Feeding MY Animals

The only reason that I made myself spend $79.99 on a trail camera was so that I would be able to see the deer that are walking through my yard. I have always known that they were there, I just needed something to catch them in action. As you have seen before I was successful in seeing deer at night.

When I was at Academy the other day I couldn't resist buying some corn. I have been putting it out for a while now. Matter of fact, tonight I put out the last of the 40 lb bag.

I went in the back yard to check out the left over corn from two nights ago. Well, I went over there to find NOTHING. Normally deer will leave behind a little bit, crumbs or something. Well, this was a sure sign of raccoons eating all of my corn. It was about to be time to take out the pellet rifle and protect my corn investment.

I went ahead and took the memory stick out of the camera to see what ate all of my corn in two nights. Here is what I found:
Yeah, there are FIVE deer in that shot. And you should be able to see that the one scratching HIS head has some antlers coming out. How about that! YEEAAHHH BABY!
You can actually see that there is a raccoon in there eating some corn.
I put the bag of corn in front of the camera and threw out the corn from there. Obviously this deer found a little pile of corn from where I was taking the corn out of the bag.

Feeding my animals is well worth my money spent on corn. Unfortunately they are not going to be fed every night. There is no way that I would be able to afford putting out that much corn.

Feeding Amanda's Animals

Amanda has been feeding some stray cat in the back yard. I didn't think that it was a good idea to feed the cat because the cat is a hunter. It is not dependent on a human feeding it, until a human starting feeding it. Amanda decided that she wanted to spend her money on cat food. I can't complain, it's her money.

One night I emptied out the fridge of old food. I layed it all out on the ground with my motion camera next to it. Not too long after I put it out there I saw a possum and a raccoon getting at it with the food. They were chomping away. Unfortunately both of them seem to be in stealth mode. The camera never saw them. I guess that they are too low to the ground. Except it caught the cat coming out, hummm....I don't get it. Here is our cat.

Crawfish Boil

This past Sunday I had a crawfish boil at the house. It was the first time that I had one. I needed some help with doing the crawfish so I went to someone that I knew could help me. He has had plenty of practice with boiling seafood. I knew that I could count on him for showing me how to boil some good tasting craw-dads, and a pot to boil them in. Thanks for everything Chris.


I was expecting to have about 13 people eating crawfish so I ordered 70 lbs. When I got there they had 80 lbs waiting for me. I figured that it would be good to have a little extra anyway. Well we ended up not eating all of the crawfish. Matter of fact we didn't eat a lot of it. But its a good thing that I had my food saver handy. I was able to put up two bags with a little more than a pound a piece and another bag with about 3 lbs of tails (unpeeled). I look forward to making me some good fettucini with that!


Thanks to everyone for coming. I had fun. I hope that it was good.

FE Exam Update

I have had a couple of people asking me about the test. As you know, I took the test a week ago. I think that everything went well with the test. I have high hopes of passing this time. I hope that all of my hard work went to good use with a letter that tells me "Congratulations".

The official results are due 12 weeks from the date of the test.

Wii Commercial

Saturday night my mom and grandmother came over to the house. My mom was nice enough to treat us to Chili's in Zachery. Of course that is one of the only places that is near that house where we can sit down and eat decent food.

After leaving with our belly's' full we were headed home to check out the Wii. My Granny was curious about it so I was looking forward to getting her on there and playing some Wii sports or something. We started off with making her a Mii. We then moved on to bowling. At first she was having a little trouble with when you release the B button. It didn't take her too long to get use to it though. She figured out that the faster the arm motion, the faster the bowl goes. That was funny.

Bowling was fun, but boxing was calling. She got on there and immediately impressed me. It was so funny. Amanda, my mom, and I could not stop laughing. Here is a video of her playing. I don't have camera but I was able to take video with my cell phone.



She was wearing her night gown since it was just before bed. I hope that she doesn't mind me posting this. In all of the laughter you may have heard her trying to say something. She was saying "I got him down" while continuing to beat the crap out of the guy.

The reason that I called this post "Wii Commercial" is because all that I can think about is how quick my grandmother got the hang of things and she LOVED it. I am pretty sure that she would be a master if she had one at home to practice with. I really enjoyed playing with her. It was a lot of fun and I will ALWAYS remember that night. It was great to be able to spend time with her and I am glad that I still get the chance to do things like that. I love you Granny.

