- NARRATOR: 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 provided by the Toyota Tundra.

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

Adventure-- it's what we share.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - The ovens came west with the pioneers.

It's a quick and easy way to use the coals from your fire to make an oven out of a pot.

- I am the fourth generation, and I think that's really special that through all the hard times and hardships, we've been able to keep it together as a working ranch.

- I like to challenge myself in a lot of situations to test my limits and see what I can do.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Texas Parks & Wildlife , a television series for all outdoors.

♪ ♪ [birds chirping] - NARRATOR: On a crisp February morning at Cleburne State Park, south of Fort worth, a group arrives to get set for their monthly meet out.

While they have an almost religious devotion to their gathering, this is not a church group.

And while they share some specialized knowledge, it's no secret society either.

In fact, sharing their secrets is part of why they gather.

These folks are members of the Lone Star Dutch Oven Society.

- That's probably good right there.

- The Chisholm Trail Chapter to be precise.

And they are preparing for a DOG.

- RICK: When we get together, it's called a DOG, a Dutch oven gathering.

- NARRATOR: That just means they're about to fix lunch.

- We cook and we eat and we talk about cooking and eatin'.

[laughing] [clanking] - WOMAN: Should be really good when it comes out.

- NARRATOR: The Dutch oven is a cast iron cook pot, but not just any.

It holds a special status in Texas.

Shared with the bluebonnet, the mockingbird and the pecan tree, among other icons.

The legislature even named it the Official Cooking Implement of the State of Texas.

In case you didn't know we had one of those.

- LAVOY: They burn really well.

- NARRATOR: Lavoy Oates, is about to make the Official State Food in his.

- We're gonna be cooking chili.

My wife can't eat real spicy chili, but she's not here today, so I'm gonna spice it up a little bit.

Yeah.

- WOMAN: When the cat's away.

- That's it, I'll mix all that up.

Then add little cayenne pepper in this one here anyway.

But we don't add beans to it.

- No, because you're in Texas.

- No beans, that's right.

So it's called chili with beans.

Chili don't have beans, but this is chili with beans.

- That'll be good, just a Texas thing you know.

- Right.

- Some people kind of get upset, being in Texas, you don't add beans to your chili.

- Every third Saturday, we just get together and cook.

And just something that we do just for fun.

[upbeat music] - NARRATOR: Step aside diets, and make way for the casseroles.

- We're cooking chicken Alfredo casserole.

Chicken cordon bleu casserole.

- It's just a beanie weenie casserole.

- Chicken enchilada casserole, Mexican rice, and a Bundt cake.

- NARRATOR: Oh yeah, and the desserts.

- Bread pudding.

- DENNIS: Also, a crumb cake.

- Anything that you can cook on your stove at home, we can cook in a Dutch oven with one exception.

- And that is ice cream.

And Rick Alexander proved that out here one day.

- You can't cook ice cream on your stove at home, but I can make it in a Dutch oven.

- He made ice cream in a Dutch oven.

He sure did.

[laughing] [upbeat music] - There's always a lot of variety.

There's a lot of different dishes.

- And then I'll add my secret spices to it.

And it's really not secret.

It's just garlic salt, onion flakes, oregano.

- You reckon I could try that when you're done?

-Yes sir.

-All right.

- The skills that they're teaching are skills that have been used for literally hundreds of years.

This is the same sort of cooking that someone may have done on the Chisholm Trail, which runs right through here.

[somber music] - DENNIS: It's kind of associated with the cook on the, on the cattle drives.

And the chuck wagon.

The ovens came west with the pioneers.

- MICHAEL: When pioneers and travelers would travel across the United States, it was a quick and easy way to use the coals from your fire to make an oven out of a pot.

And it's been modified and tweaked and perfected since then, but it's still the same basic techniques.

Those techniques still work very very well today.

- This type of cooking is a little more precise in that you're using briquettes.

They put out a certain amount of heat.

You can use a certain number of briquettes to get real precise with your heating.

They call these camp Dutch ovens.

So, if it has the ring in the legs, it's called a camp Dutch oven.

And they put the ring on there so it'll hold the charcoal.

- They've been coming here for years, teaching Dutch oven techniques and sharing their experience and sharing their food with visitors here at the park.

- The number of coals in that ring, it's pretty close to the diameter of the pot plus four.

It's not really complicated, it's just, there's just a few tricks and things that you learn to do that makes all the difference in the world, as to whether or not you burn something, whether you get it completely done.

We'll let that simmer there for a little while.

