A Deer Hunting Icon: The Muy Grande Big Buck Contest
Likely the oldest and most respected big buck contest in the nation has been in operation for more than 50 years. This deer contest is a cultural icon in south Texas. But its humble beginnings will surprise you. By Bernie Barringer Leonel Garza is the son of immigrant workers who settled in south Texas. Soon after high school, Leonel went to work at the Center Circle Filling Station in the small town of Freer. It was 1965 and, at the time, no one had any idea that this self described grease monkey would put Freer, Texas on the map when it comes to deer hunting. Leonel had an interest in promoting the wide-racked whitetails which grew in the brush country. Garza thought maybe a deer contest would help promote the station. He began to spread the word about his deer contest, which would crown a winner among the hunters who could bring him the widest deer rack. That first year, the contest was won by Homero Garza (no relation) who had entered a buck with a spread of 27 ¼ inches. When told he was the winner, his next question was, “What did I win?” Well, Leonel had overlooked that one small detail. In a move that illustrates his character, Leonel took the watch off his wrist and handed it to Homero. Garza continued to tirelessly promote his contest at any opportunity, and while leaning over the gas pump, he taled about it to everyone who stopped. In 1968, a man in camouflage walked into the station and told Garza that his pickup was stuck a few miles away. Garza dropped everything and pulled him out. When the man tried to pay him, Leonel refused the money and just asked the man to spread the word about his buck contest. Little did he know, that man was the popular outdoor writer Fred Strong, who wrote a story about the experience. Leonel remembers that cars were lined up for two blocks to get gas, and they would all thank him for what he did for Fred Strong. The contest benefited greatly from the publicity. In fact the story caught fire, and several other outdoor writers passed it along to their readers. One of those writers referred to the contest as “Garza’s little deer contest,” which caused Garza to decide he needed a name for it. It became the Muy Grande, which is Spanish for “Very Big.” The contest was growing quickly. During the hunting season, pickups with bucks in the back would line up to have their deer measured. Leonel decided to change the scoring system and add some categories. He came up with a system that includes the Boone & Crockett score, base circumference, antler width, number of points and field-dressed weight. So the bucks that win this contest are truly Muy Grande in all ways! Leonel added categories for women, youth, heavyweights, longest main beams, bowhunting, high fence, veterans and on and on. Today, there are a total of 11 categories and 137 divisions. More than 1,000 people pay the $25 entry fee to have their buck scored each year. Each of the winners gets a Muy Grande deer contest jacket. You cannot buy this jacket, you have to win it. And they are worn with pride everywhere they are seen. Wear one in an airport anywhere in North American and someone is likely to come up to you and ask you about your buck. The jackets have become legendary in their own right. The contest will celebrate its 54th year in 2018, and Leonel has lost track of how many thousands of bucks he has scored. But he can relate stories a large number of celebrities and professional athletes who have brought in deer to be scored. Somewhere along the line, Garza went from employee to owner of the little service station, in part with money loaned to him by a priest. The “Muy Grande Village” is now more than an acre with a 5,000-square foot convenience store including a souvenir shop and deli. Hundreds of photos of past contest winners line the walls of the store. Rather than tear down the iconic filling station building, they simply moved it over to the corner of the lot where it stands as a reminder of the hard work of a man who everyone now refers to as “Muy.” You won’t have to hang out at Muy Grande Village very long during late December and January if you want to see some big bucks. Every couple hours it seems, someone backs up a pickup truck and drops the tailgate. Leonel is right there with a smile to enjoy the moment with the lucky hunter. With ambition, character, a great work ethic and a knack for promotion, Leonel Garza created the best known deer contest in the nation. And he’s wearing a pretty darn nice watch these days. Today, most of the day to day workings of the contest are handled by Leonel’s youngest of five daughters Imelda and her husband Kenneth. In the souvenir shop, you can buy Leonel’s own line of south Texas brush country camouflage clothing. But you can’t buy a Muy Grande jacket at any price. You have to kill a big buck to get one of those.
