I thought I would go ahead and put up a few more of the shots I have found while searching all of Dwight’s photo files.The two black and white shots were from 1973. One shows a couple of guys with a really nice buck while the other is of the full group assembled after the hunt in front of the Brighton Oaks grocery store. The group shot really shows how much more of a social hunt it is when dogs are used…

because there are more hunters there for one day than we have in our entire club for a season.

As for the color pictures, one is of Ray Treadwell with a great buck taken off of his Deerwood hunting club in 1978 while the other shows a couple of hunters with a young piebald deer killed in the early 70s.

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It has been a while since I have done a post on Dwight Moore - the Shooter, so I thought I would dig in to his files for some new old pictures. (And if you don’t know who I am talking about, then please make sure and read this first.)

I also thought that with all of the discussions going on right now about dog hunting at the Hog Blog and Moose Droppings, these old shots would illustrate the heyday of dog hunting as well as possibly spur some great memories in those that have heard the hounds coming. Because there was a time when being “bloodied” was a crucial step in becoming a man, camo was whatever you had on and only the guys in the Lone Star State hunted out of those things called “Texas Towers”.

Most of these pictures were taken in the early 70s when dog hunting in the South was enjoying it’s final days as THE way to hunt, however the pickup loaded with a morning’s harvest was taken in 1966… Check out all of the great bucks that came out of this place back then!

Also while searching for some good dog hunting pictures in Dwight’s files, I came across a young man in 1984 proudly showing off a spike killed while stand hunting the land he manages now. As my oldest boy Bo told me last week on my birthday while looking at one of my photos on the wall, “there you are being young”.

I also wanted to thank everyone that read and commented (online or in person) about my mini-autobiography last week. I truly enjoyed looking back at my life, and I found it interesting that so many thought that I have had an exciting one - I have always tried to live life to the fullest, but I guess you see it differently when you are in the middle of it. I know it was very personal, and some may not like that mixed in with their “hunting”, but others loved it and have requested more info about my “troubled” youth. I have a few stories that I think people would enjoy, but I will try to keep them as hunting oriented as possible. And if you are a newer reader and liked learning a little more about me, then please make sure and read “Remembering my Dad and Listening to Turkeys”. However please note that it is very personal, so you have been warned!

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Since I am in Florida this weekend, I thought that it would be appropriate to showcase some great trailcam pictures from here. My friend C.J. hunts west of Palm Coast and gave these to me a while back. He says that they have more bears than coyotes!!! I would hate to find that big one waiting patiently by the feeder for me to show up with a fresh refill…

They also have quite a few coyotes running around too. And I just thought that it was funny that he got a picture of one peeing in the corn pile. I also have caught them doing that, so it must be fairly common for them to mark it. This behavior is also not surprising since they love to go at high-traffic areas.

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Would you look at that… The Hunter’s Wife has awarded me the BIG E, the excellence award.

I have to truly thank her for recognizing me and this blog because I just absolutely love writing about the great hunting we have here in SC as well as sharing all of my stories and photos. I also just love that so many people enjoy reading it, and I promise to keep up the good work starting with a post of some great trailcam pics later today, so please check back.

(I am in Florida this weekend, so working from my friend’s computer is making things tougher and taking longer. I have already had to download Firefox because I was unable to write a post from his Explorer… and even with that fix, I now can’t get the hot link buttons to work!)

I also have to pass the Excellent Award on, which is tough when I read so many great blogs. Every one of the sites listed in my blogroll, posted over to the side, should get it. They are all so deserving, and of course some have already received it. However I think the Hog Blog really stands out for recognition.

Phillip always has such great content! And just as importantly, he consistently provides a perfect example to other bloggers on how to to deal with the inevitable controversies that come up. I know I learn something every time I visit his great site, so please check him out and congratulate him on his EXCELLENT blog!

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A while back, Arthur at Simply Outdoors pegged me for a Me/Me - a post about who we are and what we do outside of hunting and our outdoor blog.

