November 21, 2024 • 29 mins
Pliny and Daniel travel down to deep south Texas, practically Mexico, for another hunt in Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. This is the fourth and final hunting day in the refuge and the fifth episode of our semi-live series. Thank you for tuning into this series and following our adventure on this really tough hunt. Hopefully, we get drawn for the rifle hunt next year!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
All right, what's up, y'all. Thank you for tuning in
to another episode of the Adventure one podcast. We're continuing
our land War series, so Luguna Atiscosa National Wildlife Refuge.
We've been down here for several days on an archery
hunt for white tailed deer and for a Nilgai antelope.
So if you haven't caught up on the other episodes,
(00:27):
you should probably do that. It'll make this one make
a little bit more sense. But we're sitting here with
a cold beer, a bunch of mosquito bites, and just
kind of reflecting on the last day of our hunt
and on the hunt as a whole. So this morning
we were a little conflicted about where to go. This
(00:48):
morning we came up with a plan. We went back
to a unit that we've seen previously.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well hold on before you go get that. This morning
started with soggy boots.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah yeah, Daniel was big sad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I was not.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
You were all dressed up in all your camos on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The couch ready to go, and you grab your.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Boots and saw their away and you're just like, this sucks.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
If y'all remember if you listened to the last episode
last night on the way in and the way out
of where we're hunting. We walked through probably three hundred
yards each way of just marshy swampland, and my boots
got soaked, and I realize, now one thing I would
pack next trip is an extra pair of boots. They
were soaked. I put them outside we went fishing, thinking
(01:32):
that I'd bring them in. I was just trying to
let them steam out. And the last time they'd kind
of dried out inside the house. Did not remember to
bring them back in, and I think they were wetter
because of the dew this morning, and I was not happy.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, it's ninety eight probably ninety four percent humidity out here.
It's just like everything is just steamy, so nothing dries.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Nothing dries. But we got through that, and.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Then yeah, in the unit got out there, I forgot
something this morning. Kind of pissed off about it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
What was it? Your wallet?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, we were licenses, right, my.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Driver's license, my honey license. Might want that, so turn
back around. Got that. We lost a little time, but
still we.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Were too much. We were the second truck there, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Second truck, and the other guys were just just getting
out and we were able to get into the spots
that we planned well.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And the guy so there was there's three guys in
that truck. It looked like one of them headed down
the same trail we did with a knee bike and
he dud. This was what was crazy. He left right
when we were getting there. So we unloaded, took the
bikes off, and then then we kind of took off.
The other two guys We found out later they went
to the right side of where we went because they
we saw him coming back. Yeah, but we went to
(02:43):
the left, Like we weren't that far behind this guy
and he had knee bike, so.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's like, hey, yeah bike and he started before us.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, so we peddled pretty well, but he was he
was probably halfway between the trucks and where we ended
up going.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so we felt pretty good because we were what
a mile and a half back?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, he was three quarters yeah about that.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, But we got there. And the craziest thing, like
I noticed it driving out there this morning is I'm like, man,
I just can't clear my windshield, like it's so fogged
up and I'm trying to spray it and turn on
the defrosters and you know, yeah, when it's like cold,
you kind of know what to do, but sometimes when
it's hot and steamy, it's hard to get it clear
(03:22):
because you're like, do I use the air conditioner, use
the fan, like yeah, you just kind of try a
bunch of things. And so it was just crazy foggy
out there.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Like would you say at first when we first got there,
when you put your head lamp on ten yards fifteen
yards of visibility, it was.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Just bright fog. Right, it feels like when you're in
a snowstorm.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Or something and you can see it in your face moving.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Flecks back at you. Yeah, it's it's probably the foggiest
conditions I've ever hunted in that weren't like snow and fog. Yeah, yes,
So I got there, it got settled in. We picked
two different fields and we kind of did the exact
same set up on the two different fields. We're like, okay,
we got a northwest wind, so we're gonna get just
(04:07):
pretty much on the southeast side of these fields looking
in where Yeah, if something goes out in the middle
of field, we'll see it might not be in range,
but either way on kind of the perimeter will be good.
So that was the play. It was super foggy. Then
kind of right around first light it led up a
little bit, and yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Went from probably forty yards of visibility, so probably like
eighty to one hundred.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah, and then it went back to twenty. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, like to the point where I have I have
a little it's by a brand named Nukem. It's like
a little pop up I guess you can call it
a pop up blind. It's like if you cut a
corner off a pock pup blind. It's like two different triangles,
so it's just enough for you to kind of hide behind.
But it's got a black backing on it. And I
could see the fog moving between me and the black backs,
(04:57):
just like the white mist.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
A picture with my phone and I pulled it out
and the black stream was there and I could see.
I was like, man, there's something on fire, because there's
like smoke going by my phone right now.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I heard the duck hunters getting after it. The oh
they must have not been.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And what was crazy is like I heard probably three
flocks of duck go by me and I could not
see them, like it was so thick, but I heard them.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You just hear the whistling feathers. It's not like a
fighter jet going by you or like somebody shooting an
arrow over.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah. Yeah, so I sat.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I actually felt like I found a pretty good little
spot to sit in, and it was probably so Plenty's like, hey,
let's sit a little longer, just so this fog clears up.
They might come out later, which was a good call.
So the fog finally clears, and it was probably twenty
minutes after the fog cleared, I saw a dough in
a fawn. I think they were bedded down in the
field about one hundred and twenty yards from me. They
(05:55):
popped up and they started walking around. They got within
probably about eighty five nine the yards. But one of
the challenges down here, and this we've talked a lot
about this is you have really dense areas, but then
you have really big fields. Yeah, and like tiny inte.
You have really dense areas, but then little like probably
(06:15):
one hundred yard max.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But usually like fifty yard fields.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So you feel like if you're in the right spot,
and not even.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Really fields areas where the trees are more sparse, and
so it's like at most a little meadow here.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I think the small like we were in pretty small
fields and I think it's still two yards across.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, And I think a lot of these fields are
like swampy, boggy areas that when when they're wet, it's
you look on satellite image and you'll be like, there's
a pond here, yeah, and you go there and then
it's just it looks like a field with just spiky
grass in it. And so it's it's either a one
foot deep pond it's really wide, or it's just kind
(06:54):
of this weird field.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah. So I watched these deer.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
They came within about eighty yards and then I saw
him kind of bug into the forest going west towards
your field, and I texted Plenty him like, hey, they
just went into the forest. That forest is probably five
hundred yards deep though, but they may come out your way.