- It takes about 15 to 20 briquettes to cook your entire dinner.

Add one to the top and one to the bottom for 25 degrees.

These people are absolutely amazing.

- DENNIS: That looks really good.

- NARRATOR: Just after noon, cooking is complete and pots are lined up buffet-style.

Some curious visitors, perhaps drawn by delicious aromas, are welcomed to join.

- DENNIS: We're eating lunch, you want some lunch?

You're welcome.

It's all cooked in a Dutch oven.

- WOMAN: Yeah?

- DENNIS: Go right ahead.

And you're welcome to eat with us.

- MICHAEL: They always invite people to try what they have cooked, to call them, email them and learn the trade.

They've been asked to do this demonstration monthly somewhere else, and they choose to keep coming back here to their park, Cleburne State Park.

And we're just thankful to have them.

- NARRATOR: Recipes and laughs are shared.

And a few new folks are introduced to an old way of cooking.

- DENNIS: The food is really good.

We have a lot of fun, you know, cooking outdoors.

I think the number one thing is just the people.

Food, fun and fellowship-- that's what it's all about.

- NARRATOR: Needless to say, no one leaves with an empty stomach.

- I like to say, if you come to one of our events and you go home hungry, you're not doing it right.

[laughing] [water rippling] [gentle music] - There's a lot of life along this river.

Really a magical place for me.

I just love to be here all the time.

♪ ♪ I am Caleb Helsel.

I live in Austin, Texas.

I've been a birder for six or seven years.

Bird watching's been a longtime hobby of mine.

One summer, I saw these people with big cameras, but they weren't looking at birds, they were looking at dragonflies.

So that made me curious what kind of species are around here that these people are seeing that are so interesting.

And that just got me down the path of curiosity.

[water rippling] There's an abundance of water here, kind of along a river the whole way with several ponds that attract a bunch of wildlife.

[bird chirping] Dragonflies like to lay their eggs in bodies of water.

As those eggs develop, they'll grow into nymphs, which are also hunters, like the adult dragonflies.

And they live the first part of their lives underwater hunting other aquatic insects.

And then when they're ready, they'll climb out of the water and turn into a dragonfly, which will fly around and hunt things like mosquitoes, gnats, and even other dragonflies, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, this is a male great blue skimmer right here.

Wow!

I think I've seen over a hundred species of dragonflies.

Every time I see a new one, it's just a little bit of enjoyment for me.

See if I can catch it.

Got it.

Let's have a look.

So be gentle.

You gotta make sure you hold them so that you don't harm them.

They sure are pretty.

This guy's a Rambur's forktail.

I'm gonna let him go.

Wee.

It's just nice to get intimate close views with a dragonfly actually in your hand.

When I started dragonflies, I couldn't recognize any species at all that I was seeing, but over time, I eventually kind of got familiar with the species in my area and was able to recognize all the species that I'm looking at.

This guy's a Blue Dasher.

I use iNaturalist.

It's a app and a website for people to post sightings of anything they see in nature.

And experts will give opinions about what species you're seeing, but eventually that knowledge actually builds up and you will become an expert on the species that you're seeing, and eventually you'll just be able to see it in the field and know what you're seeing.

[insect buzzing] It's always fun to discover uncommon ones that aren't regular for an area.

[gentle music] - I am John Abbott, Chief Curator and Director of Research and Collections for the University of Alabama Museums.

- My name is Kendra Abbott and I'm an ecologist.

What really gets me excited, what really wake me up in the morning is like discovery.

It's like being in the 1800s with Darwin, you know, traveling around the world and figuring out where species are, where they aren't.

Although Darwin didn't have a lot of the tools that we have today.

- JOHN: Oh yeah, look at the river.

- KENDRA: Yeah, it looks nice.

- We'll see the Erpetogomphus eutainia here for sure.

So, there are 250 species of dragonflies and damselflies, or odonates, known in Texas, and some of them are rarer than others.

And so what we're trying to do is better document some of those more rare or rarely seen species as a way to figure out if they need conservation help.

If a dragonfly is around in the water, it's shedding DNA.

And so we use this machine called ANDe to filter the DNA out of the water, and we'll be able to pick that up.

Even little particles of DNA, we'll be able to pick that up.

- We'll pull up about a liter of water.

We'll collect the DNA on a filter paper in here.

- JOHN: Then we will go back to the lab using the set of what are called primers, select for dragonflies, and the specific ones we're looking for, amplify them and compare that DNA to these known libraries of DNA out there to determine what's here.

