Frank's outdoors...

Went on a deer hunt on my buddy Rich Corl's property in Northeast Texas. Took my little brother Mike with us, and he shot his first deer, a nice big doe. I shot the spike in the picture below, and I always take a photo of myself... no idea why :)

This years goose hunt was a banner one... we had 12 hunters go into the field! That's a lot of people! 3 Flannerys, 3 Fulliloves, 1 Morgan, 1 Kopecky, 1 Kuebler, 1 Broadhurst, 1 Ballantine, and 1 Dufreche! The forecast was dismal according to Butch Waggoner (our host and his son Ryan), but we managed to get all of our limits on speckle bellies (24 total), and pulled a lesser canadien and a ross goose, to bring our final total to 26 birds! A great hunt in all! Looking forward to next year!

Long time since I have posted, and I intend to post after every hunt in the future. So far, I have been out 2 times this season. Teal hunting on the Katy Prairie Conservancy thanks to the North Houston chapter of Ducks Unlimited banquet in July. Pictures below... there were 4 hunters and we pulled 14 teal! It was an awesome hunt! That place has produced ducks everytime I have been out. Thanks to Gordon Johnston for donating the hunt to DU and Wes Newman for guiding us (that's Wes with his dog next to me and PawPaw)!

This year, my posse of hunting buddies decided we would take a goose hunt with Butch during the electronic calling season from Jan-March. So, on Feb 16th, we got up early and headed out to an area just southwest of Sealy. It was about 55 degrees a 3am but by 6 it was well into the 60s, and was forecast to rain all day. We actually hunted with Butch's son, Ryan Waggoner, this time. He had some different style decoys as opposed to just "rags" (aka garbage bags on a stick). These things had silhouette heads for both feeding and sentry decoys. They are more expensive, no doubt, but man they worked great. Pic 1: me and my 2 dads We had birds working the field ALL morning. It started out a bit foggy, and the fog burned off and we were left with an overcast, morning. It was perfect. Granted, we didn't pull down the 70+ birds I was hoping for, but the action was great, and we still got some 24 birds. The snows were very wary, but we still did real well. Pic 2: My cuz Tom...

The 7th annual Thanksgiving Goose Hunt was a resounding success. With our usual crew (plus Chris's dad and brother, and minus my dad), we headed to the field with Butch's Guide service for another outstanding hunt! We were in the field and awaiting the birds by 5:45, and had our limit of speckle bellies by 7am! Then spent the next 2-3 hours picking off the snow geese! All in all we had 16 specks, 1 blue, 2 or 3 Ross, and the rest were snows totalling 33 geese. We truly had another great hunt that has surpassed the previous years. Our crew is going to be heading into the field one more time this season in February for our first electronic call hunt with Butch... I can only imagine how fun that will be! Pics to come in February after that hunt! See below for our current pics! This is the Fullilove gang (from left: Chris, his dad Doug, and his brother Jeff). 3 Geese committing suicide :) Seriously, this is my favorite picture of the birds coming in! What a sight! Another great pi...

We had a really great time this past weekend in Llano, as expected. Weather was hot for Novemmber, 65-70 in the morning reaching well into the 80's by the afternoon. A nice wind on Saturday kept us "cool" in the heat. The blinds were covered in these babies: One blind I sat in had easily 70 of these boogers dropping down from the ceiling, and on the walls, and floor, and my bag, and my hat, and it was jacked up! They are called bold jumping spiders, and most of them in the blind were between the size of a quarter and a fifty cent piec... they were freaking huge! I, personally, would almost fall into the arachnaphobe category, but when the deer come out, you just have to get over it (if you want to shoot something, anyway). I did get to sit in my chair blind twice, and had some real good views on some deer. The second morning we were there, I had setup with my blind backing up to a tre, but I neglected to put any natural side cover around the blind. A pretty decent 8pt ca...

I can't wait for the upcoming season! I have several hunts lined up, as you know. I plan on taking my Nikon D50 to the blind during deer season to see if I can take some quality photos, as well as hunting. I want to get some shots of the buck I plan to take (time permitting), provided I see a good buck while out there. Last season, I had the video cam in the blind, and caught some great action of rutting bucks cracking heads! It was really exciting to watch from the blind, and I had only seen such antics on hunting shows. It was very cool. That same morning, I had deer all around my blind. I also will be taking my chair blind to the field this year, and will use it at least once instead of on of the box blinds at the deer camp. This way I can get to the areas I have seen deer, but didn't have a great view from the blind. It fhat works out, I may venture off the beaten path and find some hidden areas. We have 2300 acres to hunt, so there is lots of land we haven't hunted ove...