Owl Squatters

Originally aired on August 17th, 2025. On this episode, Doug talks about Operation Ghost Deer, the BMW Championship, and much more.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Had by Riceland Waterfowl Hunting Club in Eagle Lake, a
premiere waterfowling experience available exclusively to members and their guests.
Now here's Doug Hike.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
That was a good reminder right there. If you haven't
figured out where you're gonna do your duck hutting this year,
and you haven't talked to David Prue at Riceland, well
you might want to get on that. There's there's not
that much time left before he's going to close the
gate and just say okay, this is what we're working
with this year. And there I talked to him fairly recently.

(00:35):
There was still some room, but he's bearing down and
focusing on. What he'll do is shift gears once he
once he gets out of recruitment mode, he'll shift gears
and make sure that he's on full time in the
field work. He and Jeff has able bodied assisted out there.
They spend more time on that prey than rice farmers

(00:57):
do every day. There's somewhere out there, riding around, making
sure a blind's ready, making sure waters where it needs
to be, and moving it if it's not, and just
doing what good outfitters do for fifty years it's amazing.
You'll hear more apartment. You'll hear more about him later.
But seriously, if if you want, if you want to
change your luck from whatever it was last year for

(01:19):
the better, uh, just go to Riceland Waterfowl Club and
look it up dot com. Look it up Ricelandwaterfowl Club
dot com. Anyway, so you know, wind along the coast
this morning, almost all of the entire Texas coast, even
down south, is at single digit velocities. For the first
time in a long time. There was one anomalous look

(01:42):
I think it was at It might have been Rockport
maybe or somewhere around there where it was thirteen. But
it was surrounded by mid to low single digit readings.
So maybe somebody just sped by the weather vane too
fast on their way to church. Who knows. But the

(02:02):
bottom line is, if you've got if you've got a chance,
if you've got a chance, to get out and go
leave now, get to the ramp as fast as you
can and then drive off shore as far as you
want to go. I won't hold it against you. It's okay.
Going fishing is a top priority for most of us
this time of year. If it's not preparing for hunting season.

(02:25):
If it's not playing a little golf or whatever. I know.
I think I know this audience pretty well, and I
think most of you like most of the things that
I like as well, starting with just being outside rather
than inside. By the way, there's a little ripple on
the Gulf of Mexico right at the beach, but not
enough to get a surfer out of bed. And even

(02:45):
better if it's if today's not your day to be
able to do any of that, there's a lot more
of the same on the horizon for a big junker
next week, which starts tomorrow or today, depending on how
your calendar's laid out. I prefer calendar that starts with
Monday and ends with Sunday, although half of the ones
we get around here for work, and by the way,

(03:08):
it's about fifty to fifty. You never know what you're
looking at with some of our software, in the different
programs we use around here. Some of the calendars start
on Sunday, some start on Monday, and you always have
to check yourself and look back down. If you're looking
at the first day of the week for something. It
might be a Sunday, it might be a Monday, in

(03:28):
any event, in case you wonder too. By the way,
the National Hurricane Center has yet another new yellow thing
on the map. It is at present nothing really, and
I think, hold on, I'll put the mouse on here.
Let's see what it says for this thing. Low chances
in the next forty eight hours. The seven day forecast

(03:52):
for this thing says it's got a twenty percent chance
of becoming something. And right now it's pretty much following
the same path that Erin has followed across the Atlantic
Ocean air and by the way, gonna be throwing some
pretty heavy wind and water along let's say, from Cuba
down across back more east southeast. I guess that whole

(04:17):
island chain through there, all of the islands that fell
off of Florida a billion years ago, they're gonna get
They're gonna be hit pretty good. But I don't think
it's I don't foresee anything catastrophic in those areas. But
I could be wrong. This thing could intensify more. Let
me see what it's supposed to do. Hold on real quickly,
Let's see if it when it's supposed to go major,

(04:40):
you know, actually after it looks like after today it's
going to move away from those islands. It's it's got
major hurricane stuff going all the way through tomorrow, really,
but by tomorrow it's gonna start turning more north than west,

(05:02):
and that's gonna do big favors for all those islands,
all those little, big favors for the Bahamas. Let's get
that thing out of here, and as long as we're wishing,
let's get that little yellow thing back behind it off
the map. I went and checked my spaghetti models at
Cyclocaine yesterday or this morning, once I saw that yellow

(05:25):
blob up there. Cyclicane's not even acknowledging that thing yet,
and it won't until there's reason, until it becomes a
little more organized and a little more of a threat.
So hopefully we won't have to deal with that one
anytime soon. August sort of a kind of a bittersweet month.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Really.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
The light wind is fine. I love the light wind.
I'm tired of wind. We fought wind all summer long
so far, so here we are in August. The wind
lays down, but it's still blaze under that August sun.
So be careful, stay hydrated. Should be all right. And
if you start to feel a little bit a little

(06:09):
bit hot out there on a fishing trip, especially when
it's dead calm. There's no shame in firing up the
boat and riding around in circles for five minutes to
cool off, which you will. It helps a lot. James
Flogg and I had my son out many years ago
when he was probably seven, I guess, maybe eight, somewhere

(06:30):
in there, back when the limit was ten, I know that.
And we were in Upper Galveston Bay somewhere, chasing birds
and having a blast, and we'd cut a long drift
and we're doing pretty well. But at one point in
that drift, I looked at James, and James looked at
me and told him, spoo him up, kid, we're going

(06:51):
a boat ride. And all we did was ride around
in a big old circle for about five minutes and
then went almost right back to exactly where we'd been
catching fish and doomed catching fish. It was fine, but
it was hot. And I don't know about you guys,
but I'm at I'm at the stage of my life
now where I'm having to pay attention to the heat.

(07:11):
It wasn't that many years ago that I was still
writing and still talking about how I loved the middle
of summer, just a dead of summer, because it kept
a lot of people off the water, and it kept
a lot of people off the golf course. And I'm
rapidly becoming one of those people. I'm not there yet.
I'm not there yet, but I am paying attention and

(07:35):
trying to remain acclimated. I don't run from the heat.
When it first hits in the summertime. I'm okay, I
welcome it. Bring it on, let's go, Let's see what
I got left in the tank. And most days, anything
I set out to do, I can accomplish. Whether it's
yard work, I don't do a lot of that anymore,

(07:57):
but I'll still get out there and trim trees, get
knocked some of the limbs that don't need to be
near my house off of the trees. I'll do that.
I'll do whatever, rake I'll do. Raking leaves. I hate
raking leaves. I do, but it keeps me acclimated. And
so I just bite my tongue and go on out

(08:17):
there and knock it out and look down three minutes
after I start, and I'm soaking wet. Absolutely same with
practicing golf. I found out about two weeks ago where
my threshold was for hitting golf balls at ninety nine
degrees or higher. And it wasn't nearly as far down
the bucket as I thought it might be. Yeah, I

(08:40):
was having to take breaks about every five swings, just
taking knee, have a little water, put a little wet
rag on the back of my neck. No wind, just
nothing but sun straight down on my back. And yeah,
I give up. I don't give up. I don't give up.
I can see that I need to pay attention more,

(09:02):
but I'll never give up that you can be sure
of seven three two one two five seven ninety Email
me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com. August actually a great
month for bayfishing, too, especially for those of us who
are are not croker soakers. Uh nothing, and there's nothing
wrong with that. It's just not my style. Okay. No

(09:23):
better time than now, though, to dust off those floaters.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Man.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
I got calls from two guys this week, two guys bragging.
Just called it a brag. Oh yeah, yeah. They they
claim they're letting me know, they're giving me information. Hey, man,
there's some there's a pretty good bite in the surf
where I am one guy down south. Yes, it's been
pretty good in the surf. Yeah, I've been catching them
on top waters and I caught a twenty seven, and

(09:47):
I caught this, and I caught that. So now you're
just bragging. You're not giving me information, you're bragging. And
that's okay too. That's okay too. I live vicariously through
a lot of you, and I love to hear about
you catching fish, and I'm happy to report that I'll be.
If you want me to tell everybody where you were,

(10:07):
I will. If you have enough spots that you don't
care if somebody finds out where one of your spots is,
that's fine with me. But if you don't want me
to tell them, that's all you got to say. Hey,
you can say that I was, and now don't lie.
We're not gonna We're not going to have you go
catch a bunch of fish at Corpus and me sit
here and tell people you were off the Galveston Beach front.

(10:28):
That's not happening. But if you want to give little hints,
what I used to tell the guides when I was
writing the fishing reports at the paper, say, look, first
of all, you need to have enough spots that if
somebody finds where you are, that's okay. You can move
and go to a spot that's just as good. Second
of all, I don't want to know the exact location.

