With all the work you guys have put in, I was hoping you would not get burned. I'm glad to see your efforts are being rewarded!! Congrats to you, your family and friends on a great season so far.
-
-
What a wild weather week at The Fat G.
Cooper and I rolled down on Monday for what I thought was our last hunt of the season. (We were supposed to head to Midland over New Year’s, but the weather cancelled that trip)
We rolled into the ranch and threw out alfalfa at a few spots. We got settled into the stand Monday evening and hadn’t seen anything at what had been a hot stand. I called Keegan to confirm when the feeder was supposed to go off as I hadn’t heard it. After talking with him, I got out to check the feeder and it was bone dry with unit about 2 inches down from the funnel. Cooper and I scrambled to get set up in another stand before last light. We make it in and shortly after I see a couple of axis meandering through the cedar. Nothing was really presenting a shot and then a pig comes out. I told Cooper we could wait on the axis and maybe not get a shot opportunity or kill this pig. He said kill the pig, so we did. That evening we filled the empty feeder and moved the timer unit back up to the funnel.
The next morning was about 50 degrees but the wind was absolutely howling. Cooper had chosen the stand we were going to hunt the night before. It’s the tallest stand on the place and it was sketchy in the wind. We saw a couple of WT doe and then had a booner of a spike roll through. He was going to die, but every time we got set up on him, the wind would howl and buckle the blind. We got out and stayed at camp the rest of the day. The wind was miserable and I had work to get done.
The evening hunt was more eventful. I made what I thought was a great shot on a doe early around 4:45. We hunted until dark and went to recover her. Good blood at impact and then nothing after. I mean nothing. I hate losing an animal. The next morning hunt i had 4 axis come out. 1 buck growing antlers, a young spike, a doe, and a yearling. I got settled in on the doe and CLICK! No boom and they scattered.
A little dejected, we got out of the stand and we headed home. We passed Joe coming down outside of Sonora. Joe experience all the winter storm madness. He thinks we got about 4 inches of accumulation at the ranch.
I wish he would have gotten a kill during this time. It would have made for an amazing picture.
Matt rolled in Thursday night. He went through all the sketchy road conditions around Junction, but made it to camp safely.
With my trip to Midland cancelled, I got the green light from the wife to head back down Friday. Keegan, Truitt, and I rolled out around 9:30AM. I think they were a little wounded from the NYE festivities.
Most of the snow had melted and it was a swampy drive into the ranch. Truitt pelted me with a snowball during a pee break. I got him back later at camp. We put some of the remaining snow to good use.
It was great to have us all at camp together!
That evening we scattered to different stand locations. Truitt and Joe hunted together and it was a success! Truitt shot a stud Auodad! That’s our third of the season and his may be the biggest of the 3.
I caped him out and we celebrated pretty hard that night. The next morning was rough. I got settled into the airstream stand and after 8AM I had a cull buck roll out. Weak tine length and very short beams. I sent a bino picture out and Keegan said to shoot it, so down he went.
Keegan’s brother made a surprise trip through Temple so he decided to head back home that morning with Truitt and Joe. I got the buck quartered and on ice and shortly after got to meet two of our local game wardens. Those meetings are a lot better when everything is legal. We had a good talk and one of the wardens was named Brent Deen which we got a chuckle about because my first and middle name is Brent Dean. Matt left after the evening hunt and I spent Saturday night solo watching the A&M game. I hunted Sunday morning and saw a few doe, a couple of scrub young 6pts and about 10 axis on the property behind us. No additional shots fired and that put a bow on our whitetail season. Axis herd looks strong this year so hopefully we can put down some studs as they come out of velvet in the coming months. We’ll have a work weekend coming up soon. We’ve got to paint the cabin and put up some skirting on the bottom for our LO insurance company to maintain the policy. Thanks for following along and I’ll have more updates in a month or so!
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkComment
-
Awesome thread! Thanks and congratsComment
-
Thanks for the update. Congrats again!Comment
-
This is a great thread.
