In late November I made an unscheduled trip out to Grand Junction, CO to visit my sister and I wound up staying December and part of January. When I flew back to Dallas The Duck (Don Beckwith) picked me up. He was anxious to race down to the deer lease and hunt that afternoon. But I had other plans.
Ojeda’s Mexican Restaurant.
This is mexican food done as good as it gets. Way better than the mexican food you ate, if you ate it that day, and didn’t eat at Ojeda’s or down the street at Herrera’s. The Duck and I slammed their home-made salsa and chips and waded into beef enchiladas and tacos.
And later, since there was no way we could get home in time for an afternoon hunt we stopped at Braum’s Ice Cream in Hillsboro for dessert in a waffle cone.
The next morning the temperature was in the mid teens with the wind blowing a gazillion miles an hour. One look through a slit in the door at the thermometer and hearing the sound of the wind blasting through my front yard I retreated to my warm bed. The Duck, however, hunted. We both saw the exact same number of deer, turkey and wild hogs … none.
The Duck cooked corn beef hash and eggs and we had a hearty breakfast. When I checked at the post office there was a package. I was looking for it, new Executioner crossbow bolts from Black Eagle Arrows. Both the Duck and I are shooting crossbows this year and we wanted additional arrows. Duck is shooting a 150 lb. Barnett crossbow and I’m shooting a Darton.
We put a practice head from Grim Reaper Broadheads on an Executioner bolt and took some practice shots to be certain the new arrows were sighted in. Mine were already on the money but Duck’s were 2 inches to the right and he adjusted it in.
My afternoon was busy, deer were moving, just not close enough for a bow shot. The Duck hunted an entirely different area on the highest place on the property. He has a ground blind set up in the dense cedars near the top of the hill.
He brought a video camera and tripod to self video his hunt. As well as his backpack, arrows and a bi-pod rig he made to hold his crossbow while he waited to use it. Inside the blind, it looks like this. It’s overlooking a well traveled game trail that runs parallel to the crest of the hill. This is an excellent place to hunt. The Duck has taken deer, wild turkeys and wild hogs all from this same ground blind.
Three hours clicked away on the clock without seeing any of them. A shift in the amount of daylight darkened the view in the tight cedar trees and the already cold temperature dropped noticeably. He thought about leaving, it was a long walk to his pickup.
Without so much as a whisper half a dozen wild hogs circled the blind and walked into the small opening in front of the blind’s shooting window. Duck turned the red dot on in the sight. The hogs were all similar size and he took aim at the nearest one, a big boar, and took his shot.
The boar growled roughly and ran back up the hill the way he came. Duck heard a guttural moan in the trees to his left. He texted me and we decided to to wait until morning to take up the track in these thick cedars.
CONTINUED…
