Never give up…

 

One of the great things about fishing and hunting is the uncertainty factor. Take for example the duck hunting trip Tommy Countz went on early this week. Countz is a well known Texas middle coast fishing guide. He was hunting in the Anahuac area with a friend.

“We only had four birds come in on us and we got three of them,” said Countz. “There was nothing happening. We saw lots and lots of ducks but they were going down way away from where we were. It was just one of those crazy days.”

Countz decided it was a losing cause and started unloading his gun and putting it in its gun case. “We crawled out of the pit blind we were hunting from and started walking down the levy. We weren’t 20 yards from the blind when a couple bald eagles who hang out in that area swooped down over one of the ponds that’s called the Crawfish Pond.” The pond was loaded with roosting ducks

The eagle scared the ducks and bunches of 20 and 30 ducks were rocketing off the pond. “One bunch like to took our heads off as they came off the pond,” exclaimed Countz. Everybody else was on down about 100 yards and we hollered to them to look and see what was happening. It was just bunch after another bunch.

“We ran back, got into the blind, loaded our guns again and ended up killing 16 teal. If we had waited 15 minutes before we got out of the blind we would probably have had shot our limit.

It was just one of those deals. Our timing and the ducks timing was bad, but we ended up killing a bunch of green wing teal.”

Countz preaches patience. “I tell people to not give up to the last tick on the clock.” He learned to deal with disappointment while playing football at Rice. “There were times we were down so far by the end of the first quarter, and knew we couldn’t come back, but we kept playing…like there was a chance. Sometimes we did come back. This was one of those days we went from zero to a hero. From 6:30 to 10:00 we shot three ducks; 10:15 to 10:30 we shot 13 more.”