Don’t Shoot the First Bear!
In fact, don’t shoot any bear on the first day of a six-day hunt. Unless… well, never mind. By Bernie Barringer My adventures with Grandview Outfitters in Manitoba have been well-chronicled in blogs, magazine articles, online and on You Tube over the years. Tom Ainsworth has put me on incredible numbers of bears, plus color bears and even big bears. The hunt I experienced in 2015 where I saw 20 different bears in four hours, topped off by shooting a B&C bruin, was one I thought I would never be able to top. Until 2016 came along, that is. I have thrown my life into accomplishing some goals as a bear hunter. I admit it has all the hallmarks of an addiction. I have always wanted to shoot a B&C bear, and a 500-pound bear is sort-of the hallmark of a true giant, so put that on the list as well. But the one that really eats me up is the desire to shoot a bear from each of the four major color phases, black, chocolate, blonde and cinnamon. And if all this goal-setting doesn’t seem crazy enough, I want to do all this with a bow and arrow. Each spring for five years now I have headed to the Duck Mountains to hook up with a blonde bear. I have the other three colors so the blonde is the one that keeps me awake at night. I came close to getting one in 2015, but didn’t close the deal. The spring of 2016 had me holding out hopes that I would accomplish my goal. Tom has three baits where blondes had been seen in the past three years and I figured I could put myself in position, with Tom’s expert help, and close the deal. But it was not to be. I had one bear in front of me several times that was nearly blonde on its back and sides, with cinnamon legs. A beautiful bear for sure, but no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that this bear would satisfy me and everyone else who saw it, it just wasn’t blonde enough. Rather than fill my tag on the last day with a nice representative bear, like I have done in the past, I decided to pocket my tag when Tom invited me to come back and have another try in the fall. He offers deer hunts as well, and having seen some really big bucks in that area, I decided to combine the hunts. The bear season opens the last Monday in August and the archery deer season opens the first Monday in September. Perfect. Arriving in camp the end of August, I found Pennsylvania hunter Jim Roth and his wife in camp as well. Tom doesn’t offer fall hunts because normally all of his hunters fill out in the spring. But occasionally, a hunter is too selective and then finds himself going home without a bear. Since Tom would have two baits going for me, Jim was also invited back to fill his tag. Jim was committed to shooting the first big bear he saw. Tom showed me a few scouting camera pics of some bears at one of the baits, and it was pretty clear that this was a target rich environment. In many photos, there were big bears, multiple bears and color phase bears. One of the pics had six bears within sight of the Covert camera at once, three chocolates and three blacks. All nice bears. Having taken a bear on the first night’s hunt in 2016, I committed myself to holding out for a couple days. I had a week before deer season opened, so I was in no hurry. So when I arrived at the stand in the middle of the afternoon, I looked at my video camera and promised I would not shoot a bear the first night. And I meant it. As usual, I had bears around me right away. In fact, a yearling cub was in a nearby tree as I settled into the stand. Within 15 minutes, more bears started to appear and move around the bait. I had sprinkled some Northwoods Super Sweet Cherry Burst powder around the bait, and the bears were all over it. Over the next two hours, I enjoyed the view of bears interacting, fighting, scratching trees, feeding, chasing and in general just being bears around a bait site that’s the hub of area activity. I had seen 11 different bears, surprisingly all males, including a couple really nice boars. This aspect of bear hunting is one of the most rewarding parts of being patient and waiting for the right bear. Suddenly, the bear standing at the barrel dropped down on all fours and slipped quietly into the dense underbrush behind the barrel. He had clearly seen something that scared the bejeebers out of him. I scanned the brush in the direction that bear had last looked and my eyes soon settled on a patch of black. Cautiously this bear moved towards the bait and everything became perfectly quiet as every other bear had simply vanished. When he stepped into the open, it was clear why. This bear was a prime specimen, like a million-dollar angus bull, his size and structure dwarfed every other bear I had seen. This was a giant, mature bear in the prime of his life. I watched that bear feed and analyzed his size as he stood near the barrels. I quickly became convinced that I was looking at the largest bear I have ever seen in a wild, hunting situation. But my commitment was strong and I did not shoot. I admired this bear for about ten minutes, just taking in the amazing sight of a bear this size. I reconsidered my promise to hold off on all shooting the first day a couple times, but I never took my bow off the hanger. Then he walked off the way he had come.
