Frank's outdoors...

Opening weekend came and went with nothing taken this trip.  However, I did have some pretty good excitement that I have never seen. Opening morning, I saw the biggest deer of my life.  A tall-tined, chocolate antlered 14 pt.  Its the best count I have, need to get him on the ground to get an accurate count, but double crab claws on his upper main beams of an otherwise 10pt, and little kickers here n there. Sunrise was at 7:13am, and about 5 minutes later I see movement about 50-60yds in front of me through the woods.  This deer (coming from the right) goes behind my protein feeder, and around the corn feeder, and passed me to my left.  I was thinking, "why isn't he going to the feeders???"  That became very evident when he took a sharp turn at the treeline to my left, and came in behind me to a scrape that was 7yds from my tree!!!  Of course, no chance at a shot on him through the tree I was in, but I could turn and see the whole thing. ...

My buddy Mark found the old fella back and still alive after the crossbow shot on his shoulder last season on opening day archery.  He appears to be no worse for wear and still in the area.  Oh yeah, and his rack has grown!

So my good friend from church, Trey, invited me to go hunt in Louisiana.  He was born & raised in Jennings, LA and has a lot of family there.  Well, we saddled up this last Friday, and went to his cousin Frank's camp in Lake Arthur, LA (just south of Jennings 15 miles or so). First, to call it a camp is insulting.  This place was outrageous!  Really an amazing home on 5 acres on the lake.  It is a beautiful piece of property.  So, we roughed it there. Second, the hunting.  We were there to teal hunt on Saturday/Sunday mornings, and get some dove on Saturday afternoon.  We hunted until about 8-8:30 each morning, and with the cold front that moved in it was very pleasant upper 60's.  There were plenty of birds moving in the morning, but not a lot of luck having them sit down on our pond.  We only took 2 the first morning.  During our dove hunt that afternoon... sigh, there were birds, but the hunters left a lot to...