Fundamentals of Engineering/E.I.T. Exam

I am going to be taking an eight hour long test this Saturday. I am hoping that I pass this time around. What will it mean for me? I will be able to put three letters behind my name "E.I.T - Engineer in Training". What does that do for me? That means that I am going to be much smarter on my resume. Isn't it funny how a test can do that for you? It's too bad that I never have been good at test. I have studied for this test, but as I continue to study I realize that I should have studied more for it. I really did under estimate how much material there is. Some people tell me that I will be fine, I hope that is the case. Some of the problems (like the math) I haven't seen in over six years.

Anyway, wish me luck. I am going to need it!

Mexico December 2007

Right after Christmas of 2007 Amanda and I packed our bags to go to the ranch. Amanda was looking forward to peaceful time for reading and relaxing and I was looking forward to seeing a lot of really big deer.

When we turned on the main (dirt) road to the ranch it was not long before we saw something really cool. It wasn’t even a huge deer. It was black and I could see it on the left side of my car and the right side of my car. That’s right…it was stretching across the road and it was that big…what is it? It was a blue indigo. This is the largest snake in North America. Trust me, this one was big. I am guessing that it was around seven feet in length. I was not able to take a picture of it, but it was still cool. Since we didn't have a camera on the trip I got this picture courtesy of Google Images.


I was able to hang with Russel, Taylor, Brady and David for our hunting trips. Brady was on a mission to kill a buck this year. He got his first deer (a doe) last winter. So Taylor was working hard to get him the perfect shot on another doe, that way he would be warmed up and ready to kill a buck later in the trip. Despite all of Taylor’s effort he wasn’t able to get Brady a doe. Taylor moved on to bigger and better things with Jason. Now it was up to Russel and I. Russel took up the roll of being drive, guide, and entertainer. Entertainment usually included cacti and a lot of thorns in the boot. I couldn’t sit there and let him kick all of the cacti by himself, so I might have joined in here and there. In between kicking the desert plant life, we were hunting does for Brady. Russel finally found a good deer for Brady to shoot. Everything looked good and Brady got his shot off. We went looking for the deer but found no blood in the area that he shot. It was almost time to give up when I found the smallest speck of blood. I was able to follow the trail enough to know that we were looking in the wrong direction before. So Russel came to help. While I was looking on the ground following the blood specks, he just looking up and saw the deer about 20 yards away. Brady got his second deer! That meant that we were going to be eating backstrap that night! That is really good news for me. The next deer was going to be for David. He was also in the mood to kill a doe. So we started looking for him. After a long search we found the perfect doe. David came with me this time. He and I stalked after the deer for about 200-300 yards. Finally we came within range. It didn’t look like the doe was going anywhere so we got setup on the ground for a binocular-propped shot. The doe wasn’t really facing broad side but I could tell that David was ready to shoot. He knew that he was supposed to shoot behind the shoulder but for this deer it wasn’t facing right for that shot. So I told him to shoot right in front of the shoulder. As soon as I said “whenever you are ready” he shot. I knew that the deer was running dead. When we went to look for her David told me “I hope that we find her, that would be my 1st deer!” I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea that was his first deer. I made the assumption that he had killed before. That is why I had no problem with setting him up for a 137 yard shot with the deer facing right at us. I was then on a mission to find that deer. I knew from the way the deer ran that it was shot perfect. I just had to find the deer. We looked around where he shot and again, there was no blood from the .243 wound. I went into the brush to look around and found nothing. After about 5 minutes the rest of them gave up, I kept looking. I walked in circles while moving a little over each time I walked around. I finally came up on the deer! It was laying down next time a tree. I picked her up to find a spot of blood about the size of a quarter. The bullet did not exit, so there was no external bleeding. I came out of the brush and made David go in there to find his deer. He was so excited. It was a lot of fun to be the person to help him get his first deer. He was very acceptant of the tradition with the bloody face! All I could think about while looking for his deer was how hard Papa Bear looked for my first deer. We looked for my deer in the dark and in some think woods. I was so thankful when he found my deer, so I knew that I couldn’t give up on finding David’s deer.

Of course that was just a limited version of everything that went on during the hunts. Our hunts were usually filled with seeing really cool things. We were really interested in seeing a deer called “The Colts”. This deer was given that name from the very long horse shoe shaped brow tines. This deer has antlers going every where. It is thought that it could be the widest deer on the ranch. He also has a drop tine. Of course, I didn’t have a camera when we saw the deer. We actually were able to see the deer twice. The second time we watched the deer from about 100 yards away. He was nervous about seeing us, even though we weren’t pressuring him. He was next to a ten foot high fence when he decided that he was going to attempt to jump to the other side. It was a pitiful attempt and the deer hit the fence about mid-way up the fence. He came down hard on his back. He just got up and walked away. I think that he was embarrassed with his jumping skilz (or the lack of). So that was a really really cool thing to watch.

