Staying busy

Here lately, Jeremy's been helping some neighbors brand calves. It's a great way to work horses, meet and visit with people, get dirty and sweaty and put a little money in his pocket.

But that means he's been gone all day which isn't something we're exactly used to. Yesterday Calvin and I went on a not-so-fun trip to the big city for a dentist appointment. It ended with bad news and another appointment made. Today, though, we got in a little fence fixing. Calvin was real helpful. He's actually only pretending to sleep. He spent plenty of time getting too close to tumbleweed-infested fence, all while assuring me, "There's no rattlesnakes in this neighborhood!" Here's hoping he's right!

It's almost SUMMER!

You have to sing  the word "summer" the same way Olaf from Frozen sings it. Really, belt it out.  It will warm you up. And if you haven't seen that movie, please do. It's for all ages. Jeremy, the "I don't watch comics" hater even found Frozen amusing.

Anyway, chilly day today dealing with this:

And makes me wish it were more of a day to do this:

I'm back. It's windy!

I have been on a blogging hiatus of sorts. Sure, we've been posting a few hunting pics but that's it. I apologize. Mostly to myself because I read back through my old blogs and remembered I so enjoyed it.

Reading those also reminded me how enamoured I used to be with ranching and hunting and living on the prairie. But something changed. Yeah, I had an amazing little boy and got busy with that. And sure my freelance career has, well happened, I guess. And that means more writing for money and less time for myself.

But truly the thing that changed was it stopped raining. We haven't had a good year since 2010 and that takes its toll. On everything. If your income isn't directly related to the weather you can't understand but believe me when I say looking out your window for nearly four years and seeing brown, dead and dying grass makes you a little crazy. Or it does me anyway.

And it makes me grumpy and irritable and whiny and just plain no fun. But ya know what that doesn't do? Make it rain.

Being miserable doesn't seem to change anything at all about the weather no matter how much I wish it were that easy to change. So today, a day where the wind has blown dirt at a steady 35 miles per hour with gusts around 50 the ENTIRE day, I vow to continue blogging. I mean it's  bad out. Watch the dust bowl documentary and it's just like that. Seriously nasty.

No matter how depressing it is living on this droughty prairie right now, I'm going to write something. Because ranching isn't all sunny skies and cowboying.

2014 Texas Pronghorn Hunt Report

We had a very good Texas pronghorn season this year.  We had 12 hunters this year kill 12 bucks.  We do have some openings for 2014 if anybody would like to join us next year.  Feel free to call us at 806-333-4358 or email at sagebrushhunts@gmail.com

2012 Antelope Season Pictures

I know this is kind of late but a much needed post.  Here are a few pictures of the antelope we shot during the 2012 Texas pronghorn season.  Some real nice bucks considering the severe drought.  We had some very fun hunts with some great clients!

Big Typical Mule Deer

Opening day we found this giant typical at first light.  After watching him break off from the herd of does and disappear over the hill in search of a hot doe and headed to some real rough deep cuts we thought we would not see him again that day.  We continued to glass from our hill in hopes of seeing him again.  About an hour later to our amazement we seen him about 2 miles away coming back towards us and the does.  We bedded them down and had a text book stalk to within 180 yds but the buck was bedded behind a yucca with no shot.  We waited about 30 minutes and he stood up and started feeding our way.  At 160 yards Bill made a great shot with the muzzleloader and dropped him.    Last year I watched this deer fight another buck and break his entire g2 off at the main beam and he got to live another year and grew another 10 inches or so.  This buck ended up scoring 191 and was 29.5 inches wide.

This wrapped up our mule deer hunts for the year.  A very good year considering the terrible drought we are in.  Just in case you forgot or didn't see it we shot this 210 buck in the September muzzleloader season. 

Big 210 inch mule down

We finally were in the right place at the right time as our hunter Dennis was able to shoot this giant Kansas mule deer with the muzzleloader at 125 yards.  We passed on this buck last year when he was a young 190 inch buck.  After lots of scouting before season we finally turned him up and knew he was the one to hunt.   This buck has had more luck than a cat and was able to outsmart us for 9 days before we finally got him.  This buck is 32.5 inches wide and scored 210 6/8. We will post more pics when things slow down.  Off to Texas to start antelope season.