(10:51):
We're not trying to punch it into GPS here, But
give me a ballpark description of what you're fishing, and
not necessarily the north shore line of East Bay. But
how about maybe say something like I'm fishing in three
to five feet of water and keying on bait on
windward shorelines or calmer shorelines or whatever. And then the

(11:15):
people who get that report, the really good ones, the
very sophisticated, experienced fishermen, have probably a pretty good idea
where you are. The younger ones, the less experienced fishermen,
get an opportunity to learn something and teach themselves by
riding around until they kind of figure it out. I
don't mind. I don't mind helping people become better fishermen

(11:38):
by giving them clues. It doesn't really help anybody to
become a better fisherman to just be handed a GPS waypoint.
Who cares? What have you learned from that? You've learned
how to read a screen? And then I guess when
you get there. If you're a bass fisherman, you can
turn on your your cheater scope, your forward facing radar

(11:59):
or sonar and use that to catch the fish. And
again I'm not against any of this equipment. I think
it's I think they have to do something about it
for competition though, because it's it's ruining bass competitions, and
eventually it'll probably it'll probably factor into a lot of
the offshore competitions and bay fishing competitions, which I don't

(12:22):
think it should. I don't think that's a traditional fishing contest. Now,
what's gonna happen is it's gonna be kind of like
some of the other things that are going on in
sports right now. There's gonna have to be a new
division created, a separate division forward facing sonar, no ford
facing sonar, electronics, no electronics. I would love to have

(12:47):
people go out for a tournament and the only the
only device they can use. Now I'm not talking about
an offshore tournament. I'm talking about a bay tournament. The
only thing you can use is your compass, and other
than that, you've got to use what I and most
of the guides I fished with when I first started
at the paper use, and that's triangulation, which young fishermen

(13:11):
have no idea how to do. We would we would
get on a spot or try to go back to
a spot where their dad or their granddad showed them
how to find it years ago. So okay, we got
to line up the Blue Water Tower with the Red
Beach House on the other side of the bay, and

(13:31):
then we have another waypoint. We got to get on
that line and then go until the the what the
tower at the galves at airport lines up with the
San Luis Hotel, and that's when we'll be on our spot.
And then you get kind of close to that, and
you keep looking up, and you keep looking around, you

(13:52):
keep and you finally punch your twelve foot cane pole
to the bottom, sand sand, sand, oyster shell. We're here,
throw the jug over the side, the weighted jug to
mark the spot, and then you just fish around the jug.

(14:12):
That's a long ways to go to get nowhere, isn't
it it? Sure it's easier to just punch in a
button and just let the boat drive you there while
you sit back and watch for logs. Timber Creek Golf Club.
Speaking of logs, Timber Creek had a bazillion trees. Before
the last two major hurricanes that came through there, they
lost hundreds of them, but you'd never know it. The

(14:35):
way I play golf anyway, I tend to knock a
ball or two off a tree during a round and
it's okay. What I need to do is go down
there and get with JJ Woods over at his teaching
academy just next to the range. Maybe he could help
me with some of that. Timber Creek's on FM twenty
three to fifty one down there and friends with about
three miles west of the golf freeway. Very easy to
find and a very enjoyable place to play. The course

(14:58):
is challenging if you're playing from the right box, but
it's not difficult, uh. And by that I mean if
you've got any kind of swing at all, if you've
got any kind of short game and putting game at all,
you'll have a good time going around there. You might
not break the course record, but you'll have a good time,
and there'll be people riding around, people back in the grill,

(15:18):
people in the pro shop, all of them who want
to make sure you have a good time while you're there.
Timber Creek Golf Club dot com. This is looking more
and more like a good day to go play golf,
and they'll be happy to make you a tea towel. Actually,
you can make it yourself at the website Timber Creek
goolf Club dot com. Timber Creek Golf Club dot com.

(15:38):
All right, welcome back, thanks for listening to Doug Pike
show on Sports Talk seven ninety. Let me wrestle this
little mouse here and get something off my screen that
I don't want to talk about, and then I'll get
to the other thing shortly. Yeah, that's what I need
to move right there. That's gotta go, bube bye, all right,
seven one three two one two five seven ninety. Email

(16:00):
me Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com. Man, everything still
looks really pretty along the coast.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
It is.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
The water actually had gotten so clean that it needed
a little need, a little stirring of the pot, which
we got this past week, and now it's gonna I
think it's gonna kind of settle back out for at
least the next several days be pretty calm. So again,
if you if you want to go fishing, you might

(16:28):
want to go fishing. Let's go back. You know, I
was talking earlier about top waters, and there's a lot
of debate over how to work those lures.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
But the and by the way, Dave sent me a
picture of an old topwater lure he made, and it
looks like one of those green and only lizards. And
I got a hunch if you threw one of those
into a bass lake, it probably wouldn't make it back
to the shoreline. It would get eaten so fast. So
that may have been his lure may have been ahead

(16:58):
of its time. The coolest commercial top water I ever saw,
something I didn't expect to see anyway when I was younger,
was that boone needlefish, which I got kind of at
a discount where I found them. I guess they weren't
selling because it looked it looked like a pencil somebody
had spent three minutes sanding on and then five minutes painting.

(17:24):
Threw a couple of hooks on it, and that was it.
But man, did it catch trout in the surf. Holy cow.
I wish I could get a handful of bows and
take them back out and do the same thing with
them again. That would be pretty dog on good. The
bottom line. Is this the fish you're going to tell
you what they want? And when you start. If you've

(17:45):
got a group of guys, the best thing to do
is have somebody fish slow, somebody fish one fast, Somebody
throw this color, somebody throw that color. Just mix it
up and you'll be surprised if you do that how
quickly you and your crew are gonna be told by
the fish what the fish want, cause that's all that
really matters. Doesn't matter how many lures you got in

(18:07):
your tackle box. If they don't want any of those,
you're not going to catch any fish. And the guy
who bought something brought something different, he may be the
one who rings the bell. I'm a skitterwalk fan, always
have been, that little one uh wearing a speckled trout costume.
I've caught a lot of fish on that lure, man,
But if somebody next to me is getting more bites

(18:28):
on a chrome mirror lure or a spook or whatever,
I'll have that skitter walk back in the box in
no time and have whatever that guy's throwing close as
I can get to it. Anyway, I'll have that one
looped on and tied and back in the air like
I'm a calf roper at the rodeo. In just six seconds,
I'm back in the water with a different lure. And

(18:50):
if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. By
the way, what now, I'm not gonna I don't want
to do this. I'm gonna go to Dave right now.
Let's do that click. What's up, Dave?

Speaker 4 (19:00):
Hey, I'm sitting here looking at the water. Just I
ain't even threw a bait in yet. I didn't wake up.
What happened? I didn't wake up till a quarter to seven,
but I could go.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Lord, I think that may have something to do with
how late you stayed up last night and what you
were doing then day No, no, I.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Went to the the what what you know Walgreens together
a flu shot and a single shot so probably can
knock me out and.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Getting your zat getting your jabs oget. Let me give
you a quick, quick Walgreen story. So I had to
pick up a prescription for my wife from down here
once at a pharmacy a little farther away than I'm
used to going. So I start driving and I can't
punch you in the stuff because of because I'm driving.
But I can use the voice controlled stuff. So I said,

(19:47):
give me the I mistakenly said give me the CBS pharmacy,
because we use them both everybody does on such and
such a street. And it popped up on there, and
I started following the directions, and it had me on
the freeway and it said take I ten east toward Beaumont.

(20:09):
I'm thinking, no, I know where that pharmacy is. I've
been there a few times, but that seems somewhat out
of the way. And it had me headed to a
CBS pharmacy on the same name street in Chicago, Illinois.
It was twelve hundred miles away and it was gonna
take me like two days to get there.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Like, oh my god, Hey, that's what. Hey, that's another
thing I told you about. Okay, Yeah, the triangulation and
when you can't you can't punch nothing the entry, you're
in the dead zone or somewhere. I'm going to go
probably today, I'm going to go and buy me and
brand new accomplish and keep it in my pocket at

(20:51):
all time, absolutely so I know where I'm at. And
then uh, and then try and relating stuff. Yeah, my
dad and my older brother who's a surveyor they taught us.
And then dropping the old coloross bottle with the weight
on it there when you get to the spot, you know,
that's that's that's classic there. Yeah, Kelly, Kelly from Conroa.

(21:12):
He finally come by last night about nine o'clock. He
brought me. He brought me some keen fish salad. Man,
I ain't even I haven't even tried it yet. I
put it in the coldest part of that ice box
in there, and uh, he said, yeah, just eat this
with some crackers. And he had his bathing suit on
and tanned out.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
To the deck.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
And he's a pretty handsome, most good guy. And I
looked at my wife and I said, quit looking at him.
They started laughing. No, he's one of the coolest guys.
And he can catch some croppy and I can't wait
till the tail the cropper coming back in. And I
got his phone number and everything. So yeah, but he
come to the house and and brought dropped that off.

(21:56):
And then right now, yeah, there's some kind of big
boat out there going. I don't know if I can
hear it.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, I can hear it.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
I think, Yeah, that's a that's a big boat. It's
it's putting the rooster tail that crazy right there? Oh lord, yeah,
but I mean the water slickers glass. Yeah, I got
me some uh Canadian long worms and I'm just gonna
sit out here for a little while. And then I
got to go home. Oh. I was telling the producer.
I went, I was going through all my well not

(22:25):
all my albums, but a bunch of them. I found
one by Marilyn Monroe, oh lord, and never even been open,
and then herb albut.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Oh yeah, you want to brass man? Sure?

Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the tea you want to brass man?
You know, that was the That was some classic stuff
back there.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
It was. It was very different than what's out there now.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
And then I found a Marlborough album on the moor, yeah,
and it's got all those songs on there, man, And
I'm like, wow, that's what you would hear in commercials
and stuff like that. And you're not supposed to do
that anymore, but you know, yeah, just now, don't smoke cigarettes.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
That was that was back when doctors were were promoting.
They would they would do endorsements for cigarette brands, and
in hindsight that that's pretty messed up.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
You know, Hey, my wife. He asked me this morning
when we was going to be doing the gallast and
I said, well, hang on, we'll figure out a trip.
You had to take a day off, and then first
thing I want to do to stop by and see
the cigar man over there.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, go and talk.

Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah, because I got to ask him a couple of
things about my barbecue smoke flavored segar. Okay, I already
got a band. Hey, I got a band sketched out
to g T D. He can he can do it guitar.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, that's cool. Man, all right, I'm at a break.
Don't hate to do it. Man, let me know if
I'll see videos. Oh man, what a character. He knows
as many people around town as probably the mayor does. Well,
not anymore. He's up in Conroe. Now he's up in Conroe,

(24:12):
but he's Gonnay. I would imagine he probably makes about
one friend today, just sitting out there watching that water,
watching the boats go by, watching little kids catch fish.
That's how you make friends, and just be out there
doing cool things that you like to do, where other
people who like the same things might show up. I
can't tell you how many people I met just walking

(24:34):
the surfside. Jettie driving up and down the beach on
a really pretty day looking for a place to jump
into water and wadefish because it was crowded and you'd
see somebody else kind of doing the same thing. And
as they're moving west and I'm moving east, I just
rolled my window down and kind of flag him down, said, hey, man,

(24:54):
you doing what I'm doing. Yeah, I'm looking for a
place to get in. Said, well, if you you find something,
I tell you what. Let's meet back here in ten minutes.
And if you find a place where the two of
us can get in, let's meet here and we'll both
go back and we'll fish it. And I made friends
with probably half a dozen people over You became pretty
good friends, not just acquaintances. One time you met them

(25:16):
on the beach and you see it, feel like you
like the same stuff, but then you never see them again.
But these were guys. We would start calling back and forth.
Hey man, I'm going tomorrow. You want to meet me
down there? Yeah, let's go. And we'd meet on the beach,
go fish for a couple hours, go get a hamburger
or something, then go back home to our lives and
our wives and our whatever. That's fun.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Man.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
When you're around people who like the same stuff you like,
good things are gonna happen. There's no question about that.
Speaking of good things, if you need some shooting help
before Dove season, a good thing for you to do
be to head out to American Shooting Centers on West
Timer Parkway between Katie and Highway six. Very easy to find.

(25:58):
If you're on West tim Or Parkway. You can't miss it.
You'll see it. It's on the north side of the road.
Giant berms out there look like the pyramids rising from
the Attics spillway, and there you will find ten trap
and skeep fields. You'll find several five stands setups around

(26:18):
the property, a beginner's wing shooting area, three complete Sporting
clays courses, which is pretty cool. That's because the new owner,
well I say new, he's been out there ten twelve years.
But the owner, Ed Riggy, is a Sporting Clay's fanatic
and he's really really good. If you ever get involved
in something where somebody says, let's put some money on

(26:41):
this round of Sporting Clays and Ed's shooting, just go
ahead and hand him your wallet. It's done. Great guy, though,
in all seriousness, great guy, a great instructor. He has
other professional instructors out there who can greatly help you
get ready for dove season if you're not already, deal
seasons right after that, deer seasons coming in, waterfowl seasons

(27:04):
coming in. They're coming at us like a house of
fire right now, and you better be ready because if
you're not, all you're gonna do is make noise and
waste AMMO, and neither one of those is a good outcome.
American Shootingcenters dot Com is the website a safe, fun
place to enjoy all the shooting sports. American Shootingcenters dot Com,

(27:26):
all these little pop up showers we're getting their kind
of daily reminders that you need to take care of
your trees before we get a big storm. Hopefully we
don't get one, but if we do, and your trees
aren't ready for that, aren't healthy, aren't well maintained, and
they could go down on your house, on your car, wherever.
That's not what you want. Protect your house. That's your

(27:49):
biggest investment really in collateral damage from negligence or trees
for your trees is just not gonna help you at all.
Get it either, prune them, get them removed, get them fed,
get them watered less, get them watered more. All you
gotta do is call Champions Tree Preservation and they will
send an arborus to the house to fully diagnose every

(28:10):
tree in your yard. If they need work, they can
tell you how much it's gonna cost, and how long
it's gonna take, and when they can do it. And
they have crews going all over town every day taking
care of people's trees. If they have to take one out,
they actually own a tree farm, so they can put
a Native Texas tree right back into that spot and
you can get started on getting some more shade that
well or that soon. Don't wait, give them a call,

(28:34):
get them out there. Two eight one three two zero
eighty two zero one two eight one three two zero
eighty two zero one, or go to championstree dot com.
I'm hi, welcome back. Thank you for listening the Dugpike
Show on Sports Talk seven ninety. I hadn't been to
Amarilla in a long time, A long time. Wells up there,

(28:58):
I believe. I'm pretty sure it was there for a
competitive shooting event many years ago, and I remember it
being a good experience, but also remember it being in
the middle of summer and hot as blazes. Oh my word,
but it's a dry heat. Well, yeah, it's still hot,
so is a convection of it. That's a dry heat too.

(29:20):
Seven one three seven ninety Email me Doug Pike at
iHeartMedia dot com. So far, I have gotten this Parks
of Parks and Wildlife Department news release from several people,
including the Parks of Wildlife Department, and I'm going to
jump into it right now because it's a it's a
it's not kind of a big deal, it's a really

(29:41):
big deal.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
To read from straight from the press release from Austin,
Texas game moord investigation known as Ghost Deer that was
wrapped in quotes has reached a possible conclusion after two
additional suspects turned themselves in on on felony charges. This
brings the total number of individuals. Have a seat and

(30:06):
listen to this total number of individuals implicated in the
case to twenty four with approximately Uh, Frankie, you want
to play a quick game, Yeah, you got twenty four guys.
They've been busted on some pretty serious and not so
serious charges with wildlife stuff. Approximately how many charges are

(30:28):
going to be filed against those guys across eleven Texas counties.
So it's four guys, twenty four guys, twenty four excuse me,
twenty four guys. And I'll give you five seconds because
then you got to answer Jeff's call. Okay, Oh yeah, okay,
Now what do you got? How many charges?

Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
How many charges shooting from the sixty five seventy somewhere
in there, fourteen hundred, Thank you very much. Okay, call back, Jeff.
It's okay. We were playing a game. Calls back, Jeff.
So I'm not going to tell you who these people
are because they they're in the midst of a whole
lot of trouble and I'm not gonna name them because
it's all it's all evidence, but nothing's been adjudicated yet.

(31:07):
But the bottom line is there are What was going
on apparently is a lot of hocus pocus with moving
deer around the state. There are very strict rules about
moving deer around the state, how they can be moved,
what you have to the paperwork, you have to fill out,
all of these things, all kinds of activity, all kinds

(31:30):
of documentation, very little of which apparently was actually happening
within the law for a lot of these people. And
I'm reading the ages of these people. The youngest I
saw on here is a nineteen year old and the
oldest was fifty nine. And that's a lot of phone calls,

(31:53):
that's a lot of emails, that's a lot of text
messages going back and forth. I don't know exactly what
was going on, but I know that I'm pretty glad
that they've gotten where they are, The Parks and Wildlife
Department has gotten where it is uh with this one,
and hopefully there will be more information forthcoming. And my

(32:17):
gut tells me this is going to be kind of
like what went on with that Russian dossier on a
not so grand scale as that we're not talking about
tipping a national election here, but when it comes to
Texas and it's white tailed deer, that's a big deal
to most of us, and it should be. It should

(32:37):
be a huge deal to most of us. And I
got to hunch the canary that sings the loudest is
going to spend the last the least time in the
cage there. There's going to be some of these people
whose attorneys are going to tell them, Hey, it's in
your best interest to just just spill every bean in
the bag. Let them know exactly what was going on,

(32:57):
who was doing it, how it was being done, all that,
and maybe just maybe we can get you some leniency.
But yeah, operation what is it? I got a ghost Deer,
an Operation Ghost Deer. Coming to a conclusion. There's a
cool case that went down many many years ago that
was called Operation yard Dog. And I've talked about why

(33:21):
it was called that, and not gonna go into it again.
If you don't know, shoot me an email and I'll
send you the short version. But it was These people
are creative. Not only are they excellent investigators, are also
very creative. And you'd never thought you couldn't, you couldn't
come up on your own. I don't believe with what

(33:41):
was going on in that operation and why they named it,
that you could probably figure out an East Texas investigation
into allegations of hunting out of season, of fishing violations,
all kinds of stuff that used to go on. I
feel I want to feel like East Texas has kind
of cleaned up its own act a little bit and

(34:03):
most of the people are abiding by the law. I
can't know that with certainty, but the people I've met
in the last five or ten years from that part
of the state certainly are our good law abiding people,
to the best of my knowledge. El Cubano Cigars. Speaking
of Dave, I hope you're still hanging on. When you

(34:23):
go down to Galveston, you need to go by and
meet Manny Lopez at El Cubano Cigars. There are two
places you might see him on any given day, actually
probably a half a dozen because he's running all over
town all the time. The two main places would be
the cigar manufacturing facility slash Smoking Lounge in Texas City,

(34:43):
right there on Main Street. Or you might see him
at the League City Smoking Lounge, which is really cool.
It's got kind of an old Havana flavor. Just when
you drive up to it. It's the open air, it's
gonna be warm, it's gonna be a little muggy on
a muggy day, be sealing, fans running, and it's just
a really comfortable place to go have yourself a fine cigar.

