Ep.105 A Free-Range Texas Adventure That Checks Every Box

Send us Fan MailA North Carolina houndsman meets a target-rich Texas and turns a bucket list into a full-blown field course. We kick off before daylight with bodies moving through mesquite and a cold, old buck that tests our patience until legal light. By 7:12 a.m., the tag is punched. That moment opens the gate to everything Texas does loud: thermal glass sweeping wheat fields, boars and sows spilling like ink across the dark, and a sudden realization that red reticles don’t work for colorblind eyes. Switch to green, and the hits land. Farmers breathe easier; we learn why hog control is stewardship, not spectacle.Midday brings rock and thorn, where an aoudad teaches new anatomy. Heart and lungs sit in the shoulder, not behind it, and a steady 200-yard shot with a 308 proves it. The meat is better than the myths, the country spare and beautiful, and the lesson simple: every region makes you relearn what you think you know. Then the surprise—Rios in the fall. With a legal rifle and a calm rest, a Rio turkey adds a Grand Slam square while highlighting how seasons, tools, and ethics shift across state lines. We collect coyotes over hog kills, trade stories about javelina and axis dreams, and map the contrasts between scrubby flats and the oak-tangled Appalachians.Threaded through it all is the power of dogs and good people. Tyler’s plot hound roots meet Texas blood-trailing pros who help youth hunters recover deer, turning near-misses into lifelong memories. It’s a reminder that conservation isn’t a slogan—it’s decisions made at night on farm roads, in daylight on glass, and beside kids learning to breathe and squeeze. If you’re weighing a Texas trip, this story delivers practical intel on free-range opportunities, hog management, gear choices from .308s to suppressed .223s, and the terrain truths that make or break a stalk. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s planning a hunt, and leave a review to help more folks find the show. What’s the first tag you’d punch on your own Texas run?Check us out on Facebook  Hunts On Outfitting, or myself Ken Marr. Reach out and  Tell your hunting buddies about the podcast if you like it, Thanks!