For Saturday morning, we decided to hunt somewhere else and give the ducks on the other hole a rest. There are several ponds on our land that usually keep ducks in them since they are all right beside the river. We drove about a mile down further than we had been hunting to a new pond that had several sloughs that mouthed out into it. We had never hunted this hole before, but had always seen ducks in it. We arrived about an hour before daylight to throw decoys out. Since it was a bigger hole, we threw about fifty decoys in this one.
It was as if turning on a light switch as soon as it became daylight. The ducks were coming into the hole in pairs perfectly. We were only shooting the drakes, and letting the hens fly so that we could hunt longer. About ten that morning, two of us had a limit, but we needed one more duck to fly in so that my buddy could get his. It took about twenty minutes for a lone duck to fly through, but after calling back at it and tempting it with duck calls, the drake finally circled through and gave him a perfect one shot kill.
This was a fun weekend of duck hunting. Three hunts and Three limits of mallards. This is a great start to a opening weekend of duck hunting. I am looking foward to doing more hunting over the christmas holiday if I can get away from work for long enough.

Friday afternoon's hunt started out about the same as it did that morning. The ducks were pouring into the hole to feed. We were being real selective with what ducks we shot because we didn't want to limit out within a few minutes. We started shooting nothing but mallard drakes. These are the green headed ducks that everyone knows of, and by far the best to eat.
About the time we all had about four ducks a piece, the ducks seemed to quit flying. We waited for about thirty minutes without even seeing a duck. I stood up to look behind the blind we were sitting in, and at that time we had about one hundred ducks coming flying through the pond. All of us shot two a piece out of the flock, giving us our second limit of the day. It was pure luck for that hunt, but i'll take luck over skill anyday.

OVer this past weekend, duck season opened. I returned home for three days to do some duckhunting with my two friends. It started out slow, but quickly picked up better and better each day. Our first hunt was on Friday morning. We got into the blind about an hour before daylight, and threw about twenty decoys into the duck pond. Since we were hunting a small pond off the river, we didn't need that many decoys. Once daylight broke enough so that we could see we had action. The ducks were really wanting to land in the hole we were sitting on. If we missed one the first time, they would actually circle around and try for another shot to land. We shot our limit of six ducks a piece by nine that morning. We returned home to clean the ducks, get a bite to eat and a short nap, and we were right back out there for the afternoon hunt.

Today was opening day of gun season for deer. I was hunting on the private land that we have that is about twenty minutes from the house. Yesterday afternoon I arrived in time to get a late evening hunt in with my bow. I climbed into my treestand around three o clock, and waited until it got later and the deer started to walk around. At 5 o'clock, I had a doe walk out into the trail I was expecting one to walk on to. I let the deer walk in, and turn broad side until I made the Shot. The deer jumped, and ran about thrity yards until it died. That was the first of 10 days I am going to spend hunting on the land.
This morning, I woke up and climbed into another stand I have set up about an hour before daylight. Around seven this morning, I had a group of does walk through the woods, and under my stand. Since i was hunting with my rifle, I decided to let them walk. Shortly after, I had a small buck walk under the stand where the ones before him had walked. I decided to let him walk, mainly because it was early and I was curious of what else would walk by me. Nothing else walked through until four this afternoon. I had just woken up from a short nap to see the nice buck walking down a trail coming out of the woods and up to a field that is planted for the deer. The deer walked past me and made it about a 100 yards before I decided to shoot him.
I waited for him to turn broadside, and then made the shot. The deer fell instantly, and never felt it coming. So far this holiday, it has been a good start to hunting season. I will be hunting for the next nine days, and hopefully shoot one more big deer for the year.