That is a tough one for me since much of what we do and who I am shows up here everyday. Therefore I thought I would go about it a little differently and just redo my “About Me” page. I also figured that looking back on my life to see how I got here would be the perfect assignment for a new year as well as for my 37th birthday. In addition, it may help answer many people’s nagging question about how exactly we ended up living so deep in the country of the Lowcountry - because while many are fortunate enough to be born here, I obviously took a more indirect route.

I grew up in Orange Park, a suburb just outside of Jacksonville, FL, where I had a nice childhood playing lots of local sports while also hunting a great deal with my dad and family friends in SC(that is me with my first buck, age 9). However my parent’s divorce when I was 12 took a heavy toll on me, and I spent a lot of time in trouble after that (I have probably done more hours of community service than most people have hunted).

I did finally managed to graduate from Orange Park High School in 1989, right on time despite dropping out in the 11th grade, by going back to high school while also taking classes at night. Fortunately, unlike some of my friends, I was able to escape my downward spiral by using my love of music, the outdoors and my mom’s support to get it together. I then immediately moved to Melbourne, FL so that I could surf while attending Brevard Community College. There I had several GREAT teachers that really helped me find myself including Sensei Steve and Kathy Kabboord at the Okinawin Shorin Ryu karate dojo (that is me with Grand Master Nagamine during his trip over from Japan). I spent several years getting my AA (I had a lot to catch up on), surfing and studying karate. I was also VERY in to punk rock and had a spot on WFIT, one of the five top college radio stations in the country at that time. There I took on another persona, the CANNIBAL, and did the hardcore/punk show every Friday night.

After BCC, my heavy involvement in the music scene helped me make the choice to move over to Orlando where I attended the University of Central Florida to study journalism. There I refined my writing skills by interviewing bands for local magazines while I pursued my interest in photography by shooting concerts. I ended up seeing hundreds of live shows (those are my feet heading into the crowd at a Pennywise show in1994) during this period including numerous bands and entertainers that were mega stars along with quite a few locals that went on to be huge such as Larry the Cable Guy (that is him officiating an Orlando bikini contest in 1995) and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 (he played in the bar across the street from my house). I also worked as the news and photo editor at the UCF newspaper in addition to freelancing for several publications covering Florida sports teams including the Magic and Marlins.

During college, I also spent every summer traveling to Latin America to catch the unbelievable surf at spots such as Pavones, a wave with a one mile/ 60 second ride (that is me surfing off of the coast of Panama in the picture). And I used the immersion in to the spanish language and culture to help me complete my minor in Latin American Studies at UCF.

After graduation, I took a job at the Sanford Herald covering local news as a reporter and photographer. However was tired of living in a big city and quickly moved back to Melbourne where I went to work for the Vero Beach Press-Journal as a photographer. There, in 1998, I won feature photographer of the year for Florida newspapers with under 100,000 subscribers a day.

Around the same time, my good friend Eric introduced me to a beautiful friend of his named Amy. We have been together now for 11 years and just celebrated our 7th anniversary (we are so perfect for each other that we even went hunting in Alabama for our honeymoon-but that is another post). Interestingly, this was his third major contribution to my life since he had also let me live with him and his new wife when I first moved back as well as changed my career direction by “forcing” me to repay his generosity by shooting my first wedding - his sister’s.

Amazingly, photojournalism coverage of weddings was starting to become very popular, and through referrals, I was able to pick up quite a few jobs. So I quit the paper and worked at a photography store and cleaned carpets with a friend while we built up Jeff Hunt Photography. I also got back in to hunting heavily after meeting my wife. Because while she does not like to kill anything, she loves to go scouting, hiking and camping with me as well as dive! So we would dive during the summer months, if we were not hog hunting out at my friend Drew’s place in Grant, FL. Then we would camp or stay with my grandmother up here while we hunted turkeys in the spring and deer in the fall. And the more we hunted, the more we wanted to incorporate it fully into our lifestyle by living here and running a hunting club as well as writing and photographing the outdoors. We also wanted to one day, start a family in a quiet, rural atmosphere, and we couldn’t think of a better place than the Lowcountry.

So when my grandmother needed help with her care giving four years ago, we moved up and Amy took care of her at night. We also continued to shoot our weddings in Florida on the weekends while we established our photography business up here. Of course we also started the trophy hunt club that I write about so much. And my ultimate goal is to start a magazine that focuses on hunting the lowcountry while I continue to get my work published elsewhere.

