When A Plan Comes Together: Hunting the Buffalo 4 Ranch
“If you can shoot like that when we see a big, you just might be able to hit the entire deer!” chided my guide, Johnnie Hudman, who is also a very dear old friend. I tried to ignore his comments, but doing so was impossible. “See if you can hit that house-sized boulder over to the left of the hundred-yard target. I’m going to have to get you really close to a buck the way you’re shooting!”
I shook my head and found a silver-dollar-sized rock to the left of the boulder, he suggested. At the shot, the small rock exploded. “I knew it! The way you’re shooting, I’m probably going to have to put a buck at the end of the muzzle for you to hit him!” Somehow, I expected no less from my compadre with whom I have shared numerous hunts and campfires, but never as many as I have really wanted.
“OK, back to the target!” I shifted, got a good solid rest, and picked out a bullet hole I had purposefully placed nine inches high and eight inches left of dead center. I squeezed my Mossberg Patriot Predator’s trigger and adjusted it down to 2 ½-pounds of pull. Through my Trijicon AccuPoint scope, I saw the 175-grain ELD-X Hornady Precision Hunter load turn the .284-inch-sized hole to a .308-sized hole. “You’re still way off…” said Johnnie Hudman. I then asked Johnnie to “lay his hands” on the barrel to correct all problems…reluctantly, he did!
My next shot, quickly followed by another at the 100-yard target, took the “X” out of the center of the bullseye. I turned to smile at my old friend. Said he, “If you’d let me do that before you fired the first shot, you sure could have saved several rounds of ammunition!”
Buffalo 4 Ranch
Early summer, Johnnie had asked me to join him on the Buffalo 4 Ranch for a whitetail hunt owned by Matt and Amy Skipper. “As you know, I have managed the wildlife and hunting on several ranches in the past (Johnnie managed the famed Nail Ranch, as well as the Stasney’s Cook Ranch and others in northern Texas); the Buffalo 4 is one of the best I have ever had anything to do with. The owners and I would like to invite you to experience the ranch and, while there, take a mature buck if we can find one, and you can hit him! Let’s plan a mid-October hunt. We do have a Managed Land Deer Permit. The bucks should still be patternable before the bachelor herds start breaking up.” Sounded like an excellent game plan to me.
The Buffalo 4 Ranch lies just north of the old Fort Chadbourne Calvary Fort, on the edge of relatively flat plains and the lower edge of the rugged Texas Edwards Plateau. The sizeable property is high-fenced to keep in the exotic species they have introduced and to keep out whitetails. Hence, those within the fence’s apparent confines get full benefit from the ranch’s extensive habitat manipulation, supplemental plantings, and feeding program. I say “apparent confines” because in years past, as a professional wildlife biologist, I have watched mature bucks regularly and easily clear 8-foot tall fences. We humans see such fences as a barrier; local whitetail deer do not.
The Buffalo 4 Ranch is involved in various whitetail deer research, including having known-age bucks, which can be tracked from year to year to determine how the management program is “working.” This is accomplished by putting ear tags into the deer’s ears when they are fawns. Thus, at least for the time being, it is not uncommon to see bucks with tags in their ears. As a wildlife biologist who spent many years researching and managing whitetail deer, I understand and appreciate why someone would want to use ear tags on deer on a specific property. I applaud the research the Buffalo 4 Ranch is involved in.
The first couple of days of my hunt, Johnnie and I, along with Matt, did a lot of reconnoitering and simply looking. As a wildlife biologist, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the ranch’s habitat, plant species, the age structure of the local deer herd, and every thing else I could learn. Too, it gave Johnnie and me time to “mess with each other,” something we have always done. I quickly learned the owners, Matt and Ms. Amy, as Johnnie had told me, were dedicated to producing the finest deer possible and learning everything they could about whitetails and the local habitat, and they have personalities very similar to my long-time friend. It quickly became apparent why Johnnie, beyond his knowledge of deer and habitat, was working with them.
Over delicious meals, I learned Matt and Ms. Amy are both serious hunters and conservationists. Both are Life Members of DSC and support the organization’s goals and objectives of wildlife conservation, education, and advocacy.
During our reconnoitering, I saw more typical 12-point and drop-tine bucks than I would have ever imagined. We saw many antlered bucks that were in a single word: “HUGE”! To say the least, I was impressed. Johnnie and I spent the early hunts driving from one glassing point to another. We also spent a couple of hunts sitting in the Buffalo 4’s comfortable blinds, watching feed areas. We saw numerous bucks, including two, that, according to Johnnie, had they given us the opportunity, he would have instructed me to shoot. When the bucks appeared, I concentrated on getting footage for A SPORTSMAN’S LIFE, the digital TV show I co-host with Luke Clayton and Jeff Rice, which appears weekly on CarbonTV. Lowering the camera and picking up my Swarovski binos, they walked behind a screening of mesquites. What I had seen of them, all were huge! “One if not two of those are strong possibilities!” to which Johnnie added, “But you probably could not hit them anyway…”
That night, over a delicious meal, visiting with Matt and Ms. Amy, we discussed going back to the same blind the next morning.
We did but saw only a few does and a yearling buck. We were back at camp at 10, had a quick breakfast, and immediately headed out to hunt and scout another area of the ranch.Â
After checking an area where Johnnie had seen an older, six-year-old or older buck, we formulated a plan to return to the area where we had seen the five bucks the evening before, including one Johnnie decided I should take if we saw him again.
