Last week was a quiet one for me. With intermittent rain throughout the week, I did a good bit of ‘inside’ work, catching up on some magazine articles and finally getting some of my more recent photographs organized.
But later in the week on that one day with very little rain, I did find time for a short but very fun outing. This was one excursion that didn’t result in fish being caught or wild pork or turkey meat for the freezer. My wife and I visited one of the best places I know to get away and photograph whitetail deer. We booked a cabin at Wind Point Park, near Lone Oak on beautiful Lake Tawakoni, one of my favorite fishing destinations.
Wind Point Park is comprised of about 200 beautiful acres with an estimated whitetail deer population of about 200 animals. The park has something for everyone, secluded RV sites, tent camping, large and smaller cabins, a swimming beach with white sand, boat launches, fishing piers, a nice playground for the kids, a fully stocked store and much more.
Fishing is always good there off the pier but shad are spawning now and catching can be red hot for channel catfish close to shore around the rock rip rap, especially along the end of the point that is exposed to wind and wave action. Golf carts are available and a favorite pastime while at the park is driving along the roads that wind their serpentine course through the park and filming deer.
Bags of deer food are available at the store and just about anywhere you stop your cart in the park and toss out a handful of food, deer will cover you up. Last week, it didn’t appear the does were giving birth to fawns just yet but that will occur any day. I plan a return trip in a couple weeks to film the newborns. I was able to get some good close up photos of bucks that are just beginning to grow antlers.
Antlers are the fasting growing tissue of any animal and during peak times can grow up to an inch per day. Some of the bucks had sprouted antlers about 3 inches long but these will grow quickly and begin to branch in a few weeks. By August their racks will be fully developed and it will be time for them to create rubs to remove the ‘velvet’ covering, then they will again be in ‘hard horn’ as week hunters say.
The park is a great place to study deer throughout the year. To learn more at Wind Point Park, visit www.windpointparktx.com
Oklahoma this week
About the time you are reading this, I plan to be up in southeast Oklahoma at The Choctaw Hunting Lodge with my good friends Larry Weishuhn and Edgar Cotton and his son David from Kaufman County. Both Edgar and David are lifelong hunters but neither have taken an eastern wild turkey. The hills and valleys comprising the near 45,000 acres of land owned by the Choctaw Nation is home to not only a very healthy population of eastern turkey but black bear and big whitetail deer as well.
When folks ask me about a good place to hunt eastern turkey in Texas, I always point them toward this land owned by the Choctaw. Hunting for eastern turkey is hit or miss at best now in Texas, even in the counties along the Red River. Restocking efforts seemed very successful several years ago but eastern turkey numbers are not looking good at the present, even in my home country of Red River.
Mike Ford, my lifelong friend who owns a ranch in the northern part of the county says he has not heard a gobble on his place or seen a turkey in several years. Just a few years ago when I often hunted with Mike, the woods would light up with gobbling every morning during the breeding season. The mountain country up in Oklahoma owned by the Choctaw is a great destination for Texans wishing to bag an eastern gobbler.
I hope to be there to photograph my friends with their first eastern turkeys but I just can’t pass up the opportunity to hunt the Choctaw mule-foot hogs that are common to the area. I will pack my CVA 50 caliber muzzleloader and hopefully find time to do a bit of stalking. With any luck I will put a good eater Choctaw hog on the meat pole alongside my friends' big eastern gobblers!
Fishing is also very good on the many ponds scattered throughout the Choctaw land. Adjacent the lodge is a nice lake that is full of bass and crappie. I will pack my spinning rod and an assortment of Roadrunner and Beetle Spin jigs to target crappie. If I’m able to harvest a porker the first day, I look forward to devoting some time to procuring some of those tasty crappie from the pure spring water of the lake.
For the past several years, I have hunted deer on the Choctaw land, usually about the time the persimmons are getting ripe. I hunt near a little valley with several acres of persimmon trees that produce hundreds of pounds of food that attracts bear, deer as well as lots of migrating birds and small mammals. All the wild critters love persimmons, as do I!
The mountain country also has a lot of wild blackberries. I love to pick a few quarts and make Dutch kettle cobbler. I’m afraid my trip will be a bit early for the blackberries to ripen but hopefully dewberries will still be producing. I might not have time to accomplish everything I’d like to do but I’m a big proponent of making plans and then seeing how things unfold.
Dusty Vickrey and his wife Nacolh run the Choctaw Hunting Lodge; Dusty handles the hunting and land management and things outside the lodge and Nacolh is in charge of preparing the excellent meals and much of the day to day business of managing the lodge. The husband/wife team are excellent hosts and make guests feel at home the minute they arrive. Once you spend time at this beautiful destination, it’s a good bet you will return again and again.
Hats off to Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
TPWD announced a new Wildlife Management Area has been acquired along the Trinity River in Anderson County. The Trinity River WMA is the first new WMA in the last two decades to be added and will provide and protect 6,900 acres of prime land along the Trinity for the public to enjoy. For more details, Google TPWD news media releases.
Contact outdoors writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio.org. Watch “A Sportsman’s Life TV show on www.carbontv.com or YouTube. Luke’s weekly podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” is available just about everywhere podcasts are found.
