Another year another trip to Texas

Just sharing my sixth year of experience with the Harding Ranch about 45 minutes north of Del Rio Texas. I make this trip every year with a group of guys. The group tends to change around a little year to year but most guys try to make it happen every year once they go. It’s a great time to get away and fill the freezer.

Day 1: Six of us left Globe AZ at 3am on the 4th of January for the 11 hour drive. This year was myself as the lead organizer, Ricky, Scott, Jesse, William, and Williams oldest boy Isiah who was going along for his 18th birthday present.

The drive went smooth and by late afternoon we were pulling into the Harding ranch. Being the 6th year it feels a little like home at this point. We got settled into the house and signed the paperwork. I asked what everyone wanted to do. Three of the guys opted to sit on the porch and have a drink and a cigar to shake off the long drive. William and Isiah being first timers on this trip were eager to get out and get a quick evening hunt in. A quick scan with the binoculars revealed a couple of aoudad ewes on a cliff face 800 yards up canyon from the house. When I set this hunt up we had 3 aoudad ewes on the list so I told them to get their gear and we would try to move in and get a shot. As we worked our way back towards the aoudad we slipped into the brush to check on a feeder I knew about. A quick peek confirmed several whitetail deer and some Eland on the feeder. One of the guys was looking to take a management eland and I quietly wondered to myself if the eland would be an easy hunt or if we had just seen them by dumb luck. The rest of the week would prove the second possibility to be true. Continuing towards the aoudad we bumped a herd of scimitar horned oryx. We had two management oryx (broken horn) on the list including one for Isiah. We had pushed them off the water trough they were at so we got in the blind that was over that feeder waiting to see if they would come back. After 45 minutes it was starting to get dark. I opted to slip out of the blind leaving William and Isiah to wait for a chance at hogs or aoudad while I cut into the next canyon for a quick look. After working my way quietly through the brush I found myself glassing into the clearing in front of the blind set up in the next drainage. I was able to locate the same herd of oryx 500 yards away on the side of a hill as well as a coupe of beautiful fallow bucks and a big nilgai bull. I made note that it was likely the oryx would be at the third blind in the morning. I collected William and Isiah from the second blind and headed back to the house for some dinner and a glass of scotch.

Day 2: up bright and early and headed to the blinds before first light. Scott hoping to connect on an eland headed for the first blind where I had seen them the night before while Ricky and Jesse headed up the big ridgeline behind the house to glass for aoudad and feral goats. I took William and Isiah to the third blind. The oryx were there in the first pale light of pre dawn. After waiting and watching for over an hour we were able to identify a broke horn oryx in the herd and after another 30 minutes they finally moved into the clear and Isiah made a perfect shot dropping the bull on the spot. We were off to a great start for day one.
I quick call to Ricky on the radio got us a side by side and some help from Jesse and Ricky to load the bull into it. On the way back to the house we bumped a herd of bison. I planned to take a younger bull to fill my freezer but wasn’t really mentally prepared for running into them on the first morning. I looked down the road and realized the ranch hands were just coming down the road with the skid steer to fill protein feeders. We need the skid steer for recovery anyways so I decided to double back and see if I could move in on the bison and get one in a place we could get the skid steer into. I grabbed my Ruger m77 II in .300 win mag loaded with 180gr Barnes TTSX and headed down the road towards where the bison had disappeared into the brush. I followed them for about 2-300 yards before I finally got a good shot at 30 yards right next to a road. One shot put the bull down with not fuss or drama. Just the way I like it.
We spent a good chunk of the rest of the day skinning and quartering the oryx and bison. Once we had the meat taken care of we all headed back out to glass for whatever we could find.

We drove the side by side up a big ridge and parked and started glassing. We quickly located several goats and worked around the other side of the canyon where Jesse and Isiah were able to take two of them. On this hunt feral goats and pigs were shoot on sight.

We headed back to the house got the goats skinned and hung up and settled in with some bison heart and oryx backstrap for dinner washed down with a glass of black label.

Day 3 to be Continued….

Day 3: Time for a bison. This is a freezer filler trip so we tend to take some bigger animals. We made a plan over a quick breakfast and decided William would be going after a bison this morning. Funny thing with bison is that they seem almost unpatternable. Never in the same place two days in a row. But you can count on them likely being at a water trough or feeder at first light. We waited until it got to be Light enough to see before leaving the house and slipping towards the various feeders. First one we checked had a couple whitetails, so we moved on. Easing up to the second feeder of the morning to check I saw a young aoudad ewe feeding on alfalfa pellets. I motioned for Isiah to get into the sticks and get ready. Kid hit the ewe with the 7mm rem mag and she dropped without a twitch. As we walked up to the fallen aoudad I looked up on the hillside behind the feeder to see another ewe standing broadside looking down at us. I got William the range at 270 yards and he dropped the ewe with little issue.