And then probably about an hour later they came back out.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It must have been just bedded right behind the tree.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Line, right behind it. And I think those are the
same dear we saw on the scouting day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Could be. I think they were. So the doe was
kind of walking.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Around, the fawn was just playing, wasn't following her, So
the dough. It's kind of funny. The dough goes into
the woods or stands right by the woods and like
kind of looks back and the faun just messing around,
probably eighty yards from her, and then the Doe's like,
I'm done.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And she just walks into the woods, yeah, and follow me.
The faun just kind of sits there. She's like, what
the hell's going? Like where do I go?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, Mama left me, and so I decided, I'm like,
all right, it's about nine thirty.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm gonna go make a play. So I ended up
getting up.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
The fawn saw me and then ran after the mom.
I went all the way around and I had good wind,
and I got within twenty yards of where they kind
of went in the wind and they blew at me.
But I was like, look, you got to try something.
They weren't coming closer to me. They weren't, you know,
there there was no play to just sit there. So
I made a play, and you know, it doesn't always
(08:17):
work out, but I feel like I got pretty close
to them before they winded me and I couldn't see him.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I looked. It was so so dense.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
It was like when we were kind of walking through
tonight and like, I can't see anything in there.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, I just saw birds. I saw lots of cool birds.
I saw some of those. Were they scarlet billed ibis
or whatever, those like crazy tropical birds? Mocking birds?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Were they mocking you?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah they were they were. Feel like everything was mocking me.
But it's a lot of fog. Saw some cool birds,
but didn't see a little single man all the whole time.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And I was like, admittedly, when my shoes were all
swampy this morning, I was pretty like I wouldn't say
to feet about I'm like, what are we doing? And
when I saw those deer, I think anytime you see
animals and you can kind of maybe.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Make a play, dude, you're just like, all right, let's go. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So I was feeling pretty good this morning coming out.
I was like, oh, look we saw I saw something.
We tried something. So I was fired up about tonight. Yeah,
but I think tonight we didn't like we had like
three plans and I don't feel like any of them
handed out, And so we found a fourth plan that
worked I think pretty well.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, And I guess our theory was it's now Monday.
There's a lot of people. Saturday Sunday were really crowded
and a lot of people got to get back to work,
got to get back home. So Monday a lot of
people kind of give up early, or there were areas
that just got boogered up and people were gonna move
on to new places. So we kind of saw this,
(09:52):
Like the last time we were here, there was one area
where Nilgai would frequently stand out in the open, and
I think a lot of people saw that from a
long ways away, and so you gradually saw people screw
up their own areas, and then everybody encroach on this
one to the point that the last day we were
there and you're looking around, you're like, Okay, see orange
(10:13):
over there. It's the orange over there. Like we're just
like surrounding these.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And what was crazy is like we saw so we
surrounded this field, meet plenty and Kyle and I think
we all saw this dough walking in the middle of
the field at probably one hundred yards from any anyone,
and then that was probably nine and then we all
get up to go and like.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Ten people started walking out from that same tree line.
One man. We were just surrounded by people.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
The Orange Army. Yeah, but so we were kind of
expecting that, but then we're also we've kind of really
boogered up some spots too. I mean we both stuck
Nil guy in kind of the same area.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And blood searched the blood trail for three quarters of
a mile. Yeah, so we try them stall over.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So we're like, yeah, maybe you don't go back there,
Like we know there's animals there, but I think we
blew it up pretty bad, so let's not go there.
And somebody else cart it out a deer from there,
so I.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Think they're further back though, yeah, yeah, but still they
went through that area.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, And so we're like, okay, maybe this is our
chance to go way up north try Horse Island, like
that whole area that we haven't really been touching. It
must look really good at the map on the map,
or there must be a lot of people. I suspect
there's a lot of people seeing Nilgui at a distance,
so a lot of people just see him there and
go up there.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I haven't really explored the area. So if you're listening
to this and you hunted and you've explored the area,
like I'm not the authority on that.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And please text us and let us know. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, so we're like, maybe we'll try it. But it's
also interesting because like the road dead ends and so
there's kind of one like launching spot that you can
go in a lot of different directions. But it meant that,
like there were five trucks.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
That did at least and there was there was another
truck behind us that looked like it was pulling in there.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, there's a lot of trucks there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And we're like, I just don't want to deal with
other hunters. Yeah, like I want if it doesn't go
well I wanted because animals weren't there, or I screwed
up a stock or something like that, I don't want
it just because we're I feel like we're on the
amazing race trying to just beat people to a spot. Yeah, Like,
I just don't like that. So that didn't work. There
(12:25):
was another spot that's kind of on the way to
that had three trucks, so we just kind of called
them ull Agan. We're like, hey, let's go back to
this other area that it's another unit that's a really
obvious area, but let's get in a little corner of
it that's a little bit overlooked.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
That by the way, is really kind of challenging to
get into. Yeah, like we had to push through what
fifty yards of brush and like we were on our
hands and knees crawling through it to get through.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And we were talking about this. We're like, I think
so many people have finally learned, like you got to
go further, you got to try harder, you got to
get way back, you got to go further. And now
that so many people have bikes, like I think people
just especially bikes just on foot. Then people got bikes.
Now half of the people here have e bikes.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Maybe more, maybe more. I don't think I saw a
bike that was a regular pedal bike.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Besides, did you two guys this morning?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
But I saw so Sorry, I saw one guy. I
can't remember what day it was.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
He came back and he's hauling ass and he's a
big bubba, no shirt on, just his orange vest.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Ride and just hauling ass.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
We see the guy in his underwear, you get a
little hot.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Bro. I was like, hey, man, good on you, but yeah,
that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, hey, but we found him.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
We found this area that.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I thought he Sorry, I have to comment, he did
still have his hunter's orange.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
He did. He had the vest, he had the vest
over his over his his naked torso.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, and I think he had a bow, so I'll
give him credit for that. So we found an area
and it was it was kind of a wide open field.
