- ANNOUNCER: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife... - My major rule about the Texas longhorn kiss.

Very important.

Is you have to commit.

- We hope to learn some unique things about bass behavior and we hope in the end that increases angler catch rates.

- What I really love about Caprock Canyons is that it's more rugged, more raw in nature.

[theme music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife, a television series for all outdoors.

[birds chirping] [gentle music] [wings flapping] - My major rule about the Texas Longhorn kiss, very important, is you have to commit.

[upbeat music] [laughing] [indistinct chatter] - We have eight Texas Longhorns here at Copper Breaks.

They're all members of the state herd that's co-managed between the Historical Commission and Parks and Wildlife.

We keep 'em here for educational purposes regarding the cattle drives and the Longhorn as a breed.

- GIRL: Oh, look at that slobber.

Ew, what?

You need to get that checked out?

- STEWART: You get to feed 'em.

They love treats and they're really a fascinating animal to learn the history about.

[gentle music] - Woo hoo!

- STEWART: It's really satisfying to see a bunch of kids who have never shot a bow and arrow start drilling bulls-eyes.

- Stop, aim, there you go... - Well that works.

- I mean... - It still hit the target.

Ricochets count.

[chuckles] - INSTRUCTOR: Right, put your three fingers underneath it.

There you go.

Now draw that back.

- STEWART: Archery's one of my favorites for that reason, and it's a wonderful program.

I try to do it at least once a month.

- Nice, oh!

[gentle music] - We're gonna walk about two miles round trip out and back to a very scenic vista near the Pease River and then back to our cars.

[footsteps] Juniper Ridge Trail.

It's the one I recommend to people first.

It's not flat, so be warned.

There are stairs on it.

If you want flat, I recommend the Bull Canyon short-loop trail.

It's one mile loop, it's flat.

That's where you see those horned lizards more often in the summer.

- Here he comes, he's coming back.

- I see him.

- Good.

[footsteps] - STEWART: Still some really stunning views of the Pease River and really some of the best views of the rugged red breaks that you see through this area.

[birds singing] [wind blowing] [insects chirp] - It's really cool, yeah.

People really enjoy it.

And that's what's, for me, that's the fun part of it, you know?

Showing people stuff they've never seen before.

- STEWART: The number one thing that draws people, especially from outside the local community, is the stargazing.

Copper Breaks is an international dark sky park.

Essentially that means that we already have dark skies and we're trying to keep it that way.

[dramatic music] - Okay, and everything in the sky starts moving this direction.

Okay.

So that's gonna be going down pretty quick.

- CHILD: What's that one?

- STEWART: The telescope program where we have volunteers come out, they bring their telescopes and we set 'em all up and then we have folks walk around between them and learn about the night sky from our really, really topnotch volunteers.

- Jupiter?

Have y'all seen Jupiter?

- MAN: Yes.

- Everybody seen Jupiter?

Okay.

And what we're gonna see tonight, we're gonna see the Milky Way basically stretch across the sky from here to here.

- STEWART: It's just close to home and it's got some of the best dark skies around.

[inspirational music] - It's a very large reservoir.

It's 185,000 surface-acres.

[country music] - NARRATOR: On the Texas-Louisiana border, Toledo Bend, by area, is the largest man-made lake in the South.

- Toledo Bend has a storied history as a bass fishery going back to the mid-60s when the lake was impounded.

- NARRATOR: Today, fisheries biologists comb these vast waters to keep a close eye on a couple of dozen largemouth bass.

- Toledo Bend itself raised its own bar back in 2015 and '16.

It was the bar for every other bass fishery.

So it only had one way to go and that was down.

- NARRATOR: Keeping the bass fishing bar high is what this work is all about.

- We've started a largemouth bass telemetry study.

What initiated this study was what turned out to be pretty tough fishing here the last year or two at Toledo Bend for bass.

- NARRATOR: Todd Driscoll and his crew are trying to increase our understanding of bass behavior to improve fishing success for anglers who flock here.

- The Bassmaster magazine had Toledo Bend ranked number one in the world in terms of a bass fishery in year 2015 and '16.

- Boom!

[laughs] There's an eight-pounder.

- ANNOUNCER: 185,000 acres.

We've been looking forward to this one all year long.

- TODD: Toledo Bend has always been a popular bass fishing lake but you can imagine how that fishing pressure increased with the number one world ranking two years in a row.

- NARRATOR: While fish numbers dropped, reported catches dropped further raising some questions.

- TODD: With all this fishing pressure, we, as well as the anglers began to wonder are some of these fish literally avoiding boats.

As you increase fishing pressure, they get caught a time or two.

Fishing can certainly get tougher and studies have flat proven that bass learn.

Are they literally swimming three or four miles out in the main lake basin to avoid anglers.

Those are the things we're gonna address with this study.

