As head guide of the Novillos and Host of Brush Country Monsters, let me just say that we appreciated Gavin Harvey as well and he is welcome in my camp and our show anytime.
Be sure to tune in to Brush Country Monsters when Gavin Harvey hunts the Novillos!

- Lamar Smith

Gavin Harvey of the Sportsman Channel and his awesome Novillos trophy. Job well done Gavin!

To start off with a little teaser… our favorite Yankee Dan Como was first up this season. And if you know anything about BCM and Novillos, you know that Dan Como has been every year since we started. Year number 17 was good to Danny. He comes on a management hunt every year but he is always considerate to help us with some management duties with some of the “inferior” deer. What a great guy Huh? A year on the Novillos would not be the same without our good friend, Dan Como. Thanks Danny and the Novillos herd would not be a great as it is without all your help! See you next December friend…..

Dan Como with his two Novillos management bucks

Kansas

Seth and I booked a hunt with Midwest outfitters in Kansas last Spring. A great operation who happens to be partly owned by Alan Rovig of McWhorter Custom Rifles. I was going to be there a day early with the cameraman Jaime Lovette and hunt a week. Seth with his “day job” was going to come in for the last four days. Jaime and I leave my house two days early and head to Midwest Outfitters. Texas is in the throws of its worst drought in history and Oklahoma was not fairing much better. Southern Kansas was brown and ugly as well. Then about 80 miles south of Midwest Outfitters we hit God’s Garden of Edan! Lush, green and crops look like something out of a picture book. Now I am a farmer by trade and I lost my rear end farming this year and the crops were as ugly as ugly can get. I was having to sit in blinds and draws and hill tops looking at lush bumper crops and it was like someone was rubbing salt in the wound! Seven straight days of looking at this and of course that meant that the deer were still living in the corn, soybeans, sunflowers and grain sorghum. It also meant that they were not moving. They just stood up, ate and laid back down. Seven days of a few doe and dink bucks and turkey. Not one shooter. Seth flies in and the same thing awaits him and before we know it, the hunt is over and neither he or I or BCM have a deer. Midwest Outfitters did their best and worked hard but it was just not going to happen. The barbeque from Rudy’s Anywhere that was flown in was a highlight of the week!

North Texas

A hunt with good friend Bobby Dodd and a group of his buddies was set up with a wounded warrior named Damiel Lange. A great guy who was wounded in June while defending our freedoms. Great ranch and owner here folks. Jay bar Ranch and Joe Brooks near Mineral Wells Texas just west of Fort Worth. Met a group of hunting buddies that were awesome and man could they cook! I was here and invited to film Daniel getting his first Texas whitetail for BCM. Well, as the story is unfolding it is obvious that we are going to struggle here even in Texas. The drought had been bad here too but a two inch rain a couple weeks before we had arrived had the deer sticking to the brush and enjoying Mother Nature’s table fare instead of out enticement. Three days and nada! That was not to say we didn’t have a great time. Daniel was a super guy and he even brought his father along for the adventure. The table fare around the “Whistling Bung Hole” (Bobby Dodd’s camp name) was to die for. We had two meals with Joe Brooks that his lovely wife cooked for us that topped off a great three days even without a buck. But once again…. no buck for BCM.

New Mexico

I pick up Cameraman Darin Clifton at the Albuquerque Airport and we head west for an hour and a half and arrive at a less than billed destination. This is Darin’s and my first meeting and work together and sadly, it was a nightmare. Calling this place a “hunting destination” was a stretch at best. Let’s just say that reliving this fiasco is not something that I want to do and simply said, I didn’t even take my safety off my McWhorter 7MM RUM at a bull elk. Time and money down the drain. No elk for Lamar and BCM. Third show was like the first two and in the end… a NO SHOW!

Montana

Blue Rock Outfitters to the rescue to break the bad luck streak! Seth and I as you might remember, had an awesome hunt last year with Mike Zmek. Just in time to break the curse was Mike and his awesome Blue Rock Outfitters. Cameraman Chad Daley and I fly out of San Antonio and Mike picks us up at Gillette Wyoming Airport for the short drive to camp. Mike smiles as he is loading us up in the truck and says he “put one to bed for a nap” just before leaving to come pick us up. We get to camp and he is dead serious. Get the truck unloaded and then the hunting gear loaded in the truck, sight in the McWhorter 6.5 Weatherby and we are soon glassing the ridge where the big buck was bedded before lunch. Mike is struggling to find him and I joke and bet him $5 that the deer is gone. He takes the bet and says that since the wind shifted, he thinks the buck moved as well, but doesn’t think it is that far. We move to the far side of the ridge and get out and walk up three different levels of ridges and find ourselves between two hug boulders. Mike slips in between them, slips back out and say the buck is bedded down just about 70 yards and has no idea we are in the area. I get into position and so Does Chad. I have an awesome 175 class B/C  in my cross hairs…. and Chad cannot find the animal. I tell him to move up a little higher…. and that was a mistake. The buck busted him and was gone in a heartbeat. Later Chad said that he was shocked the deer was that close. He thought we had said 170 yards and he was looking on the next ridge. Not the first time the camera had cost us a buck, but this time it extended the streak of bad luck for me and BCM. We hunted three more days and the last hour of the last hunt produced a shooter. Not the 175 class we had seen early in the hunt, but a fine deer none the less. But BCM was to have two and only one was taken. The curse was only slightly broken. Seth was going home empty handed. The ride to the airport to connect was a quiet one, and an adventure! An 18 year old kid was told to get us to the airport on time. 75 miles was no match for a 18 year old with a heavy foot! We arrived with 3 minutes to spare before they shut down the ticket machines and take baggage.

Novillos

I was after a buck on the Novillos. Three different bucks were on tap for BCM. Two of them were bucks we had been after for a couple years and failed to harvest. Old and mature would be understatements for these guys. Add a great upper 150 class 9 point with split brows and it was game on. This was my turf! Granted it was the Feedyard pasture and it is known to be brutal to hunt, but still home field advantage should be on BCM’s side. Walker Smith and I were going to switch rolls. For years I have been the guide and cameraman for my first born son. Now he was going to guide and film me. We had a ton of trail camera pictures of these deer. They were patterned like clock work. This was going to be a no brainer. You know where this is going don’t you? Well, you are right. Walker and I hunted three days and saw the same management buck every time, but NOT any of the three bucks we had planned on making a show on. Unbelievable to say the least. Another busted hunt and no kill for Lamar or BCM!

Now all this misery is recorded history. But not all is a total loss. Everyone is having a blast hammering me about my bad luck streak! Well I have news for them. This streak is about to come to a close. The Friday after Thanksgiving our old friend The Yank, Dan Como is coming to the Novillos. And he may not know it but he is about to become my lucky rabbit’s foot. Things are about to get back to normal. (Even though normal is usually NOT any word we use pertaining to Dan Como!)

Stay tunes folks. Super Guide shall return and the streak is going to be nothing but an unpleasant memory….