hi, these are all great comments. It is neat to read so many people care. We didn't notice that people were not getting notified if someone comments to their forum post so I will have to investigate. I have noticed our Facebook.com/TexasHuntFish, Twitter.com/TexasHuntFish and Youtube.com/ExploreTexas seem to be much more active than the forum.

We have actually been talking about adding some new features and would like to know your opinions... would you like:

1. ability to login using facebook?

2. better video player?

3. ability to upload group of photos together?

4. online chat?

5. any other ideas?

At the end of the day this site was created as a free resource for people like US to talk to each other, ask and answer questions, and find quality Texas-based small businesses to buy our hunting and fishing related products and services from.

Most forums would delete references to other "competitive" sites but the reality is I care more that we spread the word and share our knowledge - whether on TexasHuntFish.com, TexasHuntingForums.com, TexasBowHunter.com, or 2coolfishing.com. We even built the official www.TexasYouthHunting.com website for the Texas Wildlife Association and Texas Parks & Wildlife to give them a better youth oriented platform.

I must admit I have also been spending more time with the Boy Scouts, Texas Wildlife Association (www.texas-wildlife.org); Texas Youth Hunting Program, and the politically active Texas Outdoor Partners.

I do not have one - yet. Why, cell phone signal issue. Wireless internet access issue. Charge per photo sent over cell network can get very expensive quickly. If money is not an object and at least someone can "reset" when/if necessary, here are the companies that I have talked to who seemed like they new what they were talking about:

Tommy, tommy@granderiver.net I see him at the Texas Deer Association shows and at the 4H Shogun Shooting Sports competition in San Antonio. They have very high quality equipment and operate an internet hosting company in South Texas.

I just met these guys this summer for the first time at the Texas Wildlife Association banquet, their name was www.timekeeperssecurity.com and they had an equally impressive solution with a strong security background.

Parks and Wildlife commissioner dies in his Lufkin home
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Texas Parks and Wildlife Commissioner John D. Parker died Monday afternoon in his Lufkin home, leaving a legacy of passionate advocacy for the wildlife, woods and waters he loved. The cause of Parker's death has not been determined.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Parker to the commission in November 2003. The former homebuilder and past director of the National Association of Builders was also a past national trustee and past state chairman of Ducks Unlimited, among many other affiliations.

 
John Parker
 
"John Parker was well known for his passion, eloquence, and the courage of his convictions, and he was tireless and determined in anything he undertook," said Peter Holt of San Antonio, Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission chairman. "His passing is a great loss to those of us who knew him as friends, and to the cause of conservation in our state and nation."
"It was abundantly clear to anyone who heard him that Commissioner Parker deeply loved wildlife and the outdoors, and he especially wanted young people to enjoy the natural heritage he valued so highly," said Carter Smith, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department executive director. "He will be missed."

Parker was a champion of youth outreach programs, and he consistently pushed efforts to expand youth hunting opportunities and provide settings and incentives for young Texans to experience nature and the outdoors.

Parker loved fishing as well and supported a successful campaign to bring a new freshwater fish hatchery to East Texas, a facility now under construction near Jasper.

He was also a stalwart advocate for state parks and spoke passionately of the need for increased state funding for parks in 2006 at a time when awareness of park system needs was just beginning to build.

"In 1933, Texans struggling during the Great Depression found hope in a vision of parks that could enhance their quality of life and provide jobs and economic vitality," Parker reminded readers in a February 2007 opinion-editorial published in the Lufkin Daily News. "There is reason to hope that our state is poised to again make a wise investment, which will benefit all Texans for many years to come."

Through the efforts of Parker and many others, including fellow members of the commission, the governor and legislative leaders, the legislature passed a significant increase in funding for state and local parks later that year.

John Parker

This is from an article I posted on the site about 2 years ago:

A common topic among landowners is white-tail gene pool management.   When talking about the management of a deer herd’s genetics there are basically two schools of thought.  One is the genetics management strategy developed and championed by TPWD and their research station on the Kerr wildlife management area.   This strategy, based on half a century of controlled environment research (their only test subjects have been deer who literally spend their entire lives in a small pin), emphasizes the importance of killing all spikes- no matter what.  Their reasoning for killing spikes stems from research showing that if two deer are born in the same year and one is a spike and the other is a 4 point the spike will always be inferior to the 4 point, which is true, with pin raised deer. 

The other school of thought comes from one of the, no, the greatest deer manager of all time, Al Brothers.  In a time when deer populations were managed like cattle and shooting does was thought to be a cardinal sin, Mr. Brothers applied his real world experiences from the field and co-authored a book called, Producing Quality White-tails, changing the way we look at deer management today.  His management strategy was based on 3 principals: letting bucks grow old, planting food plots, and keeping buck doe ratios as close to 1:1 as possible.   What Mr. Brothers strategy has over the archaic dogma that TPWD is now using to set harvest regulations in parts of Texas, is that his strategy can actually be applied by ranchers, hunters, and deer managers to create deer populations with more bucks and bigger racks.  Until the day that deer walk out from the woods with their age, weight, and a record of what they have been eating and will eat in future seasons tattooed on their backs, the indiscriminate killing of young deer, thought to be inferior, is not practical for managing deer genetics, unless of course these deer live their entire lives in a variable controlled pin, living off an ample ration of pedigree.  If you are managing an average Texas lease, between hunter error and environmental variation, there are just too many variables too implore the Kerr WMA’s harvest strategy on your ranch.

CLICK HERE for public hunting information from Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Tips On Conducting Deer Surveys

by Macy Ledbetter, Wildlife Biologist, Spring Creek Outdoors, LLC

For those choosing a spotlight survey this year, consider the following hints:

1. Spotlight surveys have limited application on small tracts of land or where dense vegetation greatly reduces visibility. 
2. Spotlight surveys are not designed to observe a total deer population, rather to sample a representative portion of habitat and the number of deer found there.

For those choosing a aerial helicopter survey this year, consider the following hints:

1. Begin the survey at daylight or late in the evening for optimum visibility and animal observations.  Avoid mid-day surveys unless absolutely necessary.
2. Experienced pilots know how to fly game surveys, but some less experienced may need to be reminded to fly low and slow during the entire survey.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE TIPS AND THE FULL ARTICLE...

You should watch out everytime you see the National Wildlife Federation.  They are a wolf in sheeps clothing.  They try to appear as though they are pro sportsman however after careful analysis of their positions, all they really seem to be in favor of is perpetuating the global warming hoax and using it to take away hunting and fishing rights.  I get several e-mails a month from them and you wouldn't believe the complete BS they say about Global Warming and wildlife.

In this case I would imagine Carbon neutral means that the proceeds from the tournament go toward reducing the effects of global warming to offset the carbon emissions from their off shore fishing boats.  Either way it's a big load of crap.