Just Some Southern girls, Enjoying Some Sweet Summer Time Adventures.

     We all live hectic, chaotic, busy lives; well I surely do anyways and that's a fact.  Some of us are work professionals, momma's, wife's, care takers or ALL of the above.  But one thing we all have in common is the need of some of our own time spent with friends and the amazing world of nature.  Sometime off and away from our everyday very busy work loads.  Even just a mental break from all the stresses, cares, and concerns.  This is why God gave us women, girlfriends.  Friends to restore us, revive us, who understands us and supports us without any judgement or tension.  This helps us to be better professionals, momma's, wifes, and care takers.
A sweet friendship refreshes the soul. Proverbs 27:9

     Back in May the text messages began.  A group of us girls trying to find a date that will work for all of us to go bow fishing in OK.  I am so glad everyone can be patient with each other because one date will work for one or two of us and then the other can't.  After several text and several dates, we decided on a date in July.  I arranged for Billy's parents to come down to our house to watch the girls and take care of all the animals.  I was ready to make that trip to Oklahoma to catch some summer time adventures with some of my girlfriends.  The good ole Lord knows when I am needing a break before I end up at the end of my rope. 

     A week before our upcoming adventure should begin,  I receive this text message;   "It's not looking good for our trip next week!  Our water is still high and now they are calling for torrential downpours next week with that tropical storm hitting."  Not what I wanted to hear from the outfitter but very thankful for his honesty and concern.  We talked about it, and decided to pass on this trip and  we would plan another trip at another time.  I suggested they come down to my house to hog hunt since some of us had already taken off of work.  Carlee was all for that!  She has been wanting to come down and do some hog hunting for a while.  

So that Saturday morning Callie, Cassie and I drive excitedly and determined to the south end of town to the Southside Feed store. We pull the truck around back to the drive through feed barn. I park the truck and keep it running with the AC blowing hard because it is already hot and humid in the 90’s. I jump out to lower my tailgate and go inside to pay. I get loaded up with 10 fifty pound bags of corn and then off to the grocery store to buy all the raspberry jello they had on their shelf. The grocery store checkout lady rang up all 13 boxes of jello but never questioned or said a word that this might be odd to buy this much jello and nothing else. This is our secret ingredient while hog hunting. The hogs seem to love the raspberry jello and I was hoping with only a week to try and bait and get these hogs coming in, they would smell this jello! We next drive out to our friend Dan’s property. We hog and deer hunt on his property and it is heavily wooded and usually has several hogs being destructive out there. We drive out to his back pasture and the girls and I pour out a bag of corn at a bow stand, and at our box stand. This will give us two different hunting places at his property. I put up a game camera at both locations to see if and when the hogs find it and the times that they come in at. Before we leave we mix our raspberry jello up with some water and we pour it all over the corn we had just poured out. Oh it smells so sweet and good, I sure hope those wild, nasty, crazy, wild hogs think so too!

Corn and Raspberry Jello mix

We then drive back home and Callie opens the first gate at our driveway, then Cassie opens the second gate to get us up to the house, and then Callie opens the third gate to get us into the back pasture. This is when it is really good to have the kids with me to open gates as I drive through and have them close them again to keep the cows in the pastures that they need to be. Because you know those cows always think the grass is greener on the other side! #ranchlife #gateopeners
In the back pasture we pour out another fifty pound sack of corn and more of the jello. We are feeling good that we have some good spots and hopefully those hogs will start coming in. Up goes another game camera. It is always like Christmas morning checking all the pictures on the camera. The anticipation, the unknown, but you know its going to be amazing!
     I am the Director of Mapping Department at the Henderson County Appraisal District. I wear a dress and heals to work everyday. So Monday morning I throw a pair of socks and cowboy boots in the back seat of the truck before I leave out for work. After work I drive over to Dan’s property and drive out back to see if the corn is gone that the girls and I put out on Saturday. I drive down the narrow sandy driveway out back dodging the tree branches so they don’t scrape my truck. I take my heals off and put each sock on and my boots. I walk through the tall weeds out to the corn pile we had poured. It might look like something ate a little bit of the corn but for the most part, a bunch of it was still there. I walked over to the box stand as sweat is already starting to pour down my back from this summer heat and humidity and lifting my dress so it doesn’t get snagged on all the tall weeds. I brought a can of wasp spray to spray under the stand because I noticed they were pretty agitated when I opened the door Saturday to make sure the stand was in good condition. I don’t think anyone has been in the stand since the past deer season in December. Nobody wants to get stung by a wasp while trying to hog hunt.

