Lifetime Hunting/Fishing License

I will NEVER EVER have to purchase another hunting or fishing license for the state of Louisiana. There were many gracious people who gave me some cash for graduating with my Masters in Civil Engineering and that cash went towards a lifetime license here in Louisiana. Thanks to all of the contributors.

Thanks to Stephanie and Dustin

On our way to Mexico last week we stopped in at Stephanie and Dustin's house for a sleeping spot. We didnt really sleep very much though. We had a wonderful night playing the Wii. Dustin is the guy to beat! I couldnt believe his driving, seriously.

Thanks for letting us stay there.

**NEW** EL GATO SUMMER 2008

The trip has been divided into seperate post, be sure to read all of them!

The Mexico Trip never fails. It was another great kick-off to our summer. We had a couple of new people with us this year. Kristen had some friends from Colorado with their four kids. One of the kids was in her class this past year and an older kid was in her class a previous year. Renee was also able to make it this year. You would most likely know her as the producer/manager of The Harmonizers.

Every time that I tell someone that I am going to Mexico they always ask the same questions: Are you going to Cancun? Are you going to Cozumel? My only response to them is “Nope, Better!”

There are many different things to do on the ranch. Such activities include: fishing, hunting, shooting plants (mainly cacti), taking afternoon siestas, swimming, and eating cheese nachos. Sleep at night is a rare thing.

This place really is better than any beach resort that I could ever go to. I hope to show you all of the fun things to do with some pictures.

Two Bucks

I was very happy to find something when I walked into the office at the ranch. There were a couple of racks from this season’s past kills. Two of the racks had Scott written on them. They were indeed from the bucks that I killed back in December. I was very happy to see them again. So I took a couple of pictures. The 8 point was a very massive deer. So I took a solo with it. The other picture is just me playing around with photography. It shows both the 8 point and the 9 point racks that I killed.


This rack is not a deer that I killed. I think that Rusty killed it. That deer was named “The Colts” by Russel. He thought that the brow tines looked like the symbol for the colts. I was lucky enough to see this deer alive in December. I wasn’t aware that they had killed it this past season, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a closer look at it.

Pretty Flower

The cacti at this time of the year are blooming these really pretty flowers. I just had to show Justin and Charles the pretty flower.

Huge Utters

We were running the cows near the lake. There was this one cow that we felt sorry for. She had the biggest utters that we have ever seen. We couldn’t believe that a cow like that could even run. It must have been really painful for her to run.

The Head Stand

For as long as I can remember doing head stands I have always taken pictures with Justin in random spots. Here are two more to add to our collection. El Gato and the Rio Grande.

Rio Grande

A little inside information that I didn’t know about until this past week: In the United States we refer to the river as “Rio Grande”. In Mexico they say “Río Bravo” or “Río Bravo del Notre”.

We took at trip down the to Rio Grande with the group. We actually cut through Rancho Rio Grande to get to it. That is another hunting ranch next to Rancho El Gato. Anyway, we took a trip down there just to see the sights. It was fun. We ended up having a rock splashing war. Take the biggest rock that you can find and splash someone with it by throwing the rock in their vicinity. Lots of fun. Some people even added to their list to go along with the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Grrrr…that makes me mad to think about it. I wish that I wouldn’t have missed out on it.

Here is a “what if” situation. So we were all walking around and playing in the Rio Grande. We are all Americans. What if we were walking down the river and a boat that was in the middle of the river started shooting at us…Which side of the river do we run for?

Dinner For Two

Amanda and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary on June 3rd. That’s correct, it was our “special anniversary”. (3-year on the 3rd)

I started thinking a couple of months ago that I wanted to do something special for her. So I figured that I would have dinner with just her and I at the new lake. I was thinking that I was going to get a blanket and we could sit in the back on the truck with some candles and we could have a romantic dinner under the stars. That was my idea. When I talked with Augustine about it he thought that it should be more than that. He went out and got a table and some chairs, he had everything set up for us. They went set it up and when he got back I knew that it was time for me to go. Amanda had no idea about what we were going to be doing. She thought that we were going take some pictures somewhere. Then she thought that she was going for a boat ride under the stars. Then finally she saw the table set up. She was very surprised. I think that I impressed her.

