Remember Your First Buck

For those of us that are deer hunters there is probably no feeling that is much greater or emotional than the thrill of putting your first buck on the ground.  I still remember fifty years later the old Texas classic basket horned eight point that followed a doe onto a cactus flat where I was hunting near Round Mountain, Texas.  My grandfather had put me in the blind well before daylight and told me to shoot right behind the shoulder if the old buck he had seen several times before showed up.  I now know that grandad had passed the old buck up just so one of us kids might have a chance at it as I often pass bucks today in hopes my daughter or wife might have the opportunity to harvest it at our place.  The old buck heard the safety catch click as I took it off to shoot and looked right at the blind.  I put the cross hairs right behind the shoulder and pulled the trigger.  At the crack of the .243 the buck whirled and ran quickly out of my sight.  I was horrified, I must have missed.  Being eight years old I did not realize that a lung shot buck could run quite aways before expiring.  I put the rifle in the corner of the blind and left it as my grandfather had directed me to do and started the long walk back to the ranch house.  I dreaded telling grandad that I had missed a buck.  About five minutes down the road I met the old truck coming down the road to meet me.  I did not know at the time that grandad had been sitting in the truck at the pasture gate about 500 yards away waiting to hear my shot.  I explained what had happened and waited for my lecture.  Instead grandad told me we would go look and see what happened.  When I showed him where the buck was standing he studied the ground and took off in the direction the buck had fled.  After a few feet he pointed at the ground, looked back at me and grinned ear to ear.  There on the ground were several drops of blood.  As he followed the buck the blood trail became heavier until he stopped and pointed.  There about fifty yards away was the old buck piled up in a cedar.  The shot had been good.  That old hill country buck was a tremendous trophy to me.  I will never forget that buck or the wisdom and soft heart of my grandfather, Eddie Thomas.  Thanks for the memories.  Wild Ed

I have a good friend in Georgetown, Texas that had the chance to re-live that first buck feeling through his grandson this last week.   I congratulate Clayton and also Dennis for being a grandad that just created a memory that will last a lifetime.  Here is the sequence as Dennis related it to me.

Eleven year old Clayton Andrews of Georgetown had quite a first hunt. He harvested the heavy horned seven point with an eighteen inch spread on the first morning of Youth season at 7:45 in the morning. Clayton dropped the buck with one shot. He was hunting with Dennis Chapman, his Grandfather, on the Chapman Ranch west of Georgetown. He was using a 222 caliber rifle with 50 grain soft point ammo.

Watching the buck work his way through brush for five minutes Clayton never got buck fever, but Grandad was a nervous wreck hoping on hope that the deer would step out of the brush so Clayton could get a shot. Yes, Grandad is having the buck mounted for Clayton.

 

The TexasAntler Restriction and Ethics

 

I have struggled with writing about this as I know it will make some people mad.  The Texas Antler Restriction Rule has been around long enough for everyone in those counties effected to be aware of the rule.  There are still too many violations of this rule and hunters should be helping to enforce the rule by reporting those that break it.

 

Report Game Violations

1-800-792-4263

 

We had around nine, year and half old eight points coming to our feeders last year.  None of them would have been legal shooters under the antler restriction rule.  By the end of the season we could find none of them on our game cameras. I made sure my kids and family knew the antler rule and would not shoot anything but a legal mature buck, a doe or cull spike. I watched two of these young eight points crossing a road easement last year and jump over the fence on to a neighboring place with lease hunters.  I heard multiple shots and someone then yelling for help to find a deer.  I talked with a hunter last year that told me it was so close to 13 inches that he was pretty sure it was a legal buck when he shot.  My answer was that if it is that close why would anyone shoot it.  If you can not tell let it walk.  If a buck is too little to kill this year just remember how big it will be next year.  I also saw a neighbor and his grandson with a buck in the back of a truck that would not meet the 13 inch rule, so I mentioned it just to make sure he was aware.  He said it was a big buck to his grandson so he let him shoot it. What a great chance he blew to have let his grandson pass on the buck and then explained about deer management and that a true hunter doesn’t break the law or kill everything that they see.

