Hunt a Big Horn Ram...

[RichardM]

I guess if this fundraiser is really successful, they can work on putting in a new hunting blind like this one:

Any idea where that is at Richard?  Maybe around Del Rio?

I have no clue.  The pics were forwarded from a friend who emails about as as much stuff as you post. :shock:

[SHANEA]

I guess if this fundraiser is really successful, they can work on putting in a new hunting blind like this one:

Any idea where that is at Richard?  Maybe around Del Rio?

I have no clue.  The pics were forwarded from a friend who emails about as as much stuff as you post. :shock:

Oh, you are lucky.  I email way more than I post and you are lucky that you only get the crim-de-la-crim of the emails.  But, I can change that   :idea:    

Just joking...   :P   I'm very selective on who I send my emails too and they do have an opt out option.  I get a Brazillion emails a day and forward about .5 Brazillion, but I'm getting better.

[SHANEA]

Money's wrong motivation for Hall of Fame

MIKE LEGGETT: OUTDOORS
Money's wrong motivation for Hall of Fame
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, September 09, 2007

Money really may be the root of all evil.

It's taken control of the Texas Wildlife Expo celebrity banquet, which is fast becoming a rich guy campfire sing to raise money for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation instead of the celebration of hunting and outdoor heritage that it started out as 15 years ago.

One need only look as far as the opening class of the far-too-late-in-coming Texas Conservation Hall of Fame. The late Perry R. Bass and the Texas Bighorn Society will be the first inductees, at the Oct. 5 celebrity banquet. The Expo begins the next day at Texas Parks and Wildlife headquarters.

Worthy though they may be of induction, both Mr. Bass and the Bighorn Society seem to be being used as shills for raising money for the Parks and Wildlife Foundation. Their names sell tables to their friends and families and a highly prized desert bighorn sheep permit makes an amazingly appearance on the high-dollar auction program later in the evening. How convenient.

If the only way we can have a hall of fame in Texas is by inducting people who can sell tables or come from the right political party — and it's not the only way, of course — we ought to find something else to do with the money. Maybe it won't happen that way. Maybe we're only being conservative with the first inductions. We won't know for a while.

Other states do this already, notably Arkansas. It has a huge banquet with the governor, where the only goal is to induct honorees, who are anglers, teachers, conservationists, artists and duck callers.

Since this is the first class of hall of fame inductees in Texas, where we should be doing things bigger and better than any other state, why not start with a much bigger class, people we know should be in the hall and who stand shoulder to shoulder on the side of conservation.

Who, you ask? Well, the Coastal Conservation Association, for instance, There's an organization that did something people thought impossible. The group helped establish protections for saltwater game fish that ended generations of over-fishing, creating a model that was exported to other states. Walter Fondren became the spokesman of the group.

Ed Cox and Chuck Nash both served as chairman of the Parks and Wildlife Commission at crucial times in the history of the department, and either could lay claim to having been the man who kept things going through significant changes and turbulent periods that followed even Perry Bass's tenure. Nash helped found the Expo.

Charles Allen. That's a name that most people either won't know or will associate only with the infamy of his frantic last days with Parks and Wildlife. Allen was ultimately deposed and denounced — mostly through his own hubris — as the Wildlife Division's director, but he also looked me in the eye once and told me the pitiful pen-breeding system would never succeed in restocking bighorn sheep in West Texas.

Wild-trapped sheep were the answer, Allen said, and then he went out and got them. Turkeys, too, for the re-stocking in East Texas. There wouldn't even be bighorns out there now for the Bighorn Society to take care of if Allen hadn't made that project work.

There are other people, too, who could and should be hall of fame material, even if they don't all have the name cachet to attract a bunch of $1,500 table buyers: Bill Carter, "Big" Roy Hindes, Jack Cowan, Bob Brister, Bob Kemp, Dale Rollins, Bill Eikenhorst, Shorty Powers, Murry and Winston Burnham, Dan McBride, Jerry Johnston, Jerry Smith, Wyman Meinzer, Bob and Mickey Burleson, Ann Richards, Watt Matthews, Rudy Grigar, Maurice Estlinbaum, Bubba Wood, Rick Pope, Charlie Inman, Al Brothers, Nick Creme, Butch Thompson, Rick Clunn and Ben Lilly.

I could keep on listing them, but you get the point. Texas conservation is so much more than money. Ann Richards will be a hard sell to a hard-core Republican state right now because she wasn't really even a hunter, but she started the annual governor's dove hunt photo-op and news conference. And she gave a speech at the first Wildlife Expo that would have made Wayne Pacelle want to take up hunting.

Richards appointed Mickey Burleson to the commission, who along with her husband, Bob, campaigned to save tallgrass prairies in Texas and were among the first to pioneer trekking in the Big Bend region.

Rudy "The Plugger" Grigar was one of the old-time Galveston Bay saltwater anglers who used lures, not bait to catch reds and trout. He lived for years in a shack on the Chandeleur Islands with his dog, Yuckapoo, taking people from Texas fishing.

Jerry Smith made big deer famous with his King Ranch shots on the cover of Jerry Johnston's Trophy Hunters magazine. Shorty Powers ignored his own disabilities and made sure kids with similar limitations learned they had no limitations outdoors.

Bob Brister could be a self-promoting, arrogant SOB, but he really invented newspaper outdoors writing in Texas and kept at it until he died.

Dale Rollins invented Bobwhite Brigades and infused it with more energy and information than 10 people could.

All the other names are probably out there on the Internet for you to look up and learn what they've done, and there are hundreds more that I haven't listed. My apologies to those people in advance.

