Outdoors With Mat Taylor
Birthday marks a special achievement

Today is my birthday. That's no big deal, as at my age I kind of hate to see them come around. I usually don't do anything special to celebrate. The only reason today is special is that I killed my first white-tail buck on this date 40 years ago.

All deer hunters remember their first buck, no matter what age they were. I won't bore you with the details, but I bagged the deer on a friend's ranch in southern Taylor County.

The buck sported large antlers with 11 points and heavy beams. He field-dressed over 150 pounds, and 40 years later he remains the largest one I have taken.

If you want to know the whole story, pick up a copy of the 2007 Hunters' Edition at the Dispatch Record office. The special section features a number of interesting articles for hunters.

The deer season has been open for more than a week and from all indications, the deer are in excellent condition and have larger than normal antlers.

I recently visited the cooler at Sulphur Creek Taxidermy & Deer Processing. It was full of hanging deer. Sulphur Creek employee Robert Keller said they received more deer the first weekend than for the same period last season. This may be due to the weather, which has been warmer than usual.

"All of the deer have been real fat, and the antlers look real good on most of the bucks," Keller said. "Hunters also seem to be abiding by the county's antler restrictions."

As a reminder, a legal buck is one with a 13-inch or greater inside spread or a buck with at least one unbranched antler.

On our property near Kempner, only one buck has been harvested. My nephew, Seth Taylor, bagged a large ninepointer on opening day.

The buck had an inside spread of almost 18 inches and fielddressed 135 pounds. He was so fat he looked like a feedlot steer. There was at least a one-inch layer of fat across his back.

Although just one buck has been taken with a rifle on our ranch since the season opened, four deer have been hit and killed by vehicles near the entrance to my home on U.S. Highway 190. These included one small buck, two does and one fawn. I hate to see deer dead beside the road as it is a waste of a valuable resource, and the vehicles involved usually do not fare very well either.

I read last week about a hunting accident that involved a vehicle. The story said a pickup driver was killed by the accidental discharge of his hunting companion's deer rifle. The Abilene man died after a back-seat passenger accidentally fired a high-powered rifle. The bullet went through the front seat, striking the driver and killing him.

To make matters worse, the pickup then crossed the Interstate median and collided head on with another pickup. There were several injuries but no other fatalities.

It is not illegal in Texas to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle, and that includes big-game rifles. Maybe it should be. I have hunted in New Mexico and Colorado, and both states ban loaded rifles in a vehicle. The law is vigorously enforced.

As a rule, I do not carry a loaded rifle in my pickup while hunting. I do keep cartridges in the magazine, so when I see game, it takes only a few seconds to jack a shell into the chamber.

On a lighter note, several years ago a man I knew in another city traveled to Colorado to hunt elk in his almost-new Dodge Ram 4- wheel drive pickup. Although illegal, he had his loaded 300- Magnum rifle in the middle seat pointing down while driving a rough road.

He hit a bump, and the rifle fired, sending a bullet through the floorboard and into the transmission. The safety was off or it malfunctioned. The truck was completely disabled. He spent a good chunk of money having the transmission replaced before returning to Texas.

Later, his hunting buddies presented him with a plaque that read something like this: "Presented to John Jones (not his real name) in recognition of shooting the largest RAM ever killed in the state of Colorado."

The story is humorous, but the situation could have been deadly. One can never be too careful when handling firearms.

Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via e-mail at mntaylor@agristar- .net.