A Most Memorable Hunt

There is nothing quite like it when a wild bird responds to your call. By the time the ducks and geese travel down the flyway to Louisiana, they’re very well schooled. They’ve heard every conceivable call and been exposed to every imaginable blind and decoy set up.

It takes beaucoup work and close attention to every detail for consistent success. If you overlook any detail in preparing a natural set-up for your blind, the birds will make you pay. Also, a few sour notes on the call can get you busted. So pre-season practice is essential for success in producing the exact sequence of calls that gets the birds excited.

James Palma and his eight-point South Texas buck

Specklebelly geese are the gold standard for goose hunters, and it takes patience and practice to mimic their wide range of calls. Scott Cloud, Troy Tate and Matt Fontenot put together a beautiful limit of mallards, topped off with a primeaux limit of mature specklebellies. These three amigos were hunkered down in a pit blind near Hayes on a most memorable hunt when everything was working. The specks were locked up and looking for a spot to land. It was a day that makes all the preparation and work it takes to be successful worthwhile.

Scott kept a handsome black-barred speck for a memento of this great hunt with good friends. It does not get much better.

This wasn’t Arthur Walls’ first deer hunt. Arthur and his hunting compadres head for Newton, Miss., each year for some serious deer hunting. These guys run dogs that are trained and bred for running deer. They are also very good at it!

Each season, Arthur and his hound dogs look forward to the first frost. The dogs are well trained, and their handlers experienced at a sport they all love. It’s music to their ears when the dogs are singing their sweet song that never gets old. When the dogs are heading in your direction, the adrenaline surge is a natural high that always keeps you coming back for more.

Arthur was on point when the dogs jumped a deer and were pushing straight for him. The movement he caught out of the corner of his eye quickly materialized into an eight-point buck, and Arthur flipped from safety to fire. He rolled the buck with a sweet moving shot. But the deer got back up and kept on trucking.

The hounds were not far behind, and were hot on the deer’s trail. This is the other big advantage of hunting with dogs that will hunt.

They tracked the buck down and put a big smile on Arthur’s face. The hounds were richly awarded with an all-you-can-eat dog chow supper surprise.

James Palma headed to South Texas for a late-season shot at a mature buck. These deer have the genetics and nutritional diet to grow big bodies with horns to match.

James caught movement in the thick mesquite brush and went into kill mode. The buck stopped just long enough for this hunter to settle the crosshairs and squeeze off a round. The deer crumpled with a fatal shot to the vitals and the rest, as they say, is history. He was a fine management eight-point that was about as big as he was ever going to be.

How sweet it is! Support McNeese athletics! Go Cowboys, and Cowgirls, too!