I think it was probably two hundred yards across, yeah,
and it's probably, I don't know, a thousand yards wide.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, just a long, long strip.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So we ended up saying, all right, we're gonna we're
gonna park a couple hundred yards apart from each other,
push through some brush, got there, and nothing happened for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah. And I wasn't seeing a lot of great sign
I mean I was seeing some trails with some pilots
on though. Yeah, it didn't didn't look great. But what
gave me a little bit of hope is looking at
the satellite view, I could see a lot of criss
crossing trails where I am. I'm like, there's some kind
of pattern here. It's it's not fresh enough that I
(14:50):
can really feel it, but I'll just trust kind of
like some of the historical data, which most recent information
is always the best, like whatever saw happened the day before,
trust that over what you see on satellite for anything else.
But I'm like, wow, it looks like there's a lot
of trails going to a new area, Like trails is
(15:10):
the best thing you can hope for because it means
animals move there. So I sat there for a long time.
I didn't really see anything, so I didn't I don't
have much of a story to tell, so.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I didn't see anything for a while. And then I
looked to my right and I was sitting. I was
sitting back up in the brush, and I kind of
put myself in a position where the main trail was
probably twenty yards for me, but there was a bunch
of other trails, and I felt pretty confident that within
sixty yards I had pretty good visibility to take a shot.
(15:42):
And I looked to my right and I see I mean, dude,
when I first looked, I'm like, the hell's that horse
doing out there?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Like there's this massive animal over to my right.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
And it was cool because I was blocked by a
mesquite tree, so I could see through it. But this
it was a It ended up being a Neil guy bowl.
He had no idea I was there, so he ends
up I'm sitting facing east because we had an east wind.
He's off to the south of me, and he's coming
around the corner and I kind of see him, you know,
(16:13):
coming a little bit towards me, but on the other
side of the field. So I'm like, all right, that's
not great because he's two hundred yards for me. And
it was what twenty minutes before last night.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, it was getting pretty dark. And what was funny too,
is I I was just pretty much not saying anything
by me, So I was spending the whole time in
my bi not I was just looking around, trying to
peer into a little dark corner see anything I could see.
And I saw that bull, and so I texted Daniel
just reading our conversation, said you see that bowl, and
then like at the Saint at the exact same time,
(16:43):
he texted bull one hundred yards south of me, middle
of the field. Yes, that's the one I'm talking about. Yes,
So this bull ends up going across to the other side.
I'm like, all right, there's two plays here. I can
wait for him to Maybe he cuts, you know, towards
me up north. I don't think so, because he's grazing
(17:06):
and I've got about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
To get him.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
If I'm gonna get him, yeah, So I'm like, all right,
I'm gonna make a play for him. I'm gonna see
what happens. And this was actually just spoiler alert. I
did not shoot him, but this was actually one of
the most fun parts of this trip. So I was
at the time I decided to make the play, I
was one hundred and ninety yards from him, and I
(17:30):
basically started coming out of my area and it's like
that real kind of crunchy shrub stuff, so when you're walking,
it's just but I kind of had decent wind on him,
so I started going down and I got to probably
one hundred and fifty yards from him, and he kind
of like looked up at me, and I just stopped.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I was kneeling. I just stopped, and.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
He's looking looking, looking, and then he kind of goes
back down to eating.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And I didn't run, but I ran.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
As fast as a slow creep can go and like
got twenty yards further and then just stopped and like
kneel down and his head came up, and then it
was I was within probably one hundred and ten yards
of him when he looked up at me, and he
shifted his whole body like this was crazy.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
He shifted his body and plenty can see it from
where he's sitting.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I got a little bit of video, so I hope
to do a video of this whole trip, but I
mostly was looking at him through the byes and I
see him turn about ninety degrees yea, so it's like
he's he's getting lined up, so his vitals aren't visible,
but his horns are.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, And like what went through my mind was he
was probably six hundred pounds maybe more.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He was.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
He was He wasn't huge, but he was bigger than
the one I shot at Teniante by probably thirty percent.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And he was fat, like bigger than any of those cows.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, he was. He was a large, large animal. And
I'm like, dude, if this thing charges me, like and
I again I didn't think he would, but I'm like,
this thing just like literally bowed up on me. He turned,
looked at me. He stomped his foot and then like
pushed his chest out and turned his body to look
right at me.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And I think he still wasn't sure something was there, Yeah,
but it was enough that he felt uncomfortable, and so
he was gonna kind of not really mock charge, but
like just let me blow up a little bit. Yeah,
So that it if it was if there was an
animal there, it would flinch a run or something and
he would know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
And the whole time I react, which the whole perfect.
The whole time, I'm thinking, come at me, bro, So
I just like, come, come halfway. Yeah, come halfway and
turn broadside if you don't mind. So I'm sitting there
thinking like, okay, I got it. I can't move. I've
got my right hand in the dirt and I feel
ants like crawling on me and like I can't move,
(19:46):
Like if I move, it's done, Like he's gonna bolt.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So he ends up. I don't know it felt like ten.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Minutes, but it was probably a minute that he's just
staring at me, and then he kind of goes back
to grazing a little bit, but he kept flicking head
up every like five seconds.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So I moved closer.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I got within about ninety yards of him, and my
thought in my mind was if I can get thirty
more yards, get a sixty yards.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Shot, I'm gonna take it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So he started he had turned around when he bowed up,
so he was coming. I guess he was coming kind
of north, and then he turned around and started going
back south when he kind of noticed there was something there.
So I crept up a little bit closer, and I
was thinking about taking a ninety yard shot, which I'm
glad I didn't, because first of all, my pins go
(20:34):
to sixty, so it had been it's a big gap.
It's a huge gap. Number one, number two. Even if
I hit him at ninety yards based on plenty of
smoking when at twenty five and not finding it, I
don't know that we would have had a lot of success.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
You'd get the broadhead and a couple of inches of.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Arrow in there, that's right, and he would probably flick
it off and just walk away laughing at me. So
I thought about it. I never I never actually did it,
and I'm glad I didn't. But I got within about
nine I started creeping a little bit more and I
and I stood up to go run at him, or
not run, but walk at him a little bit more,
and duck down, and he saw it, and this was dude,
(21:10):
this was like at this time, two or three minutes
before last night, and he just ran off. But what
it told me was I closed a two hundred yard
gap to ninety yeah, in the middle of a field.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah. I felt pretty good about that.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, And it got my heart racing and it realized
it made me realize, like that's why we're out here,
cause it's it's it's that excitement that gets you coming
out to bow hunt. It's so hard, like everything about
this hunting trip has been so hard. But I feel
like we hunted really really well. It just didn't break
our way.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And we were kind of reflecting on that. So we
banged back through the brush, got back to our bikes,
and we're just kind of talking on the way back,
like it didn't work out. We're coming home with empty coolers.