(35:07):
He makes one hundred and fifty something different kinds of
cigars they're rolling. He and other Cubans are rolling those
cigars at Texas City. Every single day. They ship thousands
per week of cigars and they're one of only four
dozen such places in the entire country. In the entire country.
Day was talking about custom banded cigars. He does that, man,

(35:30):
he does that. He built a box of cigars for
us over here with the iHeart logo. They're really cool looking,
they really are. He'll come to an event for you,
a golf tournament, a wedding reception, whatever, any place that
you want your guest to have the opportunity to enjoy
a fine cigar or take one home with them. Maybe
a client, one of your clients would love something like this.

(35:53):
He'll create a special cigar, specially banded just for them,
or he'll come right there and roll cigars right at
your event. Elcubinocigars dot Com one of the coolest, nicest
guys I've known in a long time. I was so
glad to make his acquaintance, and I'm gonna keep speaking
for him as long as I can, as long as

(36:14):
he'll let me. Cubano lcubinocigars dot com, lcubanocigars dot com.
Kobe Stevens Outdoor Apparel and by outdoor, I mean, well
mostly golf. Kobe Stevens, the company was started originally as
a golf attire company. Fantastic place, fantastic You've got a

(36:35):
store up on the north side of town out Champions Way,
but online you can see everything they do, well, you
can see everything they offer, but you certainly can't see
everything Kobe Stevens does. Because what Kobe Stevens does that
a lot of these big name golf clothing companies don't
don't do, is give back to the community in a

(36:57):
huge way. Almost every time I try to get in
touch with Kobe and see if he can go play
with golf with me on a Monday, I can't. This
is his patented every time I call him, Hey, Kobe,
can you play golf Monday. No, I'm going to a tournament.
We're helping sponsor the thing. And that's that's almost every week,
at least one They give back almost as much as

(37:19):
they get great people, great attire, and whether they've got
kid sizes, they've got women's clothes, they've got grown man
sizes up to I think four X that will pretty
much cover most of us. And moving into the outdoor
apparel arena as well, we'll be having an announcement of

(37:39):
some sort here, hopefully very soon. You're gonna look good,
you're gonna feel great. You're gonna be proud to wear
his stuff, and he'll be proud to have you in it.
Kobe Stevens dot com. The man's name is Kobe Gallic.
His partner got guy's last name is Stevens. That's how
that came about a long time ago. And he is
he is full gear forward on taking care of anybody

(38:04):
and everybody who wants to try his gear. Kobe Stevens
dot com is a website. Go check it out. Kobe
Stevens dot com. Eight fifty one. It is good heavens
already eight fifty one. Okay, okay, we can do that.
We've got a lot to talk about too. We'll get
to the FedEx Cup race. We'll get to that in

(38:24):
the nine o'clock hour. A lot of things still to
talk about. By the way, would somebody please want to
go to the field tonight, They would have to send
a bus. They couldn't send a limo. They'd have to
send a bus. Were are so many people down and
unfortunately the guys we brought up are good they're good
baseball players, there's no question, because they've been keeping us

(38:47):
alive kind of sort of. They've been keeping us alive
for a pretty long time. But they're not They're not
keeping up with the pace that we were setting before
the dominoes started to fall. And I'm concerned about that,
I really am. I'm seeing little mistakes, little defensive mistakes,

(39:09):
little mistakes at the plate, little mistakes running bases. Pardon me.
That just don't stack up for a team that has
plans to go deep into the playoffs. We got lucky
last night, very fortunate that the Orioles just made more
dumb mistakes than we did in what was at twelve innings.

(39:31):
I had to set up and why I couldn't. I
couldn't turn off the game when it went to extra innings.
It was already I was already upset enough that they
let it get away from them in that way, and
it was yeah, we we finally got that done. Thank goodness,
Holy cal thank goodness. Seven one three two one two

(39:53):
five seven ninety Email me Doug packet Ieartmedia dot Com.
I yes, yesterday, there's a couple of things that we
can play with in the nine o'clock hour. After I
briefly work on real golf. Rick Bisce shared an interesting
game that he and some of his buddies play around
the campfire sometimes, and we could probably come up with

(40:15):
a version of it here. What they do. They start
with a scenario in which they talk about being isolated
and just lost basically for eight hours in the woods.
I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and ramp that up
because it will make the decisions harder. And you'll see
what I'm talking about in a second. I'm gonna ramp

(40:36):
it up to twenty four hours. It's three o'clock in
the afternoon. You're not gonna see anybody, You're not gonna
hear anybody. You're not gonna have anything going on for
you but you and your resources for the next twenty
four hours, no communication, know nothing. You are on your
own for twenty four hours, which to anybody who's been
in Survivor or naked and afraid would just kind of

(40:59):
snicker out day. We can do that standing on our heads.
But here's the deal. You can bring three things with you.
Three things with you, and in one of the scenarios
Rick was telling me about, I think somebody had like
a shotgun, shotgun shells, and a hunting license. You can't
do anything illegal. Everything you do has to be legal.

(41:22):
So one guy had that, the next guy gave up
the hunting license or did he give up? What did
he give up? You can give up one thing and
replace it with one other thing. And I think maybe
he gave up the hunting license and decided he'd want
a box of matches or something like that, whatever it was.

(41:42):
But you can see how this could get really interesting
and complicated. If there's three things to begin with, and
you can keep two of them, but you have to
give up one of them and replace it with something
that you would find more useful. And one of the
things I would probably be eyeballing, uh, a large plastic tarp.

(42:06):
I would be eyeballing string or a cord of some sort,
probably a little heavier than string. I would go. I
would go for a big tarp. I would go for cord.
And I'll hold on, let me go talk to faux
pro and then I'll figure out what my third thing
is gonna be. Faux Pro, what's up?

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Man?

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Well going on?

Speaker 4 (42:25):
Well?

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Man, I'm all right, let me finish this coffee, looking
for my weed whacker battery.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
And do a little weed whacking.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Then a probably probably go up there, you know, our
new fish and Lasnes for a year running down the
New Canes and cat Academy and some just some good
stuff down there. But uh, but uh, I had a
couple of props for you real quick, for a couple
of your sponsors that I have a I need some advice.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Okay, come on, So, uh, first day, you.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Totally ruined the way I go to Schoenberg. Now I
cannot go that way without stopping Belleville absolutely market at
least one of the trips. So that place really me
So thanks for that. But yeah, that's a good ruin. Also,
you know, you just talked about it a minute ago.
You know, Kobe Stevens. You know, I urge, you know,
I urge your listeners to go check out the website

(43:17):
because not only does he have cool stuff, he has
cool fishing shirts fifty percent off for the for the
first time buyer. But he's got a really good seale area.
I mean there's like these, you know, the real good
hooded fishing shirts like I wear for eighteen bucks and yeah,
like fifty to sixty dollars shirts I wear. I wear
the gear to work. It's it's nice stuff, you know.

(43:38):
The polos are great for work because that's that's what
I wear. But the good props on that stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
It's a good guy too. That's that's something I like.
Everybody on my list, every one of Manny h Kobe,
the guys out at Belleville. They're all great people. That's
what I like about them most.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah. Yeah, so I got each I'm trying to scratch. Okay,
and uh so here's here's what I'm thinking, and you
tell me what's wrong about it, and it I'll fix it.
And I'm going to academy. Okay, So I got an
itch to go down down to the coast. Okay, I
like to throw. I like to throw a big pencil
popper because I can throw it in a quarter of
a mile.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
But my thought is an eight footish type spinning rod
with a decent three to four sized spinning reeal nothing
expenses and uh something I could not go out too deep,
but I can still chuck a quarter mile. Maybe some
twenty pound braid something like that. What we find you
think would be a good starter setup? Wuld that be good?

