How to enjoy lemons

During the short time that I have been breathing oxygen, I have seen some pretty drastic changes in the landscapes that I see on a daily basis. I grew up in a swamp, went to college in the foothills, spent a year in the desert on a military base, moved to Central Texas, and moved to another desert in New Mexico.

Texas was wonderful. The people were great, the food was great, the music is the best in the world, and the hunting and fishing opportunities are almost endless. I would move back in a heart-beat, and I remind my wife of that on a regular basis. The Texas coast is one of my favorite places anywhere on the earth. If you like to fish and duck hunt(which just happen to be two of my favorite things), you can keep yourself fairly occupied for the majority of the year. I was just learning the ins-and-outs of Texas when we found out that we were moving even further west to the dry, dusty and windy city of Las Cruces. I wanted to lay down on the floor and throw a temper tantrum like you might see in Toys-R-Us. I pouted, I moped, I sulked. Not only were we moving further away from anyone that we called friends or family, but we were moving to the desert. Remember what I just said were two of my favorite things? Yea, well water is vital to both of those hobbies, and water isn’t very readily available in the desert, hence the name. The area of southern New Mexico that surrounds Las Cruces is hot, dry, windy, dusty, and anything but green and lush like I was accustomed too. I was not optimistic about my new hunting grounds, to say the least.

We flew out to look for a house a couple of times, and after talking with our real estate agent(who has turned into a good friend), I didn’t feel quite as pouty as before, but still wasn’t thrilled about the move. The Augustus McRae look-alike and I hit it off when I brought up hunting and fishing opportunities in New Mexico. In fact, our wives made us stop talking about hunting and fishing multiple times during each of our visits. Moving day found us, even though I tried hiding from it, and we packed up our life and hit the road. Once we pulled off of I-10 and got our stuff unloaded, I started looking for any kind of outdoors clubs to join. I found the Mesilla Valley Shotgun club, and they had just opened their skeet and trap fields. I had also just acquired a stylish new 20ga scattergun and needed to get acquainted with her before the fall rolled around. I ended up becoming a regular at the range, shooting pretty much every weekend from July to the end of August and picked up on bits and pieces of info from the old guys who had been out here for a lot longer than I had been alive and stashed those away in the hunting folder of the file cabinet between my ears for future reference.

Dan(the Augustus imposter) took me along on a couple of fishing trips to Elephant Butte lake over the summer. He showed me how they caught white bass, and I showed him how I catch black bass. We had some great trips and we both learned a lot from each other. On the first trip, I actually caught a very nice(@ 3lbs) smallmouth. I never really had the chance to catch any before(I did catch one or two tiny guys in the Medina river outside of Bandera on a fly rod),  but they might be my new favorite fresh-water fish. New Mexico was looking a little better.

The aformentioned tiny Medina Smallmouth

The closer it got to September, the more giddy I became. I had discovered that what this part of the world lacks in greenery, it makes up for in doves. And not just mourning doves, but the pigeon-sized white-wings too. It’s always exciting getting to hunt a new species in new places, but add to that the fact that I had a new pup to train, and no job yet(which normally isn’t a good thing, but during hunting season, it can be dealt with) and I was like a redneck in a Cabela’s for the first time. Dove season was a blast. I shot great, I didn’t ruin my pup, and I killed a lot of doves. New Mexico was looking a little better.

A limit of New Mexico doves

Duck season was coming up, and I had seen a few birds flying up and down the river during dove season and managed to scratch out a couple of teal during teal season, so it was time to get serious about finding my web-footed crack. I ran into a very large problem here. There was water in the Rio Grande up until early September. It turned into more of a tiny creek about the time teal season hit, and now, in October, it was a dry canal. I didn’t realize that the Rio was more of an irrigation ditch than a river in southern New Mexico, but it is a sad reality. I put the rubber to the road and headed north, and found ducks. I’m not going to get much detail about duck season, because us duck hunters(the real duck hunters, and not the punks that learned everything they know from a tv show) are the most paranoid sumbitches that ever walked the face of this earth. In fact, we normally loathe other hunters. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even like hunting with more than 2 people at a time, and chances are, I know those people well. And I’ll take 3 ducks and no other parties anywhere around over a limit of birds and having to deal with a bunch of rubberheads any day. Let’s just say that I had a great season, and leave it at that. New Mexico was looking a little better.