We got a bunch of fish, but we did not
kill a deer or a nil guy. But we're like,
well we from the get go we were prioritizing meal guy. Yeah,
(22:04):
and we saw a lot. Yeah, I think we counted
them up. I think I saw ten.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, not during scout we saw more, but during hunt time,
I think I saw ten.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And I think I saw six seven, seven, So yeah,
I mean it was like we we got we found
the target species. We flung arrows at him. We didn't
really have any equipment failures. Yeah, we didn't really get
boogered by the wind.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Like, what is this stuff called we sprean on our
clothes permethn So anyone listening to that put permethrin on
your clothes. Like the first time we were down here,
I think all of us were covered in ticks and chiggers.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
We just got lit up bad.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I got a bunch of mosquito bites but nothing else. Yeah,
which is I mean that is that was a game changer.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I'm looking at I have like scratches all over my
hands from briars which I had gloves, but I did
and wear them most of the time. I wore them
a couple of times. So I'm all scratched up and
got some mosquito bites, but no ticks the entire time,
no triggers the entire time. Yeah, that's a wind. Yeah. Yeah,
bike stuff was good. I just playing the wind was good.
(23:14):
And I think our call, like you made a really
good call.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So that a couple of days ago on the podcast,
it was a night hunt. You had seen these Neil
guy three hundred yards due north, and we went and
set up there the next morning. That's when we both
shot a Neil guy that like just figuring out where
they were yah, and then making a good hunt call
to go, hey, let's go get in that area where
they're naturally going.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
To be get at them from the right angle, get
at them from.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
The right angle, the right wind.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So I think from a hunt standpoint, like dude, bow
hunting is so hard, like you have to get within
fifty yards and you'd rather get within thirty. Yeah, And
it's just it doesn't it doesn't always work out. You
can't you can't just move on.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
These animals.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
They're so so they have great visibility, they have great
sense of smell. There's so smart when it comes to
not getting hunted that it's really difficult to hunt them.
And from a hunting perspective, I think we did all
the right things to get in the right spot. We
had a couple of shots, we made some plays. It's
just didn't break our way.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, And I think kind of the conclusion we're getting
to is just reflecting on Like, I don't think we've
made rookie mistakes. I don't think we learned something. They're like, oh,
here's a totally different strategy. Yeah, Like I think we
were doing a lot of things right, but it was hot, windy, humid,
lots of hunters out here. This is one of the
(24:36):
I mean, I've had multiple people tell me this is
the hardest public lan hunt in Texas.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
I agree with that. It may be.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I haven't done a lot of other ones, so it's
hard for me to rank come or tell you. But
I'm not disappointed in our performance, even though I'm a
little bummed out that we're going home with empty coolers.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
There isn't anything that I'm like, Man, we should have
more aggressive, or we should have done this thing, or
if we had this other piece of gear, it would
have been way different.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I think we laid it all on the table, and yeah,
I think we played our hand. Well, it's just it
wasn't meant to be this time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah. So I mean we got we got a bunch
of fish, we got a bunch of memories, we got
a bunch of pictures, we got some experience. I think
we both really really want to come back here and
do this with a rifle.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Oh, dude, with a rifle, we would have both shot
at least if we wanted to, at least three or four.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Neil guy, we would have had an opportunity a day
like for sure if it was to average out, and
even if you take deer off the table, like we
would have shot Neil Guy all day long. Yeah, So
because we.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Got within one hundred yards of half the Neil guy
I saw, I got within one hundred yards of yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, And just the logistics of being like when you
see something like you can shoot it rather than having
to get closer than get drawn. Then so we really
want to come back down here for rifle, maybe come
down here for our again, we're still debating. There's a
lot of other so lower Rio Grand Valley, there's several
(26:05):
units there that they're just they're smaller, they hunt like
you can really get a little bit more intimate with
the unit and learn it and hunt it the way
you want to hunt it, rather than here. Like one
thing I was thinking about, the predominant wind here is
coming from the east. There's not a single entrance on
the west side of the property. So in order to
(26:25):
hunt the wind right you got to do some weird
goofy stuff and every time you got to hook around
pretty much every time you set up, and so there's
a lot of stuff you have to do that just
makes it challenging. And so maybe we'll be back here.
I think we will at some point.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I think we will. I think we need about a
year to cool off.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I don't know if it's And we drew this
with two points, didn't get drawn last year, but did
get it this year. I think it's one of the
easier ones to draw. But I think ever since Mediator
did a nail guy hunt, everyone wants is a lot
more I was.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
They shot a Neil guy with a rifle. I did
shoot one with a bow. So yeah on publicly, yeah,
public versus Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Which that's a great animal.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Like if I that would have been my choice too.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So if I if I could take a three hundred
wind bag and a hundred yard shot and a Neil guy,
I'd do it all day long.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, all day long. We definitely did it the hard way.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
But again to your point, I think I think we
did all the things that we needed to write. I
think we hunted really really well. I think we got
creative on trying to avoid the masses, which I actually
think we did a really really good job of.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
We didn't get except for that first.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Morning with the kind of goobers we didn't get, you know,
and he gumbled up with any other hunters.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think we're pretty good about that.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
And the one guy we passed, I guess it was
this morning. We acknowledge where he was, where we were,
and it was just very much just hey, good luck,
like it was super cool like that. That's what I
like when when it goes that way. I guess we're
done with the laguna. We're heading out tomorrow morning. I
guess later on the season, maybe we'll chase some more
(28:09):
deer on some more more public Maybe we'll find some
other spots. I don't even know. We'll do some more hunts.
Duck season just started this last weekend, so there will
be many more hunting adventures. We're just trying to figure
out what they are right now.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And I think, by the way, if I see a
pig on public land near us, I'm gonna shoot it.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah yeah here, yeh yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
There's bigger things to go after.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, exactly. Well cool. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this.
