Pictures

Last Tuesday I drove over to Temple and visited with my knee doctor and got the same old report from him, “In two or three years you’ll need a replacement for your right knee.”  Not liking his report any better this time, on Wednesday I drove up to Irving and, despite the killing heat, 115 on Thursday, played in five, Senior Softball games.  It was so hot and humid that our third game on Thursday was canceled.

As a side note, during the two-day tournament, three players fell out, with one having to be hospitalized for heat stroke.  All three ate no breakfast and drank only sports drinks, no water.  Replacing electrolytes are fine, but you have to replace the water that is sweated out!  

After getting home from Temple, late Tuesday afternoon, I was able to get a couple of “shots” of a big, buck.  This one is probably the one I mentioned in my August 14, post, More Outdoors Pictures.

There was a group of 6 deer and the big one, the buck, in the middle, has his head down browsing.

After the heard broke up, the big one is still in the center of this “shot”.  Cropping the picture helps some to see his size.

A third “shot” of the big one and more cropping shows the excellent size of this big boy!

I wonder if that young, dark one is a melanistic deer?

One of my softball teammates, Ev Sims, sent me these pictures of some real good deer he and his Son have coming into one of their feeders on their ranch.  Last year, before deer season opened, Ev sent me the picture of a ten pointer they had caught on the game camera.  This, the best deer they had seen on their ranch, was on my post More Outdoor Pictures, November 6, 2009.  After the season opened, Ev’s Son shot the big one and posted it on November 19, 2009, “We Got Him”.  This year, some excellent deer are already showing up on their game camera.

This one, a nice deer, is pictured on the right.

Picking up all this corn is really tiring.  Must be time for a nap.

Finally, this last picture shows some good deer, but the one in the back by the blind, is really a “keeper”.  Blowing up the picture, this deer has a drop tine on its right.  If I were more technical I would show the blown up “shot”, but, still, it is a big one!

My friends send me a lot of good outdoors pictures, but sometimes I get lucky and get some good “shots”.  Last Monday afternoon was one of those days.

Preparing to bale our hay, on August 9, we cut our twenty-five acre hay field.   We finished before 6:00 PM and within an hour, the deer, probably around twenty, scattered all over the field, started showing up to browse on the exposed forbs and cuttings.  Some of my “shots” follow.

My last “shot” was on a young buck about two hundred, yards away.

Tuesday morning, I saw, but didn’t get a “shot” of a great deer, eight points with at least a twenty-inch spread.  Seventy-five yards from our back porch, he looked to be four and a half years old and he was with four other bucks, including the one in the picture from the ninth.

My friend and former business partner, Bob Baugh, lives in an area south of Rosenberg, Texas.  Last week he sent me some pictures of white wing doves on a telephone line, behind his house.  They feed these birds and it looks like it’s chow time!

The white wings are lined up.

More of them.

And, here’s the whole bunch.

Years ago, my Dad befriended a farmer in this area, Vasilav Vacek, and he arranged for us to hunt on his and several of his friend’s property, almost a thousand acres.  See my November 17, 2008 post, Vacek’s.  The white wings didn’t move into this area until twenty, or so, years ago, now they are everywhere and have taken over, except for the panhandle, most of our fine, State.  I’ve even seen them as far north as Plano, Texas.

Back in the 50’s and 60’s this provided my Dad and I with some wonderful mourning dove and duck hunting, but now, the area is built up with shopping centers, homes, industrial sites and very little farming.   All we can do now is admire the wildlife. 

Visiting with Bob Baugh recently, he had found some pictures of me taken in the 1980’s that he shared.  Catching, cleaning and cooking fish has always been one of my “jobs”.  These old pictures show me at my best.  

In the first one, standing in Bob’s, trailered, twenty-three foot Formula, the tackle has been washed down and I’ve just finished filleting one side of about a ten pound, amberjack. 

The other shows me hard at work in front of Bob’s house cutting up some chum for the next day’s trip.  After years of having sores on my hands from cleaning fish, I finally found out that by holding fish in a towel ,as shown, as I filleted them, stopped the problem!

Bob Baugh’s ex wife caught this hundred and sixty-five pound, marlin while on a trip to Mazatlan.  I had taken some great, pictures during the fight, but over time, they’ve been lost.

In 1970, during a cool, foggy morning in West Galveston Bay, this five pound, redfish mistakenly fell victim to my bait and ended up in the frying pan.  I wasn’t being “cool” with the shades, but the polarized sun glasses cut right through the morning haze. This old picture of mine just turned up.

Good pictures keep coming in!  The latest are from Clayton Gist, Randy Pfaff and James Crumley.

Clayton Gist sent me this picture of a happy hunter and his axis deer.  Clayton recently stocked the axis on his ranch, see “More Outdoors Pictures, March 30, 2010”, and last Thursday held his first successful hunt.

Randy Pfaff sent me this picture of one of his friends and the mighty trout he caught.  He landed this one in the river near Randy’s home in southern Colorado.  Nice fish!

James Crumley usually sends me pictures of fish caught by him and his son's, but this time he sent me a picture of his daughter.  She was chosen in the top 15 contestants in this year's Mrs.Texas Pagent.  Very pretty lady!

It’s a lot of fun receiving the pictures that friends send to me.  Big fish, big animals and unusual outdoors pictures fit very well within the scope of Outdoor Odyssey.  This post has some big fish!

Randy Pfaff, an e-mail friend from Colorado, sent me this picture of two of his son’s friends and the very nice rainbow trout they caught in the river that runs along his property.

James Crumley returned from a fishing trip to Lake Amistad, along the Mexican border, with pictures of some big, striped bass they caught.  That’s not all the story however.  On this trip they were beset by gale force winds, big waves and miserable, scary conditions that finally settled out, enabling them to snag these big ‘uns.

This is the biggest of the bunch at twelve pounds!

Today’s post has some more neat pictures from my friends and neighbors!

Randy Pfaff sent me this picture of a wolf killed recently in Idaho.  This one is a really big animal and wolves like this are a definite threat to our wildlife and hunters to boot!

My neighbor, James Crumley sent me this picture of a two man, limit of stripers  caught on Lake Amistad, along the Mexican border.  He added that the winds were 25 to 50 and gusting out of the northwest and that it was a real scary outing.

Clayton Gist, another neighbor, snapped this picture of six, axis deer that he just acquired.  Nice animals and I understand they are quite tasty too!