In the 1950s deer were very, very, very scarce in the east Texas piney woods for a long, long time.
Grandad told me something like black leg or hoof and mouth had come through, or something, long ago. He wasn't around when it started, as he moved to that country from Georgia as a kid. It was a fifty year or something longer occurence. People hunted squirrels and ducks.
The virgin timber was open and had grass. He and his brothers hunted wolves, from horseback, with hounds.
They were scarce when I was a kid. Most the timberland was unfenced and open range that paper companies owned and people hunted at will, as well as let their livestock roam at will.
I remember once as a kid when a cousin rode his horse a couple miles from the edge of Corrigan to visit an old man, Blind Willey, who had several acres he lived on near the Neches River bottom and came back by my Grandads farm reporting he had seen a doe.
It was big news.
Last edited by jaguartx; 04/19/23.