Maybe you learned something, Maybe you were just along for
the ride. Maybe you're just in research mode trying to
figure out this property and kind of learn what works
and what doesn't work, and tips and tactics and all
that stuff. But either way, I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time, stay safe, be free, and never stop
(28:55):
seeking adventure.
All right, what's up, y'all. Thank you for tuning in
to another episode of the Adventure one podcast. We're continuing
our land War series, so Luguna Atiscosa National Wildlife Refuge.
We've been down here for several days on an archery
hunt for white tailed deer and for a Nilgai antelope.
So if you haven't caught up on the other episodes,
(00:27):
you should probably do that. It'll make this one make
a little bit more sense. But we're sitting here with
a cold beer, a bunch of mosquito bites, and just
kind of reflecting on the last day of our hunt
and on the hunt as a whole. So this morning
we were a little conflicted about where to go. This
(00:48):
morning we came up with a plan. We went back
to a unit that we've seen previously.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well hold on before you go get that. This morning
started with soggy boots.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah yeah, Daniel was big sad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I was not.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
You were all dressed up in all your camos on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The couch ready to go, and you grab your.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Boots and saw their away and you're just like, this sucks.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
If y'all remember if you listened to the last episode
last night on the way in and the way out
of where we're hunting. We walked through probably three hundred
yards each way of just marshy swampland, and my boots
got soaked, and I realize, now one thing I would
pack next trip is an extra pair of boots. They
were soaked. I put them outside we went fishing, thinking
(01:32):
that I'd bring them in. I was just trying to
let them steam out. And the last time they'd kind
of dried out inside the house. Did not remember to
bring them back in, and I think they were wetter
because of the dew this morning, and I was not happy.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, it's ninety eight probably ninety four percent humidity out here.
It's just like everything is just steamy, so nothing dries.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Nothing dries. But we got through that, and.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Then yeah, in the unit got out there, I forgot
something this morning. Kind of pissed off about it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
What was it? Your wallet?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, we were licenses, right, my.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Driver's license, my honey license. Might want that, so turn
back around. Got that. We lost a little time, but
still we.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Were too much. We were the second truck there, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Second truck, and the other guys were just just getting
out and we were able to get into the spots
that we planned well.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And the guy so there was there's three guys in
that truck. It looked like one of them headed down
the same trail we did with a knee bike and
he dud. This was what was crazy. He left right
when we were getting there. So we unloaded, took the
bikes off, and then then we kind of took off.
The other two guys We found out later they went
to the right side of where we went because they
we saw him coming back. Yeah, but we went to
(02:43):
the left, Like we weren't that far behind this guy
and he had knee bike, so.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's like, hey, yeah bike and he started before us.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, so we peddled pretty well, but he was he
was probably halfway between the trucks and where we ended
up going.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so we felt pretty good because we were what
a mile and a half back?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, he was three quarters yeah about that.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, But we got there. And the craziest thing, like
I noticed it driving out there this morning is I'm like, man,
I just can't clear my windshield, like it's so fogged
up and I'm trying to spray it and turn on
the defrosters and you know, yeah, when it's like cold,
you kind of know what to do, but sometimes when
it's hot and steamy, it's hard to get it clear
(03:22):
because you're like, do I use the air conditioner, use
the fan, like yeah, you just kind of try a
bunch of things. And so it was just crazy foggy
out there.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Like would you say at first when we first got there,
when you put your head lamp on ten yards fifteen
yards of visibility, it was.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Just bright fog. Right, it feels like when you're in
a snowstorm.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Or something and you can see it in your face moving.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Flecks back at you. Yeah, it's it's probably the foggiest
conditions I've ever hunted in that weren't like snow and fog. Yeah, yes,
So I got there, it got settled in. We picked
two different fields and we kind of did the exact
same set up on the two different fields. We're like, okay,
we got a northwest wind, so we're gonna get just
(04:07):
pretty much on the southeast side of these fields looking
in where Yeah, if something goes out in the middle
of field, we'll see it might not be in range,
but either way on kind of the perimeter will be good.
So that was the play. It was super foggy. Then
kind of right around first light it led up a
little bit, and yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Went from probably forty yards of visibility, so probably like
eighty to one hundred.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah, and then it went back to twenty. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, like to the point where I have I have
a little it's by a brand named Nukem. It's like
a little pop up I guess you can call it
a pop up blind. It's like if you cut a
corner off a pock pup blind. It's like two different triangles,
so it's just enough for you to kind of hide behind.
But it's got a black backing on it. And I
could see the fog moving between me and the black backs,
(04:57):
just like the white mist.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
A picture with my phone and I pulled it out
and the black stream was there and I could see.
I was like, man, there's something on fire, because there's
like smoke going by my phone right now.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I heard the duck hunters getting after it. The oh
they must have not been.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And what was crazy is like I heard probably three
flocks of duck go by me and I could not
see them, like it was so thick, but I heard them.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You just hear the whistling feathers. It's not like a
fighter jet going by you or like somebody shooting an
arrow over.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah. Yeah, so I sat.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I actually felt like I found a pretty good little
spot to sit in, and it was probably so Plenty's like, hey,
let's sit a little longer, just so this fog clears up.
They might come out later, which was a good call.
So the fog finally clears, and it was probably twenty
minutes after the fog cleared, I saw a dough in
a fawn. I think they were bedded down in the
field about one hundred and twenty yards from me. They
(05:55):
popped up and they started walking around. They got within
probably about eighty five nine the yards. But one of
the challenges down here, and this we've talked a lot
about this is you have really dense areas, but then
you have really big fields. Yeah, and like tiny inte.
You have really dense areas, but then little like probably
(06:15):
one hundred yard max.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But usually like fifty yard fields.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So you feel like if you're in the right spot,
and not even.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Really fields areas where the trees are more sparse, and
so it's like at most a little meadow here.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I think the small like we were in pretty small
fields and I think it's still two yards across.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, And I think a lot of these fields are
like swampy, boggy areas that when when they're wet, it's
you look on satellite image and you'll be like, there's
a pond here, yeah, and you go there and then
it's just it looks like a field with just spiky
grass in it. And so it's it's either a one
foot deep pond it's really wide, or it's just kind
(06:54):
of this weird field.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah. So I watched these deer.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
They came within about eighty yards and then I saw
him kind of bug into the forest going west towards
your field, and I texted Plenty him like, hey, they
just went into the forest. That forest is probably five
hundred yards deep though, but they may come out your way.