However I do love many things outside of hunting, and the biggest would be my family! As you have read here, we have two boys - Bo Hunt who just turned 3 and Will Hunt who is 1.5 years old. We are generally just a wholesome bunch that spends a lot of time outdoors, because there is not a lot to do otherwise. So, everything our family does is related to being outdoors, just like we wanted. If I am not hunting, I am taking pictures of hunting or blogging about hunting. And we are always hiking, scouting, shed hunting, arrowhead hunting, etc.

Again, that is why we moved here. We just have a few neighbors around us, tens of thousands of acres of woods (much of it WMA) and the Savannah River! However we also have several major cities just about an hour away including Hilton Head, Savannah, Beaufort and Charleston. The markets provide plenty of wedding work, and if we wanted to go out, we could. But with two young children, we tend to stay at home a lot. And we don’t mind, because we do get to sit by the fire and socialize with our friends when they are up hunting!

When I am not hunting, shooting pictures or writing, I love to read. I read lots of photography books and hunting books/blogs, but I also love politics, history, philosophy, martial arts, astronomy and physics, so I pick things like the Wall Street Journal, Hawaii by James Mitchner and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. The only sports I like to watch are Ultimate Fighting and the PBR, Professional Bull Riders.

So there you have it. More about Jeff Hunt than Arthur probably intended when he picked me for this project. But I do truly have to thank him for tagging me. Because not only is it great to look back to see where you came from and how you got here, but it makes you think about where you are going! It has been a perfect end/start of a year project, and I’m just sorry that it took me so long to finish.

And I know I slacked, but let’s see if we can keep Kristine’s great idea going. I think I will renominate Darrell at Alpha Trilogy, and he can do it when he gets back to writing (Please make sure and stop by over there to let him know he is not forgotten). I would also like to renominate Jody at the Hunter’s Wife because she says that she “is her own person” and would like to occasionally talk about something other than hunting… And since the picture she put up the last time only told part of her story, HERE’s another chance! My third pick is Kris over at Jakesoutdoors; while he has obviously been blogging for a while, I only recently found him. However I have enjoyed what I have read so far, so please check his site out.

Thanks again Arthur!

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I have lots of friends that email me anything they can find that concerns big bucks, and this morning my inbox had one from my mom! Check out this video of a good buck “playing” on a swing set…

Buck on Swingset

I just wonder how they got him free. Or maybe this was his “last request” before going to the great freezer in the sky!

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I must have over 50 hunting VHS tapes, however we have not watched any of them in a long, long time. For one, until my mom gave us a new dual format player this Christmas, we only had a DVD player. And two, we have tons of big buck DVDs (of course I could only watch them when my wife was not home - for fear that if she heard one more word about hunting, she would go crazy and kill me.)

However, our two boys love to watch big bucks and gobblers so much that lately she has let them back in the house. Therefore when Bo requested monster bucks yesterday, I immediately started looking for a good one. And since we have watched all of the DVDs many times over, I thought it might be nice to break out some of the VHS oldies but goodies. After a few minutes of perusing the collection, I decided on Ken Tucker.

Ken was an old Alabamian that loved to hunt and produced his own cable show for many years called the Sportsman’s Showcase. He then took the best of these shows and put them on tape, calling them The Best of the Sportsman’s Showcase. We started watching them around 1997 when my wife picked up one of his tapes on the dollar table at Winn Dixie. And since we did not view any regular TV, it was a special treat to have something to watch that night on the VCR.

After that, we regularly picked them up whenever and wherever we could find a new one. And for an hour and a half, Ken would help us step away from the crummy little apartment we lived in at the time and our busy working lives to share with us his hunting trips all over the country, and sometimes the world. He certainly covered big bucks in some of the usual locations, but he also regularly featured great Southern spots such as the lowcountry of South Carolina, Mississippi, and his home state of Alabama. He also pursued rabbits with beagles, squirrels with feists and coons with hounds. Occasionally he would also venture south of the border on cool trips like shotgunning for doves in Argentina and bow hunting river buffalo in Belize. And of course, all of this footage was accompanied by Ken’s commentary on the hunt and delivered through his heavy southern drawl.

