Texas hunters

Friday Phil had a day off so we drove from Houston to Boerne to attend the Sheep n ewe n llama too festival. The 3 hour drive out to Boerne was a hoot. What we didn't realize when we started out, but soon discovered is that the deer hunting season started this weekend. I think it was when we passed the third or fourth SUV towing a trailier with an off road vehicle and multiple piles of coolers that something different might be going on in the Texas hill country. There were lines and files and convoys of all sorts of trucks and SUV's each loaded with cross country and offtrail vehicles, rows of coolers and multiple bags of deer corn. Some even had cow catcher type platforms extending from the front bumpers loaded with more bags of deer corn.

I particularly got a laugh out of the van, cunningly painted in bamboo camouflage motif towing the requisite trailer loaded with off road vehicle, corn, coolers and a futon couch also in camouflage colors. Obviously some good old boy is planning to haul his couch to a shoot site, scatter corn, set up his coolers and wait for the deer to come so he can shoot from the comfort of his own bed. Maybe he's hoping the deer will also obligingly slaughter itself and stow itself in the cooler.

Many of the off road vehicles sported multiple guns already racked and stowed in their carriers along with a variety of antennae for radio, cb, and proximity radar.

One truck, another in camouflage, only this time oak leaves motif rather than bamboo, also had a deer feeder and a shooting stand in addition to the requisite off road vehicle, coolers and corn. This guy not only had corn in the truck and in a cowcatcher rack on the front but also had an additional rack for corn on top of the cab. I hope he planned his route out to avoid low bridges.

It was hard to believe that the deer population could be large enough, even though it is huge, as is everything else here in Texas, to support a kill for each hunter. Maybe they all end up out in the woods stalking each other and just generally giving the birds and other wildlife a good scare, or maybe those coolers were all really for beer and we just hadn't seen them stop and fill up.