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Need Help In Central Texas.........


Bigtex

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Hey norseman & SWWASAS.....hope you guys are doing well! LOL, playing with fire is a part of a boys life for sure:) I remember playing toy solders with my older brother once....it was outside and he spent hours setting up all his plastic solders, tanks, and planes, while I only put out a few guys. When the war started, I told him my guys had flame throwers and pulled out mom's HairNet spray, flicked my dads zippo lighter, and melted his army..

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When I was 4 or 5 a neighbor boy the same age and I set a bon fire in the concrete floor of a garage.   I have no idea what we were thinking.     We could have burned the garage  down.   A few years later (age 8 or 9)  I decided that I wanted to learn how to bake a potato with a fire.    The fire got away from me into some dry grass and the whole field burned.     How I managed to avoid getting tagged as a little fire bug I don't know.    

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38 minutes ago, SWWASAS said:

When I was 4 or 5 a neighbor boy the same age and I set a bon fire in the concrete floor of a garage.   I have no idea what we were thinking.     We could have burned the garage  down.   A few years later (age 8 or 9)  I decided that I wanted to learn how to bake a potato with a fire.    The fire got away from me into some dry grass and the whole field burned.     How I managed to avoid getting tagged as a little fire bug I don't know.    

 

I've done my share.   Wasn't necessarily "little" every time though.  :)  

 

One time when I was 8-9, I think, I went up the "crick" by our house fishing.    I noticed bubbles coming up out of the bottom of a deeper crack in a large pool.    I don't know what inspired me to strike a match and toss it in the water but I did, and ... wow.   Fortunately, most of the pool shore was rock, there was only a little grass fire to put out and I did, successfully.   That got me interested in geology.    Turns out there is low grade coal, not worth mining, but it is there.

 

Not much later .. well, I went to a one room school for a while and only had one other kid in my class.   The teacher sent us to the post office at lunch to pick up the school mail.    The other kid had the first butane lighter I ever saw.   He lit a stump on fire beside the road and we couldn't piss enough to put the fire out so we ran off 'n' played stupid when asked about it.   Coulda gone badly.  

 

When I was about 30 (old enough to know better, young enough to do it anyway) my aunt asked me to help her limb up some junipers .. take away the ladder fuels in case of a fire.   I'm "efficient."   I didn't think we wanted little dinky burn piles scattered all over the place, it would be better to have just one pile.   She bought a chain saw and a file for me use and I spent a 3 day weekend cutting and stacking.    I had one burn pile that was likely 35x35 feet and approaching 20 feet high when I got done.   Fortunately I ran out of time and didn't have time to light it off before I had to go home.   She decided she'd have the fire department come out and burn it for her.   They 'bout had heart attacks.   Apparently there's about a 4x4x3 foot limit to burn piles there.   They were going to make her take it apart but took pity on her and did burn it for her as it lay, but definitely got the stern talking to.  Oops.   I thought when you build a burn pile, the fire should be visible from outer space or it's a waste of effort.  Yep, oops.  

 

Y' ought to see dry pine needles go up.   I had 5-6 8x8x2 trailer loads, heaped to about 6 feet tall, in a giant pile.   They were going' sorta slow .. couldn't get enough oxygen for the fuel density.  :(  Did you know a leaf blower makes a bad a$$ turbo-charger?   :)  

 

MIB

 

 

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Love the stories guys.....bringing back many of those fiery memories!

 

Here are a few pics from the weekend hikes......the first pic is a rock that I sit on at Gift Tree #2 for a rest when hiking through, and always gifting rocks, piling them a certain way, and I left the stick triangle the other day, but guess some critter didn't like it, took a dump where I sit, and circled in red, lol. The 1st print pic is in limestone, as old as the formation of the rock itself......of interest, there are Dino tracks nearby, and both covered by volcanic ash on the same day that has since water eroded away.....I left the print 'as is', leaving the heavier creek gravel in the print & toes. And a few fresh prints......a local buddy who has a mild interest in BF asked me why I find so many prints, and maybe some of you guys have the same question.......just been researching this one area near my home several times a week for 20 years, so I've learned some of their patterns of travel, have found their trails, plus they are using many of the ones that I have made over the years......add a lil rain, and giddy-up prints!!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Howdy......hope everyone is doing well:) Here are a few recent print pics, fresh animal kills with interesting breaks circled, and more evidence of someone carrying fire down a very remote trail.

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1-deer.jpg

1.jpg

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That one is a very fresh kill. Interesting that the cartilage is still there. That's usually one of the first things to disappear when most animals feed. 

Edited by BigTreeWalker
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  • 2 weeks later...

Where did the fire come from? 

 

Maybe if you could determine that, you could look for prints there and find it's route. Assuming of course, that it was your bigfoots and not a human. 

Edited by Madison5716
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That’s a good question, miles from any human activity, and wasn’t near any human trails, it was on a trail that I use and pretty sure the hairyman does too......always find tracks in the area. I couldn’t find any tracks that day, a few from nearby down by the creek.

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The Sotol is coming out, they’re chowing down on that now.

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They are loving the Sotol this time of year.....the tender white meat of the young shoots are not quite soft enough for my taste, but the hairyman doesn't seem to care. Here's an hours old chomp, wasn't there yesterday....it's still white too, as the white part turns brown very quickly. Found this on a frequently used BF trail......notice the 3 large flat teeth marks on the leaf, on the 1st & 2nd bite, the white part was not soft enough yet to preform a proper scrape with the teeth, but on the 3rd bite success....it was soft enough. Have any of you guys noticed this in the Southern States, it is more than interesting to me, gotta be DNA all over these things too. 

Sotol 76A.jpg

Sotol_76B.jpg

Sotol_76C.jpg

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For a tasty sweet snack, put your thumb in the groove, the outer edges are sharp be careful, and pull.....scrape with your teeth like an Artichoke leaf and enjoy.......Lulu thinks it might be good too, lol:)

 

If you look at the scrape marks that my flat teeth make, it's exactly the same as what I find, there's just no way a person or persons are doing this........and what I find has remained very consistent for many years, hogs will get after these too but is very easy to tell the difference, and in particular they don't carry them off to be consumed at a different location, they just tear up the plant and surrounding dirt. 

 

Sotol 79A.jpg

Sotol 79B.jpg

Edited by Bigtex
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Fascinating stuff, BigTex. I am not really familiar with sotol. Do you know if it has specific mineral content? Does it grow primarily in mineral rich areas, such as creek beds? I am just wondering if they are choosing this plant for a specific reason to supplement some sort of biological need aside from just "food". 

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Hey NorthWind.....I've done some research on this particular species of Sotol, and the roots were a main staple of the Native Americans in the South, however it couldn't be eaten raw and had to be baked in earth ovens for up the 24 hours to remove the toxins, couldn't ever find anything about the leaves as food source  though, and can only assume they are fine....they taste good and haven't made me sick, plus the hairyman doesn't eat the roots and older leaves....guess they already know about the toxic (raw) roots. There was plenty of mention about the leaves being used for all kinds of other stuff, such as cordage, baskets, etc.

Edited by Bigtex
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It just makes me wonder about the minerals, or maybe salts. I wonder about that with the prints Madison and I have been finding out by the drained lakes, too. There may be a concentration of minerals or salts. but I am not sure. Have you ever left a salt block out? That's something I want to try.

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