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Welcome to TexasBowhunter.com's most anticipated Live Hunt of
the year! On this hunt, TexasBowhunter.com field staffer Casey Morris and
I will be joined by Keith Latimer, from Sulphur Springs, and Chuck Kimball, from
Kerrville, on a weekend Rio Grande Turkey hunt with one of the original
TexasBowhunter.com site contributors, 15 year old Ben Stovall, at his family's
home in Cisco Texas.
For those of you not familiar with Ben, let me give you a brief
history that will explain why I'm so excited about this hunting
opportunity. TexasBowhunter.com went "live" on the internet in
October 1999, having up to that point been an email newsletter to a few friends
and acquaintances. One of my first priorities when beginning the website
was to create a discussion forum, since the object of the site was to not only
attract bowhunters, but to give them a reason to keep coming back. The
original discussion forum that I rolled out was a very simple one that was
automatically created by my html editor. It wasn't much, but it was all I
had at the time. A few of the original subscribers to the old newsletter
stopped by and posted to the forum, but the day it was created I noticed a new
name, "Bob Crystal", that I hadn't ever seen before. I could
tell by the writing that it was a young person.
To make a long story short, it turns out that "Bob
Crystal", who we later discovered to actually be named Ben Stovall, had
simply typed in the url "www.texasbowhunter.com",
figuring there had to be a website with that name. Sure
enough, up popped our website, which had a much different look than today, and
it happened to be within only a couple of days after the site had been
started! Actually, Ben said that he had entered the same name a few weeks
earlier, but of course nothing had come up, and just by chance decided to give
it another shot! Ben, 13 at the time, became one of the favorite
contributors to the discussion forum, and has really learned a lot about hunting
since that time. Along with his bowhunting skills, his maturity and
writing ability have increased as well.
Ben was adopted by the site members as the "Official Mascot
of TexasBowhunter.com", and has entertained us with stories about his
hunting adventures, as well as non hunting adventures from four-wheeling, to his
"Crushed Bottom Boat" stories!
I had the opportunity to meet Ben, and his mom, last summer at
the LSBA State 3D shoot at Canyon Lake. Shortly after that, Ben invited
Casey and me to come up to his family farm to hunt. We weren't successful
in planning a trip during deer season, so we decided to set up a date to come
during the spring turkey season. We finalized the date, and Ben decided to
include a couple of more hunters (I had to settle him down a little because I
think he was trying to figure out how he could invite everybody from the
site!)
So, after much anticipation, the hunt finally begins
tomorrow! Be sure to join us for what is sure to be an exciting hunt!
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