- We could spend like 10 weeks looking for this species, trying to find the nymphs in the water, but in just 30 minutes, we could sample the water in the soil and then say, "Hey, you know what?"

Erpetogomphus is here," so I'm just gonna grab a soil sample because we might find the DNA in the soil if we miss it in the, the water.

- JOHN: It's much more efficient in terms of just the amount of time it takes to potentially get an idea of what dragonfly species are here.

It can detect potentially really rare species, and we're not having to kill anything.

We're actually just literally filtering the DNA out of the water.

- I really love using tools like environmental DNA to be able to really figure out what's happening with these rare species.

What is their range?

Where are they, you know?

Can we find them this year?

And then maybe we don't find them in five years.

And then we know, "Hey, we really need to focus on conserving this species."

Something's changed in this habitat that doesn't allow it to persist anymore.

- JOHN: Dragonflies are oftentimes the one that really gets people hopping and excited.

It pulls people over from studying birds and from studying butterflies, just because it's such a new group that hasn't received so much attention in the past.

There's a real opportunity for enthusiasts who contribute real science.

- Oh, male roseate skimmer on this twig.

You can just keep going to a place, and the more times you go there, the more chances you'll have at finding a larger variety of different species.

This here is an American rubyspot.

It's a kind of damselfly, and you can usually tell the difference between dragonflies and damselflies by the way they hold their wings when they're perched.

So damselflies like this will usually hold their wings close together and straight up over their backs, while dragonflies will usually have their wings spread out so you can see all four of them.

Before, I was just looking for birds, but now I have a whole nother species to look for.

I dunno if I could get burned out.

I mean, if I see all the dragonfly species, I can start looking at the butterfly species and the plant species.

There's always more to learn.

[birds singing] [bright music] - We are in Southern Atascosa County, which is approximately 60 miles south of San Antonio, Texas.

[bright music] [car door slams] What makes it special is the heritage.

I am the fourth generation and I think that's really special that through all the hard times and hardships that we've been able to keep it together as a working ranch.

So we're over a hundred years old.

And it came through a line of only daughters.

My grandmother was an only daughter, my mom was an only daughter, and I'm an only daughter.

It's not just land to me, it's family.

A 1922 picture of my great-grandmother, who is one of the first people that started buying parcels of land here with my grandmother on horseback here on the ranch.

Purchases of the ranch started in 1916, and they started buying 20 acre tracks.

So the ranch was not bought as a big parcel.

It was pieced together, traded to be what it is today.

And since that time, my husband and I have added another 1,300 acres of adjoining ranch land to compliment what we already had.

Well, these mesquites are just starting to bud out.

Document that for our spraying.

- Yeah.

- Forty-five days post bud out.

- This is South Texas brush ecosystem.

It's made up of lots of different soil types and a lot of different brush species, mesquite trees to Trujillo, to lots of different species that provide a lot of habitat for wildlife.

- All we need is some rain now.

- Yeah, we need some rain.

- Just some rain.

[Matt] Some of the challenges are, as you can see around here, is drought.

We're a very variable rainfall landscape.

We also have a lot of the brush species that grow here are re-sp routers and so managing the brush is very difficult.

[cows mooing] [Suzanne] We have done a lot of work to supply our cows with water.

[Matt] The development of earthen tanks throughout the property have been exceptional and they run water lines to all of their tanks.

[water trickling] [gentle music] - In the old days of Highway 16 wasn't even paved and my great-grandmother, truly a pioneer woman also, she talked about herding cattle all the way from down here to San Antonio to Union Stockyards on foot.

Come on.

A hardship that we wouldn't even come close to knowing about.

[cows mooing] Okay, breakfast is served.

[Matt] So we all to work with landowners that care about their land and the work that they do with the community, as well as on the property.

And it's very apparent that Suzanne and her family care very much about the property.

[gentle music] - I think today the sharing of a knowledge is really important because we have to get out and educate on what rural life is.

We need to be in organizations that promote wildlife.

We've done this through the WA youth hunts.

Sometimes it's the first time they've ever come out and been able to hunt.

I love everything about this place.

It's come through so many generations.

To go to that fifth or sixth generation, it's a challenge.

So I hope that my children will appreciate it and I hope that I can pass that along.

That's my hope, is that they will find enjoyment in the love of the land like I have.

[bag ruffling] [zipper rasping] [bag ruffling] - LEVI: We got up just like at regular time to go to school.

But Jonah was lucky, we pulled him out of school to do some real life hunter's education.

- All right.

Ready to roll?

