Kudos to LaMascus

Your article at fishgame.com on defining power was exactly what some of us were thinking, but not sure how to say. Thank you for putting your experience and insight into plain English. I have had a very similar experience when hunting deer here in Texas. I only have two hunting rifles, a Marlin .357 and a Remington .270. I have physical limitations on how far that I can walk and track a wounded animal. I bought some Hornady for my .270 to go mule deer hunting in Colorado They worked as expected.

I think Hornady is a good ammo manufacturer, if you use the correct bullet for the correct animal you’re hunting. I returned to Texas to hunt whitetail using the Hornady ammo that I bought for mule deer there was a completely different outcome. The Hornady ammo that I used for mule deer was too powerful for the whitetail down here in Texas. Just like you said in your article, it went right through without expanding. I changed bullets several years ago and ended up using the exact same bullet that you mentioned in your article with a greater recovery rate than the more powerful ammo of the same size.

Steve

Gonzales Still Impacting Readers

Damn that was a good and powerful article! It struck a chord with me for sure. Great job in tying the trials of 2020 to being more Christ-like without sounding too preachy. Tight lines.

Sigue adelante!

Gerardo Huerta

Editor: Cal was a brave man and a really good one. Even though he is no longer with us, his words are still impacting people. Thanks for sharing Gerardo.

Rancho del Mar

Dear Joe Doggett,

Wow! That really tugged at my heart strings. It was the stuff I dreamed of reading the Chronicle growing up in Sharpstown, which was the civilized edge of the planet back then best I could tell. The main lanes of US 59 ended at Bissonnet where you were relegated to feeder roads all the way to Victoria.

I would absolutely devour the Outdoors Section of the Chronicle, every Sunday and any other day you and Bob [Brister, long time Houston Chronicle Outdoor Editor] had an expanded report or story. Bob’s and your style really does leave us wanting to go wherever the heck you had been—Barrow’s Ranch, Champions Lake, Bolivar Peninsula, Rockport—man, what an endless list of great places, most of which I’ve been to or close to chasing tails or feathers. I loved the section of Rob Sawyer’s latest book, Images of the Hunt: A Photographic History of Texas Waterfowling. There’s a good section on the east side of Houston, in particular, Barrow’s Ranch, which I never did get to hunt.

Rancho del Mar, from Doggett’s January/February 2021 column.
(Photo: Joe Doggett)

Your story has an air of foreboding in it for those of us that crave the edge. There’s not much left, at least around these parts. With flats boats, cat boats, tunnel boats, airboats, mud motors and jets—not to mention the internet cyber scouting, GPS and drones—no critter is safe anywhere at any time. It seems as though there is hardly a technology that could improve our odds of success. It is more about how you get there and in what style than about actually doing it well.

Though I still have a bird lease on the edge of the Katy Prairie, I am old enough to know that it is not even a shadow of what it was “back in the day.” It hurts my heart to drive home when I can actually see the so called progress instead of just the lights on the way out in the early morning.

You guys did it well. Keep writing and telling those stories with Ray, Popo and Lou for the rest of us. I can still dream of the edge.

Jim Gregory