- 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 & Wildlife... - They put me in a baby crib going out there like we went today.

Never done nothing else!

- You can come just within an hour's drive of Houston and experience Texas the way it used to be.

- You typically find the bats in abandoned houses in the spring to summer months because they're looking for a warm roost.

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

[boat engine rumbles] [gentle music] [radio chatter] - NARRATOR: Meet Anthony Stringo.

- We're going to try the ship channel.

- NARRATOR: This bay shrimper calls Port O'Connor home.

- ANTHONY: I was born here, that's all I've ever done.

Ya know, Matagorda Bay mainly.

- NARRATOR: While Gulf shrimpers may stay at sea for weeks, bay shrimpers take things one day at a time.

- This right here is a new concept for me for the last 10 years.

This is called a lazy line.

So, you don't have to pull the whole thing in to get to the back of it.

[clangs] - NARRATOR: A lot has changed over the decades, and Anthony has had to adapt.

His catch now includes Atlantic Croaker, a fish recreational anglers like to use for bait.

- ANTHONY: Ya know, the weekenders gotta be here, the people that buy them got to be here.

You can catch all you want, but if there's no one to buy them, you're not going to make nothing.

You want one about that size for fishing, that right there, put it back.

- NARRATOR: While Anthony's been shrimping for most of his life, he's still decades behind his dad.

- ANTHONY: Fifty years I'd say.

He's probably one of the oldest left out here, might be one or two more his age left.

- One, two, one.

See I'm going to reinforce the edges here.

Add another string here to stay together.

- NARRATOR: Jessie Stringo's 75, and when he's not shrimping, he's mending his nets.

- Pilings, tires, just so many different things!

- NARRATOR: The Stringo's have been shrimping for generations.

Here is Jesse's dad, Junior, in Houston Chronicle from 1930.

- Oh yeah, he's the one that taught me, yeah, down in the 50s.

Oh, there was so much damn shrimp, we didn't know what to do in them days.

- NARRATOR: Those days were indeed prosperous says Marc Fisher, who's studied the shrimping industry for 25 years.

- Shrimping in the 1950s, it was a very good decade.

Price of shrimp was very high, fuel, fuel was cheap, labor was abundant.

There was almost no government regulation back then.

If you could work hard and handle it, it was all for the taking.

- JESSIE: Man, there was lots of shrimp, it kept dwindling down after about 50 years of working em.

- NARRATOR: Yet Jessie is still out working em.

- Ah, what happened!

- NARRATOR: His old boat, The High Roller, rolls along.

- JESSIE: You know how it gets old and everything coming apart.

I don't want to stick my hands in there.

Guide the cables back and forth like you do a rod and reel.

- NARRATOR: Jessie has a new partner, his brother James, who just sold his shrimping license.

And his boat.

- JAMES: Yeah, I was getting too old to work by myself now, and I just had to give it up!

Whew!

I'm all right with it.

I know I couldn't do it no more so I just went ahead and sold everything, boat, license, everything.

- NARRATOR: While there are 300 or so licensed bay shrimpers now, back in the late 80s, Gulf and Bay shrimpers were out in force with more than 5,000 licensed shrimpers on the water.

With that much pressure, the state of Texas started to buy back shrimping licenses.

The reason, shrimp nets bring in much more than just shrimp.

- MARK: For every pound of shrimp that is caught, they also catch four pounds of other species.

These species have no commercial value, they're just pitched over the side.

That really doesn't sound that bad, but when you are talking about 60, 80 million pounds of shrimp caught every year, that's a lot of bycatch.

We would buy back commercial shrimp license, and then retire it, which in turn would reduce the amount of bycatch that is being caught.

- JAMES: Hang on!

- NARRATOR: Now James has a little extra money in his pocket and he and his brother Jesse can work together.

- JESSIE: You ready!?

- JAMES: Yeah!

- JESSIE: I'd go crazy if I had to sit home and do nothing.

I had one brother retire at 62 and he didn't make it to 64.

- JAMES: That's sorry!

There weren't to many shrimp, a few croakers and a few ribbon fish.

There wasn't too much of nothing.

- Agh, wasn't too much!

- NARRATOR: It's the unknown that's the constant concern in this business.

- JAMES: You never know there, ya know.

Sometimes you have a good year, and next year you might not get, ya know, hardly nothing.

Always different.

It's not always the same where you can depend on it all the time.

- JESSIE: Ugh, we picked the wrong place to go to!

- JAMES: Get the hell out of here!

- This is it, we're going home!

I've had enough bad luck in one day!

- NARRATOR: They can only bet on a better day tomorrow, as shrimping still pulls them back to the bay.

