Friday, November 9, 2007

This Is My Secondary Blog Where I Will Be Posting ...


about my experiences in God's great outdoors hunting and fishing. I will only post to this blog on an irregular basis when the mood strikes me. Dudleys Diary will still be my primary blog. I want to document my many wonderful experiences I have had in my life hunting and fishing, for my kids and someday I hope, for my grandchildren to read. My days afield striving to catch a trophy Largemouth Bass or shoot a trophy Whitetail Buck have been the most rewarding and exciting days of my life without a doubt with the exception of the birth of my two children. As I have grown older and my physical activity becomes more and more limited due to my having Muscular Dystrophy, I have learned to cherish the memory of past hunting and fishing trips and special times spent with my kids. Teaching them the joys of hunting and fishing as they were growing up and the lessons to be learned was very rewarding for me . I am grateful to my father for teaching me and encouraging me to fish and equally as grateful to my father in law for teaching me how and giving me the opportunity to go deer hunting on a small farm in East Texas. We hunted for many years down at "Kickapoo" named for Kickapoo mountain. It is a mountain in Texas but anywhere else would be called a "hill." For many years I have hunted and fished at every opportunity. When I was growing up, I went on some great fishing trips with my father to Lake Of The Pines and Lake Texarkana in East Texas. We had some great trips to Lake Arrowhead near Wichita Falls. We made a couple of truly memorable trips to a private sixty acre lake near Chico. When I was in college, I had many memorable fishing trips on Sam Rayburn Lake and Lake Murvaul. There were trips to Houston County Lake and Lake Fairfield. I remember many great fishing trips on Lake Benbrook growing up. Later, there were a lot of great Striper fishing trips on Lakes Palestine, Texoma, Bridgeport, and Proctor. I remember catching sand bass by the hundreds on Cedar Creek Lake and crappie and catfish on many lakes across the State. For many years I made trips to the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma and stayed in a cabin built high on a bluff with a majestic view of the river below. I floated the river in a canoe day after day, fly fishing for bass and perch in the clear running water. I remember duck hunting in college and other hunting trips for dove and quail. I have been blessed to have gone deer hunting on the historic 30,000 acre Ford Ranch down near Brady many times. I have been hog hunting on the famous 60,000 acre Nail Ranch near Albany. I have gone turkey hunting on the Mayer Ranch near Sonora. My kids and I have hunted the Kyle Ranch near Bandera several times. My father in law and I made trips yearly for many years to my uncles ranch in Palo Pinto county in West Texas camping in a primitive cabin down in the Brazos River bottom during both bow and rifle seasons. We would load my Jeep down with camping gear and hunting equipment and rifles or bows and pull it behind my pickup truck with a tow bar. I have a lot of stories to tell and photos to share of many of my successful hunting and fishing trips and many trips to the taxidermist. My whole life it seemed I could never go hunting and fishing enough. The opportunities are few and far between these days due to my declining health and other constraints, at least I will always have the memories. Muscular Dystrophy can't take those away from me.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Dudley. Like you, I grew up following my father and grandfather around as they went on hunting and fishing trips across the state and sometimes across the country.

The memories that were created from these trips are now constant reminders of how much influence these moments had on me.

I've traveled many miles across east Texas walking from stock pond to stock pond trying to catch the next big Bass.

And to this day, I still dream of some of the quail hunts we enjoyed.

These days I'm still hunting in east Texas, and enjoying many exciting feral hog hunts.

Here is a great website for Hog Hunting East Texas.

Greg said...

Hog hunting in Texas is immense! You can get Texas wild boar hunting information as well as guides, free hog hunting books, and locations at
http://www.huntwildpig.com/state-specifics/texas/

Thanks for the great post!

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