Another cool thing was getting orders from Rusty to protect his fish investment. He was having a bird problem on his new 200 acre lake. They were eating his fish that he just put in there. So we had to get out there and take care of those birds. After Russel and I went out there alone we quickly found out that we were going to need help. Without getting into too much detail, let’s just say that four guys with four guns and (seemingly) endless shells, we took care of a large part of the problem. I was glad that I was able to help with a job on the ranch.

Rusty gets the surprise Scott award for this trip. He starts talking on the radio about how he was going to take one of Kristen’s friends hunting in the afternoon. Both Russel and I started wondering who the friend was because we didn’t know who else was coming to the ranch. He then says that his (the friend’s) name is Scott. Again, I am still wondering who this person is. Then I realized that he was talking about ME! I was so excited that I was being invited to go hunt with him. I was very quick to accept the invitation.

That afternoon we took out the “top-drive” truck. This is the truck that can be driven from a rack that sits about 10 feet above the ground. It is on top of the truck and there are connections to everything in the truck so that you can drive from the top. On our adventure we saw two Ferrell hogs. Basically a wild pig, good meat! Rusty told me that he wanted for me to shoot the pigs. I was a little worried about shooting and missing. I didn’t want to miss because there were other people out there that missed and it is never fun to be the guy who misses. I took my shot and killed one of the pigs. He then tells me to shoot the other one (it didn’t run away). So I bolt another one into the .270 and shoot the other pig. Another kill! I was so happy that I never missed. I thought that they were going to be big pigs. When I got up to them, I realized that they were not big at all. They were some small-good-eatin’ pigs. Good for us! We continued our hunt for bucks that afternoon but never saw anything worthy. Although I was very happy to see some of the deer that Rusty was considering. There were a couple of deer that I had a chance for shooting, but they were too young. The deer were quite nice in rack size. It made me realize that I wasn’t going to be killing another gimp deer like last year.


Rusty and I continued our buck hunt the next morning. It wasn’t long before Rusty had an 8 pt. picked out for me. We got setup on the ground and waited for the deer to come out again. While waiting a 9 pt. walked out, Rusty whistled to me from behind giving me to sign to shoot the 9 pt. Again, I remind you that I am nervous about missing in front of Rusty. I shot the buck and he fell in his steps! I was so happy. He was behind me filming, so I looked back there with a smile on my face and he tells me to shoot the 8 pt. if he comes out. So we waited to see what happened for about ten minutes. No bucks came back out but there was a doe and two yearlings. Rusty whistles to me again, he wanted me to shoot the doe. So I took aim and I shot the doe. Now we had two dead deer. It was said about not getting the 8 pt. but I was happy about eating more backstrap from the doe. We road around some more just to look around. I wasn’t really counting on seeing any more bucks since it was so late in the morning. While riding around Rusty decided that there were too many does walking around, so he stopped, rolled down the window and shot a doe. It was very funny because it all happened so fast and so spontaneously. We drove back to the other spot that I shot my deer and we picked up those deer. We went back to where Rusty shot his deer and picked up that deer. We were heading back to the camp when we saw another buck quite a ways away. Rusty looked at it with his super binoculars and he was able to determine that it needed to be shot. It was really far away and it was steady walking away from us. We got out of the truck and started running after the deer. Rusty sent me ahead to go shoot the deer. I got within range just as it was slowing down its walk and starting to turn into the brush. I quickly got setup on the ground to shoot. I figured that I was on a roll (4 for 4) with my shooting, so I was just going to shoot the deer walking. Just as I was pulling on the trigger Rusty shouts out “HHHEEEEYYYYYYY”, this shout stopped the deer. As it stopped and looked our way I shot it. We marked off around where it was and started walking to it. It was about 300 yards away. It was a successful kill! I killed a really nice 8 pt.

This morning was most likely one of the most memorable mornings with hunting. I was so honored to be hunting with Rusty. I couldn’t, and still cannot thank him enough for taking me. What a blast it was (literally)! That was the last morning that I was hunting. We loaded up the deer and brought them back to get cleaned.

Here are some pictures of the two bucks that I killed that morning.

