went down to the ranch to do a little hog hunting/scouting around.

dropped a buddy off at the feeder, and went back to camp, parked the mule and started walking. Ranch looks pretty bad, we've gotten two rains in the last 6 or so weeks but still really, really dry. Alot of brush has died off, we did get a good bean crop and the tuna's are on the cactus.

didn't really expect to see much in the way of game, but I saw several healthy does, many with fawns, which is suprising since its been so dry and We have so many hogs that we haven't been able to kill. I was walking down a cross fence, when 5 bucks crossed in front of me about 50 yards out and started walking down the fenceline.

two bucks were in the 160's, the other two were young tens and one was about a 120 in 6 point. 4 of them moved back in the brush while i tried to hide myself in the middle of the road. the biggest buck couldn't quite figure out what I was, so he started walking down the road back towards me. I watched him for a good 20 min before he walked back into the brush.

its still a long way to go till season, but hopefully things will be alright for the season

That is good you are seeing healthy deer. My place is just outside of LaGrange and I was there two weeks ago. Like yours, we have had very little rain and the place looks pretty rough in some spots. I did see quite a few deer at mine and a few bucks. Nothing to get too excited about but at least they looked pretty healthy.

That's very good news.

really good news.

this will be our 4th season with no hunters, finally starting to recover from the damage they had done (killing too many of the wrong kind of deer, shooting immature trophy bucks, etc)

Sounds good trophy,did ya'll buy it from the previous hunters or did you lease it to them?The reason I ask is because we kinda' had a similar situation.Had about 10 guns on 1200 acres or so,and they shot EVERYTHING except the deer that wised up and went nocturnal-and I'm not real sure about that.This will be our third year w/o most of them and things are looking so much better.Sounds like your deer are in good shape.Good luck.

we leased it out.

we had a good group of guys, but they wern't as trophy minded as I would have liked them to have been. they shot several good 4 year old bucks that would have been real studs at 6 years old, plus they shot the top end managment stuff and let the real scrubs to walk. by the time I would clean house in jan they had already bred and it was too late. 7 years of that takes a toll

the first year after we sold off 2/3rds of the ranch, I only went out once, the only deer taken that year was a old 4 point that I saw in the oat field. the next year we took a few cull bucks and an approriate number of does. last year i shot a few does and one good 8 point, saw quite a few up and comming tens but nothing to get really excited about. there was a heck of a buck in there, both my uncle and our neighbor saw him chasing a doe but i never did. really should have killed more culls but supposedly we had family comming down that wanted to shoot some but they never did get a chance to make it

hopefully this year I'll get the chance at a 160+ buck, that is my goal for the year......that and get rid of the hogs

I'm still kind of new to deer hunting but I would think that with the drought I would think that the deer would be hitting the feeders pretty hard due to the lack of forage.

we've had a tremendous mesquite bean crop, as well as cactus tunas.

they are still eating the protien but not like they were.

Trophy, could you pm me with some info on your hunting packages? I would like to see what you have to offer this season.

Nice to hear that it is looking postive in a negative year for you.

Nice to hear