Southeast Road Trip: N. Florida, Tennessee and Georgia

This trip had three basic parts.  Everything went according to plan for the most part.  The plan was to go to Apalachicola and meet up with all the Southeast folks of NAFHA and look for reptiles and amphibians, then head up to Tennessee where the 17th annual primitive archery classic was being held then go back down through Georgia and visit family and hunt hogs on some family land.

Apalachicola was fun!  We found a lot of cool stuff.  If you want to see lots of pictures check out my facebook page.  I was able to stay with my brother and his family and meet up with some other folks that were there for the event.  All in all during that event over fifty species of reptile and amphibians were found.  That's a lot for just one weekend.  Here's a shot of one of my favorite finds:

Next stop was Tennessee but I spent the night at my aunt's in Atlanta, where I also got a flat tire.  That was a fiasco.  My bank thought it was suspicious to buy a tire in another state, because that's the first thing that an identity thief would do???  After I got that taken care of I headed to the Tennessee Classic.  The primitive archery folks there were awesome!  It was also cool to be recognized by a few people from my videos.  I had several good trades as well.  My goal was to talk to folks that had hunted with stone points and had experience with the primitive hunt.  I certainly learned a lot and met some really cool folks.  Pappy is the man that runs this event and I was honored to put an arrow on his arrow rack among other arrows that had been given to him.  Mine is the one with the green fletching on the right

Now on to Georgia for the hunt.  Well, the hunts were unsuccessful.  This wasn't terribly unexpected.  I wanted to spot and stalk some pigs.  I had gotten some advice on this at the classic but this is something that must be practiced a lot before you can even think about success.  The first two days I was able to see some pigs and get fairly close.  I never got close enough for a comfortable shot though.  I never want to wound an animal, even if it is an invasive and is causing damage to farms and the local ecosystem.  I did have a good time being out in the woods and checking out some cool plants that are unfamiliar to me.  This being one of my favorite finds:

This trip also coincided with my cousin's graduation so it was a lot of fun to be able to be there for that.  She's a sweetheart

All in all it was great trip and even though I had some curve balls and failures I was able to learn from those experiences.  Now it's back to work editing footage from the trip.