 

 I am giving notice to all in this article that from now on I will be calling the game warden and reporting any antler violations I see, so will most of my family and friends.  So should you.  "Why" some will ask?  It is the law number one; number two is that we have only a few legal bucks on the place this year coming to the cameras.  It makes me mad when I think of all the promising young bucks of last year.  There would have been a pretty good group of nice bucks for the girls to hunt this year if not for the thoughtless shooting of illegal bucks by others last year.  In fact all of the hunters in the area would have had a chance at bigger bucks.  All of our would-be-bigger bucks were killed before they had any chance of growing a decent set of antlers.  I would bet that none of those eight points were mounted or even the antlers kept as a trophy as the largest might have had a twelve inch spread.  What is the point in killing them when a legal doe or spike could have been taken for meat?    The problem with management on small tracts is  that your neighbors have to manage the deer also.  Making sure they follow the law will help in managing the deer herd in the area.  I would also urge parents and grandparents to explain to kids and grand kids about management and help them hunt a cull or get a legal buck and then make sure they understand that the Texas Antler Rule helped grow the big buck for them to harvest. 

 

Remember I’ll be out there watching and so will others, I hope you will be too.  Wild Ed

 

Report Game Violations

1-800-792-4263

 

 

For counties with Special Antler Restrictions, a legal buck deer has:

1.       at least one unbranched antler, or

2.       an inside spread of 13 inches or greater. The inside spread requirement does not apply to any buck that has an unbranched antler.

Not more than one buck with an inside spread of 13 inches or greater may be taken.

The following picture shows how to judge if a buck is legal or not.  If you can not tell he is not big enough to shoot, let him grow one more year

 

Ears in alert position
are approximately
13 inches apart and
may be used to judge
the inside spread.

 

 

BWD Digital: NOT Scary!

It's Halloween season right now, which means there are scary things all over the place: Jack-o-lanterns, haunted houses, headless horsepeople, robo-calls about the presidential election, Old Man Jenkins from Scooby Doo...

One thing that is NOT scary, however, are the really wonderful digital options available for enjoying Bird Watcher's Digest.  

 

BWD is the magazine that I edit (and which my parents started in our living room in 1978). We're a magazine for folks who love reading about birds and birding. If you download the BWD App or use your e-mail address to log-in to eBWD our fabulous digital edition, flesh-eating zombies will NOT immediately surround you. I give you my word on this.

 

If you like reading about birds on your computer, give eBWD a try. In addition to all the great articles and columns in every issue, you'll get bird videos, sounds, audio files of authors reading their articles, and links to birdy websites all over the Internet. Just a few issues after we launched eBWD, it won a digital magazine award for being awesome. You can poke around the current issue of eBWD by visiting this link: http://www.birdwatchersdigest-digital.com.

eBWD: The digital edition of Bird Watcher's Digest

 Here is a video that we made to help our readers get maximum enjoyment out of eBWD.

 

Or, if you prefer reading on your iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook, or other digital tablet/reader, then the BWD App is a better option because it's designed to take advantage of the tablet format and interface.

You can download the BWD App here in Apple's iTunes. And if you're unsure about whether or not you'll enjoy the app, please browse the many positive comments it has received since it launched in January of 2012.

Here's the current issue of BWD as it appears on an iPad (our digest size is perfect for tablet reading!). Now if YOU get (or GIVE!) an iPad or some other whiz-bang digital gizmo for the holidays, wouldn't it just be wonderful to have some engaging, entertaining content inside it? We certainly think so.

Subscribers to the printed edition of BWD get access to the digital options for FREE! All we need is your e-mail address to verify your subscription.

If you're not a current subscriber to Bird Watcher's Digest it's just $19.99 for one year/six issues. Of course you can also subscribe to just eBWD (six issues is currently $9.99) or just via the BWD App (six issues is currently $4.99). But folks these low-low prices won't last forever...

It's a well-know fact, in these scary times, that one of the ONLY ways to keep flesh-eating zombies away from yourself and your loved ones is to subscribe to Bird Watcher's Digest.

Happy Halloween, happy holidays, happy birding, and happy reading!