A couple of limits

Once duck season was over with, my brain switched gears, and the longer the days got and the closer we came to spring, the more I got the urge to start puffing out my chest and gobbling at the crack of daylight. I did all the researching I could on turkeys in New Mexico and found that for me, the Gila and Lincoln National Forests were my best bet. I had been through the Lincoln on the way to Ruidoso Downs a few times, but that was about it. I contacted a fella whose name was listed on the NWTF website as being the president of the local chapter, and he was nice enough to give me a few jumping off points. After lots of maps scouting, I pointed the truck east and made the 5,000ft climb into the land of milk and honey to look for turkeys. Now if you know anything about the Mesilla Valley, you’ll know that it sits somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000ft above sea-level. Add 5,000ft to that and you get 9,000ft. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not in the best of shape, but put me on flat ground around sea level, and I can walk through the woods all day long and then some. Put me in the mountains at 9k feet, and I can get around about like Jared did before he discovered Subway(ok, maybe not that bad, but it damn sure feels like it walking up a mountain at that elevation). I got in a good days worth of scouting before the season, but unfortunately, I had one of those inconvenient things they call jobs at this point. I had one during duck season too, but 90 days is a lot longer of a season than 25, and it’s hard to drive 3 hours at 3am by yourself when you only get one day off at a time. I was able to go back one morning during the second week of the season and got on a pair of gobblers, but I’m pretty sure they were henned up already. My best friend was able to make it out for 4 days of hunting during the last week of the season, so I called in to work temporarily dead, and headed back to the mountains for 5 days. We found birds, but they were ridiculously call shy and the people hunting off of 4-wheelers made it even harder for us to kill a bird. We did kill a feral pig, and we saw elk and deer and even a few turkeys, but we were never able to get a gobbler to work for us. Even though I didn’t get to add a Merriam’s to the bag, New Mexico was looking better.

Mountain meadow in the Lincoln at almost 10,000ft

I got my chance to finally go to the Gila National Forest this past fall. I drew an archery elk tag in unit 16a and I was stoked. On my scouting trip before the season, I saw a bear, turkeys, elk, deer and antelope. It was awesome. The Gila is a little lower in elevation than the Lincoln, so I could actually walk more than 20 feet without my lungs throwing one of those Toys-R-Us style temper tantrums I was talking about earlier. I found where I wanted to camp and the main area I wanted to hunt, but I had a tough time finding someone to be a potential pack mule. I did have a friend come up and hunt the first morning with me, and I also had some friends that camped with me for a couple of days while they were deer hunting, but that was it. I arrowed a rabbit while I was hunting(which was some great camp grub) and actually had a chance to kill a cow elk, but I had a brain fart and aimed with the wrong pin an sent an arrow right across her back. Even though I came home with a tag still in my pocket, I felt like I had a very successful hunt. I was on my first elk hunt, by myself, and stalked in on a small herd of cows and calves, by myself, and was able to take a shot at a tasty looking cow. I just muffed the shot out of excitement.  New Mexico was looking better…

Yes, it was delicious.

I’ve got a lot I could write about individual hunts and excursions, and I’m sure that I will eventually, but not yet. Folks, life is good. It’s real good. And you only get one go-round. I love the South. It will never leave me, and I never really thought I would leave it either. But life happened and I did. People that know me will tell you that the desert is the last place they would expect me to be. I could have been bitching and whining from the time I left College Station until now. And my better half will tell you that there are times my distaste for the desert comes to a head and I’ll piss and moan for a day or so, but I’ve learned that if you aren’t willing to get out and make the most of what the good Lord has given you, you’ll be a miserable soul.  New Mexico has grown on me considerably, and luckily I was able to look past the dust and wind and lack of water and really see what was put in front of me. I'm grateful that I've gotten the chance to live in a place as beautiful and unique as the Land of Enchantment, no matter how different it is. When life hands you some lemons, do like I did and cut those babies in half, squeeze the sourness out of them and into a glass with some ice cubes, pour in a double shot of sweet tea vodka, and start digging some shins.