Once we got the two aoudad loaded up in the side by side it was about 830am. We were thinking of just heading back to the skinning shed when Scott called on the radio that he had located some bison about 800 yards from us bedded down in some brush at the base of a hill. Well why not? So we drove over to where the bison were and then we got out on foot and started in on where we thought they were. After 5 minutes of easing up through the brush we were within 50 yards. William put a single bullet from the 7mm rem mag precisely where it needed to go and just like that we had the third animal of the morning down.

Once again the a good chunk of the the rest of the day was spent skinning and quartering. Late in the afternoon we headed back out. Looking for eland, another broke horn oryx, hogs, goats or aoudad. We went back up to the top of the big ridge behind the house and quickly located some feral goats and aoudad along with a line broke horn oryx. Ricky took off to stalk the oryx with his bow while me, Jesse, and Scott hung back to keep tabs on the oryx. About ten minutes later though Jesse found a group of pigs coming up out of the deep canyon bottom. He sent two rounds killing two pigs. We got down to them, gutted them, and hung them in the tree for the night. It was too late at night to be wrestling a pig out of the canyon on all the loose rock. We figured we’d go retrieve them in the morning.

Day 4: The Eland. For such a large animal they sure can disappear. Other than the very first night we hadn’t seen them. We started calling them Bigfoot! You only get a glimpse and no one believes you when you tell them! We devoted this entire day to finding the management eland for Scott. Based on tracks I knew they had to be in one of three places. We hiked all over the ranch. By 1pm we had hiked nearly 5 miles without a single look. Then the radio crackled to life. Jesse and Ricky had seen them in a rather thick area of the ranch very close to the house. We took off and got up there only to bump them and have them give us the slip right back into the thick stuff. We were hot, tired, and hungry at this point and headed to the house to get some lunch.

After lunch we headed back out. Scott and I eased though the thick stuff where we had seen the eland disappear. We bumped them along with a large hog that we couldn’t get a shot at. The eland kept wanting to go back to one particular mountain when pressured. And they did once again. We followed and bumped them again. Hard to walk when the rocks are so loose and loud. We went back to the house to regroup. Scott elected to go sit on the mountain again. I headed for the brush where I thought the Eland had gone and Ricky and Jesse headed up to the top of a big ridge to see if they could glass them up. As luck would have the Eland were just off the road headed up the ridgeline. Ricky and Jesse bumped them and they headed right back to the mountain where Scott was sitting. By chance they almost trampled me on the way over to the mountain and I can now say that an Eland is very large when you are looking up at them from 5’ away. But two minutes later I heard the suppressed rifle shot and radio call of eland down! We all went over to check it out and help load it into the skid steer. Scott had made a perfect heart shot and the Eland had only gone 30 yards. Luckily right to a place we could get a skid steer into for retrieval. Everyone was pumped! It was a true team effort to get this animal down. We would spend the rest of evening with some celebratory drinks and skinning him out.

To be continued…..

Continuing on….

Day 5: like many hunts when you have a long list of animals at the start of the hunt the opportunities come fast. We were getting toward the end though and really just down to two animals. Ricky was still looking for a broke horn oryx (which we had seen on a several occasions but just couldn’t close the deal on) and Jesse was still looking for an aoudad ewe. We spent the the morning looking for oryx and aoudad glassing from ridge tops. Willis and Isiah had a run in with some feral goats at long range but missed a shot. Finally around 3pm Ricky was able to close the deal and take the oryx. The rest of us hunted for goats and pigs the rest of the day.

Day 6: last day. One animal left. We all took off in different directions looking for an aoudad. We glassed all over the place, seeing eland, nilgai, fallow deer, whitetails, and bison but no aoudad. We had seen them a couple of times in a specific canyon though so Rocky and Jesse eased their way up in there. About 9am Jesse put a nice ewe down from less than 100 yards.

And with that our trip was over. We spent the rest of the day hiking around, glassing for any pigs or goats we could find, shed hunting (we all picked up several shed antlers and Isiah got a oryx deadhead), packing up meat in all the coolers and we all enjoyed the sunset from the ridge behind the house one last time. It was another great trip, full of laughs, some good natured ribbing, good food, drinks, and full freezers for everyone.

Sounds like a fun hunt. Lots of game and lots of shooting. How did you transport all of that meat home? You must have had a literal ton of meat!

Son and daughter in law hunted there last November. (Package was donated to a local fundraiser). They had a great time as well. Tyler got a nice audad ram and she got a nice black buck.

Rolly said:

Sounds like a fun hunt. Lots of game and lots of shooting. How did you transport all of that meat home? You must have had a literal ton of meat!

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Lots of coolers! We actually took a chest freezer we could plug in and freeze meat with in one truck and the other truck pulled a trailer loaded with about 12 large coolers. The ranch has a couple chest freezers so we freeze the meat there and put it in coolers for the ride home. And yes we had right around a literal ton of meat.