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Twenty pound braids. Good, just put some probably put some
twenty five or thirty pound floor carbon in front of it,
and uh, okay, you know, leader up. You're gonna have
to You're gonna have to use a leader. I mean,
just to keep the especially if the water looks like
you want it to look, it's gonna you're gonna need
to keep that braid out of their eyesight. And then
just sling your top waters and have some fun. This

(44:53):
is you're doing it at the right time of year.
I guarantee you that if there's any greenish color to
that water at all. Oh, you ought to be able
to find some fish and then some friends.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Down there this week. And uh, I think I sent
you maybe one or two of the posts are down there.
You know that Freeport surf side area. I know, well,
going out there about knee deep and they're not catching trophies.
No expect to catch trophies in this part of Texas.
But I just want to get bit walk out, walk
out to.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
The second bar. Okay, you don't need to go past
the second bar, but depending on the tide, uh, the
first is you walk off the beach up on this
end of the coast. You're gonna walk through the little
trough that's probably gonna be maybe waist deep, and then
you'll come not even that the first one, and then
you'll get up on a sandbar where it'll be knee
deep again, and then you can walk through that one

(45:44):
and get out to where it's probably gonna be waist
deep maybe a little bit more. You don't want to
go too much more if there's any kind of surf
at all, but uh, and and just stop there. There
might be a couple of heroes out there standing on
the third bar with their arms over their heads and
and you know, getting lap waves lapping at their necks.

(46:05):
But that's just stupid. There's no need to do that. Okay,
go on the second bar, and don't necessarily throw straight
out and straight back when you're standing on that bar.
You got to realize that the fish are going to
be mostly in that gut, Okay, And so instead of
throwing straight out and reeling straight back, throw up and
down that gut and you're gonna keep the lure in

(46:27):
where the fish are more likely to be for a
longer time. That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Oh, yeah, it makes perfect.

Speaker 5 (46:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Is there any is there any value to maybe before
you before you get to your spot. Is there any
value to maybe driving up and down the beach like
I would looking for bait or looking.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
At her Oh yeah, look for BAITA absolutely, look for
finger mullet. Yeah, if there's finger mullet, there may or
may not be seagulls diving on it because they might
be eating free does off the beach or something like that.
But if you got finger mullet, you got clean, and
you can get out of that second bar, you probably
get some bites. Now, I'll tell you something else too.

(47:05):
If you're gung ho and you get down there, if
you spend the night in your gung ho and you
get on the beach, like when it's still dark and
starting to crack light over there in the southeast, then
by all means, don't even get your feet wet before
you start fishing. I mean, throw right in that very
first little bunch of water. That's cliff Web taught me that. Well,

(47:25):
Actually I knew it up here a long time ago.
But down there, there's some really big fish in the
first gut down there. Because it'll be three four feet
of water up here, that first gut's only going to
be a foot and a half deep, but that's plenty
of water to float a trout and they will be
in there. Don't just walk through fish to try to
go get the fish. Give it ten fifteen minutes of

(47:47):
honest work up and down that beach. See if you
can't get a bit close first. You're not gonna lose anything.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
It's not like the fish are gonna go all the
way out to an oil rig just because the sun
came up. They'll still be there for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
My goal is to keep my feet dried and throw
a few hours, catch a few fish, and go find me.
I'll be searching for a good place breakfast downer. I'm
a big breakfast guy.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
All right. Man, Hey, I'm looking up and I got
to go because we're supposed to do a network rejoin
and all that. Real quick, Faux Pro. I'll talk to
you again. Let me know when you make your plans,
I might try and meet you.

Speaker 6 (48:20):
Sounds good, audios all right, Holy cow Bellville Meat Market
speaking of like Faux Pro did anything and everything you
want for a delicious meal.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
They serve lunch and dinner from ten to seven, seven
days a week. You can get pulled pork, you can
get homemade hot dogs for the kids, or a delicious
traditional barbecue menu. Serve that way stuff, pepper stuffed pork,
tender stuff, mushrooms. Let Belleville Meat Market handle all of
that stuff for you. All of that stuff. They're on
Highway thirty six, about fifteen minutes north of Sialy, fifteen

(48:53):
minutes south of Hempstead. Very easy to find is go
to the middle of Bellville. Roll down your windows. When
you smell smoke, barbecue smoke, just follow your nose. Fantastic place,
been there forty something years. Great people, Belleville MeetMarket dot Com.
If you can't get there, they'll ship it to your door.
Belleville MeetMarket dot Com nine oh four on Sports Talk

(49:17):
seven to ninety The Doug Pike Show. Thank you all
for listening. Let's get over to.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
The lick here and I'm going to the BMW, going
to BMW Championship Leaderboard, specifically, if I can get it
to load up for me.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Come on now, come on now, out there at Caves
Valley Golf Club up in Owings hill Owings Mills. Excuse me.
Robert McIntyre. Robert McIntyre held on the Steady Eddy yesterday,
shot sixty eight to go along with a sixty two
of sixty four on Thursday and Friday. He will tee

(49:55):
it up today at sixteen under par. He goes out
at twelve, right alongside the guy I told you was
gonna be there, Scotty Scheffler. It's not like some great profit.
I didn't have a view into the future. That just
made sense that the world's number one wasn't gonna let
this guy run away with it. Ludwig Oberg. Scotty's at twelve,

(50:18):
by the way, he teas it up four shots back,
but hey, would you bet against him? I wouldn't. Lud
Big Oberg is at ten under part. He has six
shots off the lead. The lead of Robert McIntyre, I
think is going to I just I just feel a

(50:40):
stumble out of the gate for McIntyre. And I'm not
trying to jinx the guy or anything, but I think
he's in a position where he's gonna have a lot
of pressure on him internally, and in golf, more than
any other sport, internal pressure tends to turn into external mistakes.
So we'll see how that works out. McIntyre at sixteen,

(51:02):
Shepherd at twelve, Oberg at ten, Sam Burns and Harry
Hall at eight, Thanks for playing, Maverick McNeely. Tommy Fleetwood
at seven, thanks for playing all of the sixes, all
of the fives. They're gonna be playing to try to
bring themselves up into that top thirty that are gonna
play next week, and it's gonna be it's gonna be

(51:25):
a dogfight. There are a lot of guys tied up
and tangled up in where they stand, and you either
make it or you don't. These guys have been working
all year trying to find their way into that final
group next weekend on Sunday down in Atlanta, and good

(51:46):
luck to them, good luck to them all. It's amazing
to watch these guys play. And again you can go
look up the the Blooper rules from the PGA Tour
and you can see these guys make all kinds of
bad shots. Somebody asked Scotty Scheffler the other day after
he I don't remember it was a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe he just dead shanked that ball out of the bunker.

(52:08):
And somebody asked him how that happened, and I think, sarcastically,
Scheffler answered very calmly with exactly how a ball winds
up going almost dead right off his club base. He
just said, well, here's how it happens. This is the
hozzle and this is the face of the club and

(52:30):
normally you want to square it up to hit the
ball straight, and if it hits this part, it's gonna
go out right, and gave the guy way more, way
more answer than he deserved for asking a question like that.
That's just not I think the guy had to have
realized that Scheffler was messing with him without appearing to

(52:53):
mess with him at some point in that answer, and
probably just wanted to shrink into the corner where seven
one three two one two five seven ninety email on
me Dugpike at iHeartMedia dot com. By the way, this
time of year, as we start meandering around the woods,
if you will, we're walking around, we're feeding, filling feeders, where,

(53:18):
checking fences, where checking deer stands, getting the wasps and
yellow jackets out of them, and owls. Oh my god,
you haven't lived, you haven't. You don't know how fast
your heart can beat until you climb up into the
deer stand an hour, thirty minutes whatever before the first

(53:40):
crack of light, and it's been quiet the whole way.
Maybe you heard some kyouts way way over in the distance.
It's you're tippy toeing into your stand and you parked
your vehicle a quarter mile away, and you're walking in
in the dark, no light but starlight. It's dead still,
and you take that gun off your shoulder, you make

(54:02):
sure it's unloaded. You climb up that ladder, you open
the door. You're still down low because you got to
put that rifle in there first. You want to lay
it in there in the corner, standing up in a
corner opposite where you're going in. And just as you
get your head up into that blind a little bit,

(54:26):
and out goes a giant owl. I've had that happen
to me once, and I hope, I just pray it
never happens again. I almost fell off the ladder, I
really did, and I was braced. I thought there could
be anything. I'm telling myself the whole way there. There
could be anything in this deer stand right now. Maybe
a person down in South Texas could be a person
in there sleeping. Who knows. But I got the door

(54:47):
open and I got my stuff in, thank goodness. So
I had both hands in secure positions, and just as
I got high enough, I guess did owl just got
tired of watching me come into his house what he
thought was his house. Is a squatter, that's what he was.
He was an owl squatter. That's a new subspecies of

(55:10):
owl that the squatter owl. And it'll scare the pants
off of you. And just about took me off that ladder,
it really did. But anyway, there are those out there
much lesser issues. I guess, well, I say lesser issues. Chiggers.
They're always out there. But it seems to me that
the more you're in the woods, the more likely you