After work driving to put more corn out.

Hogs got the ground tore up.

Each night after work I drive out to Dans property. Each day the corn seems to be disappearing more and more. I am pouring about twenty five pounds of corn out at all three spots each evening. I would also check the game camera’s and I had some deer but I hadn’t seen a hog. But over by the bow stand, it sure looked like some hogs had the ground tore up a little. Of course this was at an angle the camera could not capture.




   Thursday finally got here. Carlee was getting on the road driving down from Oklahoma and Angelle was almost here from Louisiana. I am a member of the Athens Rotary Club and we were having our Thursday night social at 3 P’s in a Vine here in Athens. Perfect timing for my out of state girlfriends to meet up with me and to meet my Rotary friends. I figured after those long drives Carlee and Angelle would be ready for some wine tasting. It was my first time to go to the Winery and it was so interesting and fun.

Myself, Angelle & Carlee

Angelle tasting the grapes.

We took a tour and we got to taste the grapes out in the vineyards. I was so surprised at how yummy they were. It made me start thinking about needing to plant some of these grapes at home

Myself and Angelle with the grapes in the background. 

After the tour we went back inside into the air conditioning to visit while eating cheese and crackers and tasting different wines they offer. This gave me a chance to introduce the ladies to my friends Chris and Larry Russell. They offered for us to go to their place and hog hunt on Friday night. Larry has had his deer feeder up and running all year and he said hogs come in almost every night and that he would love for us girls to help eliminate as many as we could. Absolutely we would love to! I thought that is great, we would hunt at the Russell’s Friday night and Dan's property Saturday. After our visit with Rotary we drove back to my place. I had my famous Taco Soup in the crock pot ready to eat and we sat our lawn chairs out in the front yard to enjoy the wonderful breeze. I normally have a camp fire going in this spot but in the middle of July in East Texas even in the late evening it is too hot for a camp fire. We had our music playing while eating our Taco soup and enjoyed visiting and catching up. Occasionally one of the kittens would attack our hair from behind and try to play with us but first scaring us to death with claws to the back of our lawn chairs. Never a dull moment.

I wake up at 7am and notice Carlee and Angelle still asleep in Callie and Cassie’s bunk beds. I quietly go outside to let the chickens out, gather eggs, work in the garden some and gathering fresh cucumbers, cantaloupe, tomatoes and peppers. I keep my eyes the whole time on the back pasture where I had poured the corn. A few Does were out there eating on the corn but never seen a hog. When I brought the produce I picked back up to the house, I noticed in the front pasture what looked like a newborn baby calf. I set the produce down and grabbed the pistol to walk out into the front pasture to take a closer look. I take the pistol with me because I have it loaded with rat shot. In this tall grass we have to many snakes you could walk up on and I do not want to get bit by a water moccasin or copperhead. As I got closer to them, momma cow was not liking it. This was Cassie’s heifer and this was her first calf and thank God she had the baby perfectly fine during the night. The calf was trying to stand as the new momma was still cleaning her and licking her off. I thought I will leave y’all alone because it sure looks like the new momma cow had it all under control. As I walked back up to the house both ladies were up and were wondering what I was doing. I made us some of the girls show pig sausage and bacon and some eggs from our chickens and we were getting our game plan ready for what we were going to do for the day.

First thing after eating breakfast we drove the truck out into the front pasture to check on momma cow and baby calf again and to try and snap some photos. We had the dogs, Cowboy, Sally, and Gracie in the bed of the pickup and after we snapped some quick photos we started to drive off. But not after Sally got a bark or two in and momma cow was not happy so we left them alone. We drove to the furthest back pasture to feed the young heifers back there and make sure they were all good. We all got out of the truck wearing our snake boots and Angelle had her pistol on her side. We crossed the dry creek and walked past the very swampy alligator infested looking swamp through the trees to the muscadine vines on the back fence. Unfortunately there were was not even one muscadine grape on the vines. I was really disappointed, especially after experiencing the vineyard, I wanted to explore more with the muscadine grapes. We loaded back up and drove to town and headed North on hwy 19 to a little town called Canton. We were meeting Granny to pick up Callie and Cassie that had been in Sulphur Springs visiting family earlier in the week. We all got us a delicious ice cream cone from Dairy Palace and started talking about our game plan for hunting hogs at the Russell's. Callie an Cassie were excited because they knew they were going to be able to swim in their super cool swimming pool! Also, another friend Jason, from Rotary, was going to bring his three little girls to swim as well, and my girls just love his kids. Driving back now on South hwy 19 Angelle pointed out a roadside vegetable and fruit stand. I slammed on my breaks and made a u turn and parked at the little stand. We all jumped out and was looking at the big bins of watermelon. Angelle told Callie and Cassie to pick out one of the seedless watermelons and I spotted some peaches. We made our purchases and jumped back in the truck and continued heading south. We finally made it back to our place, and started to make some jalapeno duck poppers for us to take with us in the evening and a cheese and olive tray. We had some time to kill so we walked down to our front pond and we all took turns practicing throwing cast nets. We had two 3.5 ft cast nets and one 5 footer to practice throwing. That 5 footer was nearly impossible for me to throw. Carlee and Callie were the two doing the best throwing the 3.5 footers.

