Blog 3317 – 12.01.2024

“We’re Burning Daylight”

On my second pilgrimage to my son’s and my timber ranch/hunting and fishing paradise in the East Texas piney woods approximately one mile south of Bon Wier, Texas, I arrived about an hour before sunrise. It is currently 37 degrees F with a high today expected to reach 66 degrees F. That is just perfect weather for a little target practice, a little fishing and a whole lot of access to “our sweet pond” path clearing.

Last weekend, over from Houston with my son Jay, we spent most of our time working on clearing a trail along the southern fence of his sixty acres. Just before we left to drive back to Houston and after a well-needed lunch break at a Mexican Cafe in nearby Newton, Texas, my son installed two game cameras, one over looking a likely deer bedding place in some tall grass near a logging road on my fifteen acres and the other overlooking the most open access to “our sweet pond” where we expect animals might come for water. Jay sent me a picture of a teenaged boy who was trespassing on the property (therefore I will be putting us some “Posted Property – No Trespassing” signs and some yellow Caution tape across a break in the north fence where the old logging road he led into the adjacent property.) Jay also sent me two other pictures that the game camera by the pond took, one of a big splash (Jay speculated a big fish jumping out of the water set off the motion detector on the camera for that one) and the second of a raccoon washing it’s paws in the pond.

I stopped to purchase some Canadian Night Crawlers before I got here so I plan to fish in that sweet pond and hopefully catch at least two fish to break the record one that I caught on my first try with live bait two weeks ago.

First thing, I will be putting up the signs and caution tape. Then test firing and target practicing with a sporterized 303 that first belong to my Uncle Buddy, then my dad, then me and now my son, secondly my dad’s old Montgomery Ward Western Field 12 gauge pump Model 61, and thirdly a 32 Beretta automatic pistol that I have never fired but keep in my pocket when hiking through the wildwoods just in case.

After a little fishing, I will be removing as many trip hazards along the access trail to the pond from the state road as I can with the time I have allotted for this adventure. All that before midday lunch in Newton. I have a busy morning planned before I stop for lunch and then a two and a half hour drive back to Houston.

Well as John Wayne says to The Cowboys in the 1972 western by the same name, “We’re burning daylight” so I had better get busy.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White