And then probably about an hour later they came back out.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It must have been just bedded right behind the tree.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Line, right behind it. And I think those are the
same dear we saw on the scouting day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Could be. I think they were. So the doe was
kind of walking.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Around, the fawn was just playing, wasn't following her, So
the dough. It's kind of funny. The dough goes into
the woods or stands right by the woods and like
kind of looks back and the faun just messing around,
probably eighty yards from her, and then the Doe's like,
I'm done.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And she just walks into the woods, yeah, and follow me.
The faun just kind of sits there. She's like, what
the hell's going? Like where do I go?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, Mama left me, and so I decided, I'm like,
all right, it's about nine thirty.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm gonna go make a play. So I ended up
getting up.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
The fawn saw me and then ran after the mom.
I went all the way around and I had good wind,
and I got within twenty yards of where they kind
of went in the wind and they blew at me.
But I was like, look, you got to try something.
They weren't coming closer to me. They weren't, you know,
there there was no play to just sit there. So
I made a play, and you know, it doesn't always
(08:17):
work out, but I feel like I got pretty close
to them before they winded me and I couldn't see him.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I looked. It was so so dense.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
It was like when we were kind of walking through
tonight and like, I can't see anything in there.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, I just saw birds. I saw lots of cool birds.
I saw some of those. Were they scarlet billed ibis
or whatever, those like crazy tropical birds? Mocking birds?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Were they mocking you?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah they were they were. Feel like everything was mocking me.
But it's a lot of fog. Saw some cool birds,
but didn't see a little single man all the whole time.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And I was like, admittedly, when my shoes were all
swampy this morning, I was pretty like I wouldn't say
to feet about I'm like, what are we doing? And
when I saw those deer, I think anytime you see
animals and you can kind of maybe.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Make a play, dude, you're just like, all right, let's go. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So I was feeling pretty good this morning coming out.
I was like, oh, look we saw I saw something.
We tried something. So I was fired up about tonight. Yeah,
but I think tonight we didn't like we had like
three plans and I don't feel like any of them
handed out, And so we found a fourth plan that
worked I think pretty well.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, And I guess our theory was it's now Monday.
There's a lot of people. Saturday Sunday were really crowded
and a lot of people got to get back to work,
got to get back home. So Monday a lot of
people kind of give up early, or there were areas
that just got boogered up and people were gonna move
on to new places. So we kind of saw this,
(09:52):
Like the last time we were here, there was one area
where Nilgai would frequently stand out in the open, and
I think a lot of people saw that from a
long ways away, and so you gradually saw people screw
up their own areas, and then everybody encroach on this
one to the point that the last day we were
there and you're looking around, you're like, Okay, see orange
(10:13):
over there. It's the orange over there. Like we're just
like surrounding these.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And what was crazy is like we saw so we
surrounded this field, meet plenty and Kyle and I think
we all saw this dough walking in the middle of
the field at probably one hundred yards from any anyone,
and then that was probably nine and then we all
get up to go and like.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Ten people started walking out from that same tree line.
One man. We were just surrounded by people.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
The Orange Army. Yeah, but so we were kind of
expecting that, but then we're also we've kind of really
boogered up some spots too. I mean we both stuck
Nil guy in kind of the same area.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And blood searched the blood trail for three quarters of
a mile. Yeah, so we try them stall over.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So we're like, yeah, maybe you don't go back there,
Like we know there's animals there, but I think we
blew it up pretty bad, so let's not go there.
And somebody else cart it out a deer from there,
so I.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Think they're further back though, yeah, yeah, but still they
went through that area.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, And so we're like, okay, maybe this is our
chance to go way up north try Horse Island, like
that whole area that we haven't really been touching. It
must look really good at the map on the map,
or there must be a lot of people. I suspect
there's a lot of people seeing Nilgui at a distance,
so a lot of people just see him there and
go up there.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I haven't really explored the area. So if you're listening
to this and you hunted and you've explored the area,
like I'm not the authority on that.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And please text us and let us know. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, so we're like, maybe we'll try it. But it's
also interesting because like the road dead ends and so
there's kind of one like launching spot that you can
go in a lot of different directions. But it meant that,
like there were five trucks.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
That did at least and there was there was another
truck behind us that looked like it was pulling in there.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, there's a lot of trucks there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And we're like, I just don't want to deal with
other hunters. Yeah, like I want if it doesn't go
well I wanted because animals weren't there, or I screwed
up a stock or something like that, I don't want
it just because we're I feel like we're on the
amazing race trying to just beat people to a spot. Yeah, Like,
I just don't like that. So that didn't work. There
(12:25):
was another spot that's kind of on the way to
that had three trucks, so we just kind of called
them ull Agan. We're like, hey, let's go back to
this other area that it's another unit that's a really
obvious area, but let's get in a little corner of
it that's a little bit overlooked.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
That by the way, is really kind of challenging to
get into. Yeah, like we had to push through what
fifty yards of brush and like we were on our
hands and knees crawling through it to get through.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And we were talking about this. We're like, I think
so many people have finally learned, like you got to
go further, you got to try harder, you got to
get way back, you got to go further. And now
that so many people have bikes, like I think people
just especially bikes just on foot. Then people got bikes.
Now half of the people here have e bikes.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Maybe more, maybe more. I don't think I saw a
bike that was a regular pedal bike.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Besides, did you two guys this morning?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
But I saw so Sorry, I saw one guy. I
can't remember what day it was.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
He came back and he's hauling ass and he's a
big bubba, no shirt on, just his orange vest.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Ride and just hauling ass.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
We see the guy in his underwear, you get a
little hot.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Bro. I was like, hey, man, good on you, but yeah,
that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, hey, but we found him.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
We found this area that.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I thought he Sorry, I have to comment, he did
still have his hunter's orange.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
He did. He had the vest, he had the vest
over his over his his naked torso.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, and I think he had a bow, so I'll
give him credit for that. So we found an area
and it was it was kind of a wide open field.
