Hunting Zapata

[wal1809]

I hunted several ranches down there. The biggest problem we had was landowners. They just didn't care what your thought process was. My thoughts were we pay a lease, we are the only ones to hunt. I was on several ranches over the years and the landowners have a different idea of how the lease worked. Their idea was take your money and what you didn't see was OK. Things like their people ride hunting when you're not there.

The worst case example was me in a ground box blind in the middle of a sendaro that ran uphill to a ridge. There was deer and javis feeding in the road for an hour when I saw a truck top the ridge and stop. I thought surely they saw me and would pull away back behind the ridge. When the doors of the truck opened I stuck my hat out the window to wave it. About that time the first of 6 rifle rounds came down the ridge at me. I lit out that blind like it was on fire. That ended my time on that ranch. WE moved ranches and it never quite got right on any of the ranches down there. Theft was another thing. If you had anything that could be seen like blinds feeders ect, gone!!! Long list of stolen items.

[Tx_Wader]

We hunted near Bustamante back in the early 80's. Had some nice bucks on the property and a railroad Caboose for a cabin.

There was a lot of illegals coming through but we never had any problems with them.

The drilling companies had problems with them making holes in the aluminum water lines that ran from wells to the rigs. The illegals would poke holes in the pipe to fill up their milk jugs with drinking water.

I missed one of the largest bucks I've ever seen on that ranch only to find out afterwards that a guy on the lease with us had knocked my rifle over out of the gun rack and left for home, forgetting to let me know about it.

Is that little museum owned by a Vet still open there? Man he had all sorts of cool stuff and a very pretty daughter.