I like to keep a journal of all my hunting adventures and document what i saw, temperature, time of day, etc, but this year's Holiday Hunts were a little more dramatical.  it all started with my Thanksgiving trips to Rancho Sueno Mio in Mathis TX where I downed a nice South Texas buck early in the morning and I was confident with the shot, problem is I under estimated the power of the deer as he quickly jumped to his feet and stumbled away over the back fence into the next property never to be found, strike one!!!

Then i headed down south to La Mota Ranch in Benavides where I had a good chance of seeing another Buck or at least a nice size wild boar that so much roam the pastures of the ranch.  The trip was very special, some earned holdiay time with my dad and some of his hunt club members at the lease, eating some Ranch cuisine, listening to some great music and just relaxing.  First afternoon hunt i see nothing from the tall elevated blind that overlooked a creek bed that acted as a natural highway for deer, turkey, and pigs.  Around 5:30pm my dad is attacked at his feeder by a group of monster pigs with 3 or four nice big black boars feasting on the corn before dark.  My dad was able to pop off two rounds but nothing dropped, we later confirmed that his first shot at a pig was deflected by one of the feeder leg pipes, strike two!!!

Then came the Christmas holidays and I am disappointed to say that I had alot of my relatives and fishing buddies had been just tearing up the Reds and Trout from Thanksgiving up until mid-December.  I was completely focused on getting my son a Buck, as my brother in law had harvested two young bucks, and the landowner of Rancho Sueno Mio had harvested a 150 class nine pointer with impressive main beam length and nice time lengths on the antlers.  Another hunter had also harvested two nice 8 pointers and other larger bucks were observed chasing does all over the property.  But, unfortunately we did not see anything, not even mature does, we got totally skunked over christmas and to make matters worse we did not even try to cut our losses by bringing home some fish

Then came the biggest blunder of all, MLK holiday weekend, last weekend of buck season in south Texas and were are back in the blind trying to get one last opportunity to shoot a buck or a mature doe and what do we see, 3 huge monster boars after the morning hunt crossing the road in front of us.  So I get out put a short stalk and aim for the bigger of the 3 boars and "click" no shot, i quickly try to reload and aim for the 3rd pig crossing the road as the other two had gone into the swmap / mix of brush, "Click" the gun does not fire again, by this time all 3 boars were on the move fading into the brush, unbelievable!!!

In the end, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to hunt with family and be out in the outdoors living life.  My freezer stayed pretty empty this fall hunting season, even harvested less doves then I normally do, but the smile on my face had not changed one bit, i am still 100 miles an hour living it up enjoying the time in the outdoors, I had my chances and that's hunting, i will learn from my missed opportunities and get out there and hunt some more.  Spring Break brings another chance to return to Benavides TX to go for attempt number 3 at the ranch to harvest a nice boar or a spring turkey, would rather be hunting shooting nothing then not hunting at all!!!

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