The point is that most people who deserve to be in the hall of fame couldn't sell a table to anybody but family. They haven't just spent money; they've given time and thought and love to Texas conservation, and they deserve the same recognition.

As somebody once said: "Money is easy. Some people have so much they don't even miss it. But everybody has the same 24 hours in a day, and the guy who gives you his time is giving something special."

We should give something special in return.

mleggett@statesman.com

[/b]

[SHANEA]

Deadline Nears for Big Time Texas Hunts

Media Contact: Steve Lightfoot, (512) 389-4701, steve.lightfoot@tpwd.state.tx.us

Sept. 17, 2007
Deadline Nears for Big Time Texas Hunts

AUSTIN, Texas — Some of the finest hunting anywhere in the country can be found within Texas borders, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Big Time Texas Hunts offer hunters a chance to experience the best of the best.

The Big Time Texas Hunts program offers the opportunity to win one or more top guided hunts with food and lodging provided, as well as taxidermy in some cases. The crown jewel of the program is the Texas Grand Slam hunt package, which includes four separate hunts for Texas’ most prized big game animals — the desert bighorn sheep, white-tailed deer, mule deer and pronghorn antelope. There are several quality whitetail hunt packages available, as well as opportunities to pursue alligator, exotic big game, waterfowl and upland game birds.

Entries for the Big Time Texas Hunt drawings are $10 each and are available wherever hunting licenses are sold or by phone (800) 895-4248. More information about the hunts, as well as purchases online, is available at (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/dreamhunts/). There is no limit to the number of entries an individual may purchase, and entries may be purchased as gifts for others. Purchasers must be 17 years of age or older. The deadline to apply for this year’s Big Time Texas Hunts is Oct. 15, two weeks earlier than in previous years to give the winners more time to prepare for their trips.

The Big Time Texas Hunts generates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, with proceeds dedicated to providing more public hunting opportunity and to funding wildlife conservation and research programs in Texas.

———
On the Net:

    * http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/hunt/public/btth/

[Undertaker]

In response to crusing roads hunting game, it is not legal in Texas to do so, you will have your license pulled and can have anything you own used to take game in an illegal manner taken from you, gun, truck etc. Plus as a hunter I do not consider the type of folks that do so hunters. Personal opinion.

[SHANEA]

Texas Bighorn Sheep Population Continues To Flourish

[SHANEA]

Big Time Texas Hunts Winners Selected

Media Contact: Steve Lightfoot, (512) 389-4701, steve.lightfoot@tpwd.state.tx.us
Oct. 29, 2007
Big Time Texas Hunts Winners Selected
AUSTIN, Texas — Tommy Bridgers has joined an elite group of sportsmen who can call themselves desert bighorn sheep hunters. That’s because the Duncanville, Texas resident is this year’s winner of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Big Time Texas Hunts Grand Slam.

“I’m absolutely flabbergasted,” exclaimed Bridgers. “That’s the only way I can describe how excited I am about winning this contest.”

Bridgers was selected in a random computer drawing from among 20,355 Texas Grand Slam entries and will participate in a series of four separate guided hunts for all four big game animals in Texas — white-tailed deer, mule deer, pronghorn antelope and desert bighorn sheep.

Bridgers paid $10 to apply for the drawing and said he has been entering the Big Time Texas Hunts annually. The bighorn sheep hunt alone is priceless, something only a handful of people ever get a chance to experience. “I’m a member of the Dallas Safari Club and I know we auctioned off a bighorn permit last year for about $100,000,” he said. “Anybody who hunts sheep knows how hard it is to get one of these permits.”

For his four hunts, Bridgers just needs to bring hunting gear and a valid hunting license. Guide service, food, lodging, and on-site transportation for himself and a non-hunting companion are all provided.

Here are this year’s winners and hometowns for all seven Big Time Texas Hunts categories:
Texas Grand Slam
    * Tommy H. Bridgers, Duncanville, TX
Texas Exotic Safari
    * Jimmy R, Clark, Somerville, TX
    * Oscar Buenrostro, Houston, TX
Texas Premium Buck
    * Kenneth Watson, Weatherford, TX
Texas Whitetail Bonanza
    * Alan C. Weston, Burnet, TX
    * David G. Fallin, The Woodlands, TX
    * Jean J. Astie, , Dallas, TX
    * Robert Valentine, Houston, TX
    * Stephen L. Holley, Dallas, TX
    * Lee R. Jones, , Wichita Falls, TX
    * Buren A. Haltom, Dayton, TX
    * Ward M. Cooksey, Sulphur Springs, TX
    * Miguel Saldivar, Devine, TX
    * Roberto J. Laurel, Laredo, TX
Texas Big Time Bird Hunt
    * Paulino Silguero, Hebbronville, TX
Texas Waterfowl Adventure
    * Richard A. Pratt, Plano, TX
Texas Gator Hunt
    * Adolfo C. Nabarrette, Odessa, TX
All told, hunters bought 79,815 Big Time Texas Hunt entries during this year’s sales period from Aug. 15 through the Oct. 15 deadline. This generated $798,150 in gross revenue to support wildlife research, habitat management and public hunting.

Now, one has to wonder if this money is "additional" to the TPWD budget established by the legislature or is the money generated subtracted from the budget?  Reason I ask this is that with the TPWD State of Texas Lisc. Plates - the money doesn't actually go to TPWD - as only the legislature can appropriate money to TPWD.  SEE:  THIS WILL MAKE YOU MAD AS HELL!