Another excellent deer I saw this past week was a heavy-horned specimen with over 24 inches of antler spread at Jeff's Meat Market in Coleman. I didn't get the name of the hunter, but employees at Jeff's said the deer was killed in Coleman County. To give you an idea of the size antlers this whitetail sported, one of Jeff's customers had just returned from the mountains where he had killed a pretty good mule deer buck. I haven't been necessairly searching for a role model, but I may have found one this past week in Santa Anna. I was working on an automated rain gauge in Santa Anna when the fellow who lives next door to the gauge site walked up and introduced himself.
Clarence raises, among other things in a large garden plot, five varieties of sweet potatoes.
I know Gilbert's potatoes are big and sweet because he had some cooking when we met, and he sent me on my way that day with samples of both cooked and raw sweet spuds. Later in the week I went back to the Santa Anna gauge to make some final adjustments and there was Clarence again, digging in his garden. But this time it wasn't potatoes, but earthworms, that Gilbert was harvesting. Then I'm going to use the perch for catfish bait. I want to.