New TBL Podcast Episode: Optics Advice

There's a new episode of my podcast This Birding Life available over at Podcast Central. This episode is part one of an interview with Ben Lizdas, sales manager at Eagle Optics. Ben has been in the optics game for a lot of years and he and the good folks at Eagle Optics have helped thousands of bird watchers and nature enthusiasts find their perfect optics match.

Buying a binocular can be a bit like trying to swim underwater through seaweed in the dark. There are thousands of different makes and models of binoculars, so how do you choose the right one? In our interview Ben and I discuss the important considerations for the binocular-buying consumer: power, weight, size, price, close focus, warranty, and others. He shares a lot of expertise and insight—valuable stuff if you're looking to purchase binoculars in the near future.

Ben Lizdas of Eagle Optics

This Birding Life is hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest and sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. You can listen to the MP3 version of the episode, or listen and watch the images that come along with the enhanced (M4a) version of the podcast. This and the 38 previous episodes of TBL are available at Podcast Central or via the Podcast section on iTunes.

Texas Style Link Sausage

Texas style link sausage, the real homemade stuff, comes in many variations and types. I have been around it all of my life and tried many recipes, maybe hundreds of recipes. Both sets of my grandparents made their own homemade sausage and they were very good but of different styles as they came from different parts of Central Texas. There are many recipes for the different regions and ethnic groups of Texas. I came to favor those made by certain groups from Llano, Mason, Fredericksburg and areas in between.

My favorite was Texas style dried sausage, I spent years trying to find the perfect dried sausage. If you have never had Texas style dried sausage it is a wonderful hard dry sausage that is almost as hard as jerky but has a burst of flavor from spices, smoke and the fact that there is fat in the blend of meats. My German grandmother would toss in a handful of a spice that I still don’t know if I like after 50 years of eating it. It was fennel seed and it added a taste and aroma to dried venison sausage that was at best different, but I always went back for more. My grandfather on the other side of the family liked to put mustard seed in his dried sausage.

Link sausage can be grilled fresh, smoked and later grilled, smoked until cooked, smoked and dried or even boiled in beer making the same sausage taste unique in each instance. I have settled on the meat and basic seasonings as my most made sausage after years of eating and making sausage. The same recipe can taste different depending on the blend of meats used, the wood that was burned to smoke it and what time of year it is.  I use pork, beef, and venison in most of my sausages in various mixes. I like plain pork or plain beef sausage but plain venison is just too dry.  My favorite is a blend of beef or venision for the lean and pork for the fat. I like to use about 80-85 percent lean and the rest fatty. If you like more grease and snap just make the fat a higher percentage of your mix.  I have made sausage links from ground brisket, pork butt and cheap hamburger from the local grocery. All have turned out excellent. The key is to keep everything clean and use the best spices you can get. I start with kosher salt and course ground black pepper. Remember that fine ground black pepper adds heat and course ground black pepper adds flavor. You can add cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes for heat. Garlic is another often added spice along with many others depending on the recipe. You can make great link sausage with just meat, salt and pepper. Here are a couple of my favorite recipes. I hope you enjoy your sausage, Wild Ed

The following recipe was taken from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website and is as good a recipe for dried sausage as any I’ve tried.

Dry Venison Sausage

Harold Farley

Bastrop, Texas

Instructions:

Grind the meat and mix in the seasoning. Stuff into sausage casings.

Smoke 150º for 3 hours in a smokehouse.

Remove heat and smoke for 24 to 36 hours or until sausage starts to wrinkle.

Hang in a dry area for about 1 month. (Harold must make a lot to hang for a month as ours never lasted that long.)



Ingredients:

• 30 lbs. Venison

• 15 lbs. Boston Butts (I often substitute the point or flat end of briskets for pork butts) 

• 12 oz. Salt

• 1 cup Black Pepper

• 2 tablespoons Red Pepper

• 3 tablespoons Sugar

• 1-½ teaspoons Garlic Powder

• 1 oz. Salt Peter (Prague Powder)

• 1 oz. Mustard Seed (For a different taste substitute Fennel seed or mix 50/50 as my Grandparents did.)



