Frank's outdoors...

Just a few days after I left my uncle Jim's in South Carolina, his son and my cousin Cody dropped a HUGE 200 lb 10 point on Jim's farm!!!  Helluva buck, Cody!

Had a really nice trip to South Carolina to hunt with my uncle Jim.  The trip started out rough with problems at the airport trying to get my gun checked and not having ENOUGH locks on the case... pisses me off all over again just writing about it.  Long story short, I put the damn gun back in the car and borrowed a gun when I got to SoCar.  Arrived in Florence, SC and Jim picked me up and we headed to White Horse deer camp where a good friend, Billy McDaniels has a 2700 acre lease.  (I have deer/turkey hunted here a few years ago, and this place is awesome!)  I actually borrowed Billy's gun, a Browning A-bolt 7mm Rem Mag with a Zeiss scope on it... affectionately known as "Sadness".  Sadness has taken deer at 500 yds, and I was honored to tote her to/from the blind each hunt. Anyway, there was a herd of hunters at the camp unexpectedly, 14 in total over the weekend.  I was the only one in camp that saw deer all weekend!  I saw 2 Thursday nigh...

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...