Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Worst Shooting Match Experience Ever... Midland, TX

As JGRaider points out, the economy's great, traffic's no big deal, and the people (with the exception of the batshitt-crazy woman at Jake's Clays mentioned earlier) are hospitable and friendly.

Besides, I'm a wide-open spaces kind of guy, so West Texas suits me really well. I was always kinda claustrophobic in the forest in Wisconsin.

Lived in San Angelo and San Antonio - what I miss of Texas can be summed up in one word:

BBQ

Other than that - I'm okay here in woods....

OK, I don't care where you're from...TFF!

Ok given you like Midland..

But there is also Uvalde and all points west of San Antone

It really get dicy east of Houston


Snake

Fixed it for you.

Yeah!! They also have Jal, Eunice, Loving, Maljamar, and multiple other places. And they don't want Midland???? They couldn't handle Midland. I lived there for 26 years and it was a great place. I am sure it has changed now with all the Oil boom going on but it used to be a gfredat place to live and raise a family. I left a lot of friends there.

Jim

Midland ain't bad...some old but good memories

Bob's Better Burger
Burger Train
Chief Drive-In
Four Seasons
Jack Rabbits
Horny Toads
"A" Street Park when it rained
Hot as hell and dry but 1000X more comfortable than the Bayou City $h!thole
Grass painted green in the winter
A black side, a mexican side and all the rest

Not so good memories...

Stickers, goat heads and mesquite thorns in my feet, bicycle and motorcycle tires
Few trees
Water that smells like a mixture of $h!t and piss and tastes far worse

Nothing funnier than Washington crying about Texas...

It isn't that you aren't smart...It's just that you know so much that is wrong. Bless your heart...

Pecos???

Naah, ya hang a right at Fort Stockton and do a quick 50 miles and there you are. Right past Mosquito Lake (dont worry I have never seen it with actual water in it).

Good place to get gas at all hours. Got a Wal-mart there too. Best of all it takes absolutely no time at all to drive through, maybe a light or two.

Bump over the railroad tracks past that museum place that is never open and before ya know it you're blowing across Mordor again towards the booming megopolis of Orla, where nobody lives. In daylight you can watch oncoming trucks emerge from the mirage, at night you can wonder who TF would be driving out there that time of night except drug smugglers and such.

They do have a "picnic area" or two along the highway where you can sit and admire the desert scrub and low humps of the Delaware Mountains through the shimmer while dying of heat exhaustion.

Then keep going past the turnoff Red Bluff Lake where the fish are so suicidal/desperate for company they'll hit anything at all. People actually have RV's and retirement singlewides out amid the scrub and heat mirages there and you think who in the world would wanna live out there unless they're practising for an eternity in Hell.

But, keep going, pretty much fast as you want (famous last words... I have NEVER seen a Cop out there ) and thirty minutes later Paradise appears in the form of a WELCOME TO NEW MEXICO. LAND OF ENCHANTMENT sign.

Its weird, immediately the road surface and the terrain changes. Malaga and then Loving and there you are....

Birdwatcher

What I recall about Hobbs was a sign in front of the Dairy Queen stating "WE HAVE BANANAS TODAY"

New Mexico rules.

Texas sucks.

Just how it is.

??? El Paso???

To really appreciate El Paso ya gotta go there on the 4th, dont worry about finding the firework displays they'll bring 'em to you, right on I10 and Hwy 54 (???). Just look for the crowds and the burning bushes that caught fire and dont worry when bottle rockets ricochet off of the car

Or join the crowds on the Trans-Mountain Parkway over the Franklin Mountains and watch the actually pretty good firework display against the backdrop of a literal Hell, the yellow street lights of Juarez.

Pretty good birding in McKittrick (???) Canyon Park, as long as you dont mind stepping around the condoms.

Aint got no beef with El Paso, actually like the place. I used to date a girl from there. Best of all its just 90 minutes from the Sacramento Mountains

I would live there in a heartbeat.

Orla TX? not so much

Birdwatcher

Funny you should say that, two of the three times a Texas DPS Trooper has stopped me have been on that road, within the past two years! Both times for doing less than 5mph over the posted speed limit.
Of course, I WAS driving a type of vehicle that could have been carrying any number of contraband items...

Ed

Hey, Orla has tons of coyotes.

All I have to say about the Orla area is, if you could somehow set Red Bluff Lake on fire, you'd have a pretty much picture-perfect depiction of Hell.

JMHO of course

But actually, the fishing at the lake was very good when me and my brother stopped in decades ago. Stocked reg'lar, with very little fishing pressure that I could tell.

Birdwatcher

I've killed a couple or three good mule deer over there too.

Ssshhh
JG, I hunted near there a lot of years on Roy Lindsays place north of Mentone on the Pecos, but only saw one big deer and that was on a coyote hunt in Jan. He had heavy horns and was a 27 in. 5x5 limping along and breeding the does. Roy, God rest his soul, assured me he occasionally saw a big deer in that country. 95 sections I think on the old Lindley place and he had given one of his sons control of the adjoining huge ranch to the north of that.

There was also an old certifiable Texas cowgirl wo had a big place out of Orla and to the west of the highway (south of Orla) where I hunted coyotes several times over the years there but never saw a big deer. She assured me they had them before the mountain lions took over. Sadly, she passed several years ago and I can't remember her name. Yes, after thinking about it for these ten min., she was Evelyn Dale Cooksey but her namebhad changed after a remarriage. Now I remember it as Evelyn Dale Cooksey Carr. Have you really seen any real monsters in that country?

The helicopter pilot for Roy told me he had never seen a real monster in that country but had seen some around Alpine.

I can't say I've seen any monsters. I hunted the Dinwiddie ranch there, last time was probably 25 years ago. My dad grew up in Jal where the old man lived, and Dinwiddie had a ranch West of there also. The good bucks I killed there were 160 class deer, which was big for me at that time. That is some harsh country down there for sure. Sounds like you had a pretty good place to hunt too. I also hunted many years down around Valentine. Biggest buck I killed down there was bumping 170" By the middle of my college days I realized most of the really, really big bucks were in the sand. Low deer densities but some real bombers. I had the run of the Frying Pan while Mr Linebery was alive.

He was a character, and patient of mine.