(55:32):
are to run into them. And if you do, you're
gonna wish you had prepared for that. There's all kinds
of potions and concoctions. Read up on them. Sulfur powder, really,
just sulfur powder around your socks is a good idea.
Something else that works a lot is to go ahead
and tuck your socks, or tuck your pants into your socks.
If your socks are just against your leg and your

(55:54):
pant legs are outside of that, the chickers jump on
your ankles and start crawling up. They keep crawling, they
keep crawling until they hit a bridge or a fence,
if you will, and that fence is gonna be your
belt line. They're just gonna keep crawling up until they
get something that kind of stops them. Your pants aren't
gonna stop them. They're gonna be pretty loose. And I

(56:16):
don't know why you'd be wearing skin tight pants on
a hunting trip, but if you are, maybe that'll keep
them off of you. But the pants that I wear hunting,
I tuck my pants into my socks so that those
little animals can crawl as high as they want, and
then they'll just jump off. I've never had them get
me around the neck. That's usually around the belt, and

(56:36):
it becomes very uncomfortable within a matter of hours after
you've been after you've walked through a bunch of chiggers.
That's my buddy Philip. My buddy Philip is a chigger magnet.
Every time we went hunting at his family's place down
south of here, I'd let him walk down the trail first,
because if there was a chigger within two hundred yards,

(56:57):
it would be on him. I could have walked through
there in a in a speedo and not gotten a
chigger on me because they would all be on him.
They loved him, and I was so glad. Seven one
three two one two five seven ninety Email me Dugpike
at iHeartMedia dot com. I got something else you need
to watch out for if you're walking around in the
dark in the woods, and I'll tell you about that

(57:18):
when we get back. Yeah, Frankie tell Sherry to hang
on and we'll take care of Sherry when we get
back from from this break. Shooter's Corner Palmer Harwa at
twenty nine Street in Texas City, owned by Jerry and JTK,
the father and son team who happened to be two
of the best, absolute best gunsmiths in i'd say Southeast Texas.

(57:40):
It's probably a bigger range than that. As good as
they are, I've said, I don't know how many people
down there who had trouble with their guns and just said, hey,
so and so and so and so's tried to fix
this gun. They couldn't do anything with it. Take it
down to Shooter's Corner and it comes back fixed every
time I talked to him. One of a big issue
one guy had once he was being told his repair

(58:01):
or replacement was going to cost anywhere from like three
four hundred dollars to about eight hundred something like that.
And I talked to Jerry a couple of weeks after
I sended this guy down there. He said, oh, yeah,
I remember him coming in. There was just a little
just a little burr up in there, and I just
kind of got that burr out of there and gave
him his rifle. I said, would you charge him? Nothing
took me five minutes, No big deal. Somebody in town

(58:24):
somewhere was trying to take advantage of that guy, and
he just didn't know it. Not gonna happen. At Shooter's Corner,
Palmer Highway, twenty ninth Street, Guns Ammo, hunting supplies, hunting licenses,
Go get your combo license right there Shooter's Corner if
you're down that way. Been in business forty plus years,
and they give a discount to anybody who wears a

(58:45):
badge for a living. The Shooters cornertx dot com. The
Shooters Cornertx dot Com nine eighteen on Sports Talk seven
to ninety The Dugpike Show, Thank you for listening. I
think Frankie's in there sit chatting up, chatting away with Sherry,
and we'll get her on the phone and just minut
it I think, I don't know. I don't know who

(59:07):
he's talking to exactly right now. Anyway, I did get
an email from David when I was talking about hunting
licenses and stuff, and what I wanted to share from
David is that he reminded me and anybody else who's
about to go buy a license to make sure that
the clerk, and depending on where you go, some of

(59:29):
these clerks may forget because it might be the first
day they've ever sold a license, but depending on where
you are, make sure that they if you're gonna hunt
any birds at all this year, that they do that
hip certification, that Hunter Information Program stuff. They're gonna ask
you how many ducks you killed. They're gonna ask you

(59:49):
how many doves, how many geese, how many cranes. I
think maybe even how many rails and gallon ules. I'm
not sure exactly how many questions there are, but just
get him a number, give him a ballpark number. If
it's zero, say zero, if it's twenty eight, say twenty eight.
A lot of people hunt a lot, and a lot

(01:00:10):
of people don't hunt much, but all those numbers matter
toward making up season dates and bag limits and all
of that. So just make sure you get that because
without that certification on there as a bird hunter, your
license is incomplete and that could cost you a ticket.
And sometimes even though it's not well, ultimately, anything that's

(01:00:34):
on that license is your responsibility, and if there's a problem,
it's your fault for not catching it before you walked
out the door. And that's I had a good friend
of mine, and I've talked about this before. Good friend
of mine took his son's duck hunting down in South
Texas or about the middle of the coast, and game
warden comes up to the blind and he had asked

(01:00:57):
me he wasn't familiar with waterfowl hunting it all, and
he had asked me to explain to him exactly what
he needed. I wrote it all down for him. He
took the list to the store and said, I need
all of this so that I can take my son's honey,
and he was sold a license that included everything on

(01:01:19):
the list except the federal waterfowl stamp, and the game
warden bowed up on him for it and ended up
ticketing him in front of his son, which I thought
was kind of uncool. When the guy had had honestly
gone in good faith. He he ponied up for everything

(01:01:40):
that guy sold him and was told that he was
getting everything he needed. And that didn't work. That didn't work.
That game warden hate letter of the law, and I did.
I called two game warden friends of mine after I
heard what had happened, and neither of them said they
would have warned him, but they wouldn't have ticketed him

(01:02:03):
in front of his son for for that, because it
really truly wasn't that guy's fault. He was trying desperately
to do exactly what he should have done. One of
them said he wouldn't have done it because it was
the clerk's fault and he ought to go straight back
to that store and tell him. It almost cost him
a ticket, and the other one said, unless somebody's done
something just egregious, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna write
them up in front of their children. And that's old

(01:02:26):
school game. More than there. They have that leeway, they
have that opportunity if they choose to exercise it, to
either warn you or cite you. In most cases seven
one three, two, one two five seven ninety email me
Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com. The other thing that
sometimes it's more startling than chiggers. Chiggers are gonna just

(01:02:46):
wait until you get home. They're not They're not like
fire ants, where fire ants will get all over you
and then within a minute or so or two or three,
they'll sound the horn and all the fire ants will
bite you all at once, every one of them that's
on you. I watched grown men shed almost all their

(01:03:10):
clothes in the middle of rice fields during goose hunts,
at the very beginning of the goose hunts, because and
I'd warned them, look, we're gonna lie on these rice
levees here before you set all your stuff down, before
you get comfortable. Understand that fire ants don't like to
be in the water either, so they come to the
dry ground, and the dry ground is on the levees.

(01:03:33):
If you don't put your flashlight on that levee and
make sure that there's not an ant bed within ten
yards of where you're gonna make camp there, be prepared,
and sure enough, right about first light, somebody just jump
up and start peeling layers off and get down to
their skivvies and then start wiping fire ants off their legs.

(01:03:56):
Some it's usually a pretty funny thing too, unless it's
you and it's happened to almost I would say that
during the peak of goose hunting back there on the
prairie west of town, it happened at one time or
another among regular hunters, among very active hunters, people who

(01:04:16):
went the most at least once, and maybe a second
time if they didn't learn the first time, and then
after that. I don't know of anybody who got burned
by fire ants three times, because you get really sick
and tired of it, and it hurts. The other thing
that I was going to talk about is the big
orb weaver spiders that can weave orbs, well weave webs.

(01:04:43):
These things, I mean, the webs that these things build
would almost it would stop a frail A frail elderly
person on a walker probably couldn't get through one of
those webs. It would stop a toddler probably couldn't get
through one of those webs. And no matter where it
is you want to walk early in the morning in

(01:05:03):
the woods, they're probably going to be if there's trees
to the left of you within fifteen feet and trees
to the right of you, within fifteen feet thirty feet
all together ten yards first down territory. They'll go all
the way to the high part of the tree and
then just take a nose dive. They'll spring off that

(01:05:23):
limb over toward the other tree. As soon as they
get one little crossbeam built, it's game on. And they
build big, heavy webs. You've ever walked into one in
the dark, you know what I'm talking about. It feels
like somebody's just wrapping spaghetti around your face. There's a
spider that lives outside my back door. Between the back

(01:05:44):
door and the garage, there's a little breezeway there, and
that spider builds a little at least one or two
layer web between the roof of that little eve, the
eve of that little roof on the on the breezeway
down to the trash can, and it's it's kind of

(01:06:06):
at about a forty five degree angle. And almost every morning,
because I'm so stupid, I don't remember. When I walk
out the door, almost every morning, I take the little
shortcut between the house and the garbage can instead of
going all the way around, and I walk through there
and I get a spider web right across my face
every single morning I have not learned. Fortunately, it's a

(01:06:27):
little little spider and it's a little web. If it
was an orb weaver, he might have trapped me and
eat me on a couple of mornings when I was
really tired. They're they're tough, man, they really are. I
took I don't know how many pictures of orb weaver webs.
They were really cool. I enjoyed doing that. T him
real quick, up, Frankie, and I'll get him before the break.

