Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

When I say Texas Game Warden, what image pops into your head? Is it someone in uniform, patrolling field and forest looking for poachers? You’d be right…but it doesn’t stop there. Texas game wardens have varied jobs—all of which help protect our state’s natural resources.

Eric Howard is a 19 year veteran in the department. He currently coordinates the Operation Game Thief Program—a type of crime-stoppers for wildlife. But his career path in the force has been varied and satisfying.

I spent 12 years in the field, and in about the 12th year, I was able to become an instructor at the Game warden Academy. And when you have the opportunity to make an impression on young men and women, you know, you’re shaping and molding them. And that’s certainly a highlight. Then about a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to become the program coordinator for Operation Game Thief. It’s really been a blast. It’s totally a different avenue, from being at the academy and being a field game warden. This one, you get to meet a lot of people. It’s really been a blast.

You can find information on becoming a game warden when you log onto the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show…thank you for joining us… we record our series in Austin at the Production Block Studios… Joel Block engineers our program.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Outdoor Story: A Game Warden's Life: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories

When you love the outdoors, you may be hard pressed to come up with a single moment in nature as being the most memorable of your life. Texas Highways Editor, Charles Lohrmann, took on the challenge.

When you asked me to describe one of my most memorable Texas outdoor moments, I thought about a particular amazing sunrise over the gulf in Padre Island, and then sort of a psychedelic sunset at Big Bend. And then, one afternoon I was out birding, and saw a bobcat who seemed to watching me as I was birding.

And I feel like I can sense the earth’s heartbeat at that time, and that I’m connected to something far greater than my imagination.

Thanks, Charles…works for me. Have an outdoor story to share? Go to passporttotexas.org and tell us about it.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Texas Outdoor Story: Winged Migration: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories

If you don’t think fishing makes memories, then you haven’t heard Scott Harris of Austin tell his real life fish story of the boy and the barracuda.

On one of my first deep sea fishing trips with my oldest son, in the gulf, out of Port Aransas, he wouldn’t concentrate. He was just playing with his bait, just up under the boat; nowhere near have the 230 or so feet where we were bottom fishing. And I was just about to admonish him to, you know, drop your bait down and see if you can catch a nice snapper. And I was looking at his bait bouncing on the water, just ten or fifteen feet below the boat, and a barracuda longer than him shot up like a lightening bolt and engulfed his bait, and zoomed up in an arc, and jumped and he reeled it in all by his tiny self. And we gaffed it and pulled it on the boat; and all the grown men jumped up on the benches as it was thrashing and gnashing the needle-sharp teeth. And, it was a beautiful fish that’s back out there now to give someone else a thrill. And it’s a story that comes up every single time we’re in a group of people who love to fish. Fishing makes great memories.

If you have an outdoor memory you’d like to share, do so at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Outdoor Story: The Boy and the Barracuda: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Leslie McGaha wanted to try out her new bass kayak on Sam Rayburn Lake. Shortly after she got on the water, she had the company of an otter.

So it was about 9:30 in the morning and I paddled across a branch of the lake, and I was hot. And so I saw a shady spot and figured I would go ahead and park there and see what I could see. And it was amazing: I saw a giant black crawdad crawling out of the bank; I was listening to the fish noises and the birds; the gar. Then, all of a sudden there was this bright flash of silver off to my right and I thought it was a gar or a carp.

And then he stopped for a second and looks straight at me and he and he starts hissing, kind of like he’s yelling at me. So I hissed back. So we have a pretty good conversation for a few minutes, and he pops down again, pops back up, and we start the whole thing over again two or three times before he goes on his merry way a little bit farther up the creek channel. It was just the funniest thing that had ever happened to me; it was amazing.

Share your outdoor story with us like Leslie did, and if we use it, you’ll receive a coveted Passport to Texas t-shirt.

That’s our show…the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Outdoor Story: An Otter, Water and A Hissy Fit: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas Outdoor stories from Texas parks and Wildlife

When Scooter Cheatham convinced his anthropology professor to let him and a friend conduct an experiment—instead of writing a research paper—he had no idea it would lead to his lifelong passion.

What we proposed was that we go down to my grandmother’s ranch on the Guadalupe river near Concrete, Texas, and take with us replicas of some of these early cultures we’d been studying. We had mostly stone tools, deerskin clothing—we did the whole thing.

And you start looking around and the great diversity, the thing that supplies us all of our organic needs is rooted in the plant kingdom. It just became very obvious to me that this was very important. And I was sure that some group of scientists had already done studies all over the world and that there was a body of information about this. So, I came back to Austin expecting to find that and to tap into it—it didn’t exist.

So, he created it—a 12 volume encyclopedia of Useful Wild Plants of Texas and beyond. Volume three is at the printers now.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Visit the website Useful Wild Plants, http://usefulwildplants.org/encyclopedia.htm, and see what Scooter’s been up to all these years. [Just copy and paste the URL into your browser]

 

 Texas Outdoor Story--Scooter Cheatham: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download