Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

In June, the Texas Archaeological Society (TAS) offers a Field School where folks dig in the dirt to explore our state’s history. Bryan Jameson is Field School Committee Chairman.

I have people who come up to me and I’ll mention archeology and they think of dinosaurs, and archeology obviously is the study of the people of the past. That’s why archeology sites are so important.

The 2007 Field School takes place in Menard, and celebrates the historic site of Presidio San Saba.

This year represents the 250th anniversary of Presidio San Saba. We’re going to do some excavations at the Presidio with the intent of hoping to define more of the architecture, features that we may find to help us figure out what the daily life of these people in an 18th century post would have been like.

TAS promotes the importance of archeology with hands-on activities and education during the summer event.

We’re trying to educate everyone as much as we can as to the importance of archeology and this is one way to accomplish that. Archeology sites are a very limited resource. So, hopefully by people coming and attending and being part of it, they realize exactly what we are trying to say to them. Preservation of our history can only be accomplished by these means.

Field School is June 9th through 16th. Register online at www.txarch.org…. the deadline is May 31st.

Tomorrow, getting kids involved in archeology.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Window to the Past is a segment airing on the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series the week of May 13. Series writer/producer, Alan Fisher, says it examines prehistoric rock art in the lower Pecos River Region of Texas.

In the canyons and cliffs in and around Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site, there are these amazing pictographs – ancient rock paintings.

You go down right in that canyon and you step back three-thousand, four-thousand years.

We followed, not only the personnel at the state park there, but also some scholars who were doing some of the latest research on trying to figure out what these rock paintings really mean to the people who made them so long ago.

Now, another symbol in this rock art that is what is called a crenelated arch; it is there to represent the physical barrier between the real world and the spirit world, or the after world.

There aren’t too many places you can look at something that was made by human hands that is that old in Texas, or really anywhere in North America. So, it’s really remarkable to stand before a painting that was painted so long ago and try to imagine what the people who made it were thinking and what their lives must have been like.

The Window to the Past segment airs the week of May 13, as part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series.

Check your local listings.

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

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

Exotic game species compete with native animals for food and habitat. Landowners have developed strategies for managing these creatures, including working with Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram.

The agreement that we make is that these ranchers have an overpopulation that they need to get rid of – and we’re one of their options.

Chris Hughes runs this family business, which harvests and processes the wild game.

We pay them [landowners] based on the carcass weight of the animals that we harvest. So, it’s really a win-win-situation all around. They help put their land back into an ecological balance, they get paid for it, and we get the meat, we process it, and we can sell it nationwide.

Hughes says a state meat inspector, one to two shooters, a skinner, and a mobile processing unit are deployed into the field.

The time of day that we go depends a lot on what we’re hearing from the ranchers. A lot of our harvests are at night, because that’s when the animals are active. But from ranch to ranch that varies. And some of the ranchers find that their animals are more active in the early afternoons. And so we’ll go out there during the daytime.

Learn about the humane harvest of these animals when you log onto www.brokenarrowranch.com.

We receive support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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

The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge had a feral hog problem. Their management strategy involved trapping and shooting the animals, and leaving the carcasses to decompose.

The pig, as an uninvited visitor to the refuge, has been utilizing our resources since they got there. So, we’re putting the resources back into the natural system.

The center’s Rob Denkhaus, agrees the hogs represented usable meat, but the center didn’t have a safe way to process it. That’s not an issue for Broken Arrow Ranch. They harvest hogs and other exotics, with on site processing and inspection. They age and package it at their facility in Ingram, and ship it nationwide.

On an annual basis we harvest about seventeen hundred deer a year, about eight hundred antelope, and last year about a thousand wild boars.

And that translates to more than 180-thousand pounds of wild game. Chris Hughes took over the business from his parents, who retired to a ranch in the hill country, where they first observed the exotic species.

They saw an untapped resource here in the area, and a potential market; worked through the government agencies to get all the appropriate regulations in line, and began harvesting animals and selling them to restaurants in 1983.

Tomorrow: How Broken Arrow Ranch works with landowners.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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

Feral hogs pose a serious problem at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge where they’ve destroyed acres of fragile habitat. The center’s Rob Denkhaus says working with various groups the center developed a management strategy that met the needs of the community and the hogs.

And the key to it was determining how we could do it in the most humane way possible that would allow the animal welfare community to accept it. And, we needed to do it in a certain safe fashion, because we are inside the city limits, where discharge of firearms is generally not allowed. So, we went through a whole process, a whole matrix of different ideas that we worked on in order to come up with the one that actually fit best – that met all of our criteria.

In the end, trapping and shooting the animals was the simplest, most effective, and most humane solution.

We go to great, great lengths to make sure no animal suffers in our traps, which any responsible hunter or trapper of any kind is supposed to do as well.

What happens to the harvested hogs…that’s tomorrow.

That’s our show… we had help today from Tom Harvey… the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program supports our show…and it’s funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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