Carlee

Callie

Cassie

We had the truck down at the pond with the music playing and some snacks to snack on. It was a good day to just chill and enjoy. The sun was a little hot and I even got a little sun burnt while we were down there. It almost felt like we might need a nap after that sun beating down on us, but who has time for that when there is time to have some fun! We go back up to the house and start to get our camo together, our boots, our guns, our green lights, food to put on the grill at the Russell's and bathing suits. Callie in walks with a chicken in her arms walking towards the bathroom. We all kind of looked at each other like what is she doing with a chicken in the house? Next I hear the blow dryer going. I walk out of the kitchen down to the bathroom and witness Callie blow drying the chicken that she had just given a bath! The crazy thing is, the chicken liked being blow dried and kept turning his neck trying to get Callie to dry certain spots. Yeah only at our funny farm, you never know what is going to happen. It was time for us all to load up and head to the Russell's for some swimming, cooking on the grill and some hog hunting!! Let the Fun begin!

     We pull up to their beautiful home and the girls jump out and run straight to the pool. Jason and his girls are already there swimming and the ladies and I walk up with our food and snacks. We have a seat in the shade on the patio by the pool as Chris is walking out to greet us. As we are all visiting and laughing Larry get’s home from work and gets the grill going. He is a grill master and he even sells these amazing grills. I have attended two of his grilling classes a couple months back. There really is an art to grilling and he has the talent! I could not wait to try the boudin that Angelle brought with her from Louisiana and the duck poppers of course is one of my favorites. There were plenty of hamburgers and corn on the cob grilled too. We all filled up on the good food and Jason and his three little girls needed to head back home. It was just starting to get dusk so the ladies and I got changed into our camo. We all grabbed some lawn chairs and our gear and walked to the back of their land while Chris, Callie and Cassie went for another swim. In the dark the lights in the pool shined with pretty pink and blue lights making the water look like a beautiful glowing night light. While they were cooling off from the East Texas summer heat we were setting our lawn chairs up in the dark in a row that Chris’ son told us which way we needed to face because we could not see. I sat down and could already feel the sweat dripping down my back and having to wipe it from my face. Chris’s son and Larry had night vision, that was super cool to look through and experience.

I have a green light mounted to my 30.06 that I can turn on and off. The hogs cant see the light if I turn it on or move it. I don't think any animal can see it actually. Larry has a motion light on his feeder, so when something moved down by the feeder the light would come on. After a little bit the light all of a sudden comes on. Oh my gosh it was so blinding bright after being in the pitch dark. You could feel the excitement between all of us! We all throw our guns up looking through our scopes trying to see what set the light off. As the adrenaline starts to fade, no one saw anything and we all kind of relax again. We try to whisper back and forth visiting and as the night goes on and on we are just talking normal and not even whispering anymore. Then all of a sudden the light goes off again and total adrenaline fills the air with excitement. But again nothing to be seen and we all sit back down and relax again. I can eventually feel my self doing the head bob thing. Sitting there trying to stay awake, but I keep falling asleep and waking back up as I feel my head fall. It is so quiet and dark and no one is talking anymore. Then all of a sudden on pops the light and we all jump up from our half sleeping body and I hear Larry say, “It’s a big boar, Carlee shoot him!” Carlee had to move from where she was sitting to try and get a shot on him and all of a sudden I hear, “BOOM!” And I hear all of saying, “Did you get him?”, “Did you get him?” “I don't know”, said Carlee. Then I hear Angelle say, “After you shot I seen him dart to the right.” We all take off down to where that boar was standing. We are walking around looking for any sign of blood, while Larry was looking in the tall brush and trees. After a little bit with no trace of blood to be found we all agreed she must have missed. We were so close to getting one on the ground. Carlee is a good hunter with a lot of experience. It is just a little harder and more of a challenge with obstacles. Such as hunting in the pitch dark, trying to stay alert and ready at 2am, and standing to shoot with no where to prop your gun to hold it steady. We all walk back to the truck and unload all our gear. I walk past the glowing beautiful pool and into the house to find Callie and Cassie asleep on the living room couch all curled up in blankets asleep. They wake up and load up into the truck. I grab a Dr. Pepper out of the cooler to add some caffeine to help jolt me awake but I was still running off a little bit of adrenaline from Carlees shot. I was a little bit of a chatter box while driving home talking about the hunt. Cassie even asked me why I was so hyper at 2:30 in the morning and to slow down that I was driving to fast. Poor Angelle had to open the two gates at our house again. She has had to open so many gates since Thursday but she looks like she is becoming a professional gate opener.

