In the above picture, taken on my first visit, I am standing outside the gate to the YO Ranch Land property. At this point in time, I had no idea how much I would enjoy hunting as I had not been hunting since my teenage years when I had low vision and now I and totally blind.

This past weekend, I had an opportunity to stay at Kirk Musgrove’s family ranch. Wendy and I have been friends with Kelly and Kirk for over fourteen years and now Kirk is also my hunting companion. Kirk had a hunting weekend planned and would be taking his camper to be left onsite for the Kerr County white tail deer season, and asked me to ride along.

During the five-to-six hour drive, I asked several questions and shared many childhood hunting stories. You can read the hunting page for my early childhood low vision hunting experience or check out all hunting post to learn how I now hunt being totally blind.

Starting on Friday evening and ending on Monday morning, Kirk and I spend over 15 hours sitting side-by-side in a four-foot by six-foot elevated deer stand. I was honored to be taking the place of one of Kirk’s three children, Kody, Keagan, and Kolton, who grew up hunting with their dad.

On this hunt, I was armed only with my finger and I resisted pointing and saying, “pow-pow-pow”, when Kirk described the Whitetail Doe Deer, Axis Bucks and Doe Deer and Fallow Doe Deer that he saw, Since no Whitetail Bucks or Wild Hogs, often referred to as Pigs, came into range, we left this hunt without Kirk firing a shot.  

The weekend before, Kody had shot a Wild Hog, while hunting with his three-year-old son and Pops grandson. You guessed it, Pops is the name Gunner calls Kirk and Kelly is known as Lolli.

After our second night in the stand, Kirk was telling Kody that we had not seen any white tail bucks or Wild Hogs. Kody suggested that maybe we were being too loud. Trust me, I was not making a sound, or I was at least as quiet as a three-year-old. I have asked if he uses “here piggy, piggy, piggy” or ”sooie, sooie, sooie”, for hog-calling, but Gunner has not share his secret for hunting Pigs with me yet.

While sitting in the stand, I recalled that years ago I had read an article or two about blind hunters. I also thought hunting from a stand would provide the best opportunity to harvest some game. As fait would have it, on the last night of the hunt, I came across episode 101 of The Eyes Free Sports Podcast, which featured Drew Blake, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Guiding Eyes Outdoors.

While listening to the podcast on the ride home, Kirk and I gained enough knowledge to be dangerous, and agreed I would look into getting the gear with a goal of bagging a pig sometime after deer season.

Maybe if I bribe Gunner with some Skittles, he will share is hog calls or at least teach me his secret to being quiet.