Montana Trip

I am not sure if all of you knew this or not, but we recently went on a trip to Great Falls, Montana. I figured that I could give you some highlights on the trip. We flew out of Baton Rouge around 6:00 in the morning and flew into Billings, MT around 10:45 in the morning. Here is an aerial picture that was taken between Denver, CO and Billings, MT.


Billings is about a 3 hour drive from Great Falls, so we had the Wilson’s meet us at the airport to pick us up. We arrived over there with all of them wearing LSU shirts. They were wearing LSU National Championship shirts, to be exact. So that was pretty cool to have everyone supporting my alma mater. In Billings we were quick to find something entertaining to do. We just drove into this neighborhood and started climbing a hill in the back of it. They had a couple of really cool rocks to climb up on. It was pretty fun, nothing too difficult to do wearing blue jeans and Doc Martins. I was very surprised to start hiking up the hill and see evidence of deer walking around up there. It was right in the back of a neighborhood, so it was not expected at all.


Saturday night we got back to Great Falls to find that there was a fresh blanket of snow covering the ground. We immediately took out the sled and started going down the hill in the front yard. That was a lot of fun.


Sunday morning we went walking the dogs around the neighborhood. We played on the ice that was on the sides of the road. We even came across a Hurricane evacuation route sign….oh wait, that is a SNOW evacuation route. After our walk we went to church. Their church is about a mile down the road, easily in walking distance. Matter of fact, almost everything is a walking distance away. They have a shopping center that is pretty close by. They can get groceries, go to The Home Depot, eat a Chili’s, or many other things all without getting the car. And…you can bring dogs into The Home Depot. How cool is that? I think that the way that gas prices are going that would come in handy…Not bringing the dog into stores, but walking to them instead of driving. The boys’ school is a short walk away also.


For lunch we stopped in at a Fudrucker’s. I had never been to one of those before. That was my loss. I couldn’t believe what I had been missing. It is a little pricey for a burger meal, but it sure is good stuff. We use to have one here in BR but it closed down a while back. After lunch we made a stop in at Scheel’s Sporting Goods. That was a great thing to do. Its like a really big Academy Sports. They had all kinds of good stuff. I had a $25 gift card from my Birthday (thanks to the Wilson’s) so I was shopping for something that I could use my B-day money. I found the perfect thing. I was walking around looking at the knifes when I saw the coolest knife around. Justin is always talking about a “muskrat” knife. They make a pocket knife that has two identical blades on it. For some reason this style knife is called a muskrat. Well, they are hard to find and I found them, so I bought one for me and one for Justin. I also came across a great deal on some hiking boots, so I had to get me some of those too. I ended up spending around a hundred dollars. The best party about that is that there is no sales tax in Montana. So when I found $120 boots for $64.99 they cost me $64.99. How about that? Sunday night we went to a Sunday-school gathering where everyone cooked something. So we had this big meal with a bunch of people and then had our lesson. That was pretty cool.

Monday it was off to the slopes! We (the boys: Glenn, Scott, Luke, and Nate-Dog) headed down to Showdown Mountain to do some serious snow boarding! It was so fun. I am a good skier but I had to try out snow boarding since that was what everyone else was doing. I had a blast with it. I think that I am switching over to the other side. Justin will be very happy to hear me saying that. I think that I was a pretty quick learner. I wasn’t nearly as good as Glenn and the boys, but I was able to keep up. Nate is still the little dare devil, there was no holding back with him. Luke is really good too. It is a pretty small ski hill so we were able to hit up all of the runs throughout the day. Of course I didn’t try to go on any blacks, maybe next year.


Tuesday morning I kind of slept in a little bit. Since Glenn went to work and he was going to pick me up around lunch time, I was in no hurry. We also went walking the dogs around the Missouri River while waiting on Glenn. He had to work two days that week. He was going to Helena on Tuesday and Butte on Wednesday. I like being able to hang with Glenn around his work. He has a really interesting job and I am always happy to watch him work. After work on Tuesday we went to Mount Helena. We wanted to do a small hike. Of course Glenn told me that I wasn’t going to need my hiking boots, so I ended up hiking in my running shoes. Oh well. The hike was a great one. We were able to make it to the top and we saw mule deer while we were at it. On our way down we kind of got lost going around the back side of the mountain, but we still made it back to the truck before dark. That night we ate at a saloon. Burt and Ernies was the name. Hanger treated me to a steak dinner. Mmmm mmmm good.


On the way up to Helena Glenn stopped to show me where they jump off the rocks into the river (during the summer).


