I’ve been deer hunting for the past week or so here in Texas. I love it. I went in with six or seven other guys, and we leased six thousand acres of land. We have a cabin with most of the trimmings of home so it all works out pretty well.
This year I’ll spend about two weeks here, maybe three. I’ll fly back home on Christmas Day, stay for a while, then come back here for a week or 10 days before I have to get ready for the 2019 Bassmaster Elite Series season. Getting ready will take some time. I have to get my new boat and motor broke in and then sort and organize my tackle.
My best kill ever was a 164 buck some years ago. It was here on the land we lease. I’m not going to take anything else unless it’s in the giant class, a true trophy. I’m talking about a 170 or better. Our place is full of 150s. I’ve seen a dozen or more that size. I’ve hunted long enough that a big deer doesn’t interest me anymore. I want the real thing.
It’s a really great deal out here. I can hunt, but I can also take my family and friends with me and enjoy time with them. One experience I’ll always remember is helping my niece bag a nice buck a couple of years ago. I don’t remember for sure, but I think it was a little better than 150. She was thrilled.
There’s another part of my hunting trips, though, that work directly into my fishing career, and that’s lure development. Believe it or not, I get most of that done when I’m hunting.
When you’re in a deer stand you have plenty of time to think. I do most of my best lure work here. I think about designs, colors and names. I have the time to roll things over and over in my mind. Some of our best baits have come out of a deer stand.
That’s especially important this year because we’re trying to put together a couple of brand new baits for this year. I’m talking about Pure Fishing.
You can’t do much when you’re fishing. You’re trying to catch bass and figure things out. That doesn’t leave much time for anything else. But, sometimes you do come up with an idea, something you need or you’d like to have at that particular moment. Even then, though, you can’t get into the details. You need time to work those out, and a deer stand gives you that time.
Once you get things sorted out in your mind you can tell the engineers and design people exactly what you want and it’ll make sense to them because you’ve had time to think it through.
I know I haven’t talked about cold water crankbait fishing in this column. If you want to know how I do that you can read a column I wrote about a year ago. It’s here. Everything I said in it is just as good today as it was back then.