(01:06:48):
Let's do that. Here we go, hey, Rick, right to
the front of the line. Man, you better be ready
what you got.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Let's get it. He's talking about the spider web. And
did you see the picture I sent you the spider I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Did, man, Yeah, that's one of those or weaver webs.
They can get a lot bigger and a lot tougher too.

Speaker 5 (01:07:06):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
I'm sure you've walked into a few, well, I have.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
And they can swing around, they can go far. But
that picture I sent you, that that that web this
morning was not there yesterday at seven o'clock in the
It doesn't take them along, does I just want you
to zoom in on that and look how much spinning
or whatever it is it. Oh yeah, that's a big spider.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Oh no doubt whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Anyway, I just wanted to check it out. But yeah,
that's just amazing how fast they can do. I mean,
that's less than twelve I mean I saw it this morning,
that sunrise.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
It's incredible, that really is. When I'm looking at it,
and I'm looking at probably a thousand different connections in
there somewhere to get from the grass up to the
tree and then back down and out to wherever it
goes out to the right in the picture and anchors
up somewhere over there. He's gonna that's like a catcher's mit. Man,

(01:08:02):
he's gonna catch something.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
I don't know how he can create the whatever it's
made out of that much in that short period of time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
That's a very good point. I don't ye know what
what are they eating that they can turn that into
web material that fast. I didn't even thought about that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
Holy cow, Well they sure they sure that one or
whoever it was, they didn't have time to eat anything.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
No, holy cow, it just built the whole.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
I said it to Scott.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
No, we'll see the Scott's gonna know the answer.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
He might he just might. All right, man, Hey, it's
always good, always a pleasure, right, thanks buddy Audios. Yeah,
that was Yeah, that spider picture is pretty good. You
ought to post that, man, that's a pretty good one.
I've got some back at the house when I was
really shooting pictures and taking it very seriously. I've got
some photographs of spider webs back at the house that

(01:08:56):
just just amazed me. They're just so big and every
now and then and you'll see a little bird stuck
in one if you're out in the right spots, some
poor little bird just flying around trying to find a
cricket to eat, or a grasshopper or a mosquito or whatever,
and you run into one of those, and it's just
like spider man stuff. Hence the name, I guess, huh.

(01:09:18):
Riceland Waterfowl Club. I talked about them right at the
very beginning of the program, briefly because I was thinking
about how soon all these hunting seasons are coming at us.
And now I'm going to tell you again that if
you are not satisfied with where you hunted waterfowl last year,
where you hunted ducks, maybe a few geese, maybe a
few cranes where you hunted teal deal seasons only what

(01:09:41):
a week and a half after dub season. It's gonna
come at us very quickly. And if you want to
be part of probably one of the most outstanding, certainly
one of the longest lived waterfowl operations on the prairie
west of town, Riceland water Club. Waterfowl Club is it.
David pruittt owns and operates that thing and has for

(01:10:04):
fifty years, five zero years. This is the golden anniversary
of Riceland Waterfowl Club. And I guarantee you, after knowing
a lot of the guys out there, if you're not
doing it right, those people aren't coming back. And right
now he's got room for a few more. There is attrition.
A lot of older hunters have just gotten too old

(01:10:25):
to do it, or passed on or whatever. But there's
room for a couple of more groups still, according to David.
And if you get dialed in, what you're going to
get access to is thousands of acres of prime water.
Not talking about a bunch of dry fields with one
puddle in the middle of them. I'm talking about thousands
of acres of water blinds that are at least a

(01:10:47):
quarter mile apart and all brushed up so that ducks
can't see in there unless you're jumping up and down
like a toad frog. And he doesn't do any guided
hunting at all on any of that club land, which
is very important, very important for you as a paying
member of a club. You want the access. It's like

(01:11:09):
having private access to a golf club, a country club.
But they have a tournament out there every weekend, a
professional tournament. Well, no, they don't do that at rice Land.
That's a very good way to look at it. Actually,
this is all amateur avid amateur duck hunters, and you
can get your group out there. Your group can have

(01:11:31):
a spot every day if you want to get out
there and get gung ho about it. If you only
want to go by yourself one day and nobody in
the group can go with you, he'll network around and
find one of the other groups that'll probably welcome you
into their spread. It's the fantastic operation. He runs it
so that the choice of blinds is made the night before.

(01:11:51):
You don't all have to meet in one spot in
the middle of nowhere. The choices are made the night
before so that when you go to bed. You know
exactly where your head the morning. You and all your
club member friends and your guests. You've got a six
man group and only two club members are going bring
four guests. That's fine. Get all the details from David.

(01:12:12):
The more he talks to you, the more you're gonna
understand why I'm telling you. If you want a better
duck hunting experience this year, starting this year and on
for as long as David is running the show, check
out Riceland Waterfowl Club. Go to the website Ricelandwaterfowl Club
dot com. Ricelandwaterfowl Club dot com. One more time for

(01:12:34):
Champions Tree Preservation. No fool here we are. There's stuff
out in the Atlantic. There's stuff kind of trying to
get in here every now and then, and sooner or
later it's going to and if your trees aren't ready,
you could have a big problem. You could lose some
of your really big, really beautiful trees that you've had
in your yard for ten, twenty thirty years. You don't

(01:12:54):
want that to happen. Get Champions Tree Preservation out there.
They'll send an arborist right to your house. That person
will diagnose your trees, every one of them and let
you know what it's gonna take to make sure that
they can weather a storm. I learned a lot when
when Irwin Costelanos came to my house. I earned a
learned a ton about overwatering trees. Who knew you could

(01:13:17):
overwater a thirty year old giant oak tree. You can,
and a lot of people do these days because they
don't understand the needs of the tree versus the needs
of all the other landscape. I learned from that I did,
and you can too. And if they need to prune
the trees, you can have them prune them, or you
can get somebody else to do it. You can do

(01:13:38):
it yourself if you want to. If it needs deep feeding,
they can do it for you, or you can do
it yourself if you want to. It doesn't matter. He's
just gonna come out there and make sure that your
trees are safe and sound and ready to go, and
worst case scenario, a tree has to come out. They
have all the equipment to do any kind of work
to your trees that you could possibly have done. And

(01:13:59):
on top of that, they own a tree farm where
they grow Texas native trees, so you could get something
you can put back in that space and as soon
as it grows up a little bit, starting joining the
same shade you had from your old tree. Championstree dot
com is the website. Go there, grab the phone number,
make a phone call, and get them there before we

(01:14:19):
get one of those you know, what's that I don't
want to have come through here? Championstree dot com by
Welcome back, nine thirty nine on Sports Talk seven ninety
The Dugpike Show. Thank you for listening. I certainly do
appreciate it. A lot of a lot of head scratching
going on amongst my my emailers this morning. Back to

(01:14:44):
that deer hunting bust, or not deer hunting, but deer raising,
the deer transportation thing, there was kind of a wondering
of who it was exactly who first noticed all these
deer being trans forwarded and alerted a local game ward
maybe to the first the first efforts toward this. I

(01:15:07):
think it started. And I'm looking at this email I
got back in February maybe, and might have even been
February of last year. This has been going on, the
investigation at least has been going on for quite some time,
and it's possible you have to think when you read
about an isolated incident that involves that type of activity,

(01:15:32):
there's a good chance that the Parks and Wildlife Department
may have been working on this for a lot longer
than just from when that one incident became public, because especially,
I would guess with an undercover operation like that, you
have to just kind of hold your council if there

(01:15:56):
are bigger fish that you're trying to catch and you
don't want to let let on that there's any investigation
going on. So sometimes you just kind of have to
rewrite your press release in the now so that it
doesn't jeopardize the future of a prosecution. At some point.

(01:16:17):
There's a it's a it's a game of chess, it
really is. I can't imagine how complex being in the
world of undercover police work might be. Undercover law enforcement
of where high state the states are always high in
anything like that, there's always a chance that somebody's going

(01:16:39):
to get seriously hurt or killed. And to be able
to manage those operations and keep all the actual personnel,
the undercover people safe has to be one of the
most tremendous responsibilities anywhere in the planet. So hats off
to anybody who does that job. Holy cam, I I

(01:17:00):
tip my cap, I really do. What is David gonna
send me? Let me see? Oh yeah, yeah, you know what.
I'm okay. Now, I don't waste your postage because I
know where I can. I can get one on the
twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six Texas Outdoor Annual. That
they used to have boxes of those things. Anywhere you

(01:17:21):
went to buy your hunting license, anywhere you went to
buy your fishing license. They had the Texas Outdoor Annual.
All the rules and regulations, and now it includes boating regulations.
It says here, which is a good idea. And this
year's edition, I can assure you, has printed far fewer
copies than editions of ten twenty years past. I used

(01:17:47):
to have a collection of those books, and just it
was interesting when I was at the paper still. I
kept them down at the office, and when I was
down there, every now and then around this time of year,
I would I would write, I ate an article about
how different the laws were five, ten, twenty thirty years ago.

