View Full Version : Pics from our hunting trip to Texas.
NOTICE Do not view this thread if you find images of hunted animals offensive!!!
As promised I am finally getting around to posting some pics from our annual hunting trip to Texas. We went the last weekend in February. My partner has a 22,000 acre hunting lease just outside of Turkey, TX on the Turkey Creek Ranch. He is very generous with this privelege and likes to take all the guys from our shop down once a year to show them a good time. We also include some close friends that help us out from time to time.
I tried to pick out a variety of pics showing different aspects of the trip to try and show the full spectrum of what we do.
Pic 1 sunset the first night we were there from my stand.
Pic 2 This was his first time to hunt hog. Very first hog for him.
Pic 3 Unloading the days harvest.
Pic 1 View from the blind where I spent a majority of my time. The closest feeder is 30 yards, the far feeder is 115 yards.
Pic 2 Outside view of the blind. He has about 35 of these set up with 2 feeder at each of them. Each feeder feeds twice a day 365 days a year.
Pic 3 It was a good day for our team.
Pic 1 A well needed break between the morning and evening hunt.
Pic 2 A couple of unfortunate Porcupines.
Pic 3 The crew.
Pic 1 Front side of base camp.
Pic 2 Back side of camp.
Pic 3 The relaxation area and camp stove.
Pic 1 Heading out for an afternoon snake hunt.
Pic 2 He's not smart enough to skin the snake before using it as a belt.
Pic 3 Digging for Diamondbacks.
Pic 1 Fat Daddy. By far the biggest one we found this weekend. Probably the biggest I've seen in the wild.
Pic 2 The area landscape.
Pic 3 This is a crack in the cliff face that we found. There was a lot of Porcupine dung in front of it leading us to believe we would find one in it. Our suspicions we correct as we found two in it.....along with a full den of Diamondbacks to boot. We don't know the total number of rattlers that were in this den because it was too deep to see all of them. We harvested 15 from it and there were many more. I had only seen things like this in movies. It gave me a pretty good case of the willies. We pumped between 65 and 70 into it of various caliber. Unfortunately I had to step up and help with the process. :leaving: There were a total of 18 Diamondbacks found that day.
Pic 1 The massacre. If you look closely you can see the Porcupine quills and dung on the ground. There were many holes that had this in front of them. Some were occupied, some weren't.
Pic 2 Shooting the S&W 500.
Pic 3 I wish I could begin to explain this. If you knew him you would understand. I couldn't even look at him to take the pic. Someone else had to take it. Yuck!!!
Pic 1 Snake fang.
Pic 2 Digging for more Diamondbacks. You can actually see a fat one on the ground just between the two of them and a little further back under the cliff. This is the one from the first pic in post #6. I believe a 12 gauge put him to rest if I remember correctly.
Pic 3 Weighing the evening's harvest.
Final pic...boarding the plane for the trip home.
I have many more pics of the landscape and beauty of the area we were fortunate enough to hunt. About 250 total were taken. If the quality isn't that great on these I apologize, I was using the old sony point and shoot. Didn't want to take the good camera out in the field in my gear.
I tried to post pics of the highlights and not bore you with the general stuff.
We took our kids back down to the lease for their spring break this past weekend. I have a few pics of that hunt I will post in a couple more days. I am leaving town for the weekend first thing in the morning and don't have time to resize them now. These pics will be a little family oriented and much more tame.
I look forward to comments and questions you guys may have about the hunt.
Buck
Perlmudder
03-28-2009, 01:02 AM
cool pics! so do you eat the snakes or what do you do with them?
Bobcat
03-28-2009, 07:59 AM
looks like a blast !
cool pics! so do you eat the snakes or what do you do with them?
Didn't eat them. Just took the rattles off them. Most were too mangled from lead poisoning to do anything else with.
Buck
Looks like the filming of Delta Farce 2. :D
Cool pics man.
Magic Medicine
03-29-2009, 11:47 AM
Cools pics. Do the wild bores taste good?
Magic,
A smaller boar isn't bad. Get a larger one and things get a little "gamey" for my taste.
A low to medium weight sow is the way to go. Find a piglet with a little weight on it and you've struck gold.
If we manage to harvest anything that is injured or has a wound from a previous hunter it is automatically considered no good.
Magic Medicine
03-29-2009, 03:00 PM
Magic,
A smaller boar isn't bad. Get a larger one and things get a little "gamey" for my taste.
A low to medium weight sow is the way to go. Find a piglet with a little weight on it and you've struck gold.
If we manage to harvest anything that is injured or has a wound from a previous hunter it is automatically considered no good.
Thanks. BBQ the m fer
JupiterSunsation
03-29-2009, 03:06 PM
My neighbor bow hunts wild boar in FL. He is a little guy (5'6 130 maybe) and won't kill the big boar since they are too heavy to mess with and the smaller ones have better meat. I have eaten some and it wasn't that bad. His one liner was, what you are eating was running around this morning before he met me........
JupiterSunsation
03-29-2009, 03:07 PM
Pic 1 Heading out for an afternoon snake hunt.
Pic 2 He's not smart enough to skin the snake before using it as a belt.
Pic 3 Digging for Diamondbacks.
On the snake hunt, are you concerned about ricochet from the fired rounds into a cave or getting bitten by a snake mistaken for dead? How far from a hospital are you in case of an emergency?
Offshoredrillin
03-29-2009, 03:09 PM
you shot babe!!!!:ack2:
MattBMiller
03-29-2009, 04:22 PM
Looks like a blast!
DonMan
03-30-2009, 12:24 AM
You keep referring to those snakes as "diamondbacks", but it Texas we just call them RATTLESNAKES. :sifone:
You are absolutely right about the smaller hogs. They are pretty tasty.