[upbeat music] Exactly half our fish we've caught out of deep water, 15 to 30 feet, and the other half we collected essentially from five feet to the bank.

Now the shallow fish are easy to collect.

[motor revs] Our electrofishing boat, that's what we use to index bass populations, works very well.

We've got 12 of those fish tagged.

But those deep fish are a challenge.

Traditional fishery gears, we have no way of sampling fish, bass in particular, out 15 to 30 feet.

So, that actually gives us fisheries biologist a chance to fish.

- NARRATOR: So a couple of years of fish study work begin with a couple of days that don't feel like work at all.

- TODD: I know my whole staff's enjoyed this project.

You know, particularly the fishing aspect of things.

- Man this is, I tell you...

I don't know whether he needs to pay me or I need to pay to stay the state for coming out here.

- We've got 12 fish we've collected with a rod and reel in 15 to 35 feet or so.

I've been blessed to have a volunteer help us with that.

A retired friend of mine, George Herr.

The three or four days that we have fished for these fish, he's really helped us with that.

He's come over here and scattered around a little bit.

You know, we'll keep them in a big live well and gather four to eight fish to do surgeries in batches.

- NARRATOR: With fish on board, a boat slip becomes an operating room, where each fish is implanted with a radio transmitter.

- TODD: One four nine, two zero five.

[beeping] Loud and clear.

I mean, we know these surgeries and methodology is very sound.

But boy, you know, you're dealing with scalpel, cutting around organs.

You know, the first few fish, it was... it was pretty unnerving.

Make an incision, a half to three quarters of an inch long.

The transmitter's inserted into the lower body cavity below all the organs.

We also have to route that 18-inch-long antenna out through the side of the fish.

Once you get a few surgeries under your belt... hold still, hold still... it's just pretty routine at that point.

[dramatic music] In addition to the implanted radio tag, they also have an external pink Floy tag coming off the top of their back.

That Floy tag has identification number plus my personal cell phone number.

And then it gets an intense salt dip for 30 seconds which just kind of reinvigorates the fish.

It stimulates the slime coat that a fish uses to protect itself against infection... just an added mechanism to increase the survivability of that fish once we release it.

Fish certainly have known home ranges, so we release these fish back to where we originally captured them.

[dramatic music] There you go, back where we caught you.

[boat motor revs] We come track these fish every two weeks with telemetry equipment.

And we just got a hit on it right there.

We can detect the fish within about a half-mile distance.

Fine tune it with the handheld antenna.

We initiated this study to answer those obvious questions like habitat use, movement, what the size of their home range is, but then how outboard motor noise, trolling motor noise, just the presence of a boat might affect its behavior.

- Over there.

- TODD: Once we are that close, that directionality is so strong that he instantly knows if that fish moves 10 or 15 feet.

Still ahead of you?

And if we find out that maybe a majority of the time, that outboard engine noise spook those fish, well that's pretty good information for anglers to know.

We have a sister lake if you will involved in this study and that's Lake Fork.

Both really popular bass lakes.

- There we go.

- TODD: Having Lake Fork involved just increases sample size and is gonna help us better answer those questions.

- NARRATOR: While the questions are about fish behavior, the reasons for asking may be more about local economies.

- TODD: Bass fishing here in Deep East Texas, I mean, it's king there's no doubt.

And in situations like this where we see a decline in fishing quality, you know, our end product is angler catch.

- Pretty fish.

- We can have a great population of bass out there but it's all about the angling experience and the catch factor.

This has just been a really fun project.

And I think it's gonna be real informative for the anglers to.

We hope to learn some unique things about bass behavior that no one has ever examined before.

And when the study is complete, hopefully we can increase angler's efficiency and in the end, increase their catch.

[dramatic music] [waves crashing] [gentle music] - NARRATOR: Sea turtles have survived on Earth for millions of years, but now their future hangs in the balance.

Impact from humans and extreme weather have landed these lovely creatures on the endangered species list.

Thankfully, there are caring hands on shore to help.

- The Texas State Aquarium Center for Wildlife Rescue is the leading wildlife rescue center in the Coastal Bend, as well as in Texas.

Based on the geography of our location, we have the uniqueness and accessibility to the patients that are in the Gulf of Mexico.

- We close the body wall and then the skin, and all the stitches are buried under the skin, and so- - NARRATOR: This is the place you wanna call when you have an injured sea turtle in Texas and beyond.

- All of sea turtle species are endangered species, and we have the ability to actually impact populations.

- WORKER: Grab him, Gilbert, so I can- - We're unfortunately, experiencing somewhat unprecedented patient numbers, especially with acute cold-stunning events in the winter months.

Our water temperatures are dropping sometimes so low that either the animals unfortunately pass away.

They don't have the energy to be able to swim.

They get washed ashore.