Final Essay Food on Campus

Steven McGuffee
English 102
Ryan Davidson
November 14, 2007
Food on Campus
On Southern Miss campus, the food situation is not all that great. There should be a mandatory law by the state saying that foods provided on school grounds needs to be of a certain health level. If food was healthier, I believe that students would eat more on campus, and less often in other restaurants.
There are some things need to be improved quickly, if those at Southern as wishing to keep students buying meal tickets. For example, at the current time the food in the Common’s area, is so greasy and un-healthy, that very few students eat there on a regular basis. Since students that live on campus are required to buy a meal ticket, they must eat a campus in order to not waste money. However, most students will not eat enough to get their monies worth in food. Since the meal ticket is on average of one thousand dollars, and few students eat that much at the commons, the meal is costing much more than it is actually worth.
Most of the restaurants on campus do provide food that is actually healthy, and the common’s does on some occasions. However, most of the food they provide is full of grease and fat is both un-healthy, and un-appetizing. To improve the situation, the school could hire a new food company that does provide better, healthier food that would reach out to students. A new company that would provide food that students actually like to eat would make more business, because students would come there to eat, and actually get their monies worth that they are forced to buy.
Even though I do not live on campus, I am often on campus around lunch and dinner time. Instead of eating on campus and using the money I have in my account for food, I would rather spend my other money on food of campus that is better tasting and healthier for me. Since obesity is becoming such a problem for students, and people everywhere for that matter, the school should want to provide a better menu. It seems as if the school is only worried about collecting the money from students, and less about giving the students something in return. If obesity was really a concern, than there would not be as many fast food places to grab food on campus, and more places such as Subway, or salad bars.
I feel that the majority of students do prefer to eat healthy, but it is easier to eat the un-healthy foods because they are popping up everywhere on campus ( and Hattiesburg for that matter. ) I feel that the building called Seymour’s inside the Hub would receive more business if they would remove the Mexican restaurant, and hire a eatery such as Subway. Mexican foods such as that are filled with fast and grease that leads to future health problems, but if people can learn to eat healthy at a young age, than all those problems can be avoided.
Eating fast foods or foods that are filled with harmful ingredients will lead to health problems. For example, every time someone eats foods such as those, it clogs the arteries a little. Over time, all that builds up and can lean to heart problems or diabetes. These problems will not reveal themselves for years, and since is so, then people will continue to eat poorly until the problem is out of control. Since schools hire more fast foods to come in to provide food on campus than they do healthy foods, the problems with obesity and heart disease is unlikely to decrease in the near future.

Early this morning I went bow hunting in Leaf River management area for some early season bowhunting for deer. I woke up at four a.m. this morning, allowing myself enough time to get into my stand before daylight. I timed it perfectly, and climbed into my stand about an hour before daylight. I quietly entered the woods, and not too many deer heard me I believe.
Shortly after daylight, I had dozens of deer around me. I was supprised when daylight broke, too see so many deer around me first thing this morning. Unfortunatly, all of them were out of range or too small. I might not have gotten a shot this morning, but I liked what I saw, and I will be back in there all next week trying to harvest a deer out of the area.

I need to make a trip to Vanclieve real soon. I have to go to the taxidermist and pick up some things i have gotten mounted. I have two deer, two ducks, a bass, and a trout all mounted. I asked him to save everything until it was all finished. It has been almost a year since i gave it to him to mount. I always save stuff I want to get mounted until I have enough stuff to last him a while. I have one deer to be mounted that I shot last weekend. It was my first deer of the year. Im going duck hunting next weekend, so hopefully I will have a few ducks to get mounted by then. I have several geese and mallard ducks mounted, but I want to get a wood duck, and a pintail duck mounted next.
Most of these mounts are at the hunting camp my family owns. We have a house with a huge living room in the middle that we all hang stuff in. Along with there, I have several things mounted at my house in Gulfport. My father an I are avid hunters, and we have many trophies. All of our friends that come to the house or camp say that we have the best collection. At home we have somewhere around 20 deer mounted, 3 turkeys, 4 hogs, 10 or 12 ducks, two bobcats, and numerious fish from both fresh and salt water. we keep them all in our hunting room, where we keep all of our hunting and fishing stuff. My mother hates it, but she doesn't say much since we keep it in one room upstairs instead of all over the house.

I am really looking foward to Decemeber 17. It is my birthday, and on that day I am driving with two of my friends to Iowa to stay at a hunting lodge until the 23 to do some bowhunting. We will be at the Timber Ghost Ranch. This ranch is amazing, and is known for the huge deer that are harvested off it every year. We bought the trip back in September, and now it can't come fast enough for us. We are excited about the trip, and know it is gonna be like nothing be have ever done before. It will only be the third time I have hunted outside of the state. I feel pretty sure that we will harvest some nice deer at this place because of their high ratio of kills to hunts. The deer that live on the ranch dwarf the deer here in South MS, and I really want to harvest one of the monsters. The trip was extremely expensive. I worked over time every day this past summer to save the money for this trip. Just to step foot on the ranch is costing me 5,000 dollars. It sounds like a lot, but for a deer of their quality im happy to pay it. The three of us worked in the afternoons everyday after we got off of our other jobs doing landscaping all over South MS. We made a lot of money, but that was the hardest work I have ever done for extra spending money. Hopefully I kill something or all that work will have been done for nothing

