South Texas has been my home for all but three years of my adult life although we visited and hunted here when I was a kid. I grew up in South Louisiana (almost as South as you can go in Louisiana, Morgan City). I feel quite at home in the South Texas Brush, .... but sleeping out doors on the ground gives me the HEEBEEJEEBEEs.
Contrary to that,
I feel very comfortable in finding a dry spot in a swamp and bedding down for the night.
Now I know there are folks who would not stay in a swamp at night, and rightly so. There are lots of crawly things there.
I don't know why one familiar thing affects me one way and another in a completely different manner. In South Texas on a cool night there are about 10 gozillion stars out not to mention the moon. You can see very well. In the Swamp, it gets dark. You can see straight up and that's it. Aside from up, 20' of visibility is about it.
As a kid I would walk through thigh high water hunting squirrels and rabbits. For miles it's just water and trees. Then I 'd find an old live oak tree that had made its own island from a century of dropping leaves branches and acorns. That's where I could sit and rest, take a nap or spend the night. That's where everything else that wasn't a full time swimmer went to do those things as well. We got along fine. This not to say I was careless. anything fat and black was dispatched with the Stevens and I suppose that commotion kinda cleared the place and claimed the island as my own for the night. I never had one single instance that could be called a close call.
South Texas, scorpions, ticks, rattlesnakes, .... forget it, I'm not sleeping on the ground. I'll stay in a mesquite tree. Oh, Mesquite ants, those big black and white suckers that will raise a knot on you, sting multiple times and cannot be killed by slapping them as hard as you can. Nope no trees... Zipped up tent or in the truck.
Alan