Thanks for sharing and congrats on all the killin!!Comment
-
Great update!Comment
-
Wow Brent, just read thru the whole thread!! VERY NICE SIR!! Real sorry to hear of your friend's passing. You mentioned that he was a Christian, so there's a great reunion to look forward to some day! Hope you guys are able to keep helping out to maintain the properties so that his wife will be able to keep the property and you guys enjoy any years of memories. That's a fantastic place to raise up your and your friend's kids!!
Congratulations of a fantastic first year of hopefully what will be many!! I'll follow along for the axis LDP's comin' up!!Comment
-
Originally posted by SaltwaterSlick View Post
Thanks Charlie! We’ve got a work weekend coming up in a few weeks, so I’ll have some more updates coming soon. It’s a cool place and I’m thankful to get to hunt it. I just wish Mike was able to share in it too, but there will be a glorious reunion one day and I hope he tells us all “well done”. The kids are what it’s all about. I didn’t have access to ground like this when I was a kid and I love the smiles on the kid’s faces when they work hard and get to harvest an animal. Hopefully I get Cooper comfortable enough to take a shot this year. I just hope it doesn’t take too much .243 ammo at the range. Gold bars are cheaper at this rate and more easily found, lol.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkComment
-
Well... we made it back to the ranch this weekend after snovid. It was a memorable trip and not in a good way.
First off, Trevor and some of his buddies went to the ranch back in January. (Trevor is our LO’s son in law) they took the ranger out to the 110 to hunt some aoudad that have been prevalent at that spot. I don’t know what happened, but he sent us this picture.
They had flown into Sonora and drove the old ‘99 F250 to the ranch. At that time, we were supposed to go to the ranch in a couple of weeks. I told him we would try to get it loaded on a trailer and bring it home. Well, the winter weather apocalypse happened and we didn’t make it down until this weekend.
Keegan’s trailer has a bent axle, so we had to borrow Matt’s. His cattle ate the lights and wiring so before we even left I had to rewire the trailer from front to back. No point in hauling an empty trailer so we loaded it with 50 sacks of corn and head south around 5PM. Stop in Llano on Friday night for a meal at Cooper’s and then keep trucking. We get to the airport in Sonora to pick up the F250. (The ranger broke in one of the most remote places we have and I was not driving my truck through there)
We make it to camp around midnight and quickly discover that the ground is soaked. Come to find out it was an easy issue with the freeze. A trough that’s fed by our well storage tank popped a hose off.
Easy fix. Downside was that our well runs on solar and our storage tank was empty, so we had no water for the evening. I pulled a camera on the way in and looked the photos over. Seems we didn’t get near the snow that Del Rio did and our Axis looked healthy just days after the freeze.
We get up the next morning, eat breakfast and set out to fill feeders. All but two were completely bone dry. We filled 5 feeders and then put the trailer on the F250 headed for the 110. We get there and find the ranger. We look around and can’t find the key. Make a call to Trevor and he says the key is at camp. Ugh. We drop the trailer and go fill the other two feeders on the 110. By this time, it would be too late in the day to run to camp, get the key, come back and mess with this ranger. We decide to come at it first thing Sunday morning and head to camp. We play a little dominoes and head out to hunt. A fox and boar hit the ground.
We cook dinner, play dominoes and head off to bed. By the way, the weather man said low 80s and sunny. It was 60 and overcast all day Saturday. Temps didn’t get high enough to paint the cabin and the sun didn’t shine enough to run our solar pump, so we still don’t have water.
We get up Sunday and head over to the 110. We check and doublecheck before we drive over there adding things we’d forgot to the truck before we head over. Right when we are almost at the ranger, we realize we don’t have the key, again. This was the start of a real sh*t day.
We unload tools at the ranger and send Truitt back for the key. We had two floor jacks. One didn’t work at all. The other wouldn’t lift more than a few inches. We cut up some boards and make due enough to get a couple jack stands installed and the tire off the ranger. Then we can really see what’s wrong and it’s not good. Geometry on the front end was ALL jacked. I attempted to get it able to be winched on the trailer, but without disconnecting the entire front end and rebuilding it, I don’t see how that was possible. We were afraid to winch it on in the condition it was in because I think we would have ripped the tire off and Lord knows what else. We called Trevor and said basically that we tried, but you need to get it resolved and that might require bringing parts and a mechanic all the way out here. Here’s some photos of the damage.