It was a great dinner under the stars!

Thank you so much Carlos 1, Carlos 2, and Augustine. That was so nice of you to go all out like that. I appreciate you very very much!

Bow Kills

I made sure to bring my bow with me to Mexico this summer. I was itching to be able to kill something with it. I was hoping for a big kill like a pig or something, but I never saw anything like that.

Each afternoon we tried to reserve a little bit of time for going out looking for Jack Rabbits and Cotton Tail rabbits. Of course I wanted to be able to shoot a Jcak Rabbit, since they are a lot bigger (easier target).

We drove around the ranch with one of us in the back of the truck. When we came up on a rabbit we just stood in the bed, or if we could we got up on the roof of the truck. Being higher up like that gave us a better chance for finding the arrow if we missed.

I took a couple of shots on rabbits. I would miss high, I would miss low. Finally I hit one! I was so proud of myself. It was a lot of fun being able to shoot something so small with my bow. Justin was shooting some of them with a shot gun, once I hit one with my bow I didn’t want to give him a turn on the bow. I kept shooting and eventually killed a second one with my bow.

It started getting kind of late so Justin had to take over (he has light up sights). He also killed with his bow. His shot was a little better than mine though. I went for the body, he went for the head. Either way the rabbits were dying.

Bass Fishing

We started off with a trip to Bass Pro Shops in Katy, TX. That was a fun but expensive trip. I most likely spent too much money there. I was going nuts with all of the things that I wanted to buy.


I used just about everything that I bought on that trip. There were a couple of things that I figure I shouldn’t have bought: some weights, some plastic lizards, some swim baits, some 10 pound good for nothing plastic fish, and a spring scale with 1 lb increments. The weights were for the lizards and we didn’t use those at all. The swim baits caught fish and worked really well, except for the fact that you had to do about 10 minutes of super gluing after each fish you caught. Even doing that, the swim bait only lasted about 3 fish. The bait fish that I thought would do really well weighed too much to even think about throwing. I bought them because they looked really good, I didn’t really think about their weight. The scale SUCKED. It wasn’t even close to being accurate. I should have spent another $10 and gotten a digital scale.

The fishing was GREAT. Each morning we were up for 5:30 so we were fishing at sun rise, which was around 6:00. Jessica and Amanda got in a little bit of fishing with us at some point. Jessica came some mornings, Amanda came one afternoon.

Amanda was even able to catch a fish all by herself. I was so proud of her!

Jessica was also catching fish. She even started using a fishing reel without a bail. That was a huge step to better fishing. I don’t see why they make reels with a bail.

For some reason I was able to catch a couple of really big bluegill fish and sun perch. They are both “bait” fish for the bass to eat. So we have to put those back in the water. We can’t remove the food supply. The biggest one that I caught was a sun perch that weighed 14 oz.

Some fish just felt like really big fish. It was always exciting to be bringing in a great catch. On one of my hook sets something seemed weird about it. It was pulling through the water like a big fish, but it wasn’t fighting like a big fish. This is what came up.

Yep, two fish on the same bait.

Justin may have held the record for the biggest fish category. He pulled in a fish that registered at 4 ½ pounds on our (piece of junk) scale. When we saw that the scale wasn’t working well we figured that his fish was most likely over 5 pounds. Here is a picture of one of his big fish. My biggest fish weighed in at about 3 ½ pounds, so it might have been in the 4 pound range on a correct scale. I was very pleased with that.

Justin and I were in competition with another team, Shawn and Charles. We kept count for a while but we lost interest in making comparisons. I think that with the exception of the first day we stayed close in numbers. In the end our fish count was most likely a total of about 325 bass. Justin and I averaged about 27-30 fish in the morning and around 15-20 fish at night. I am guessing that Shawn and Charles had roughly the same numbers as us.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our fishing trip:

Pillow Fight

These are the leftovers from a pillow fight that we had outside of the pool. It was the last night and Kristen left her pillow on the hammock. There was only one thing that could be done from there.

The pillow fight was really interesting; unfortunately I don’t have any other pictures to show.

Bimbo Bread

I think that the picture speaks for itself….? My only guess is that an English speaking business owner thought that it would be a funny company name in Mexico.