Three years and eleven months. Almost to the day was the last time I bagged a deer. It’s not that I didn’t try. Quite the opposite in fact. I tried a good bit and spent a fair amount of money hunting, at least in the first year. However, opportunities got harder to come by and got more expensive as time passed and I got to the point where I decided to focus my time, energy, and resources on other activities.

Thanks to a good friend who invited me for a hunting weekend on his property, that all changed yesterday.

It was an amazing weekend. The weather was really nice. Not too hot, not too cold. A little windy at times. The views were magnificent. The sunsets and sunrises notwithstanding. The best part was hanging out and eating like royalty. The next best thing was breaking my streak of coming home empty handed.

At any rate, now that I’m back home I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do a little retrospective on the dry spell and the tip itself.

The Dry Spell

When I started hunting at the end of the 2018 Whitetail deer season, I was lucky to be able to so on a friend’s family’s property. I was also lucky to do that every season for three years, before the host stopped hosting another friend and I as his interests and hunting activities changed.

Why do I consider myself lucky? Well, you see, hunting in Texas isn’t as easy as I suspect many folks would think it is. Especially for those who live in urban centers or in the suburbs who don’t have the luxury of hunting on their own rural property. There simply isn’t a lot of public land available. The limited public land is also limited by a drawing system where a resident purchases entries to hunt the available slots on public property. The likelihood of your entry being picked increases every consecutive entry purchase year without winning a drawing. Once a drawing is one the annual increasing likelihood modifiers gets reset. So there is no guarantee. While I never purchased more than one entry fee per desired public land hunting location per year, I’ve yet to win an entry even though I’ve purchased entries every year since 2020. So as you can see there is no guarantee.

Another option is to get on a lease. There are various types of leases from daily leases to annual ones. Availability and pricing depends on supply and demand. It’s basic economics. And I did take advantage of several weekend leases with a hunting buddy on a number of occasions including the one where I bagged my first exotic, an Axis deer.

Between the private property and weekend leases, I harvested about half a dozen deer.

The Covid happened. And Covid changed the equation.

Right after Covid leases started becoming scarce and prices increased dramatically. I suspect this had a lot to do with the influx of folks with fattened wallets who moved to Texas during and post Covid from states where average incomes were higher and housing prices were comparatively astronomical. Whatever the reason, hunting opportunities became far and between especially given my friend was no longer interested in hosting Whitetail deer hunts.

Late in 2021, a buddy found a hunting club that we both joined. The membership fee wasn’t inexpensive, but it was far more doable than the lease options we were able to find and unable to afford. The club worked with several property owners to offer hunting opportunities to members across the available properties. While we did get to do a good bit of hunting, I ended up having to pass every harvest opportunity I came across because the otherwise legal and ethical kill was prohibited by additional restrictions placed by the property owner during the times I was hunting on their properties.

I did not renew my membership the following year since the value proposition was nonexistent for me.

I made no plans to hunt in 2023 or in 2024 other than continuing to purchase drawing entries for public land opportunities as I had decided to focus on competition and self defense given the financial barrier of entry associated with hunting private land in Texas.

Ending the Dry Spell

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the dry spell to end. However, I’m happy that it did. At the same time, I experienced somethings again that I hadn’t experienced since my first couple of hunts and learned a few things that I think are worth mentioning. Additionally, I finally got a chance to try some gear for the first time that hadn’t been doing much more than collecting the dust.

The first thing I want to mention is stress from hunting. It’s hard to describe what the stress one experiences when a harvest opportunity presents itself to those who have never hunted, but suffice it to say that the stress generates a physiological response. It had been such a long time since the last time I experienced it that my physiological response was far greater than what I expected. At least that was the case on the first potential harvest opportunity. As soon as the selected and identified doe was in the crosshairs, my pulse quickened, my breathing became more rapid, and it wasn’t long before my hands and legs were shaking while I waited for the doe to present broadside for a good shot. When it did present itself broadside, my crosshairs were all over the place and I couldn’t get them to settle enough to take a 200-yard shot confidently. So I let the deer walk, it was the right ethical choice.

The next opportunity was a good sized buck. That stress response was more measured. While my pulse and breathing quickened, I didn’t get the shakes. Unfortunately, the buck was smart and kept moving, pausing only briefly to grab a bite of food and resume movement. Again, I let it walk as I wasn’t steady enough to lead it and make a precise 200-yard in the vitals.

The third opportunity was another doe and she was the winner. Mind you, all three opportunities happened on the same day. My stress response this time around was minimal. I’m certain my pulse and breathing quickened. However, I was able to get a steady sight picture. That response is more like what I remember the more recent of my distant hunting trips. Whereas the first two responses reminded me more of my first few hunting trips. The result was a well placed 200-yard hit that instantly dropped the whitetail exactly as I expected.

