Sometimes the only thing you kill in the deer blind is time or at least that has been the case for me the last couple of weeks. Some find themselves bored without a lot of action but I personally enjoy the peace and quiet and also the opportunity to reflect on the random outdoors thoughts that cross my mind out there.

For example…

Thank goodness, ducks don’t fly like bats. Last week I watched a bat flying around for a good 15 minutes and found myself dizzy at times trying to keep up with it. The erratic pattern was quite amazing to see and showed just how truly high their built in “sonar” is and how useful it can be for hunting insects. This bat zigged and zagged hundreds of times and made some moves I am still not sure fit within the laws of physics.

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Great blue herons are annoying. Yes, they are beautiful and watching them fly as the sun rises and sets is nice, however, their call has to go. They sound like some sort of demented crow when they are excited and for the last few weeks a bunch of them have been gathering near the creek bottom I hunt in the evenings and they just won’t shut up. I would much prefer a bunch of doves or blue jays.

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Why do some deer jump fences and others climb under? I will never forget watching a huge doe in Menard County walk up and down a fence for several minutes trying to find her under the fence crossing when I knew good and well she could have easily jumped it. In fact, that morning I had already seen several deer do exactly that. That is one of those traits of deer behavior that always makes me scratch my head.

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I am constantly amazed by the lack of rabbits in the woods these days. When I was growing up in the 1980s, it was very common to see rabbits. In fact, my favorite pastime during my middle school years was walking the railroad tracks behind our house in the evenings and hunting rabbits with my pellet gun. There were rabbits everywhere back then. Nowadays that just is not so. In fact, if there is a property where you actually see many rabbits it is sort of a shock. The huge increase in the number of predators like bobcats and coyotes as well as an increase in raptor populations has really put the hurt on rabbits.

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Note to self. Make sure and put some effort into fishing for striped bass on the Sabine River this winter. It seems like I do it about every three years and always end up reporting other anglers who catch these beautiful, hard fighting fish. This is truly an untapped resource in Southeast Texas with very little angling pressure and plenty of fish. There are far more stripers in the Sabine than many anglers might think and they can get huge.

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Do you still call the Entergy Outfall Canal the GSU Outfall Canal? So many of us grew up with that plant being GSU it is permanently imprinted in our DNA or something but the fact is it has been under control of Entergy for a long time. When mentioning it in my column I still put (GSU) in parentheses like that but maybe, it’s time to let the past go.

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Never doubt the climbing power of raccoons. Recently my game camera snapped photos of coons climbing straight up and down my feeder’s legs and doing smart-alecky stuff like looking down at the coons below and growling. It was almost as if that coon was saying “Ha Ha! I think I’ll just eat this corn up here instead of spinning it for all of us to eat.” At $10 a bag, it might be time to start coon hunting, since the deer have not been cooperating.  

Chester Moore, Jr. is the Port Arthur News Outdoors Editor. To contact Chester Moore, e-mail him at cmoore@fishgame.com. You can hear him on the radio Fridays from 6-7 p.m. on Newstalk AM 560 KLVI or online at www.klvi.com.)