“Those bucks should, for the time being, stay in that same basic area where we saw them yesterday. Although, I have noticed some of the bachelor herds I have been watching have started splitting up.”Â
I interrupted Johnnie, “Saw a couple of just opened scrapes, which tells me the bachelor herds are indeed going to start breaking up pretty quickly.”
“How do you feel about making a ground, brush blind, and hunting from there?” asked Johnnie, smiling because he knew that was one of my favorite ways of hunting whitetails. “Let’s find a stand of live oaks near where we saw those bucks yesterday in an area where we can cover a lot of ground.” I nodded in agreement, knowing the liveoak tree trunks would provide some excellent background cover, and the trees modeled shade that would help break up our shape much like some camo clothing.
A few minutes later, Johnnie and I agreed on where to set up. We scraped the litter from around several live oaks growing closely together, set up a couple of “low chairs,” and then surrounded those with cut cedar branches. Ground blind complete, we backed away to look from a deer’s perspective. If we did not make any serious “moving around,” it was doubtful even an eagle-eye doe would spot us.
The Plan Comes Together
After a hasty mid-afternoon lunch, Johnnie and I headed to our makeshift blind. Secreted there, I thought about taking a quick nap, then thought the better of doing so. If I closed my eye, I knew my compadre would be poking me.
By the time we were settled in, it was 4 o’clock. I positioned my 7mm PRC on shooting sticks got a bit of footage of our surroundings. I was just about to turn the camera off when Johnnie whispered, “Buck, typical 12, young, about one hundred yards straight in front. I quickly turned on the video camera and started focusing on the deer. Just as I did, I spotted more movement headed in our direction. Definitely a buck! Just as I got the camera focused on the deer, said Johnnie, “Second buck! Shoot that second buck!”
I looked at the buck through my Trijicon AccuPoint, adjusted down to 4x, and did a double-take! The second buck had huge antlers; tall, wide, massive, at least a typical 10 with kickers, including a 3-inch drop on his right beam. My heart jumped into my throat! I talked to myself to calm down and do simple things, like ensuring the camera was turned on and focused on the buck. A glance proved it was. The buck was partially hidden behind a tree trunk and was slightly quartered toward me, left to right. He was cautious, allowing the younger buck to reconnoiter before proceeding. I readjusted the camera. As I did, I saw the younger buck jerk his head up high, look right, then turned tail to run.Â
I had less than a couple of seconds to get on target and squeeze the trigger before the buck I was after followed. Just before he made his move, I shot him, hoping the bullet with where I was holding would take out his heart.
At the shot, my buck whirled and ran. I cycled the Mossberg’s bolt and quickly picked him up for a fast departing second shot. Just as I squeezed, the buck fell, less than 40 steps from where he stood when I had shot. I kept my scope trained on the downed deer. If he so much as even wiggled, I was going to shoot him again.
He did not…
A few moments later, Johnnie and I walked to where my buck lay. With each step, he and his antlers seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and he had started out looking absolutely huge! At his side, I marveled at his big body and the shape and beauty of his antlers. His antlers were extremely long-tined, a typical 11-point with ten scorable non-typical points longer than 1 inch. One of those non-typical points was a 3-inch long droptine off his right main beam. His primary points were l-o-n-g, as were his main beams. I suspected his inside spread would equal or exceed 20 inches, and his greatest outside spread might stretch a measuring tape to 27 inches. To say my buck had a HUGE set of antlers would have been an understatement!
Johnnie noticed I was simply staring at my buck, smiling broadly. Said he, “Maybe the first time in 40 years of knowing you that you’ve been speechless!”
After some appropriate pictures and required footage for an upcoming episode of “A SPORTSMAN’S LIFE,” I sat back and simply stared at my buck. I take it to you like him!” said a wide-smiling Johnnie Hudman! He was wrong…I loved the buck!
After many pictures, we took my buck to the skinning shed. I gutted him, them we set him up in the ranch’s walk-in cooler for more photos in the morrow.
Chores completed, Johnnie and I adjourned to camp, where, lo and behold, my old friend, produced a bottle of chilled peach schnapps, a tradition we had started many years ago. With small “pourings,” we toasted my buck, Buffalo 4 Ranch, the ranch’s owners, friends of many years who were somewhere back in Tennessee and Alabama, and our years of friendship!
Early next morning, we took more photos, and then I caped and skinned the buck, as well as quartered him and hung him in the cooler where his meat would be allowed to age for a couple of days before being cut up.
From before the hunt to after the hunt, including all in between, our hunting plan had come together! Indeed is nice when such things happen!
To learn more about the Buffalo 4 Ranch please visit their Facebook page. A full-fledged website is currently under construction and will soon be available.
Professional wildlife biologist/outdoor communicator, Larry Weishuhn, known to many as “Mr. Whitetail”, has established quality wildlife management programs on over 12,000,000 acres throughout North American and other parts of the world. He has hunted big game with rifle and/or handgun on six continents. Larry is a Professional Member of the Boone & Crockett Club, life-member of numerous wildlife conservation organizations including the Dallas Safari Club, Mule Deer Foundation, and Wild Sheep Foundation. He currently serves on the DSC Foundation Board of Directors, is one of three co-founders of the Texas Wildlife Association; is a member of the Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame and the Muy Grande Hall of Fame; he too, received the Zeiss Lifetime Achievement Award among many other honors.