Big Bucks in Offbeat Places
Sometimes public land bucks can be right under your nose. By Bernie Barringer I had been hunting a public area in western Iowa for the past few days when I became convinced that it was time to make a move. I was headed back to my truck late in the morning: a treestand and backpack were strapped to my back with the climbing sticks in one hand and my bow in the other; when suddenly I got a case of the “quick step.” The rumbling in my abdomen spurring me on, I decided I could make it over the last small hill to my truck and then take care of business. By the time I got to my truck I was really in a hurry. In the parking lot, I struggled out of everything, leaving it all in a heap, then hustled 20 yards into the woods with a strong sense of urgency. I was just about to do my business when I looked up and found myself in a stare-down with a buck. His rack was outside his ears, massive and tall. He was 25 yards away and locked onto me. He looked me over for an embarrassingly long time–standing there with my Realtree bibs around my ankles and a roll of toilet paper in my hand instead of a bow. Then he just tucked his tail, lowered his head and disappeared. Anytime I feel the sting of defeat or embarrassment, I try to analyze the situation and see if there is something I can learn that will help me avoid that feeling in the future. In this case, I been hunting more than a mile from the truck when the buck anyone would die for was only 40 yards from the front bumper, bedded in a little cattail swamp the size of my living room. There had to be a lesson in there somewhere. There were, in fact, two lessons to come from this. One, you don’t always have to walk a long distance to get to a big buck, and two, big bucks really like cattails. Let’s deal with the second one first. A lot could be written about swamps and marshes in whitetail hunting, but I have learned that the sight of a small, dry cattail swamp in big buck country will spin my head around. For reasons I don’t fully understand, bucks love them. In parts of Wisconsin, large marshes and sloughs are ringed with cattails and some of these marshes may be hundreds of acres with a few small islands in them. Hunters who are not afraid of the backbreaking work it takes to hunt these small islands consistently kill big bucks from them. There’s no reason that similar terrain where you hunt wouldn’t be the same. Most of us who hunt a lot of public land have learned that if we can penetrate a large block of land–get back in farther than most hunters are willing to go—we will find less hunting pressure and deer that are not quite as flighty. But that is not always the case. Some mature bucks become masters at avoiding human intrusion by simply monitoring it and moving accordingly. Like the buck by the parking lot I mentioned earlier, they just have a heightened awareness of the hunters’ movement patterns. They become masters are avoiding it. In fact, I sometimes wonder if these bucks like to spend time where they can keep an eye on the comings and goings. Some of the best places I have found to hunt on public land are the fringes of the property, especially where the land abuts private farmland that offers food. Finding a crop field that is only separated from the public land by a fence can be even better than finding a perfect funnel a mile from the truck. The smallest pocket of security cover is sometimes all it takes to hide a buck. I once observed a buck run down a fencerow and lie down by a pile of rocks in an Iowa plowed field completely disappearing in the knee-high grass. Shotgun hunters came across the gravel road from the south, moved into the section and began walking that fencerow. They walked right by the buck within a dozen feet, never seeing him. In another case, I was checking mink traps when I parked my truck on a bridge of a seldom used country road, stepped off the shoulder and waded into the creek below. Suddenly a buck jumped up right beside me and I just about fell over backward into the creek it shocked me so. There were signs that buck had been bedding under that bridge for many weeks. In another case I was travelling down interstate 35 one late winter day when I saw a shed antler from the road. After some maneuvering to get turned back around and hustle safely across the highway, I recovered the shed from a small depression surrounded by multiflora rose. If I hadn’t glanced at that spot at the exact split second, I would have never seen the antler and I wondered