Outdoor Odyssey - Pictures

More Outdoors Pictures, August 22, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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?

More Outdoors Pictures, August 16, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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!

More Outdoors Pictures, August, 14, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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.

More Outdoors Pictures, August 4, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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.

More Outdoors Pictures, June 28, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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.

More Outdoors Pictures, June 18, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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!

More Outdoors Pictures, April 20, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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!

More Outdoors Pictures, March 30, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:05:00 -0700

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!

More Outdoors Pictures, March 2, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:05:00 -0700

As I’ve said before, my friends and relatives send me some real neat outdoors pictures. The following ones are no different.

Randy Pfaff in southern Colorado sent me this picture of a truly magnificent bull, elk. This animal, supposedly, was shot in New Mexico, using a very expensive, Governor’s tag. I wonder what it cost?

A very enterprising ‘coon, climbing up a feeder post, to get at the deer corn, was sent to me by one of my softball teammates, Ev Sims. His ranch is in Jackson County, Texas.

And finally, my Cousin, Kathy Pribble, sent me these two pictures of the February 12, snow that paralyzed north Texas. She lives in Henderson County, Texas, on a beautiful lake nestled in Texas’ great piney woods!

This picture would pass for “up north” somewhere!

More Outdoors Pictures, February 18, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:05:00 -0700

Randy Pfaff sent me the two following pictures.

The first is of a mountain lion, the picture taken through a screen door, that was caught rooting around a cabin in the mountains in Colorado. This would be something to wake up to!

The second is of a huge deer shot near Thrifty, Texas, ten miles north of Brownwood and about forty-five miles northwest of Goldthwaite. The “Brownwood Bulletin” carried the story on December 23rd. The buck, shot off of a ten acre place, was between three and a half and four and a half years old, with twenty-seven points and scored a whopping 210-6/8 B&C! Monster bucks like this one generally don’t come from around Thrifty.

Finally Joe Tryba sent me this picture of some construction workers taking it easy on a job site. Not a hunting picture, but at least these guys are sitting in the outdoors!

More Outdoors Pictures, January 27, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:05:00 -0700

Some more great pictures from my friends!

Right off the bat, Clayton Gist, sent me this picture of one angry bobcat that he trapped last week. In the past twelve months, this makes the fourteenth one he’s trapped, along with one badger!

Randy Pfaff sent me this one of a nice mulie buck. He said he didn’t have the heart to shoot it since it was drinking out of his birdbath.

He added one of a bear eating a doe that was hung up outside overnight. The bear had a good meal, but the hunters should have hung the doe out of the bears reach!

Religiously, for the past four months, Ev Sims and his son have been bating their hog trap, with no results. Finally, their persistence paid off with these two porkers.

More Outdoors Pictures, January 5, 2010

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:05:00 -0700

Randy Pfaff lives, hunts and guides in southern Colorado and recently sent me these pictures of some really nice mule deer. The first two are from hunts that he successfully guided.

This is a nice one.

This one is nicer!

But this one takes the cake! It was almost 250 Boone And Crocket points and was a Governor’s Tag deer, very special! I’ve been told that a Governor’s Tag allows the hunter to hunt mule deer anywhere in Colorado where there is an open season, but there’s a catch. Usually the tags are raffled or auctioned off and can be great fund raisers for outdoor associations or charities. This hunter either paid a handsome price for the tag or was very lucky!

More Outdoors Pictures, December 22, 2009

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:05:00 -0700

My new PC runs on Windows 7 and my old one ran on XP and supported HP Image Zone. However, Windows 7, very clean for a new operating system, does not support Image Zone that I used to scan and file pictures that others sent to me. Yes, I could use a feature of Windows, but why worry with that? All I did was replace my new PC with my old one running, tried and true, XP and now I can scan pictures. All of this is a long way of saying that I haven’t been able to scan pictures for the last four weeks.

During this time folks still have been sending some very good outdoors pictures to me.

David Buck, a Nephew, on the right, bagged this nice one on his lease in Burnet County, the week before Thanksgiving!

Randy Pfaff woke up one morning and looked out of his kitchen window, and lo and behold, there stood a mountain lion! He got this “shot” of it.

Randy also sent me this picture of some “good” rattlers.

More Outdoors Pictures, November 6, 2009

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:05:00 -0700

Some, of the many, pictures that folks send to me are really neat! Unusual things from the outdoors, fine trophies and some spectacular game cam “shots”. Today’s post has them all.

Warren Blesh at RRR Ranch sent me this one of a young lady with a trophy buck she shot last Saturday during our State’s youth hunt. She and her Dad had visited Warren to harvest one of his many does, but this fine specimen walked out of the brush and hung around too long and finally Warren told her, “Merry Christmas, take him!”

Dayton House, a Church friend, sent this picture of a hog killed on October 28, 2009 in Mobile County, Alabama. The hog was six foot, eleven inches long, forty-four inches high at the shoulder and had almost four, inch lower, tusks! One of the largest free roaming hogs yet shot!

Everett Simms, one of my softball buddies, sent me this sequence of pictures taken on his low fence, ranch in Jackson County, Texas. The ranch is outside of Port Lavaca, an area not known for monster deer. He’s growing some good ones on his ranch!

This first picture is of “the” ten pointer taken in July with the deer still in velvet.

This picture shows “the” ten pointer with a buddy, a very nice eight.

Everett told me that he’d send me the picture of “the” ten when they shot him!

Scouting, November 3, 2009

jbryan@centex.net (Jon Bryan) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:05:00 -0700

Yesterday was a “no work” day that I devoted to scouting on my place for deer. What a nice morning it was, no wind, forty-five degrees, with a bright blue sky! Walking out to the blind at 5:30 AM, the sky was so illuminated from the moon that I didn’t even use a light and I almost needed sun glasses! I believe every star in our hemisphere was out too! With it so bright and clear, the deer moved at night and I really didn’t expect to see much early in the day.

It was very slow, so slow that I took this “shot” of a male, cardinal.

Soon an, almost fawn, yearling, showed up and started picking up the corn outside of the feeder. He was hesitant to jump on in.

Then the little one started getting nervous and took off for parts unknown and out came, an almost spike.

This one barely had the horns outside of the skin, but he was bigger so he ran off the smaller one.

The evening watch was much of the same. On my way in I jumped several deer and on my way out several. But, nothing came around the tree stand that I was sitting in.

Maybe I'll sit out on my front porch and see how many I see tonight?