Bobcats and pigs save the day on a slow duck hunt

With the closing of the regular gun season on deer, some buds and I shifted gears and opted to go duck and pig hunting last weekend. As expected, the duck hunting didn’t work out too well. We made a hunt on a backwater slough off a creek and three of us got two teal and a spoonbill. That’s pretty shabby, but the way this season has been it’s better than nothing.

With the duck hunting being so bad, we opted to shoot jack snipe that were flying all over the place. We watched ‘em for a good while and I suggested we start shooting them. The season runs through Feb. 20. Most hunters are not familiar with snipe, but I’ve been hunting them for years and they are one of the finest game birds we have in Texas.  The daily limit is eight per gun, and if you can put a limit of these fast-flying birds in the bag I want to shake your hand.

One of the best snipe hunting trips I’ve ever had was with Beaumont’s Rocky Chase. We went duck hunting at his club south of Winnie one morning, and after shooting a good number of teal and pintails we noticed all the snipe flying around. That afternoon we loaded up his dog Tank, and my dog, Big Nose Kate and headed afield. Both were labs and good retrievers, perfect for flushing out feeding snipe. Each of us shot about two boxes of shells and knocked down about 10 birds.

Snipe love to eat worms and there apparently are plenty of them on wet rice fields and plowed ground in Southeast Texas. A snipe looks a lot like a woodcock and has a beak that’s about 4 to 5 inches long. Years ago I made a hunt with Forest West, who at that time had a hunting club on the Bolivar Peninsula called Los Patos. One morning in January, he and I were out shooting snipe and flushed a few woodcock. Both birds fly about same. Woodcock like thick brush, whereas snipe prefer marsh like areas.

When snipe flush they go pretty much straight up, and away. But their one big mistake is that they will often circle back over the spot they were feeding in.

This past weekend, I cleaned our ducks and snipe and tossed them out in a nearby field. About an hour later I was outside the camp house and looked down the way and saw a huge bobcat easing along the brush with one of the breasted ducks in her mouth. That wasn’t too unusual since we had seen her and her two kittens a few times. I eased down the road on my four-wheeler and she just looked at me, which is when I took the photo for this column. Awhile later I looked down the gravel road and there she was again, digging around a gut pile from a pig we had shot the night before. Her two kittens were right beside her, watching and learning.

Even though deer season is over for most hunters there are still other options. Squirrel season here in East Texas is open through Feb. 27; duck season is open through Jan. 30; woodcock season is open through Jan. 31; and quail can be hunted through Feb. 27. And low and behold the pig season is open 24/7 every day of the year.

While pig hunting the other day I was watching three bucks and a doe eat corn I had tossed out along a dirt road, where we had been seeing two black pigs the past couple of days. Sure enough, just before last light that evening the pigs and the deer shot into the brush like they werbob e on fire. I looked down the way with my binoculars and just as I suspected there was a bobcat slinking down the edge of brush. That particular cat was big time smaller than the pigs and deer. But nothing out there wanted anything to do with her.

When it was all said and done we had steaming hot bowls of venison stew and cornbread that evening and watched the Dallas Cowboys stomp the Eagles. Yep, deer season is closed but there are lots of other hunting options to be had, and there is a lot to be said for just kicking back and watching the critters.