how many thousands of cars had sped by that buck without ever seeing him lying there. A friend of mine shot a 148-inch buck out of the road ditch, where he had previously seen it hiding near a large culvert. The next time he saw it there, he drove past, parked his truck over the crest of a hill and hurried back in the opposite road ditch. He stepped up on the road and shot the buck right in its bed. Stories abound of beginning hunters who have set up in totally the wrong place and killed a big buck. Some guy sticks his kid in a spot where his fidgeting won’t bother the rest of the group and the kid shoots the biggest buck in camp. You’ve heard it before. My son Ben was about six years old when he was relentless in his begging me
An amazing hunting experience at a special price
By Bernie Barringer It’s not often I come across an opportunity that I can pass along to our subscribers that gives you an chance to experience a fantastic hunt with great lodging and incredible meals, and offer a discount to boot. but my friend Nathan Theriault Has offered a chance for you to book a hunt this fall for $300-$400 off, depending on which option you choose. I have been on this hunt and I can highly recommend it. I love the natural beauty of the camp, of Eagle Lake itself, the history of the place and of course the incredible dining in a historical lodge that has been a destination of many Hollywood celebrities who want to get away from it all, and of famous outdoorsmen such as Teddy Roosevelt. The hunt is held out of Eagle Lake Sporting Camps on the shores of Eagle Lake, Maine and it’s in the classic northern Maine wilderness but has all the comforts and great bear hunting. They do kill some really big bears, but you are really going there for the overall experience and to have a shot at a nice representative bear. A real giant might be a bonus. Just a note on why these hunts are available at this price. Cabela’s has been booking hunts for OMM outfitters but as I am sure you have heard, Cabela’s was bought out by Bass Pro Shops which left a lot of outfitters caught in the middle. You may never see a chance like this come along again to get a discount on a highly desirable hunt. I have experienced this hunt and I can highly recommend it. Here are the two specials for fall bear over bait: Land access hunt $2,295 down from $2,695 Water access hunt $2,695 down from $2,995 Aug- 26th- Sept 1st 5 spots Sept- 2nd-8th 5 spots Aug- 9th-15th 4 spots Aug- 16th-22nd call for availability OMM Bear hunt website We strive for quality and not quantity taking very few bear hunters per week. Choose OMM’s exclusive Boat Access black bear hunt to go by boat to your stand and enjoy the solitude of a hunt within the Eagle Lake State Reserve. Remote bear hunts on almost 100 square miles of exclusive territory. Rifle, Pistol, Black Powder, Shotgun, and Archery bear hunters accommodated. Baited bear hunts start the last week of August – Hound hunts start in late September and continue into October. Bear hunter success rates are way above average. (State average 25%) Bears ranging from 4.5 feet and occasionally exceeding 7 feet. All clients are bear hunting over active bear baits. Trail cameras are utilized by bear guides to enhance success. Private channel, 5-watt, 2-way radios for direct communication with your black bear guide. Bear Guides have 50-watt radios in their vehicles. No needlessly long waits in your bear stand. Comfortable lakeside log cabins with private bath – on the waters of 55,000 ac. Eagle Lake. Fine cuisine is served in the historic dining room – Maine lobster, prime meats and much more. High quality black bear hunts, reasonably priced and ideally located. New in 2018! – Non-stop United Airlines jet service from Newark, New Jersey to Presque Isle (PQI), just 45 miles from camp. Bring your spouse and children! Plenty of lodge activities for everyone
Bowfishing Spring and Summer Fun
