Alan Bell was one of the first anglers throwing big swimbaits on the Highland Lakes. Twenty-five years later he has 85 bass over seven pounds, and roughly 18 over ten.

He talks glide baits, hand-carved Japanese baits that cost $300, eight-and-a-half-foot rods, and why he pulled every Senko, spinnerbait and crankbait out of his boat and never put them back. Plus the counterintuitive one: he owns forward-facing sonar and barely uses it — mostly to avoid throwing an expensive bait into a tree.

Link to Alan's Youtube Channel

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Texas opens statewide Sept. 1 for the first time ever, and the Special White-winged Dove Days are gone. What changed, what'll get you cited, and why that Sept. 14 date existed in the first place.

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Axis deer numbers are reportedly cratering on some Hill Country ranches — not from disease, but from trapping. I investigate whether commercial trappers are quietly relocating the free-range herd into the resale market, and why Texas has zero way to track it. A field report companion to our axis deer deep-dive.

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Texas bobwhite populations have dropped more than 75% since 1980 — but it's not the fire ants, the feral hogs, or the hawks everyone blames. We dig into the real research on what's driving the crash, bust a few myths landowners have believed for decades, and ask the question every hunter wants answered: is there still a path back to the golden age of Texas quail hunting?

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In parts of the Texas Hill Country, axis deer now outnumber whitetail — and I dig into why that's a bigger problem than most people realize. I pulled together a controlled removal experiment out of Bandera County, a Texas Tech PhD dissertation, and over two decades of density surveys to show this isn't competition between the species, it's flat-out displacement. Axis deer aren't classified as wildlife or livestock in Texas, which means no season, no bag limit, and no state agency tracking their spread. One county alone is now estimated to hold 61,000 of them. I get into the regulatory gap, a disease-risk finding nobody's testing for, and whether eradication is even still on the table.

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Every year, 1.5 to 2 million deer-vehicle collisions happen across the U.S. — and Texas is one of the top five states for them. In this episode, I break down the real numbers behind deer strikes: when they spike, which parts of Texas see the most accidents, and what the law actually says about who's responsible for that deer once it's lying on the shoulder.

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A whitetail's nose has 297 million receptors to your 5 million — and no carbon suit or ozone unit fixes a bad wind. I break down how a deer's nose actually works, what scent control products are worth your money, and what's just marketing.

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Millions of feral hogs scattered across Texas are doing damage: rooting up floodplains, spiking bacteria levels in creeks, spreading tick-borne diseases to cattle and humans. This episode covers the full picture — ecology, water quality, disease risk, and the management tools that actually work.

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It spreads underground through fused root systems, hitches rides on beetles drawn to fresh wounds, and moves long distances in firewood. Oak wilt is one of North America's most destructive tree diseases — and it's expanding. Here's what it is, how it works, and how to stop it.

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Tyler Jones of The Element sits down with me this week, and we get into all of it. Where Texas actually ranks as a deer hunting state. The feeder debate and when they work and when they don't. The reality check every first-time public land hunter needs before they walk into the woods. And what the future of hunting recruitment looks like from inside one of the biggest platforms in the industry.

But the moment that'll stay with you is when I ask Tyler something he probably doesn't get asked very often — as a devout follower of Christ, does he think killing big bucks is luck, knowledge, or God's blessing? His answer is one of the best things I've recorded on this show.

The Element links below.

Spotify

YouTube

Instagram

Subscribe to Texas Fish and Game Unfiltered on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Get Outdoors and Find Your Peace