Wednesday was our wonderful day in the small town of Butte. Glenn saw a lot of patients, I played a lot of Tetris and talked with the patients about really cool things, such as “phantom pains”. We made our way all the way back to Great Falls (two hours) so we could get a good nights sleep and go right back through Butte the next morning (to get to George Town Lake).

Thursday Glenn saw one patient at the office in Great Falls and then we were off to George Town Lake. It was just outside the city Anaconda, MT. As soon as we get into the area of our cabin we noticed a HUGE snow hill that we were going to do some “totally-wicked” sledding or tobogganing as the Canadians would say. We were in a hurry to get settled in just to be able to go to the hill and try it out. Oh, and our cabin….it had a hot tub outside on the deck! Yeah, that was AWESOME! We all put on our snow clothes and headed up to the hill. We played over there for a long time. That was a lot of fun. The only thing that could have made that better was having a snow mobile to carry us from one place to another. The snow was kind of hard to hike around in before we were able to get it packed down a little bit. I guess that I am not used to walking in knee to waist deep snow.


Friday was a big fishing day. We went to the lake to cut some holes in the ice and try to find some trout. We also brought things to be able to play some hockey while out there. So we had a shovel that we were going to use in order to clear the snow from the ice. After about 5 people and 2 or 3 hours of time we cleared the ice and tried to play a little bit of hockey. It was ok, the ice was really rough. More so than what I had been on in Colorado. Fishing was fun too. We had the gas powered ice ogre to cut through the thick ice, so Glenn drilled out 8 holes to fish in. We never did find where those fish were hiding though.


Of course when we got back to the cabin I was ready for some more tobogganing. I just went out there by myself and found the best way to get down that hill. Even though I was alone I was still having a blast. It is something that is really fun alone, but to have someone with you enjoying it is that much better. I am sure that I would have tried even dumber things if I had more people out there telling me to go faster, higher, or whatever.

Saturday morning we made our way to Discovery Ski Hill. This place was a little bit bigger than Showdown but only because the backside of the mountain was covered in black runs. Actually they were all double black diamonds. I am sure that I don’t ever have to mention that I stayed away from those. That was another really fun snow boarding day. It didn’t take long for me to get too comfortable with snow boarding. So I tried zooming past Glenn and I ended up falling really hard. It felt really bad at the time but that’s ok. I lived through it and I am not going to let it stop me from having fun. Vivian even came snow boarding with us. She is pretty good too. I was very impressed with the Wilsons’ talent in the snow boarding division. Amanda did not want to try it out. She was having enough fun on the sidelines just watching.

Since it was our last night at the cabin I took Glenn with me to the snow hill. We did some tobogganing together. We took pictures and video of each other going down and stuff. It was a lot of fun. I wish that I could have a tobogganing party for my birthday every year.

I haven’t really mentioned much more about the hot tub that was on the front deck. I am pretty sure that the hot tub took up most of our time while at the cabin. We were constantly getting in and out of that thing. It was something nice to be able to get back from sledding or skiing or playing hockey and get in the hot tub. Man that was nice. The best part about it was that we were able to freeze our swimming suits outside. It was also really nice to go out there at night under the clear sky and look at the stars! Makes me want to move to Montana just to have a hot tub in the winter!



Sunday morning we all got up early to have one last dip in the hot tub. We then cleaned up and made our way to Billings. It was snowing really hard the morning that we were leaving so it was really pretty with all of the trees covered in snow. With the snow came tough road conditions. At one point we were following two snow plows on the interstate. That was cool to watch them clearing the road. Thankfully we made it to Billings with no trouble. It was sad to see our trip come to an end. I really liked being up there and playing the entire week. We were on time for our flight but the flight wasn’t on time us. Our flight was about 3 hours delayed and we missed our connection in Denver. It worked out pretty good though. The airline paid for a hotel and three meals since we couldn’t fly out until the Monday morning. Since we were put up in Denver we got to call up my friend Shawn and his wife Kristen (Amanda’s friend) to come meet us at the hotel. That is something that was really nice. We don’t really get to call them up too much and say “hey, come on over and hang out”.




That pretty much concludes our Montana trip. I hope that it was fun reading through that incredibly long post. I told you that I had to make up for missed time.

Montana Trip: Video 1

It really hurts when you hit your ear on the really cold snow.

Montana Trip: Video 2

Glenn sure knows how to get speed on that thing!

Montana Trip: Video 3

This was my last run of the day. I would say that I had a good ending.

Montana Trip: Video 4

Amanda sure does love to play in the snow.