Saturday morning Callie is up by 8am gathering horses that need to be rode. We all wake up a little slower on this bright, already hot, and humid morning. Getting into bed at nearly three am last night is not as easy as a it use to be to bounce back into rhythm. We sit around and nibble on left overs and some fruit while I drank coffee. Angelle is eager to go let the chickens out of the coup and check to see if they had any eggs in their nest boxes for us. She also feeds them our left over scraps from breakfast. We slowly get dressed to head out to ride the horses Callie has already gathered and saddled. Carlee takes a shower and packs up her bags and load them in her car. She has some family in Texas that she needs to go visit and spend some time with them. We all exchange hugs and are so sad to see her drive off. I am just so glad she was able to see a hog last night and got to fire a shot. Come to find out, she shot her gun the next day and realized it was shooting high. We figure now she must have shot right over the back of that big boar. She will just have to come back down and try it again!

 

  Callie is riding Poco the Mare and they are really becoming a great team. Running a few practice barrel runs and just enjoying their friendship and bond.

 

Cassie is riding Lucky and they are still trying to figure each other out. He is a six year old playful, goofy gelding. He reminds me of a class clown teenage boy who has grown so fast and is super tall and kind of clumsy because he isn’t use to his larger size yet. They are making progress with each ride.

Angelle is riding Skat. He is such a sweet boy. Skat loves Poco and gets mad at the goofy teenage boy (Lucky) for showing off in front of Poco. It can kind of be funny at times.

After exercising the horses we unsaddled, brushed them down and hosed them off before turning them back out to pasture.

I grabbed a fifty pound bag of range cubes and loaded it into the bed of the truck. We all climbed into the front of the Ford and cranked the AC up high. Our nephew Andrew has sixty five acres about five miles down the road that we keep a few cows at. We needed to drive over there and just check on them and make sure they are all in there and are doing ok. Once again Angelle is having to jump out to get gates. Even when we get to his property we have yet another gate to open. As soon as we pull through the gate, I see a couple of the cows and they see me. Here they come running. They know my truck, and they know in the back of that truck, is range cubes. Range cubes must be like crack because these cows are standing in belly high grass but they will plow you over if you are in the way of some range cubes. I like to feed them in the same special spot towards the back each time. I like to keep things consistent when it comes to our animals. So they always know what to expect. But as they are quickly approaching the truck I try to drive a little faster because if they get in front of my truck I usually have to come to a stop because they will circle my truck and I cant go forward. They go crazy for this crack, I mean range cubes. I finally make it to our spot and I jump out and jump into the bed of the truck. Cassie jumps in my driver seat and slowing starts driving as I slowly pour out the range cubes. I make a good food line for them all to gather and they can all get some of those delicious cubes.

 When the bag empty’s out, I usually need the girls help in counting everyone. They get to moving and fighting and make me loose count. We finally get it, 13 cows, 1 bull, and 8 calf’s. They are all accounted for and that relieves my stress. They all look good, still have plenty of green grass even though it is the end of July. That makes me feel so good, having fat, healthy and happy cows.

 As the herd is finishing up the last of their range cubes we jump out to take a look at his pond. We still had the cast nets in the back of the truck. Both Callie and Cassie give it a throw. A few perch were caught and tossed back in. We admired the beautiful wild flowers and all the birds and butterflies.

  

     We return back to the house and decided it was time to make a drink with the Gator Bite Angelle brought with her from Louisiana. She mixed ice, a shot of Gator Bite, pineapple juice and Fresca. It was really good and refreshing on this hot humid afternoon. 

Next we grabbed that watermelon she had bought at the roadside stand. I dont know who enjoyed that more the girls or the chickens that received the rind!