Been to Turkey a few times. Scenic place.
gerritm
03-30-2009, 09:27 AM
Living here in Texas I understand shooting the hogs cause they are pests. I understand the rattlers. Why the porcupines? I have seen them where we hunt and never thought to shoot them.
masher44
03-30-2009, 01:26 PM
guy that worked for in TX would go on these hunts. He would go out and catch a huge rattler, yank the fangs and throw it in the new guy of the year's sleeping bag then wake his drunk azz up. Snake would bite the hell out of the poor bastard with no fangs.
He would fit in well with you guys but he is currently doing a 5 year stretch.
rbhudelson
03-30-2009, 01:32 PM
Magic,
A smaller boar isn't bad. Get a larger one and things get a little "gamey" for my taste.
A low to medium weight sow is the way to go. Find a piglet with a little weight on it and you've struck gold.
If we manage to harvest anything that is injured or has a wound from a previous hunter it is automatically considered no good.
Buck, it's been my experience that you can tell by the time you are within 10 feet of them if they are going to be any good to eat. If they smell bad, leave them for the vultures... We have killed some 200lb'rs that were good to eat but again, my experience is your nose tells the story.
Sea-Dated
03-30-2009, 02:38 PM
Pic 3 I wish I could begin to explain this. If you knew him you would understand. I couldn't even look at him to take the pic. Someone else had to take it. Yuck!!!
After meeting Casey, that pic does not surprise me at all......:sifone:
You keep referring to those snakes as "diamondbacks", but it Texas we just call them RATTLESNAKES. :sifone:
You are absolutely right about the smaller hogs. They are pretty tasty.
Been to Turkey a few times. Scenic place.
Rattlesnake is what I call them when I talk about them. I was trying not to over use the word in my story telling by changing it up a little. In short it's a snake, that's all I need to know. :(
Buck, it's been my experience that you can tell by the time you are within 10 feet of them if they are going to be any good to eat. If they smell bad, leave them for the vultures... We have killed some 200lb'rs that were good to eat but again, my experience is your nose tells the story.
You are correct about the odor telling the tale. We just get so many of them when we hunt that the boars are an automatic cull for us.
Buck
Masher, that's hilarious. You are correct, I think he would fit right in. I may have to try that trick if he doesn't mind? :)
We took the kids down there for Spring Break this year. They have been wanting to go hunting with me for a couple of years now. We decided we weren't going to spend a bunch of money this year for Spring Break and this would be a great opportunity to take them down. They both love to shoot and they have their own gun too. They got to hunt, ride four wheelers, shoot, and ride around on the big suburban for five days straight. I'm thinking they might have liked this better than Cancun.
The following is a quick pic of my oldest daughter's first hog she got this weekend. It was a small boar with about 1" tusks. Unfortunately we weren't able to get one for my youngest this weekend. She will have to wait for her first hog.
I plan to resize more pics from our family trip in the next couple of days and post them.
Perlmudder
03-30-2009, 11:26 PM
so what exactly do you do with the rattler from the snake?
so what exactly do you do with the rattler from the snake?
Keep them for a conversation piece. The kids go nuts over them.
dykstra
03-31-2009, 10:13 PM
Looks like the filming of Delta Farce 2. :D
Cool pics man.
I was thinking the same thing!!!! :sifone: Dave
On the snake hunt, are you concerned about ricochet from the fired rounds into a cave or getting bitten by a snake mistaken for dead? How far from a hospital are you in case of an emergency?
Sorry, I missed your question when I read through this thread last night.
The ricochet issue was a concern when we were firing into the crevice that turned out to be a den full of snakes. I got volunteered to fire the first 30 rounds into the crevice. Probably due to the fact that I had the most rounds for a handgun with me. The snakes were so thick that I was able to fire in the general direction of the snakes to do most of the damage. I actually pointed the pistol into the crevice while I hid my body against the rocks for fear of ricochet. The small rocks and debris turned out to be more of an issue than the lead itself. The next two firearms that were used on this location had lasers on them that helped. But again, whoever did the shooting would do the best they could to not directly in front of the crevice.
Later in the day when we came back we wised up and brought a shotgun. Most snakes found that afternoon were sunning due to the fact it had warmed up a little. These unlucky suckers were taken care of swiftly with the 20 gauge.
We actually discussed what to do if someone got injured prior to getting too far into our excursion. I would guess help was 45 minutes to an hour away at least. If someone other than our guide was injured the guide would know where to go and what to do. If the guide were injured we had multiple gps units on hand to navigate our way off the ranch and get us to town. The suburban that we use on the ranch also has several radios in it, a good sized first aid kit, and the ability to get us there in one piece. Cell signal is spotty on the ranch so that can be an issue. There were three lease holders with us that are on the ranch regularly. Each guide always knew where the other two groups were going to be hunting. Everyone also carries two way radios along with a cell phone. The radios are somewhat limited in range, but one could usually get a message to someone on the other side of the ranch through another person that had radio contact with them. Communication is not taken lightly. Everyone carries two extra sets of batteries for their radio at all times.
The majority of the snakes we found were mostly lethargic. It was cold enough that the little movement they were doing was very slow. Even after more than adequate harm was done to them their bodies still had some movement left in them. All of them had their heads smashed prior to laying them out on the ground. The head of each snake was held down by a good sized boot while removing the rattle.
The snake part of the hunt turned out to be a fluke. That was not our intended activity for the weekend. We just happened to find a good spot for them. The snake hunting turned out to be a time killer between the morning and evening hunts when we were bored. I can honestly say it wasn't and still isn't something I'm crazy about. I do what I can to keep my distance.
Buck
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