If there is a lesson here, then it is that in order to maintain a well controlled and managed stress response one has to be regularly exposed to a similar stress stimulus. The more time that passes since the exposure to that stress stimulus the greater the response will be the next time one is exposed to it. At least, that is my theory and one I would rather not personally test in the future. On the flip side of that, it doesn’t take very many exposures to that stimulus before it becomes familiar again and the response is minimal.

Perishable Skills

I often talk about perishable skills. However, most of the time I’m talking about marksmanship. However, marksmanship isn’t the only perishable skill.

One skill that perished notably over the past few years is that of skinning and quartering a deer. It perished so much so that I forgot to pack a few tools that would have made the job easier. Thankfully, my host had plenty of tools on hand that he was able to cover my preparation gaps without any trouble.

Even after watching a video on YouTube to make the process of skinning, gutting, and quartering a deer fresh in my mind, I still struggled. I remembered most of the steps and mostly in the right order. However, finding the right landmarks involved a little bit of guesswork and the knife work as a bit awkward. I’m pretty sure I ended up leaving a bit of usable meat on the carcass as a result although I can’t be certain for sure since it mostly looked right as far as I could tell.

Needless to say, the process took longer than expected and longer than I recall.

New to Me Gear Worth Mentioning

I might follow up with reviews on a few of these items later depending on y’all interest, but I’ll mention them briefly now.

Eberlestock Recon Modular Harness System

The Eberlestock Recon Modular Harness System, which is a mouthful to say, is an expandable binocular chest rig. It’s light. It’s comfortable. It kept my Vortex Fury HD binoculars handy all weekend long and I got a lot of use out of them. The binoculars themselves deserve an honorable mention because they continue to be awesome and the built-in rangefinder is extremely convenient.

As implied by the name of the product, the harness is modular and there are several accessories and pouches that can be easily attached with MOLLE to the harnesses’ PALS webbing. I added a utility pouch which I stuffed with trail mix. I also added a hand warmer accessory which was perfect to keep my fingers warm during the cool mornings and evenings.

I’m looking forward to using this harness again and it was a great upgrade to the harness Vortex provided with the Fury HD binoculars.

Adventure Sworn Huntsman Knife

A guy who I’ve only known via X (formerly Twitter) turned me on to Adventure Sworn Bushcraft Co.. The company is a husband, wife, and husband’s father run operation that makes knives, leather sheaths, firesteels, and bucksaws. I’ve had them make a few custom knives for me over the past couple of years and they are beautiful.

One of those knives is their Hunstman knife, which is designed to excel at skinning, gutting, and slicing. I was hesitant to put it to work because it is a beautifully crafted work of art and I wasn’t sure the polished stabilized maple burl handle would stay put once it ended up getting bloody since blood makes things super slick.

Much to my surprise, the knife performed better than I could have ever imagined. The size and shape worked very well. It sliced through everything with ease. And I did not once lose my grip on the handle, even after it got slick with blood. I suspect that had a lot to do with how the handle is shaped.

Goes without saying, but this knife is going hunting again.

Benchmade 8 Hook

This might seem like a bit of a weird piece of kit for hunting since the Benchmade 8 Hook is designed to be a tool to cut quickly and reliably in an emergency situation. And I didn’t acquire it with the intent of using it for what it was designed for.

You might be thinking, “but Zo what else would you use that for?” Let me explain.

My “go to” hunting knife has always been the Buck 537 Open Season (which I did take along as a back up) because not only is that knife spectacular for skinning, gutting, and slicing, but it also has a gut hook. And I’m a big fan of gut hooks for jump starting the skinning process. Having made the decision to test out the aforementioned Adventure Sworn Huntsman knife and noting it doesn’t have a gut hook, I figured having a stand alone gut hook was a must have for me. I could have gone with any of the other gut hook products on the market designed and marketed for hunting, however, I thought the Benchmade 8 Hook might be able to fill the gut hook role while performing double duty as a rescue tool. After all, it’s a light weight sharp hook. Plus who doesn’t like a little tactical flare.

And guess what? It worked marvelously as a gut hook. The only hiccup was that I dropped and  lost the nylon MOLLE sheath that came with it because I was too lazy to secure it to the PALS webbing on the Eberlestock Team Elk hunting pack because this trip was a test run. So now I’ll have to source another sheath.

Final Thoughts

I can’t tell you how good it felt to finally harvest another deer. I’m looking forward to jerky, chorizo, fajitas, stew, chili, bacon wrapped backstrap steaks, jalapeno sausage, and whatever else I end up doing with the meat. It’s been far too long and I’m grateful to my friend for hosting me for this opportunity. I’m even more grateful that he’s already talking about next year and how we can make the next hunting weekend even better. Now I just have to figure out how to repay him…