This past weekend, I was asked to come help film the Willie Belton Purple heart hunt near Columbia, LA with T.P. Outdoors Adventures.
The hunt was held by Louisiana District Attorney John Belton and a group of volunteers in honor of his late father, Willie Belton who earned a purple heart after injuries he received while fighting in the Korean war. Several purple heart recipients from all over Louisiana were invited to attend the hunt and four men graciously accepted.
Here are just a few of the photos from the event. Look for as these men hunt together and the community gives back to them in a future episode of T.P. Outdoors Adventures on KTVE or Youtube.
In the south, winter takes different forms. Sometimes its bitterly cold and wet. Other times its pretty mild and wet. Wet seems to be the norm though and by January, it’s supposed to be cold.
This weekend started out in the upper 50s – low 60s. Quiet warm for January. That was before the front moved through. With in a few hours, an over night storm system would bring High winds and a deep chill. The temps dropped in to the 20s and deer season is almost over. Bill Petrus with T.P. Outdoors called and we setup another hunt. Surely this would get the deer up on their feet.
Bill Petrus hauling a deer blind we primarily use for special needs hunters.
Bill is a good friend and client. We work on a lot of stuff together but our favorite is the T.P. Outdoors Adventures show. We both love getting to take military veterans and special needs kids outdoors. Bill does a lot to help other people and has a lot of fun doing it along the way. He had a couple of kids lined up and one more hunt this year.
Bryce Buchanan has hunted with us many times. He’s taken a few deer on our show and even gone catfish noodling with us in the past. He’s a really cool kid and always fun to hunt with.
We also had Tylar and his dad Kevin Kelly with us. Now Kevin was on our show earlier this year but this time it was Tylar’s turn.
I hunted with Tylar and Kevin. Tylar got to harvest a doe earlier this year with bill but this time we were after his first buck.
Right at daylight, we had a nice mainframe 8pt and it was tough getting Tylar to wait till there was enough camera light available to shoot his deer but as soon as I gave him the go ahead, he let it rip. Made a great, ethical shot with his dad’s Ruger 270. His deer didn’t run far. As we soon discovered, it actually had a split brow tine and another kicker making it 10 scoreable points.
Although I didn’t get to watch Bryce harvest his deer, he was also successful. It came down to the last few minutes of available shooting light but they made it happen so both kids were able to harvest deer.
This was a great hunt to end deer season with. I’m sure we’ll be filming lots of other turkey hunts, frogging alligators and all kinds of other crazy antics for the next season of T.P. Outdoors Adventures. You can watch for the full story behind this hunt around July when our new season of the show kicks off.
