Tracy Lee Whitetail and Black Bear
I met my girlfriend’s father when I was 16 and he was a hunter, and he got me bow hunting in Michigan. I was raised in Midland, Michigan born in Akron Ohio but raised in in Midland, Michigan. I met the the Briggs family. Mike Parsons married one of the daughters and I eloped and married the second daughter and hunted down in Houston, Texas. Worked for the oil field industry building land rigs, mobile rigs for 30 years and then started hunting I guess all over the world, elk and mule deer, in Alaska and Africa and Europe and just had the passion. I could either golf, fish or hunt and I chose hunting. Been hunting I guess for about 50 years now.
We have wonderful deer in Texas. I personally killed a couple 180, mid 180 class deer. Smaller deer, 200 pound net weight but they got 180 inches of horn on a 200 pound small deer. I’ve killed hundreds of deer in Texas. My son’s killed real nice deer in Texas. In my opinion, Texas has some of the best hunting in the lower 48. Elk, though it’s not, they’re free range but they don’t have a season for Elk. Antelope in the west part of Texas. More Boon and Crockett antelope come from Texas than any other lower 48, believe it or not. Mule deer in the Trans Pacos area of Texas which is far west Texas and then whitetail deer, you know it’s, in my opinion, second to none. You know bear hunting, they don’t have bear like this, but they do have bear. I’m not too sure that people hunt bear in Texas. They hunt lion they hunt bear but certainly not like Saskatchewan. Chances for a big body deer 3-350 lb deer, you don’t get that down in Texas. The horns here, you have to be very selective. Obviously you’ll see a lot of bucks on these stands that Greg puts together. You know hunting’s hunting whether it’s in Texas or Mexico or here. I enjoy getting out on the stand. I enjoy meeting the people that you meet on hunts like this. I’ve got to pinch myself being able to hunt with my brother-in-law and my nephew and you know, golly, we cut up all the time and you know it’s just, it’s good medicine, I’ll just tell you.
I guess I I’ve been hunting here in Chaparral five or six years, whitetail for sure five or six years, this is my fourth year for bear. I just enjoy the crap out of it. These guys are well organized. They’ll absolutely positively go out of their way to to make sure that you have a quality hunt.
You know you might not see the the bear that you want. You might not see the deer that you want but, man, the other aspects, you know killing is the small icing on the cake at least for me. Being able to get out and see, I think I saw a Fisher the other day on this stand. You aren’t going to see Fishers down in Texas and all the weird animals that you might see on stand, moose and wolves and you know it’s just a a different setup type deal. Like I say these guys they do it up first class.
It was colder than a well digger’s ass. I’ve never been so cold in my entire life. I had the best equipment. I’ve hunted all over, I’ve hunted 12,000 foot elevation with the equipment I have and I was not prepared for the cold. Greg told me about this Gumby suit and the second or third day that I froze my heiny off in the stand I wore this kind of, it’s like a sleeping bag, Gumby suit. It was no problem with the cold. That’s the that’s the impression that I had. I guess another impression is climbing up in those stands, 20-25 feet in the air. We don’t have that kind of deal anywhere that I’ve ever gone. That was kind of different being able to get up there but you know there’s a reason. They don’t smell you. I’ve had bear walk right underneath the stand. I’ve had deer, you know, walk and rut right underneath the stand. I’ve had, you know, moose walk right under the stand and and they they won’t smell you. I mean there’s a reason why he puts you up high.
I guess mass. You know big heavy mature buck. Mass and they have it here. Might not be wide but jeezlepete they look like a a canoe paddle some of these deer that they take here. They’re that massive.
Well you get up in the morning and you’re gonna go bear hunting and you’ve got six or seven hours to languish. So you either languish with a nap or you languish with hanging round the camp. Or it breaks up the monotony getting you out on a fishing boat for or five hours. I like it, we did it last year for the first time and we’ll do it every year that Greg allow us to come up here. Highly recommend. We caught a couple fish yesterday. Last year, Terry, my nephew caught a 38 incher and I caught a 40 inch plus Pike last year. Fishing’s been pretty good.
Second to none. You know the food is wonderful the accommodations in the bunk house are wonderful. You know I have been on real real nice hunts, you know as nice as this, but this is a a really cool area. You’ll see moose walking through the yard or a 150 class buck walking down the road or you know God knows what you’ll see in this area. The accommodations are second to none. You’re in the remote areas to hunt these bear and to hunt whitetail deer. So I’ll well remember that certainly.
Oh you know, getting to to see Greg and his family. Those guys treat you like extended family. That’s why I like coming here. He gets to know who you are, who you be. Keeps in contact over the year that goes by and what’s going on. He sends you a feed and what kind of deer you seen what kind of bear you seen. He’s pretty engaged in the people that he allows to come up here. I guess the third would be just the easy access to getting here. You know it’s not remote enough that you got to have float planes and all this other crap to get here. Pretty easy drive certainly for us. But this guy puts on the the whole package I’ll just tell you.