- We definitely see an increase in patients that we're in-taking to the rescue center.

We've received thousands of turtles.

We've released over 3,800 animals back to the Gulf of Mexico.

- CARRIE: If we look back in the historical records, these things we don't believe were happening 10, 20, 30 years ago.

- There you go.

- NARRATOR: As the Wildlife Rescue Center sees a growing population of patients in need, finding like-minded partners for its mission is invaluable.

The Center has worked closely with Texas Parks and Wildlife on rescue efforts in years past, but more recently that help came in the form of major funding.

[keyboard typing] In managing grants for Texas Parks and Wildlife, Carly Blankenship sees more than the numbers.

- $67,000.

$70,000.

$21,000.

- NARRATOR: She sees the Texans behind the need.

- Lone Star Paralysis Foundation, Insights Science Discovery, Marbridge Foundation.

Grants are necessary to help provide the financial resources for groups to do the work they need to do across Texas.

They help provide the funding to be able to do the programs, to work with the people, to work with the wildlife, to do the work in the parks.

That's what grant funding is all about.

- NARRATOR: Her work has a big impact all over the state.

Carly collaborated with Texas leaders to allocate $43 million in coronavirus relief funding.

Three million went to the state aquarium.

- The Texas State Aquarium identified their need to have a permanent facility in the area to help rehabilitate wildlife.

And so they needed a permanent place to be able to work and be able to do the programs that they need to do to assist wildlife in their recovery and then help release that wildlife.

- The three million dollars has been a phenomenal resource for us, and we couldn't have done it without them.

- Our previous rescue facility was about a mile away.

So anytime we wanted to go check on a patient, we had to get in the car and drive over there, take all of the equipment that we needed with us.

Having them here and being so close where we can do these really next-level diagnostic procedures so easily, just really helps us provide a level of care that was difficult for us to provide before.

If we needed to take an animal for CT, we had to transport it 20 minutes across town in traffic, you know, and that just adds a whole next level of stress for that animal.

So we can eliminate all of that.

- JENNIFER: And of course for us, that was life changing, and it's gonna be life changing for Texas.

- My favorite part of the job is to see the actual impact in all of the different communities throughout Texas.

[workers cheering] The only thing better would actually be doing those programs with these different organizations.

It's really exciting to be able to hear about these programs, see the actual impact from the dollars that the state provided to the actual boots-on-the-ground work that's being done.

- WORKER: Awesome.

[water splashing] [wind blowing] [birds chirping] [upbeat music] - What I really love about Caprock Canyons and what everybody should look forward to is it's more rugged, more raw in nature.

♪ ♪ Not only is it a lot of the trails are fast, and flowing, and exciting, but you have ledges, and steep climbs, and descents, and rocky rock garden areas that challenges you to keep the rubber side down.

♪ ♪ - I like the one on 217 that's right at the mouth.

- RIDER 2: Yeah.

- That's, to me, that's the best view into the canyon.

- CHRIS: The best all round trail for a wide variety of people is probably gonna be the Eagle Point Trail.

Fast, it's flowy.

There are several little canyons you have to cross.

It's easy access to the trail from the Honey Flats campground.

[upbeat music] Beautiful.

♪ ♪ One thing people really need to look for and search out when they come to Caprock Canyon State Park is the clarity tunnel ride from Monks Crossing.

And it's amazing.

You come around the corner, and there's just this huge hole in the side of the cliff.

It's so large, the ceiling is unexpectedly tall, and it's these massive wood timbers that you know have been there for over 100 years.

♪ ♪ This is a great place to come to to ride your bike, to hike.

There are some spectacular views where you're on the rim of the canyon.

You don't have to be, you know, a hardcore cycling enthusiast.

The little kids, the casual riders are also gonna have a lot of fun on that trail.

♪ ♪ [bats chirp] [ominous music] - MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Bracken Cave.

♪ ♪ This is a maternity colony of Mexican free-tailed bats.

♪ ♪ The females migrate from Mexico to Texas each year to feed on insects during the summer and to raise new pups.

At five weeks old, the youngsters have already grown to adult size and are preparing to take their first flight.

[dramatic music] Airspace is crowded, for Bracken Cave contains 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats and is the largest congregation of mammals on earth.

♪ ♪ It's a difficult place to learn how to fly.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ As the sun sets each summer evening, the colony begins to emerge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It is time for these young bats to spread their wings.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Bats experience the world much differently than we do.

They emit sound too high for our ears to hear, which bounce off objects and return as echoes, giving each bat an auditory map of their surroundings.

But with so many voices, their echolocation is hindered, and they must also rely on sight.

[ominous music] The new pups must navigate two rotations around the bat-nado: rise above the trees, and then fly to their hunting grounds.

♪ ♪ Their gravest danger is collision.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [birds chirping] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [birds chirping] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] This series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.