Texas Style Link Sausage

This is an all natural recipe and some people prefer to add cure or Prague powder.  I only add cure if I am going to dry the sausage.  You can also substitute an equal amount of Morton's Tender Quick for the kosher salt as that product already has the cure mixed in it.

Hog casings to stuff

8 pounds of ground lean beef, pork or venison

2 pounds of pork or beef fat  (If using hamburger or ground fatty pork butt just use a total of 10 pounds of meat.)

3 tablespoons of kosher salt

3 tablespoons of course ground black pepper

1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

You can add to this recipe as you like. We often put cheese and jalapenos in ours. Garlic, onion and other spices such as allspice, mace, marjoram, fennel, mustard seed and even sugar can be added to this recipe.  (You can find thousands of recipes on the net just by searching.)

Mix meat and spices then stuff in casings. Smoke for at least 3 hours and get meat to 165 degrees. You then can freeze or refrigerate until needed. Can be grilled, smoked or dried. We often put links on a rack in the oven at lowest settings, place a wood spoon in the oven door to let the moisture escape and dry for 24 hours to make snack links. The longer you dry them the harder they get. 

This same recipe can be used to make Summer Sausage, just stuff in the larger size collagen casings and smoke to 165 degrees and then cool to 40 degrees as soon as possible.  I drop mine into crushed ice slush.  Once cooled it can be frozen or used as needed.

If you do not know how to stuff sausage links I recommend you watch someone or at least a video on the process.  It is not hard but learning from reading about it can be confusing.  Just go to YouTube and type in sausage making or stuffing sausage and you should find enough to teach you the basics. 

 I will warn you that this is one food hobby that can become an obsession.  If you become good your buddies will search you out and ask you to bring sausage to all the get togethers, hunting trips, fishing trips and other events.  They will start to show up at your door with offerings of dead wild hogs, deer and other mystery meats begging you to make sausage products on the halves.  Don't ask me how I know.  Wild Ed

Worm-eating Warbler: Subtle Beauty

  

 I've always thought that the worm-eating warbler is our most subtly beautiful wood warbler. There's something earthy and attractive about those warm tans and browns set off by an olive back. And the pink legs and feet hardly seem out of place—perhaps they are just a way of accessorizing with a bit of bright color.

 It's the head stripes, though, that really strike me as lovely: black against ochre—simple yet so refined. Look in any color-chip book for a fancy-pants line of interior paint and you'll see the colors of the worm-eating warbler. Probably all on the same page, listed as suggestions by the taste masters for the would-be home decorator. I'd like to decorate a room in these tones. But it would have to be a room that had an aura of the deep woods, for that is where this creature lives.

 

 On our farm the worm-eating warblers spend spring and summer in the deep shady darkness of our two wooded valleys, rarely coming to the top of the ridge where our house is. No, if we hope to see them we must go to them. Finding them is not easy. They lead lives as subtle as their plumage.

If their colors do not impress with bright hues, the song of the male is even less attention-grabbing. It is a long, dry trill that could be passed off as a cicada or a tree cricket. More commonly it is passed off as one of the sound-alike members of the avian tribe for it is confusingly similar to the chipping sparrow, the pine warbler, and even the dark-eyed junco.

I saw what I suspect will be my last worm-eating warbler of the year two weeks ago, passing through the Aunt Lolly lilac along the north wall of our house. Fall is when the woodland birds come up to the ridge top to forage, and perhaps to squint at the sun that they've hidden from during the nesting months. We call it hill topping. They call it trying to live their lives—if they call it anything at all.

And speaking of words we use to describe things, the name worm-eating is quite a misnomer. The worm-eating warbler eats caterpillars, spiders, and other small arthropods. Perhaps an early ornithologist saw a worm-eating warbler eating a slug (which they do) and thought it was a worm, and yet another warbler was inaccurately named (see palm, magnolia, Cape May, Connecticut, Nashville, and Tennessee warblers).

No matter. The worm-eating warbler, to my eye, is our most subtly beautiful warbler in North America. I'll happily take retorts and rejoinders to this statement in the comments section.