Hog tracks

     Once again we gather our camo, guns, and back packs to head over to my friends Dan’s house. I have some Brats to cook on his grill and the cheese and olive tray and chips to snack on before we go hunt in the back of his wooded pasture. Dan is home to greet us and already had his grill
heating up and ready to go. We sit inside the house with the cool ac and visit for about forty five minutes while we snack and chit chat. Dan is then heading to a neighbors house for a gathering and we take off walking out back into the woods. As we start walking down the dirt road while we are dodging a bunch of spiders and their webs. I would just be walking along looking through the woods trying to see if I could spot a bedded hog and then the spider web to the eyelashes happen. This happened several times on the way to the stand. I was just hoping and praying the spider did not end up in this hair of mine because I would never get that thing out and I  would go absolutely crazy!

We spotted several hogs tracks while walking to the stand.  I also brought with me a Walmart sack I had filled with extra corn to throw out along the way. We got settled in and the sweat starts dripping down my back once again. This July East Texas humidity was something else. We kept cracking jokes about it and Angelle called it humidititties lol!! After we finally settled down and stopped talking a huge raccoon came out. When I say huge, I first thought it was a bear and we don't have bears here in Henderson County. I told Angelle, “shoot that sucker!” He obviously is eating all my corn! She whispered back to me, “No, I don’t want to scare off any hogs that might be near by.” She was absolutely right, but man he has been living good off of my corn.

Scary person

After a little bit a doe tried to come in. She got about fifteen yards and could smell us. She wouldn’t come all the way in. She ended up circling all around us keeping about a fifteen yard distance. Then you know how your mind plays tricks on you when the light is dusk. I all of a sudden look up and my heart completely dropped! It looked like a person standing in the woods looking at us. I said, “Oh my God Angelle look!” She didn’t seemed bothered by it,but it was totally freaking me out. How did I not notice this before and now it is just like, wow, out there.

 I finally told Angelle before it gets too dark in these woods we should go out to the food plot and get in the box stand. I would feel safer in there after dark and we would be a little more comfortable anyway. We start out and scare our raccoon off. Slowly go around the corner and start walking quietly to the stand. We are almost there when I completely freeze in my tracks. Angelle realizes I freeze and then her eyes see what mine see. Two nice bucks looking right at us about thirty yards away. All four of us are frozen with all eight of our eyes locked on to each other. The two bucks were not sure and then cautiously turned and walked off into the woods. That was so
cool we thought. We hurried to the box stand not to get busted anymore. We got in and opened the windows and just kept the back door open as well to try and get some air flow. It was awfully stuffy and just like hot thick air. It very soon got almost pitch black and you could not see a thing. I told Angelle we will just try to listen for the hogs and then we will shine the green light that direction. The crickets were so loud you could not hear a thing. I thought after a little bit they will calm down but by eleven pm they were still going strong. We decided we had enough and we were going to walk back to the truck up by Dan’s house and head home for the night. We start walking with the green lights turned on and our guns ready. I know there are a lot of hogs out in these woods and I was a little concerned of us walking into a group of them in the middle of the night. Well we didn’t get jumped by any wild hogs but those dang spiders and spider webs got us pretty good. It is so
crazy how fast these spiders can spin those webs! I felt like we were trying to escape a haunted house weaving in and out of all the spider webs. Creepers jeepers!! Sunday morning came to quickly. Angelle was packing up her belongings and placing them in her car getting ready to go back to Louisiana. Callie and Cassie kept begging her to stay longer. I think she was considering it, and she was also considering taking a chicken and a kitten home! She did end up picking out a kitten she liked, she called it Princess, I had called it patches and she put the two together to give her the most perfect name. Princess Patches the East Texas Kitten who was going to be Angelle’s traveling partner back to Louisiana. A perfect match! Princess Patches settled into Angelle’s car and was ready for the road trip. We gave our hugs and waved good bye. Carlee and Angelle feel like my sisters. I feel like Carlee is my little sister and I want to be there for her and help her and guide her and I feel like Angelle is my older sister. I feel like she never judges me and she just tries to give me advice and wants what is best for me. I was so greatful to have my “sisters” at my home for the weekend but I felt really sad when they left. It just makes me so grateful that even though I live about five hours away from both of them either direction, we have met and became good friends. If it wasn’t for our love of the outdoors and women hunts that we participated in, we may have never met. The outdoors and Ladies hunts have given me the opportunity to meet some amazing women all over Texas and the U.S. and for this I am extremely grateful for these friendships.

As Angelle is pulling out of the driveway I walk back into the house to start cleaning up the kitchen, here I find a hand written note on a napkin with some cash telling me to start a fund for an automatic gate opener!! Lol!!  Poor Angelle had to open so many gates this weekend!! She was a good sport!

  

Update on Princess Patches drive to Louisiana.