(01:18:07):
I had a significant collection to those things, some that
people had given me, some that I'd found in old
thrift shops and stuff like just oddball places where you
would trip over these things and paid a couple of
bucks for some of them, didn't pay anything for most
of them, though. They were what I got with my licenses,
and I've been buying hunting and fishing licenses in this

(01:18:28):
state for a long long time, very long time. It
was really fun to see all that and to share
it with readers. And if I had those annuals still,
I guess I could go back into the Internet and
look up each year's rules and regulations. But that just

(01:18:50):
to me, that doesn't sound near as fun as actually
thumbing through a paper copy of the thing. Oh good, heavens,
it's already time for the last break. All right, let's
take this last break of the program. We'll come back
and wrap up what's going on, what's happened, what's about
to happen, what hasn't quite happened yet, but might all
that stuff when we get back. On the way out,

(01:19:10):
I will remind you that Black Horse Golf Club out
there off Fry Road, just a little way south of
two ninety a fantastic place to go. Teer up if
you're looking for someplace to go play a little golf today.
And you got a buddy, whether you do or don't. Really,
every now and then I'll go out there by myself,
and because I know I can get on because of
my membership options that I have through Golf Club of Houston,

(01:19:33):
I can get squeezed in there. If there's a spot,
I can get it. And I love them just going
out there. And what teas do you play from? I
don't care. Wherever you guys are playing, that's where I'll play.
And sometimes I get get paired up with a bunch
of young guys who are big and strong and hit
it from the tips, and I draw the line there.

(01:19:54):
I'm not going all the way back. I can't play
that many yards anymore. And black Horse gives you plenty
of options. Leave me both courses, the North Course, which
is still daily fee. Anybody who wants to make a
tea time can make a tea time. As long as
you're dressed properly and don't wreck the cart. You'll be
welcome to stick around, and there'll be somebody bringing beverages
and food to you. After the round you can go

(01:20:17):
grab something to eat, or if you're really worrying about
your swing and slide over to the instruction area at
the far end of the range. Great place to hold
a big tournament too, because they do have the two
courses now. The south courses has gone private as of
early this year when they flipped the calendar, they took

(01:20:37):
that South course private and the modifications to it are
coming along nicely. Craig Hicks, the guy who's GM out there,
is doing a fantastic job of the change, all the
change that's happening out there, and he tells me he's
got a lot of good ideas coming up. Black Horse
Golf Club dot com is the website. Go there and

(01:20:59):
make yourself a tea right now, get out there and
have a little golf today. Black Horse Golf Club dot com.
Welcome back to ninety nine on Sports Talk seven to
ninety Man, this is a great question, and I'm gonna
have to think about it. I might not be able
to really do anything with it until next week. Maybe
we can all think about it. What are some of

(01:21:21):
the rules and regulations within the Parks and Waldlife Department
now that just need to be done away with, just
need to be done away with. Maybe something that's just
not enforceable anymore, Maybe something that just doesn't make sense anymore.
And off the top of my head, honestly, I can't
think of any that I want to go away. If anything,

(01:21:48):
I think there we should maybe look at finding ways.
And it's really hard to legislate or in force rules
on civility and common sense and just being a good person.

(01:22:10):
There's no law against being stupid, and that's that causes
a lot of problems in the outdoors. Frankly, you see
fistfights at boat ramps because somebody's moving too slow for
the guy behind him, and words get exchanged, either before

(01:22:31):
or after the beers get drunk, and one thing leads
to another, and you got a fistfight going on on
a boat ramp over somebody who's taken an extra couple
of minutes. Now there's fault on both sides. Number one,
If you're behind that person, you really have no legal

(01:22:52):
option but to just just say, hey, man, can I
help you? Can I can I get you in the
water a little faster because you're stacking up the line
back here. I'm happy to help you. And if they
say no, then just bite your tongue and go listen
to the radio for a few minutes. If they say yes,
by all means help them. If you're that person who's

(01:23:15):
moving too slowly, try to streamline your process to where
you get most of the work done that you're doing
now and plugging up the ramp, you get most of
that done before you back the boat into the water.
Once you've backed that boat to where it needs to
come off the trailer, it needs to come off, and

(01:23:38):
if you forgot to load the ice chest or you
forgot to put your fishing rods in there, then still
go ahead, get it off the trailer, tie it off
to the dock, and then walk over to the dock
or to your truck and get the rest of your
stuff out and go from there. But don't stop and
do all that in the middle of the ramp. That's
just going to make people upset. On the hunting side,

(01:24:03):
I think I think we do have to Maybe we
could just re examine the hunter harassment laws. I haven't
heard much about people being harassed in the field as
hunters in recent years, as was going on fifteen to
twenty years ago. There was a lot of that going

(01:24:25):
on fifteen twenty years ago because there were a lot
of young people who didn't have any other place to
go get paid to protest, and frankly, that's what most
of those people who are out there protesting duck hunting,
for example. Don't fool yourself. The people who are doing
a lot of this stuff are being paid. They're not

(01:24:48):
that big on the cause that they're that they're supporting.
They just they just like the cash. They'll they'll jump
on a bus, they'll put on a costume, they'll carry
a sign, they'll beat a tambourine, they'll yell into a megaphone,
all for money. And there might be a handful of

(01:25:08):
people out there who really care, but you'll be hard
pressed to find them. So there's I would love for
some sort of regulation that says, if you are a
paid protester, then you can't do that anymore. It's if
there's not enough people who really care, not enough people

(01:25:32):
who really care about something like that, about duck hunting
or dove hunting or deer hunting or anything, they're not
enough people against it to make a crowd, then just okay,
concede on the if you're in that group, can see
that you just don't have that much support, and do
the best you can with the six people who show up.

(01:25:52):
But I don't like the idea of paid protesters anywhere.
I don't think there's room for that. Man, how did
we get off of all this? Let's just go to
what we were talking about this weekend. First of all,
the hurricane over in the Atlantic Ocean is going to
stay in the Atlantic Ocean, and it should stay far
enough away from the United States anywhere to not threaten

(01:26:15):
much of anything. That's good news. There's a yellow blob
in the Atlantic Ocean that they're watching. But my favorite site,
Cyclicane isn't even acknowledging it yet, so it can't be
that bad. But it's just something to watch. Spider webs
we talked about, Oh my gosh, if you haven't lived

(01:26:39):
until you've walked through a spider web on the way
to a deer stand or on the way to down
a trail to a favorite fishing spot early early in
the morning, it'll it'll wake you up. I'm talking about
the big ones too, not the little one that's like
on my garbage can in my house. Top waters August
and September two favorite monster throw top waters, especially along

(01:27:02):
the coast. I'll throw them anywhere. I'll throw them in
bast water. I'll throw them at anything and hope I
catch them. But throwing top waters at trout, either in
the surf or in the bay off the rocks, if
it wasn't so crowded when it's good, it would be
a lot of fun as well. I've kind of abandoned
that unfortunately, although the little rock Gruens and Galveston still

(01:27:24):
hold a lot of promise some days, and they don't
get that much attention because the bigger places to fish,
the more well known places, tend to draw the crowd.
And that's fine with me, everybody. I'm telling you right now, everybody,
listen closely. The surf side, Jettie, when the water's nice,
great place to go catch a trout, if you can

(01:27:46):
find some place to stand and not rub elbows with
people on both sides of you while you're trying to cast.
It's gotten too crowded. And I'm just when they redid
that channel, when they the channel put the concrete tops
on there, I loved it at first, but in the
back of my mind I knew that was going to

(01:28:07):
be the end of that place as a really quality
fishing spot. The reason you can still catch some pretty
good trout walking out the rocks in Galveston, even though
you got to walk out a mile is because you
can't just roll a big wagon full of stuff out there,
and everybody and their brother can't access it. It's dangerous
if you're gonna walk those rocks. Even at surfside, you

(01:28:29):
walk the sidewalk all the way out, but eventually you
got to walk down closer to the water, and when
the water's lapping up on there, Uh, those rock get
pretty slick. Man. I am everywhere right now top waters.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Somebody sent me a snook picture and I couldn't find
it earlier. I was gonna credit it. If I find it,
I might just repost it and let you know who
was bragging about being down in Florida somewhere catching a
big snook. That made me kind of jealous. I need
to get back down to Florida. That's been a while,
been a hot. We had that big deer breeder bust

(01:29:04):
where what was it? Two dozen people are in a
heap of trouble right now, and I hope they get
that sorted out and whatever those folks got coming to them,
they need to get to send a message to anybody
else who's thinking they might be able to cheat the system.
That's it for now. I'll be back Tuesday on fifty
plus over on KPRC. That show starts at noon. I've

(01:29:24):
got some pretty good interviews lined up already for this
week too, and then next Saturday, god willing, I'll be
right back here and I look forward to hearing from
every one of you between now and then. Thank you
all so much for listening. Get outside, stay saved, and
have a little fun with your family. Ideals