January 1, 2015-Inks Lake State Park

Happy New Year!

Since my last entry, I have been very busy with the deer hunt here in the park. We have had some very nice people with their children and grandchildren this year and everyone had a good time. I was assigned two Conroe Police officers and their sons and both boys got deer. It was a cold hunt but very successful.

There was one something that happened on one of the hunts that I want to tell you about. First of all, the hunts began on Monday with an afternoon (2P-6P) hunt. Tuesday there was a morning (6A-10A) and evening hunt and Wednesday is a morning only hunt. On the Tuesday evening hunt, one of the boys got two deer one doe and one large buck. Both deer ran into the woods, so by hunt policy, they waited until I came to pick them up and returned to the park before we went back out to search for the deer. We do this for safety reasons, so that everyone has been returned to the safety of the park and then return to find the deer. It lessens the chance of someone getting lost in the woods and we have some very skilled trackers. I took the four hunters and Chris-the hunt coordinator, Chip-another park host, and Spider-the son of the park's assistant manager to search for the deer. It was very cold and we walked what seemed to be miles and miles, up the side of the hills, scrambling over rocks, avoiding cactus and barbed wire and other pitfalls but we found the first deer. Soon after finding the doe, as we were walking back out of the woods, I hung my foot and went down. I was very lucky because I hit my head and bruised my hand-when I tried to catch myself- but really only embarrassed myself because of my clumsiness and of course, the weariness of climbing. I was shaken up but not really injured and after a short rest, I was good to go again. As it turned out, we were only a few hundred yards from the trucks, so after loading the deer into one of the trucks and we resumed the search for the second deer, the large buck. He was much more easily found, so we were soon on our way back to the park. I didn't spend much time admiring the deer and came on back home for a nice warm shower, some aspirin and was out like a light. It had been a long hard day. 

We had a small host get-together last night for a Happy New Year celebration. We all brought snack foods and something to drink and had a great time sitting around and visiting. John brought his guitar and we sang a few songs and told lots of stories. It was a great way to end the year and best of all, we didn't have to drive anywhere to have a nice party. 

Today would have been my Dad's 94th birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy!

So long.