For this weekend, I am going to check out some new hunting land in North MS. I think it is about 4 hours north, but thats not so bad. If it is not any thing good, than i will be going back home to hunt on the new 1000 acres myself and two friends have just leased for hunting. Since we have each killed some deer already this season, we are all pumped about hunting again out there. We have done work out there all summer getting it ready for this hunting season, and I believe its gonna be a great year. We are planning on doing nothin but bow hunting out there, and have decided not to use guns. We want the deer to feel safe on our land, and we are managing these deer to become true trophies. We will only shoot bucks that are trophies, and some management bucks that will not grow to our expectations. Along with the bucks we will be trying to harvest 40 does, and every hog that we see. We do not want any hogs on the land because they are destroying the food plots we put in for the deer over the past summer. Hopefully this weekend I will be lucky enough to shoot some more deer with my bow. I am hoping to harvest at least 10 deer this year out of this land. However, I will only shoot one more trophy buck, and two management bucks off the land. I really want to shoot some does to get them off the land, and to add to the sausage we are making out of the deer we are shooting

Over the Fall break, I went back home to do some hunting in South MS. On wednesday afternoon, I sat in my treestand from 2 until dark. I didn't see anything, but I was still confident that I would shoot something over the break. Thursday was a wash out, an I did not hunt at all on Thursday. Friday Morning I was in the woods an hour before day light. Around ten that morning I was about to climb down from the tree I was hunting in, and then I heard something walking towards me. Soon after that, I had a black panther walk just a few yards from my tree. That was all I saw that morning, but later that afternoon, I had three massive hogs walk in, but I was unable to get a clean shot on any of them. Everyone else that night saw deer, one guy missed a doe, and one guy had two nice bucks just out of bow range infront of him. That Saturday afternoon, we all killed deer. I shot two, my good friend shot one, and my other friend shot one. I had a nice buck walk under my tree, and shortly after, I made a nice shot and the deer didn't run far. Shortly after that while I was waiting to climb down, I had a doe walk into the same spot the other deer walked into. It was a repeat, and I shot that deer as well for a management deer. It was a great week, and even better, a good start to hunting season this year.

Two weeks ago I fished a bass tournament on Pearl River down in Log Town, MS. The morning started off slow. I was catching trout one after the other, but could not find any bass. At nine that morning I caught my first keeper bass on a spinner bait. He was roughly two pounds, and just what I needed to get me going. After i caught that fish I decided that the fish were up shallower than I had been fishing. I Fished back out of the canal I caught my first one in, and continued fishing into other canals in the area. At one that afternoon, I still only had one fish. I fished until three that afternoon, and never caught another fish. It was a dissappointment, because I had spent so much money in hopes of winning. My weekend was gone, and I more broke at that point than I was when I got that early that morning.

Well, i didn't fish my tournament this weekend after all. I decided to go dove hunting instead. It was a good shoot, everyone shot a number of birds, and we all let a few get by us. That night like five of my friends and i were bowling and decided to go back and try a morning hunt. That was about 10 o' clock when that thought passed into our heads. So we all got up at around four to get into the field before daylight. As soon as it was light enough to see into the field we were shooting. The birds were coming for breakfast, and did not even mind that we were shooting them. At nine that morning, it slacked up enough to get a count of birds. Four of us had in the neighborhood of fifty birds. We decided that was enough, and went back to the house to clean birds, barbeque, and watch football all day long. All in all, it was a good weekend.

Im ready for this weekend. Im leaving on Friday morning to go home, get my boat, and head to do some pre-fishing for a tournament on Saturday morning. We have a tournament trail tounrament on Flint Creek in Wiggins. Hopefully i win or place high because im needed some money bad. I plan on concentrating mostly off points that are adjacent to deep water. The fish are staging on those points, and soon they will be venturing onto the flats for fall. I plan on fishing mostly soft plastics once the sun comes up, but first thing that morning i will be fishing top water baits in shallow water with thick floating grass matts.
If the soft plastic bite is slow, i will be targeting fish suspended on sunken rift raft and gravel beds. I will be throwing a crankbait, mostly a chartruese Lucky Craft or Bandit 3200 series. Either pattern i feel comfortable fishing because of the previous success I have had up there before on them. I hope there will be cloudy skies all day and windy. Rain would be nice so i can have more time throwing topwater baits up shallow looking for a nice stringer to weigh in.

I have a huge Biology test today, and I am going to fail miserably. I have studied for about 4 days now, and it just won't click. Hopefully I won't fail it too too bad and be able to pull it back up this semester. Not to mention I have Two big projects and a paper due some time next week. Im about to be real busy.

Im nervous about this paper that is due on Tuesday. I am going to have a hard time getting started with trying to connect life in the poem, to life on tv. Once i get started I can usually move through quickly, however, I hope I can find enough information to fulfill the requirements

Im ready for this weekend. Have a big Redfish tournament on the coast starting on Saturday morning. 1st place is somewhere near 6 grand. Im heading down to the coast on friday morning to do some pre fishing, and then to get all my tackle ready for the next day. Hopefully i will be able to locate some fish. I haven't been fishing since school started. The only thing bad about it up here is i cant fish everyday.