Deer Camp Cuisine

This weekend marks the opening of the general firearm season for whitetail deer in Texas. Take a drive on just about any highway across the Lone Star State this Friday evening and you will be hard pressed not to see a pickup truck loaded down with hunting gear bound for a deer lease somewhere. Alot of those hunters will be meeting up with friends or family for an entire weekend of hunting and fellowship. Some of them might even have a meat smoker in tow, ready to be fired up for some deer camp cookin'.

Here in Texas, one of the favorite cuts of meat to cook on the smoker is beef brisket. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know what brisket is, let me explain. (I used to think everyone knew what a brisket was, but one time on vacation I encountered a family from Ohio that thought I was talking about a type of bread.) It is a cut of meat taken from the breast section of a cow, beneath the first five ribs and behind the foreshank. See chart below.

Brisket requires long slow cooking to make it tender, and the best way to accomplish this is by smoking it for an extended period of time. There are several methods for smoking a brisket, but I prefer to place the cut of meat in an aluminum roasting pan and cover it with a dry rub. I then build a fire in the firebox of my smoker and place the tray of meat on the grates inside. Some people use Hickory or Pecan wood, but I prefer to use Mesquite which is readily available in our area. In fact, the Mesquite wood I usually use comes from my deer lease. I decided to buy a brisket this past Sunday and I cooked it up for my family. I allowed this one to smoke for about 15 hours yesterday. I sliced it up this evening and it turned out really well. Drizzled with my favorite barbecue sauce this is hard to beat! We will be eating sliced brisket and chopped beef sandwiches for several days!


What is your favorite deer camp cuisine? Let me know what you and your hunting party like to dine on back at camp.

Duck Season

Duck season opened Saturday morning with some crisp Autumn air falling on North Texas. While I've been focusing most of my efforts on archery hunting for whitetails the last few weeks, I don't want to forget about another one of my favorite pastimes - waterfowling. Up until late Friday evening, I had seriously pondered getting up early for the duck season opener and hitting a local lake within walking distance of my house. But I would have been hunting alone, and waterfowling to me is more of a social sport, so I decided to sleep in.

However, I did speak with two of my waterfowling comrades yesterday evening who had both been in their waders yesterday morning. The first report came from one of the local DU guys who had real good success on public waters at a North Texas reservoir, with he and his 4 hunting buddies almost filling a 5-man limit. The other report came from one of my coworkers who had also hunted on some public land, at a pond located near another well-known lake. He and a couple other guys were able to bag 5 birds.

I typically wait until deer season is over to really get geared up for duck hunting - unless I hear of a really hot spot where the action is good. So what is the report from your area? Leave a comment below and let me know how the ducks are flying where you hunt.

Still No Tags Filled

After some family activities Saturday morning, I was able to make it out to the lease that afternoon in time to get in an evening hunt. I climbed up into the stand where I have been getting pictures of the nice 10-point lately at about 3:45 yesterday afternoon. I sat there until dark and didn't see anything.

My game camera had a few pictures of some younger bucks cruising the area earlier in the week, but apparently I had left some weak batteries in the camera because it had lost power after only a couple days. So I didn't have any pictures from Tuesday through Saturday.

This morning I got in the stand well before sunrise and enjoyed a beautiful starlit sky. It was a bit breezy, but shortly after daybreak the wind died down somewhat making it a little easier to hear the sounds of the woods. About 9:00 I had two does move in along the edge of the heavy cover off to my southwest. They got within about 30 yards of me as they browsed around eating acorns, but they never stepped out from behind the thick brush to offer a shot. I was able to watch them for about 15 minutes before they finally made their way down the west side of the ridge I was hunting.

So, as archery season quickly nears a close giving way to the regular gun season, I still haven't filled a tag. Hopefully my fortune will change as the rut begins to kick in. I would love for nothing more than to have an increased taxidermy bill!

Here are a couple of the young bucks I had on the camera this time:

To Shoot or Not To Shoot - That is the Question

When managing a local deer herd, one of the most important aspects is age. A healthy deer herd should have a mixture of younger-aged animals, middle-aged animals, and older-aged animals. Managing for age is one of the primary goals of the antler restrictions that have been implemented by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in various counties over the last several years. By defining a legal buck as one whose inside antler spread is 13 inches or greater, the department hopes to produce a deer herd with a steady number of mature animals.

One of the challenges associated with a restriction of this sort is enforcement. Texas does not require that harvested deer be checked-in at a check station, and many hunters process their own game, which means that the animal would never be brought in to a commercial meat processor allowing a Game Warden to easily notice an illegal buck. It will be up to the many hunters across the Lone Star State affected by this restriction to make an ethical decision - Do I shoot or not?

With the possibility of a hefty fine or a guilty conscience looming, I want to make certain that any buck that presents me with a shot is legal. One proactive measure a hunter can take is to analyze trail camera photos. Utilizing trail cameras to familiarize yourself with the bucks on the property you hunt is a good management practice that will not only aid in your management efforts but might also keep you from making a costly mistake. A fun thing I like to do is to name each of the bucks I have pictures of to help myself and my fellow hunting buddies to be on the same page when we discuss the deer we see in the field.

This year I have created a slideshow that contains all of the bucks I have captured on trail cameras over the last few weeks. As you can see, several of these bucks are borderline on meeting the antler restrictions. Everyone sees things differently, and while I personally wouldn't shoot a buck that I knew was borderline, I could easily make a spur-of-the-moment mistake. Or one of my hunting buddies might have different standards than I do. While these names might be a little silly, it will be beneficial for my hunting partners and I to review these pictures and familiarize ourselves to help avoid a regrettable pull of the trigger.

Long Day in the Stand

With a big buck showing up on one of my trail cameras at 2:30 in the afternoon a little over a week ago, I decided that Saturday I would try to sit in my stand all day long to better my chances at getting a shot. And I would have sat there all day, but I forgot to grab my lunch out of the truck when I headed to my stand in the morning.

The day started off pretty good with three does moving across a clearing off to the south of my stand at about 8:00 AM. I had planned on taking a doe if given the opportunity, but they never got within bow range. About thirty minutes later I stood up in my treestand to stretch a little, and as I did, I noticed a doe standing straight out in front of me in some thick cover. She noticed me before I noticed her and she immediately took off.

I got down out of the stand and walked back to the truck for my lunch and some water at about 11:00. I sat there in the truck for a few minutes and listened to a little bit of the Red River Rivalry Texas/OU game on the radio (Hook 'Em Horns!). Then I got back in the stand for the rest of the afternoon. I ended up sitting in that stand for a total of 10 1/2 hours yesterday, and those early morning does turned out to be the only deer I would see. It made for a really long day, and my body felt it this morning, but it was still fun.

Here are some of this week's game camera pictures:
This is the fourth different buck I have gotten a picture of on this camera in the two weeks I have had it in this spot.

This deer is the reason I sat there for so long with such anticipation yesterday.

This is my best game camera picture ever! Getting a big buck to pose like that with a gorgeous sunset in the background is a pretty rare occurrence.

I had made a mock scrape in this spot the day I put the camera here. I don't know if that made a difference or not, but he is definitely marking his territory.

I'm not sure when the next time will be for me to have an opportunity to get back out and hunt again. The weekends are pretty full for the next few weekends, so I may have to sneak a quick trip in for a half day hunt. Stay tuned as the quest continues.