South of the Border

Rancho San Enrique - Mexico - 12/26/15

10/27/2015

      Last December, on the day after Christmas, I joined Leigh and Travis Creekbaum on a trip south of the border into Mexico for the deer hunt of a lifetime.  They had first hunted this property known as Rancho San Enrique the prior year and returned to tell tales of the most amazing deer hunting they had witnessed in all their travels around this country.  

      We flew into Laredo and met the outfitter, Patrick Starnes, and the ranch owner, Wyo (spelling may or may not be correct).  After eating lunch we drove across the border and then drove northwest, somewhat parallel to the border and the Rio Grande River for about fifty miles, before turning off the highway onto dirt roads that led through various properties for miles and miles until we finally reached the ranch we would be hunting.  

       The entire property, 45,000 acres worth, was owned by three siblings.  We would be hunting on a third of that property during our stay.  The landscape was mostly flat, with some hills and overlooks, and was filled with every type of cactus and thorny bush you can imagine.  And deer and javelinas.  And lots of both.  

        Friends George and Ann Morris, from Birmingham, also joined us for the trip as well as Jeff Ensor, Rusty Camp, and Joseph Maier who would be running the cameras for a few episodes of The Chase tv show.  

         There were four of us hunting: George,  Travis, Leigh and myself.  The first afternoon Joseph and I settled into a ground blind alongside a road that ran through the endless expanse of cactus.  A little corn had been dribbled along the road and a few piles dumped in front of us.

         In the first hour we heard javelinas and soon they were in front of us.  Javelinas are often confused with a cousin of the wild hog but instead they are of the rodent family.  They have big teeth and smell like a skunk, which leads to their nickname of "skunk pig."  They have a very good sense of smell and very poor eyesight.

         As a group of them came into view out of our blind window I drew my bow as Joseph rolled the camera and an arrow quickly found the sweet spot on a javelina.  We heard it crash just a short piece away so we exited the blind and recovered the javelina, then returned to the blind for the remaining two hours of the evening.  

        We saw several nice bucks meandering through the catcus, in and out of the road, as the evening progressed.  Just as the sun was starting to set I raised up and peeked out the window to see a big bodied buck in the road just twenty yards in front of the blind.  We were instructed to shoot nothing less than a 5 to 6 year old buck and when I saw this one I felt we had a shooter but I wasn't sure.  Joseph, half my age but having filmed since he was 17 years old for Buckmasters and having seen way more mature bucks up close than me, quickly confirmed that the buck was indeed a shooter.  

         Moments later I sent a Wasp Jak-Hammer through his shoulder and he jump high in the air, giving a mule kick, and then he disappeared into the cactus.  

          It didn't take long for Patrick, the outfitter, to come for us and we found the arrow in the cactus, with much help from the lighted nock still glowing.  We found  blood and began to follow.  After a while we decided to back out and give the deer a little time to make sure he was dead before we risked pushing him deeper in the cactus.  

          George had also killed a great buck on the first afternoon and we celebrated with him over dinner and then all returned to look for my deer.  It did not take long to find him and indeed he had been dead since I shot him.  

          The trip and hunt of a lifetime was just beginning for me.  Since I had my buck I was able to spend time exploring the ranch with Patrick and Joseph, shooting more javelinas, and taking in a piece of the world that I had never seen before.  

          This hunt with air on Tuesday, October 27, at 6:30pm CT on "Scentblocker's The Chase" on The Sportman Channel.  It will air again on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 9am CT as well as two more  times later this fall.  

          If you have ever wanted to take the deer hunting trip of your life, I can not say enough good things about this destination.  See www.patrickstarnesoutdoors.com for more information or send me any questions you might have.  

Arrow with lighted nock strikes the buck

First Squirrel!

Andrew and I waiting on squirrels

10/14/2015

       Sunday afternoon my six year old son Andrew and I sat down beside a big oak on the edge of my uncle's property alongside the Alabama River.  He was determined to kill his first squirrel and I promised him that if he would be quiet and patient, an opportunity would likely present itself for that to happen.

       Typically a young hunter cuts his teeth on small game before moving up to big game, but Andrew took the opposite approach, having killed two hogs already.   But our two previous squirrel hunts had been unproductive mostly due to the limited patience of a youngster in waiting for the woods to settle down and come alive with the forest critters.  

        We had ridden through a pine plantation to the edge of the hardwoods that bordered the backwaters of the river and as we walked toward the big oak, which looked like the perfect spot to sit for a while, we saw plenty of fresh acorns on the ground.  Twenty minutes passed and we saw our first game, two turkeys that flew into a nearby tree and apparently began to find something to eat there.  It was too early for roosting and they jumped and flew from limb to limb in search of whatever suited their fancy.

        Forty five minutes passed and Andrew's patience was wearing thin as the sun was not far from setting over the water.  And then in the stillness of the afternoon I saw a branch, high in a tree, move. Then I saw the squirrel and Andrew did too.  For the next few minutes we watched the squirrel go from a tree on our left, run across a series of limbs and a few other trees to a tree on our right.  He would stop briefly and then go back in the other direction.  Andrew steadied the 410 on a small sapling and tried to get a shot but the squirrel would not stop long enough in view for the trigger to get pulled.  Eventually the squirrel darted off through the pine thicket nearby and was gone.

      A few minutes later another squirrel emerged from the treetops and began to work his way along the lower limbs of a nearby tree. We moved closer and the squirrel ran down a cypress tree to the water's edge.  Again, Andrew steadied the gun on a sapling and worked to get the little 410 pointed in position to shoot.  The squirrel stopped on the ground and then ran back up the trunk of the cypress to a height of around ten feet and stopped.  Andrew pulled the trigger and hammer fell on the little gun and so did the squirrel---dead.

      My little hunter handed me the gun and rushed forward to claim his first squirrel.  He was mighty proud.  I was too.

First squirrel!