bit of blood exiting his would. This guy wouldn’t be hard to track. I was pretty sure I heard him crash somewhere in the cedars not too far from me but I waited about 35 minutes. I exited from the cedars and as I walked to where he was standing, I could see good blood on the ground. I followed the blood trail which was real good and found him laying underneath some cedars about 40 yards from where I shot him. My first bow kill was laying in front of me and I was one happy camper. Thank you LORD for letting me take this buck. He was nice and he was full of ticks, but that’s all right. Now the fun begins as I drug him out and made some calls on my cell phone and continued dragging him out of the woods. He was heavy so I decided to leave him there and get my dragging rope which was back at the blind. As I walked off the hill towards the big oak tree I could see another buck eating by the feeder, so I crawled on my knees towards the oak tree. The weeds were pretty high so I was hid pretty good as long as I crawled very slow. I made it to the oak tree and once behind it stood and peered around the side and saw the buck still eating at the feeder. I wasn’t more than 15 yards from it so I got another arrow ready and drew back and let another arrow go. It smacked him hard and he took off running and dropped about 20 yards in front of me. There would be no need to track him since he lay there in front of me 30 yards away. The first thing that crossed my mind was “dude did you just get another buck within 45 minutes of the first one”. Pinch yourself, you are awake aren’t you? Is this a good dream, am I going to wake up and realize it was one heck of a dream? I looked back and saw my first deer on the hill and then looked 30 yards away and saw the second one laying there and I realized this is real. I got two bucks on the ground, one to the left and one to the right, thank you, thank you, thank you LORD. So as you can see I have my first and second bow kill in the picture. The bigger one is the first kill. The second one doesn’t look that big but like Johnson says, “it sure will eat good”.

Brother???

Elliott set up the game cam and got this picture. It looks like it could be the

brother of the buck a few posts down. I enhanced the picture and took most of the glare out, although it still has a little glare. He sure does look like the other buck but it's not. What do you think?

Guess who is going home with me

Guess what sports fans? I bagged a turkey. That’s right I went out early this morning in hopes of taking a deer since it’s bow season right now, but that didn’t happen. As I sat there waiting for the opportunity to knock down a doe or buck they would not come in closer than what looked to be about 40 yards. I guess I’ll have to start practicing at 40 yards. I sat in my popup blind relaxing and somewhere around 11:10 some hens came strolling in. About 11 hens and there were a few that were a good size. So I got ready and watched the turkeys for about 20 minutes. There were 4 of them at the turkey feeder and they were hungry or should I say starving. The other 7 were walking around eating corn off the ground that the deer feeder had dispensed at 0700. As I sat and watched I had to stop from laughing at the sight of 4 turkeys with their head in the turkey feeder (which is pictured in an earlier post), and thinking how easy it would be to be sitting right above them in that big oak tree and shooting one with the bow. It would be an easy shot and there wouldn’t be any tracking since the arrow would pass thru them and stick them to the ground. Or better yet how some type of electronic guillotine set up inside the turkey feeder, where just pressing the button would slice their heads off at the same time. There would be no need for tracking, but as these thoughts went thru my mind I had my bow in hand and was ready for the first one to get in range so I could take that girl home since they were all hens.

Sure enough there she was heading right for me. I had placed a pile of corn about 15 yards out in front of my blind and she had seen it and was working her way to it. I raised my bow and aimed right behind her neck and as I pulled the trigger on the release, the arrow was on the way. The sound of the release must have startled her because she raised her head to look up and the arrow hit her right in the middle of her chest. The momentum of the arrow flipped her up in the air backwards and she landed on her chest and didn’t move. WOW, there will be no tracking on this bird I thought. As I looked at the other birds, I noticed the 4 at the feeder pulled their heads out and looked at the one I just shot and then turned back to the feeder and kept on eating. The other ones that were walking around and eating looked up and then went back to walking around and eating again. I told myself, THEY DIDN’t LEAVE!!!!! Hurry up and get another arrow ready, so I moved as quietly as possible pulling another arrow from the quiver which was on the ground in front of me. As I was getting ready I was also looking at the birds that were still eating. I didn’t want to make too much noise or move too much to startle them, but I did want to get ready in a hurry. I was ready and had my next girl picked out that was going home with me and as I looked thru the peep sight, I had her lined up with the pin, when all of a sudden the first one I hit started flopping around and took off towards the cedar trees. As I again pulled the trigger on the release the other turkeys reacted in the same way and ran with the one I just shot and my arrow hit nothing but rocks, dirt and trees. Who knows where it landed, since I was not able to find it when I looked for it later on. So I went looking for my bird and found it behind the cedar trees and as I approached it heads started popping up all over the place in the high grass. That’s when I told myself, “self, if you would have brought your bow you probably could have got another bird.” Oh well, you learn from your mistakes, at least I was able to get one.