Dudleys Diary

In the beautiful Texas Hill Country.  Dudley, Frank and Jeff drove down to Kerrville last Friday and checked into a motel. Saturday morning we drove to the WRS Ranch. We were all trying to kill a mature 8 point buck. We spent all day Saturday and Sunday hunting hard driving the roads looking at deer. Most of the bucks we saw had ten points. We saw a good 8 the first day but he chased a doe out into the open for a few seconds and they both ran back into the thicket.  The deer were staying tight to the cover and were not coming to the feeders.  After hunting hard for a day and a half without killing a buck, we tried doing some deer drives to push the deer out into the open. Monday morning we put Jeff out on the ground and drove around down through a thicket to try and push a buck toward him. When we picked him up about an hour later, he said a wide heavy horned ten point came within 50 yards and stood broadside before going back the way he came. We drove to a different part of the Ranch and Frank and Jeff both got out and walked up to the edge of a thicket and waited. We drove back around through the woods and after going a good ways we saw some does followed by two bucks running across a clearing about 100 yards away headed the general direction where we had dropped off Frank and Jeff. About a minute later we heard a total of four shots in quick succession. It sounded like a war zone for a time. We quickly headed that way and when we drove up Frank threw one of his arms up in victory and lifted a big 9 point rack up so we could see it as we drove up.  Frank said it happened real fast and that two does and the buck ran out of a thicket about 40 yards away. He squatted down and found the buck in the scope and fired. He said the buck veered and violently shook his head and kept running. Frank fired three more shots and  the buck fell on his fourth and final shot. Three of his shots connected. Frank shot the buck with Dudleys new Deer Rifle, a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight Custom High Grade in 25-06 with a Leupold VX6 2-12x42mm Scope with CDS and an illuminated Firedot German #4 reticle. It was an exciting hunt to say the least. We took the buck back to camp and Ricky, our guide field dressed the buck and hung him in the cooler. We then went to a different pasture to try and find a wild hog for Jeff. We had been riding for around twenty to thirty minutes when Ricky suddenly stopped the truck and pointed to a cedar tree. There was a red hog bedded down under the tree sound asleep about ten yards away. Jeff got out and shot the hog with Franks 308. The Boar never knew what hit him. At the shot, two unseen pigs bailed out of the far side of the cedar tree and took off running. We went back to camp and Ricky field dressed the hog and they put the Boar Hog and 9 point buck and four does in the back of Dudley's truck and we headed to the processor in town.  It was a great hunting trip.