OK, I'm back. And of course I brought pitchers

Gonnabe strikes back. That's 2 for little brother and 1 for the big boy. The rivalry is intense and somebody's going to be bleeding before this season is over.

Ya'll should have seen him on the blood trail. Roll back 2 years and he shot down a 6 point with a 20 yard shot. Knocked the deer down and he scrambled to his feet then limped in front of us to our right slowly. I could see blood coming from his side just behind the shoulder and low. At least a double lung shot and probably some liver as well. I decided not to shoot him again so he could claim all the glory. Dang deer limped right out of the county and no less than 10 of us couldn't follow him.

This time, that wasn't gonna happen. He spotted blood first and stayed on point the rest of the way. Gonna have to bring a leash next time so he doesn't lead too far out.

Here's the view from the stand, the master hunter at work and the shot I took when we found her. That's the trouble with hunting in the PM - crappy kill shots.

Wannabe...

OK, so I forgot the kill shots. Here's the first and the best pic I got.

Wannabe...

OK, so roll forward to Saturday. Me and Gottabe headed out early to keep the streak alive. At this point we're 3 hunts/3 deer with time in the stand totaling 2.5 hours. Not bad huh. Well, about 2.5 hours into Saturday, I was getting the feeling my average was gonna slip. So, Gottabe made me get down from that stand and take him to another so we could get in another 1.5 Hours. Needless to say, I'm 3 for 4 with total time in the stand of 6.5 Hours. :( Oh well....still a lot better than you yahoos. :D

Well, we decided to go back to the first stand so i could hunt for Gonnabe's spent casing as a souvineer for him. On the way back, as per usual, Gottabe drives and I ride the 4 wheeler. We're in second and loping up a road with little rain berms. The front tire catches a rut and lurches to the left, then jumps the rut and climbs the cut in the hill. About this time, I hear "Woooooo", the front rack catches a stump on the cut and comes to a stop, but not before pushing it a little more to the left. At this point, the right tire is off the ground and when Gonnabe came off the throttle, the right tire decides it really needs to be back on the ground in a hurry. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground (with my rifle still stapped accross my back), Gottabe's rifle is about 4 foot above my head on the ground and Gottabe is standing with Silver dollar eyes over me saying "Are you all right, are you all right, are you all right". The 4 wheeler came to rest on it's right side and is still idling and in gear. You just can't stop a Honda. :)

Everything was AOK and no one even got a bruise. I even had the presense of mind as we were coming over to brace myself and get my legs up to hold the 4 wheeler from coming over on us, but as it happened, it just came to it's side and didn't try and carry over. Can't really fault the boy for anything though. His speed was very low and he was taking it very easy. I think he just found a new and needed respect for a 4 wheeler though.

We made it back to the stand and even found the shell casing. :)

So, anyway, the plan was to hunt the AM and fish the PM with Gonnabe. With a short break in between to watch the Rebels get out about about 20 points ahead of MSU by the half.

All of which went according to plan, except for the football. So, I loaded new batts in the radio and boogied to the lake to catch a lot of fish and listen to the game on a very pretty day. This is when the wheels, pistons, transmission and side mirrors of my plan came apart.

The wind was blowing 10 out of the North (where's my 5-10 out of the South ya stinking weathergewber?). The radio wouldn't pic up not a single station - must be broke or something. And to make matters worse, the only other boat on the lake reported not a single fish in 3 hours.

Oh well, we decided to fish on and see what happened safe in the knowledge that the Rebels were showing MSU a thing or two about feetball.

Wannabe...

Things were beginning to look up for us. The wind went calm, we had a few nibbles and a couple of misses and I had just moved to a new goto spot.


And as you can tell from the smile, Gonnabe was still pretty confident.

As a side note, you see that hat in the pic? If you'll notice, that's an Ole Miss hat with a Japanese Proverb on it. We had it custom made for the boy. The translation is difficult, but loosely, it means "DonDon is a Gewber".

Wannabe...

And thats when it happened. Gonnabe's middle pole went down to the last eye and the battle was on. It ebbed and flowed over the next 27 minutes with the fish giving his all and Gonnabe matching it's every move....even anticipating it's next move. I could almost swear he was reading the fish's mind. After 3 rounds of 22 caliber to it's head, we felt it was safe to gaff it into the boat.

It was 21.25" long and I believe it weighed 6 pounds 4 ounces. Although I'll admit up front that Feelay has already seen the pics and disputes my claimed weight. He's pretty sure my scale is reading heavy and in his mind there's no way it could possibly weigh more than 4.5 pounds.

I told him like I'm telling you: You remember it your way, I'll remember it mine.

Wannabe...

OK, or catch a fesh

I ain't gonna.....Period. With those 2, there's 6 in the cooler waiting for my knife. Got lucky on the 1st one. The cooler malfunctioned and froze up and a dude in the club went ahead and cleaned it for me...and kept the meat for me too. LOL.

Wannabe...

Can't answer on the fish question though.

Wannabe...

And another by the way. That pank jig is a Creekslick speshul. Gonna have to get some pics on that boy so I can blackmail some more out of him.

Wannabe...