I’m writing my column early in the week, actually late Sunday afternoon. This weekend was the ‘opener’ of the general deer season here in Texas. Saturday marked the first day when hunters can take to the deer woods with center fire rifles, muzzleloaders, big bore air guns; any legal sporting arm.
I’ve hunted a bit in October on a friend’s ranch with TPWD managed land permits but have yet to harvest a deer. I hunt for meat as well as antlers and to be honest it’s just been too warm, too hot for me to get fired up about harvesting my meat from the wild. I have several places to hunt this fall and winter and no doubt I will have the opportunity to take three or four deer which I hope includes a couple of fat doe as well as a mature buck or two.
I would say I could care less about the antlers but I’ve always said any deer hunter that says he or she doesn’t want to kill a heavy antlered buck is probably lying. When it comes to bucks, my goal is a mature animal that has reached its potential. I had much rather take an old buck on his way down than a good looking up and coming two and a half year old, but that’s just me.
With an earlier than usual opening day of Nov. 2 and unseasonably warm weather I decided to monitor several of my friends that hunted this weekend via cell phone. I was getting text messages from several guys hunting from deep East Texas, North Texas and the Hill Country and many of the texts went like this, “It’s just too warm for much deer mo.