Sure, we moved on to Realtree’s Monster Buck series as well as others made by Mossy Oak and Knight and Hale, but we never forgot about our time with Ken. So after watching his video last night, my wife and I debated what had happened to him. That lead to a quick google search which turned up an article on his death in 2003. And even though that was four years ago, I still felt an incredible sense of loss for our outdoor community. Ken was a true sportsman and the inspiration to many, myself included.

I just wonder how many of you guys have ever seen the Sportsman’s Showcase or know who Ken is. I would love to know who else he touched… Or maybe you have your own outdoor personality that you grew up watching that inspired you to spend more time in the outdoors or helped you become a better hunter.

All comments would be appreciated!

Jeff

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That’s right, one of kill shots that I took of Cody Whittle and the Monster buck he killed while on a Webb Center draw hunt is on the January cover of South Carolina Sportsman. The same shot as well as one of our trailcam pictures was also used to compliment the story on the inside.

I always love to see my work being appreciated, so it was fantastic discovery when my wife came out of the gas station holding up the issue. I also truly love to see the Webb Center, Hampton county and our amazing lowcountry bucks being showcased in a state-wide periodical.

And while it is on the Cubbedge Hill web site’s old blog, I thought I would include the trailcam picture of the buck when he was just 3.5 years old. What a difference two more years makes! And if you haven’t seen the shots of him in velvet, check it out…

I also want to let our readers know about a local website SCOutdoorAdventures. I see a good number of viewers coming from that site’s forum, thanks to “2Tired4Dux”, and I truly appreciate the link! I have also registered on the site as well since it seems to have good discussions in the forums WITHOUT catering to the belligerent idiots who constantly spew venomous comments!

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As usual, Arthur over at Simply Outdoors is ahead of the game. This time he has a great post up about the coming Spring (and with it, turkey season) and how he is looking to take his first big redhead this year. Since I am already getting ready myself, I thought I would create a short post from my comments to him on how I believe is the best way to kill one of those darn things - Because I too spent several years trying to bag my first gobbler.

The one thing I would recommend is to forget what you see on TV. Those guys usually have lots of land to run and gun on, which is fine if you know the technique and have room to roam. And while I have definitely killed some birds doing it, I have found that calling aggressively and moving around so much usually just burns out a small chunk of property in a hurry. I believe the best way to hunt them if you only have a small tract of land is to set up/build a blind and hunt them almost like deer. This means that you must pattern them so you know where they like to go - it is always much easier to call them to where the they want to go than where they do NOT. Once you have picked your best spot or two, call SOFTLY off and on (maybe every 30 minutes) and WAIT.

That big, ugly bird has nothing else to do but survive, so he usually is in no hurry to die by rushing in. And he may or may not gobble, but I will bet that he IS coming. Your task is to keep from giving up and going home before he gets to you. Your hunt may not look exactly like the ones on the Outdoor Channel, but my 5 birds last season all agree the technique works!

The big gobbler in the picture with me is the largest bird I have ever killed (a 5 year old bird with 1.5 inch spurs and an 11 inch beard) that I truly doubt would have been stupid enough to fall for the run and gun approach. A dinosaur like that will usually take hours to come in! So the next time you don’t hear any birds sounding off, let your buddies go home while you wait him out…

And if you have never killed a turkey, just remember that you will make lots of mistakes before you do! Some of my best ones were: stepping out of the truck at daylight and having my wife’s locator call make one gobble - only to realize that I had forgotten my gun at the campsite; working a bird for an entire morning before finally getting close enough to realize that it was in a neighbor’s pen; leaving my spot after having a truck bust my

working bird - only to have another hunter come in talking about the strutting bird right were I had been just 30 minutes ago; and, while taking a bathroom break out of one blind window, looking out the other to see a giant gobbler watching me!

Unfortunately there are lots of ways NOT to kill an old bird. But if you use my technique I think you will find one that WILL.

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I am still working on the pictures from Sunday’s quail hunt, so I thought everyone would enjoy seeing more of the beautiful dogs working our great lowcountry habitat.

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