- Mm-ham.

- LEVI: Drove down from the North Dallas area and had some good father-son bonding time on the way here.

We moved down to Texas about five years ago and kind of making the shift from hunting in Iowa, to hunting in Texas has been a, a big change.

Living in a major metro, you have to put in some effort to make those kind of experiences happen.

So this is affordable, and gives you access to places you would never get otherwise.

[upbeat music] - HUNTER: We're here in Amass County to do a youth hunt with the Texas Youth Hunting Program.

- INSTRUCTOR: So push your palms to the sky.

It stretches all those tendons, and all those muscles that you're gonna use to draw any type of bow.

- Texas Youth Hunting program exists to help kids that are interested in hunting, get started.

- INSTRUCTOR: Range is hot.

- BOB: If you have the interest, we have everything that you need to be able to go hunting.

[arrow thuds] We'll help you have a place to go.

We'll help you learn what you need to know.

We can give you the gear you need.

A little bit more of an involved event than a lot of our hunts because bow hunting's a little bit more complicated.

- INSTRUCTOR: Your changing your point of an aim to adjust your point of impact.

- You, you have to be a ninja.

[Jonah chuckles] It's basically, you gotta be sneaky, right?

- Mm-hm.

You gotta creep in there, you gotta be set up before they come around.

- BOB: Bow hunters are a curious group of people.

We are choosing to make everything harder.

[bow clicks] [arrow thuds] - Ooh nice.

- Your form is... - BOB: So it takes a little more preparation, takes a little more thought sometimes into what we're doing and how we're doing it.

- INSTRUCTOR: With everybody watching too, that's not hard, right?

Good job, Jonah.

[arrow whacks] [owl trills] [wind blowing] All right, well if it starts getting too cold, then it's definitely- - LEVI: I think it's pretty cool to have like the base camp experience.

A lot of kids don't get that these days.

- HUNTER: When you walk down the fence line, you won't have a problem seeing- - LEVI: They don't get to experience being around other parents that are interested in outdoor activities.

[engine hums] - JONAH: There's something on the road up there.

[zipper rasping] - JONAH: I've shot a bow before, but this is my first time bow hunting.

[rain pelting] - LEVI: It's raining.

It's like sleet.

I like the extra challenge.

I like to challenge myself in a lot of situations to test my limits and see what I can do.

[thunder booming] [rain pelting] - LEVI: [whispering] If we were buck hunting, we could put like a doe over in that area and if they hear that call, they catch that wind, it'll come running right in.

- Yeah.

- I wouldn't be surprised if he comes and pops out in the same spot as that other guy.

- Excited.

I'm hoping we'll see a doe, because we saw a buck earlier.

He wasn't legal to shoot.

- JONAH: Come on.

Come on.

Oh there she comes.

- LEVI: She's here again.

- JONAH: She's walking out right now.

- LEVI: Turn your bow up vertical when you get a chance.

- JONAH: Dad.

- LEVI: Get it vertical and get ready.

- She stopped.

The feeder wobbled.

[Levi exhales loudly] - LEVI: She probably winded us.

[gentle banjo music] - JONAH: Didn't get a chance, but I was really excited.

My heart was pounding, I felt kind of jittery.

- Could you hear your own heart?

- No, but I could feel it.

- [chuckles] Yeah, that's awesome.

- [whispering] You can hear her crunching the corn.

[soft upbeat music] The veterinarian said he needed to get braces.

- That one?

- Yeah.

- You know why?

- Why?

- They said he has buck teeth.

[Levi chuckles] ♪ ♪ I don't think he like my joke.

- No.

- Anytime you're out hunting is better than any other day for the most part besides your wedding day or your wife's birthday or your anniversary.

Well, I said that your wedding, did I get my anniversary, yeah.

[chuckles] I think about it more about like filling your heart and mind with memories than your freezer with meat.

I know we'll look back 20 years later and say, oh, you remember that time we went out with all those crazy guys and got to do some deer hunting.

Like, that'll be what we talk about.

- NARRATOR: Next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - This spring break, I decided to try something a little bit new and go on a backpacking trip.

We'll see how it goes.

- Even though you can be sitting in the campground with 50 other campers, you only walk 100 yards, you're going to be all alone in the woods.

- It's got a small little chute area, great for children that are like 12 and under that want to float a river that's not too hectic.

[theme music] - NARRATOR: That's next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife.

[waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] [waterfall splashing] - NARRATOR: 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 provided by the Toyota Tundra.

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

Adventure-- it's what we share.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.