I think it was probably two hundred yards across, yeah,
and it's probably, I don't know, a thousand yards wide.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, just a long, long strip.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So we ended up saying, all right, we're gonna we're
gonna park a couple hundred yards apart from each other,
push through some brush, got there, and nothing happened for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah. And I wasn't seeing a lot of great sign
I mean I was seeing some trails with some pilots
on though. Yeah, it didn't didn't look great. But what
gave me a little bit of hope is looking at
the satellite view, I could see a lot of criss
crossing trails where I am. I'm like, there's some kind
of pattern here. It's it's not fresh enough that I
(14:50):
can really feel it, but I'll just trust kind of
like some of the historical data, which most recent information
is always the best, like whatever saw happened the day before,
trust that over what you see on satellite for anything else.
But I'm like, wow, it looks like there's a lot
of trails going to a new area, Like trails is
(15:10):
the best thing you can hope for because it means
animals move there. So I sat there for a long time.
I didn't really see anything, so I didn't I don't
have much of a story to tell, so.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I didn't see anything for a while. And then I
looked to my right and I was sitting. I was
sitting back up in the brush, and I kind of
put myself in a position where the main trail was
probably twenty yards for me, but there was a bunch
of other trails, and I felt pretty confident that within
sixty yards I had pretty good visibility to take a shot.
(15:42):
And I looked to my right and I see I mean, dude,
when I first looked, I'm like, the hell's that horse
doing out there?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Like there's this massive animal over to my right.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
And it was cool because I was blocked by a
mesquite tree, so I could see through it. But this
it was a It ended up being a Neil guy bowl.
He had no idea I was there, so he ends
up I'm sitting facing east because we had an east wind.
He's off to the south of me, and he's coming
around the corner and I kind of see him, you know,
(16:13):
coming a little bit towards me, but on the other
side of the field. So I'm like, all right, that's
not great because he's two hundred yards for me. And
it was what twenty minutes before last night.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, it was getting pretty dark. And what was funny too,
is I I was just pretty much not saying anything
by me, So I was spending the whole time in
my bi not I was just looking around, trying to
peer into a little dark corner see anything I could see.
And I saw that bull, and so I texted Daniel
just reading our conversation, said you see that bowl, and
then like at the Saint at the exact same time,
(16:43):
he texted bull one hundred yards south of me, middle
of the field. Yes, that's the one I'm talking about. Yes,
So this bull ends up going across to the other side.
I'm like, all right, there's two plays here. I can
wait for him to Maybe he cuts, you know, towards
me up north. I don't think so, because he's grazing
(17:06):
and I've got about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
To get him.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
If I'm gonna get him, yeah, So I'm like, all right,
I'm gonna make a play for him. I'm gonna see
what happens. And this was actually just spoiler alert. I
did not shoot him, but this was actually one of
the most fun parts of this trip. So I was
at the time I decided to make the play, I
was one hundred and ninety yards from him, and I
(17:30):
basically started coming out of my area and it's like
that real kind of crunchy shrub stuff, so when you're walking,
it's just but I kind of had decent wind on him,
so I started going down and I got to probably
one hundred and fifty yards from him, and he kind
of like looked up at me, and I just stopped.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I was kneeling. I just stopped, and.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
He's looking looking, looking, and then he kind of goes
back down to eating.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And I didn't run, but I ran.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
As fast as a slow creep can go and like
got twenty yards further and then just stopped and like
kneel down and his head came up, and then it
was I was within probably one hundred and ten yards
of him when he looked up at me, and he
shifted his whole body like this was crazy.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
He shifted his body and plenty can see it from
where he's sitting.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I got a little bit of video, so I hope
to do a video of this whole trip, but I
mostly was looking at him through the byes and I
see him turn about ninety degrees yea, so it's like
he's he's getting lined up, so his vitals aren't visible,
but his horns are.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, And like what went through my mind was he
was probably six hundred pounds maybe more.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He was.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
He was He wasn't huge, but he was bigger than
the one I shot at Teniante by probably thirty percent.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And he was fat, like bigger than any of those cows.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, he was. He was a large, large animal. And
I'm like, dude, if this thing charges me, like and
I again I didn't think he would, but I'm like,
this thing just like literally bowed up on me. He turned,
looked at me. He stomped his foot and then like
pushed his chest out and turned his body to look
right at me.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And I think he still wasn't sure something was there, Yeah,
but it was enough that he felt uncomfortable, and so
he was gonna kind of not really mock charge, but
like just let me blow up a little bit. Yeah,
So that it if it was if there was an
animal there, it would flinch a run or something and
he would know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
And the whole time I react, which the whole perfect.
The whole time, I'm thinking, come at me, bro, So
I just like, come, come halfway. Yeah, come halfway and
turn broadside if you don't mind. So I'm sitting there
thinking like, okay, I got it. I can't move. I've
got my right hand in the dirt and I feel
ants like crawling on me and like I can't move,
(19:46):
Like if I move, it's done, Like he's gonna bolt.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So he ends up. I don't know it felt like ten.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Minutes, but it was probably a minute that he's just
staring at me, and then he kind of goes back
to grazing a little bit, but he kept flicking head
up every like five seconds.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So I moved closer.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I got within about ninety yards of him, and my
thought in my mind was if I can get thirty
more yards, get a sixty yards.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Shot, I'm gonna take it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So he started he had turned around when he bowed up,
so he was coming. I guess he was coming kind
of north, and then he turned around and started going
back south when he kind of noticed there was something there.
So I crept up a little bit closer, and I
was thinking about taking a ninety yard shot, which I'm
glad I didn't, because first of all, my pins go
(20:34):
to sixty, so it had been it's a big gap.
It's a huge gap. Number one, number two. Even if
I hit him at ninety yards based on plenty of
smoking when at twenty five and not finding it, I
don't know that we would have had a lot of success.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
You'd get the broadhead and a couple of inches of.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Arrow in there, that's right, and he would probably flick
it off and just walk away laughing at me. So
I thought about it. I never I never actually did it,
and I'm glad I didn't. But I got within about
nine I started creeping a little bit more and I
and I stood up to go run at him, or
not run, but walk at him a little bit more,
and duck down, and he saw it, and this was dude,
(21:10):
this was like at this time, two or three minutes
before last night, and he just ran off. But what
it told me was I closed a two hundred yard
gap to ninety yeah, in the middle of a field.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah. I felt pretty good about that.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, And it got my heart racing and it realized
it made me realize, like that's why we're out here,
cause it's it's it's that excitement that gets you coming
out to bow hunt. It's so hard, like everything about
this hunting trip has been so hard. But I feel
like we hunted really really well. It just didn't break
our way.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And we were kind of reflecting on that. So we
banged back through the brush, got back to our bikes,
and we're just kind of talking on the way back,
like it didn't work out. We're coming home with empty coolers.