By Bernie Barringer Bowfishing equipment has evolved a lot since I started trying it out 40 years ago. There is some high-tech stuff out there, believe me. This probably sounds crazy, but my favorite bowfishing set-up features a Ben Pearson recurve that I got out of the “Free” box at a garage sale. No kidding. That’s one of the things that makes bowfishing so great: you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want, and anyone can easily get started in bowfishing. The shots are close; rarely over 25 feet, and a bow of just about any draw length or poundage will do. You need to be stealthy, to choose locations carefully, and you need to be a good shot. And being a good shot is not as easy as it sounds. It takes beginning bowfishers a while to get used to the fact that you have to “shoot where they ain’t.” Because of the refraction as the light enters the water, fish appear to be a lot nearer the surface than they actually are. So when you see a carp cruising the shallows, you must aim well below it, if your arrow is to hit its mark. Getting Started My 45-pound recurve has been the perfect bow for me. Compound bows work too, but because of the let-off, they have to be drawn all the way back to shoot. This is a disadvantage because shots are often quick and with little warning. The advantage of a recurve, or one of the wheel-bows made for bowfishing without a let-off, is that you can draw and shoot much more quickly. Sometimes you do not have time to come to full draw. Arrows should be solid fiberglass, which gives them the sturdiness they need to take a pounding (they hit bottom a lot) and the extra weight gives them the kinetic energy they need to penetrate the water and then the fish. There are several different bowfishing tip designs, but they all have one primary feature: some sort of prongs to keep them from pulling back out of the fish; prongs which can be reversed so you can remove the fish from the arrow once you get it reeled in. Reels are equally diverse. I started with a simple spool on which I hand-wound the line, and now I have a reel with a small crank that pulls all the line into a plastic jar. This set-up really works slick. My son Dawson uses a modified fishing reel that attaches to a mount on his bow. The simple spool reels are around $20 and the one I use is over $100, and there are good options at price points in between. All work, it just depends on how much you are willing to spend for convenience. Where to find the fish Many species of fish are legal to shoot with a bow. Carp, bowfin (also called dogfish), gar, buffalo and drum are among the most common. You can have some success all year long, if you find yourself in the right place and the right time. But if you want consistent action, it takes place in the spring and early summer. When the water warms up in late spring, carp move shallow to spawn. In most areas, this takes place when the water gets close to 70 degrees. In the upper Midwest, that’s usually late April to May. Here in northern Minnesota, it may be later, and we had some fantastic carp shooting at Lake Manitoba in Canada during the first week of June while on a spring bear hunt. These carp may remain shallow where they are vulnerable to bowfishing for almost a month, but the best action will be in a window of opportunity of two weeks or less. When you hit it right, the action can be furious. The best spots are where you find the warmest water. During summer, carp are again found in shallow, warm water where they slurp plants off the surface and cruise around looking for insects and dead baitfish to eat. Thus, you have a second window of opportunity. You are often shooting at their heads, which might be the only thing visible above muddy water. I also have seen pods of carp cruising the shallow bays of clear-water lakes during mid-summer, and have enjoyed good shooting under those conditions. Typically, I shoot from the front of a boat with an electric trolling motor quietly pulling me through the shallows. However, I also have had a ball shooting while slowly walking the back bays where the water is warm. The carp are often lying just below the surface, sunning themselves, but they are extremely spooky, and you have to use a stealthy approach. Shots will generally be short. A 10-yard shot is a very long shot in bowfishing; the majority will be more like 15 feet. It takes some time to get good at hitting a target that close. Most bowhunters do not practice 10-foot shots, but it is a good idea to do so before you go after carp. I cannot stress too much that the refraction of the light on the water makes the target look closer to the surface than it actually is, so you have to shoot below them to hit them. This is one thing that has to become second nature, and you will miss a few fish until you get on to it. My son Dawson missed his first nine shots one day before getting it dialed in. Then he figured it out and hit his next five in a row! Carp shooting is so much fun that it has become a sport in itself for our family. Give it a try, and see if you don’t get hooked like we did!