So we hook up the trailer and drive back to camp. Sun still isn’t out, so we still don’t have water and I’m not able to pressurize the cabin and check for leaks. We close up camp and load the trucks. I go to hook up the trailer from the F250 to my truck and discover that we ripped a tail light off somewhere on the 110 and we didn’t raise the jack high enough and screwed it all up. We swap the trailer and head out from camp with Keegan and Truitt in the F250 behind me. About 500 yards from camp they stop. Keegan calls me and says they have a flat. Oh great. This day keeps getting better. I back up to them to check it out.
Tear in the sidewall. We get a bottle jack and get the truck lifted and the tire off. In the meantime, I’m trying to drop the spare. The tool for that is MIA. Try to do it with a socket, but we don’t have an extension that will reach. We finally remove the tailgate and use bolt cutters to cut the cable. Low and behold, that tire is flat.
We load up both tires and make a run for Del Rio. Only one tire shop is open on Sunday’s and they close at 3. We get there around 2PM and drop off the tires. None of us had eaten yet so we grab a bite to eat and return. They had “forgot to do them” when we arrived back. They proceed to swap out the tires and we load them up and head back to the ranch.
Truitt and Keegan install the tire while I check the wiring on the trailer. Had to repair a couple of wires to get lights back and they’re working.
As you can tell, we were all dressed to travel, not work, lol.
On our way out the high fence gate on Dolan Creek, we find this at the gate.
The new hand working the gate for the pipeline workers apparently doesn’t have a dang clue. We manage to get the gate open and on our way.
On the road again. Finally. We drop the F250 at the airport in Sonora and continue home. As we ease into Georgetown on 29, a truck waves us down and says we have some sparks coming from the trailer. My initial thought was the live wires hanging from the ripped off light. No erratic noise or problems pulling the trailer. We pull into the First Baptist Church of Georgetown parking lot and find this...
Luckily we have two spares and a brand new 4 ton jack floor jack we bought while in Del Rio. Downside was Keegan asked me if I wanted an extra 4 way he had and I declined. These lugs were so tight my impact wouldn’t budge them. Detach the trailer and make a run to Walmart for a 4 way. These lugs were on there! We basically had to jump on the 4 way to get them to move. We got both tires changed and limp home.
We roll to my house around 11PM. My wife texts and says my son is running a 101.6 fever. This day just won’t quit.
We made it home way later than intended, but we got home safe. This country is rough, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun to hunt. I’m headed to get two new tires and a light for Matt’s trailer. I’ll be headed south again this weekend with my boss and his son to run some electrical. Hopefully our well is working and we have no other plumbing issues, but time will tell. Weekends like this are hard and not fun, but it definitely makes you appreciate the fun ones much more. I hope to have a much more encouraging post after next weekend, lol. Thanks for hanging around for the long read.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkComment
-
Man! What a weekend that was... 2 tires on the trailer at the same time? Good thing it wasn't loaded.
But, you'll forever have a "Remember that weekend when..." story to tell and laugh about while sitting around the campfire!
Glad everyone made it home safe.Comment
-
Dang! If you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all! Nevertheless, quite an adventure! Thanks for taking us along!Comment
-
Originally posted by kmack View Post
Yeah... when the front tire blew, the tread got wrapped around the second axle and shredded that one. We were actually super glad we were unable to get the ranger or that would have been a much more terrible experience under load.
I’m sure we’ll laugh about it someday, but that day isn’t in the near future. It was pretty depressing just to write this post, lol.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkComment
-
Wow beautiful
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkComment
-
Very nice. You’ll need a full time flat fixer out there let me know.Comment
-
Hahaha! I work with Joe D at the PD. He was just telling me about the place he was hunting this year and the ranch name. Low and behold I open up TBH and see this thread. Small world! Really nice property, and sorry you have to hunt with Joe lol!Originally posted by CentralTXHunter View PostComment
Comment