We got a bunch of fish, but we did not
kill a deer or a nil guy. But we're like,
well we from the get go we were prioritizing meal guy. Yeah,
(22:04):
and we saw a lot. Yeah, I think we counted
them up. I think I saw ten.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, not during scout we saw more, but during hunt time,
I think I saw ten.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And I think I saw six seven, seven, So yeah,
I mean it was like we we got we found
the target species. We flung arrows at him. We didn't
really have any equipment failures. Yeah, we didn't really get
boogered by the wind.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Like, what is this stuff called we sprean on our
clothes permethn So anyone listening to that put permethrin on
your clothes. Like the first time we were down here,
I think all of us were covered in ticks and chiggers.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
We just got lit up bad.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I got a bunch of mosquito bites but nothing else. Yeah,
which is I mean that is that was a game changer.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I'm looking at I have like scratches all over my
hands from briars which I had gloves, but I did
and wear them most of the time. I wore them
a couple of times. So I'm all scratched up and
got some mosquito bites, but no ticks the entire time,
no triggers the entire time. Yeah, that's a wind. Yeah. Yeah,
bike stuff was good. I just playing the wind was good.
(23:14):
And I think our call, like you made a really
good call.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So that a couple of days ago on the podcast,
it was a night hunt. You had seen these Neil
guy three hundred yards due north, and we went and
set up there the next morning. That's when we both
shot a Neil guy that like just figuring out where
they were yah, and then making a good hunt call
to go, hey, let's go get in that area where
they're naturally going.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
To be get at them from the right angle, get
at them from.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
The right angle, the right wind.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So I think from a hunt standpoint, like dude, bow
hunting is so hard, like you have to get within
fifty yards and you'd rather get within thirty. Yeah, And
it's just it doesn't it doesn't always work out. You
can't you can't just move on.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
These animals.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
They're so so they have great visibility, they have great
sense of smell. There's so smart when it comes to
not getting hunted that it's really difficult to hunt them.
And from a hunting perspective, I think we did all
the right things to get in the right spot. We
had a couple of shots, we made some plays. It's
just didn't break our way.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, And I think kind of the conclusion we're getting
to is just reflecting on Like, I don't think we've
made rookie mistakes. I don't think we learned something. They're like, oh,
here's a totally different strategy. Yeah, Like I think we
were doing a lot of things right, but it was hot, windy, humid,
lots of hunters out here. This is one of the
(24:36):
I mean, I've had multiple people tell me this is
the hardest public lan hunt in Texas.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
I agree with that. It may be.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I haven't done a lot of other ones, so it's
hard for me to rank come or tell you. But
I'm not disappointed in our performance, even though I'm a
little bummed out that we're going home with empty coolers.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
There isn't anything that I'm like, Man, we should have
more aggressive, or we should have done this thing, or
if we had this other piece of gear, it would
have been way different.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I think we laid it all on the table, and yeah,
I think we played our hand. Well, it's just it
wasn't meant to be this time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah. So I mean we got we got a bunch
of fish, we got a bunch of memories, we got
a bunch of pictures, we got some experience. I think
we both really really want to come back here and
do this with a rifle.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Oh, dude, with a rifle, we would have both shot
at least if we wanted to, at least three or four.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Neil guy, we would have had an opportunity a day
like for sure if it was to average out, and
even if you take deer off the table, like we
would have shot Neil Guy all day long. Yeah, So
because we.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Got within one hundred yards of half the Neil guy
I saw, I got within one hundred yards of yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, And just the logistics of being like when you
see something like you can shoot it rather than having
to get closer than get drawn. Then so we really
want to come back down here for rifle, maybe come
down here for our again, we're still debating. There's a
lot of other so lower Rio Grand Valley, there's several
(26:05):
units there that they're just they're smaller, they hunt like
you can really get a little bit more intimate with
the unit and learn it and hunt it the way
you want to hunt it, rather than here. Like one
thing I was thinking about, the predominant wind here is
coming from the east. There's not a single entrance on
the west side of the property. So in order to
(26:25):
hunt the wind right you got to do some weird
goofy stuff and every time you got to hook around
pretty much every time you set up, and so there's
a lot of stuff you have to do that just
makes it challenging. And so maybe we'll be back here.
I think we will at some point.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I think we will. I think we need about a
year to cool off.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I don't know if it's And we drew this
with two points, didn't get drawn last year, but did
get it this year. I think it's one of the
easier ones to draw. But I think ever since Mediator
did a nail guy hunt, everyone wants is a lot
more I was.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
They shot a Neil guy with a rifle. I did
shoot one with a bow. So yeah on publicly, yeah,
public versus Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Which that's a great animal.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Like if I that would have been my choice too.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So if I if I could take a three hundred
wind bag and a hundred yard shot and a Neil guy,
I'd do it all day long.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, all day long. We definitely did it the hard way.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
But again to your point, I think I think we
did all the things that we needed to write. I
think we hunted really really well. I think we got
creative on trying to avoid the masses, which I actually
think we did a really really good job of.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
We didn't get except for that first.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Morning with the kind of goobers we didn't get, you know,
and he gumbled up with any other hunters.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think we're pretty good about that.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
And the one guy we passed, I guess it was
this morning. We acknowledge where he was, where we were,
and it was just very much just hey, good luck,
like it was super cool like that. That's what I
like when when it goes that way. I guess we're
done with the laguna. We're heading out tomorrow morning. I
guess later on the season, maybe we'll chase some more
(28:09):
deer on some more more public Maybe we'll find some
other spots. I don't even know. We'll do some more hunts.
Duck season just started this last weekend, so there will
be many more hunting adventures. We're just trying to figure
out what they are right now.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And I think, by the way, if I see a
pig on public land near us, I'm gonna shoot it.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah yeah here, yeh yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
There's bigger things to go after.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, exactly. Well cool. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this.
Maybe you learned something, Maybe you were just along for
the ride. Maybe you're just in research mode trying to
figure out this property and kind of learn what works
and what doesn't work, and tips and tactics and all
that stuff. But either way, I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time, stay safe, be free, and never stop
(28:55):
seeking adventure.
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com