Interested in a Bear Hunt? Here are Some Tips for Choosing the Right Outfitter
A lot of things can go into the decision on choosing the right bear hunt. Here’s some sound advice. By Bernie Barringer I couldn’t help but fidget. I was sitting only eight feet from the ground in some rusty steel contraption that resembled a ladder with a large board tied across the top. The past four hours of seeing nothing but squirrels was taking a toll on me. I could stand on the board and lean against the tree or sit on the board and dangle my feet over the edge, which caused my legs to go numb. I was not happy that my outfitter had put me in this position. I had two hours to go. Two nice bears came in the last half hour of daylight and immediately looked up at me. Two bears had been shot off this bait already in the past couple weeks, and the remaining bears were savvy to the stand’s location. Night number two was a repeat except I had brought a seat cushion which made the long vigil more bearable. Not only did the bears have the gig figured out but the wind was perfectly wrong for this stand. They worked hard at staying out of range. The outfitter was limited in the number of stands he had available. High water had flooded the majority of his hunting area and in fact several baits were under water. He was in a tough spot, but his guide, the one taking me in and out of the baits, didn’t make things any better by being insensitive to me needs. The following day I suggested we put a ladder stand up 30 yards away from the current location, which would put me in a great spot for the wind, and the two bears’ attention would be focused on the empty stand. I had seen a new ladder stand still in the box leaning in the corner of the shed. The guide ignored my request. In this case, the outfitter was struggling due to the weather and I knew that going in. He is a very reputable outfitter and has a great reputation, but his part-time guide was a tough case. The hunt was made much more difficult because the guide was a substitute called in at the last minute and had a “my way or the highway” attitude. I tried to gently suggest things, even pitched the ideas so he could take the credit for them and even tried to make it look like he thought of them himself. Nothing doing. There are good reasons for doing due diligence before you book a hunt. Guides like this one are one of the reasons you call references before you plunk down your hard-earned deposit. For every bad experience I have had a dozen good ones. But the bad ones do tend to stick in your mind. Let’s take a look at the key points in choosing the right outfitter and minimizing the chances of having a regretful trip. What kind of a hunt do you want? The first question you need to ask yourself is what type of a hunt you want. There are hound hunts, spot & stalk hunts, baited hunts and even combinations of these. Think about your physical capabilities, your shooting ability, experience and desires. Scenery, number of bears you want to see, frantic action or lack of it, and climate. These things and more go into your choice of a hunt. If you start talking to an outfitter and you realize this isn’t exactly what you are looking for, don’t hesitate to back out. Sports shows are one of the best places to learn more about a hunt. You can often meet the outfitter and sometimes a guide in person. You can look at an album of photos and have a candid discussion that will give you a real gut feeling for the hunt and the people you will entrust with your money and in some cases your life. In the course of the discussion you will think of questions to ask so ask them on the spot. On the drive home, you will think of even more questions to ask so write them down. If you do not meet the outfitter in person then plan to have a good phone conversation and ask the tough questions. Get references of successful and unsuccessful past clients and call them. If they sound like they have a canned response, they are may be getting a lot of calls because the outfitter knows his reference will tell you what you want to hear. Define your Expectations Realistically, an outfitter can’t offer you the hunt you really want unless they know exactly what you want. Many people have had a bad experience because they went on a hunt that wasn’t a good fit because they didn’t specifically tell the outfitter what they wanted. If an outfitter says they have fishing available, but you get there and find out its only fly fishing and you don’t know how to fly fish; that’s your fault, you should have clarified it before you left home. Be honest about your physical limitations. Don’t go on a spot & stalk hunt in the mountains if you can’t hike up a dozen mountains a day. Likewise, if you are 400 pounds and can’t get into a treestand, it would be a good idea to tell the outfitter that ahead of time so he can get a ground blind in place. Don’t surprise your outfitter when you pull into camp. He will be asking questions and expecting honest answers and you should be too. Are you looking for a truly big black bear? Make sure you are going to a place that has them. There are a lot of places that specialize in getting everyone a bear, but the top end of them is about 300 pounds. If you want to bag a giant, you have to ask the questions that will