- Well, if I'm able to work, I'm gonna work.

It's just no hurry no more.

I tell ya just let it go one step at a time!

- ANTHONY: Oh yeah, he still gets around good for his age and what he does, he's one of the last one's left.

Yeah, he's gonna do it till he can't do it no more.

[boat engine rumbles] - NARRATOR: Anthony is out this morning too.

- ANTHONY: Sunshine with a northeast wind.

- NARRATOR: They're starting out by checking what's called a try net.

- We have the little net down, looking around just to find the best spot.

Where we won't be dragging for nothing You're trying to see what you can find, and you get an idea.

- RICHARD: We have 15, Anthony, best try so far!

You dropping it in?

- ANTHONY: Yeah!

- RICHARD: We'll get the jump chain on this side.

- NARRATOR: Anthony grew up out here, and has literally shrimped Matagorda Bay since he was a baby.

- ANTHONY: They put me in a baby crib, going out there like we went today.

Never done nothing else!

- NARRATOR: Back then, and even now, every day is a gamble.

- It's just the challenge, cause you don't know what you are going to catch.

You're liable to get out there, and make good money today, a thousand dollars today, and the next two weeks, catch nothing.

Like I said, it's just a challenge.

I love it.

- ANTHONY: Looks like shrimp in there!

- RICHARD: Ya love some shrimp in it!

Yah!

- NARRATOR: Since these guys are catching shrimp for use as live bait, it's a race to get them back to the bait shop.

- RICHARD: More money this a way.

About 10 times as much money.

- ANTHONY: Takes more effort to keep them alive, you gotta have pumps running, you gotta drag shorter drags.

- RICHARD: That was pretty good for live bait, that was a pretty good drag.

Ay-eeee!

[laughing] - NARRATOR: Anthony's made it back to Port O'Connor and it's time to unload today's catch.

- ANTHONY: We're picking the croakers out, the Golden ones.

- RICHARD: Get the shrimp out now.

- ANTHONY: Yeah!

Here, get me a scoop, I'll get rid of this one.

A little bit more!

- ANTHONY: We got, live shrimp caught, we caught some bait, we got what, almost 40 quarts of shrimp.

It's a little bit, pay for the fuel.

[splash] - NARRATOR: The fresh from the sea table shrimp is where the money used to be made.

- ANTHONY: These are the big shrimp, we ought a be getting four dollars a pound for them shrimp right there.

But the market's not there cause they get so much from overseas, and the farm raised shrimp.

- NARRATOR: Foreign farm raised shrimp operations have taken over.

- Aqua cultured shrimp can they can be raised a much lower price than you can catch them in the wild.

- NARRATOR: Ninety percent of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. are farmed raised.

- MARK: It's cheaper to grow them, than it is to catch them.

So, the price of shrimp has actually dropped.

The dockside value of shrimp today is lower than it was in the 1980s.

[sighs] - Kinda throws the wind out of your sails.

Yeah, the price of shrimp fell, people went to go find something else to do ya know.

- NARRATOR: The changes leave Anthony as the last in his family's business.

- You can't make no more with it... Ohhh.

Unless she has kids and they want to do it but other than that, yeah!

- NARRATOR: And yet after a hard day of work, in these difficult times, there is reason for a smile.

- Nothing broke, so we don't have to fix nothing to go out tomorrow, so that's a plus, that's a real big plus.

[majestic music] - NARRATOR: Despite the low prices, the pounding on the body, the last of the Stringo's carries on.

- ANTHONY: It's just habit, I mean, it's just something I've done all my life.

Somebody ever said you went to college?

Yeah, I went to college, in Matagorda Bay.

[boat engine rumbles] - NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant from the Sport Fish Restoration Program.

[upbeat music] - The thing that makes Brazos Bend so special and so magical is the diversity here.

You can come just within an hour's drive of Houston and experience Texas the way it used to be.

And within this 5,000-acre park, we've got swamps to marshes to lakes, coastal tall grass prairie, and we've also got some pristine bottomland hardwood forests here.

There's so many things to see here, but one of the biggest draws here are the alligators.

On a good day, it's not uncommon to be able to walk the trails, and see 30 or 40 big alligators out basking either on the edge of the trails or out on the islands.

And I'm happy to say that no one has ever been injured by an alligator here at Brazos Bend.

We've got three big picnic areas.

Probably half the people that come into the park visit Elm Lake and Forty-Acre Lake because they want to see birds, they want to see alligators.

It's a great place to come out, spend the day with the family, and have their own twist on how to enjoy the park.

We have about 30 miles of hiking and biking trails.

The majority of our trails are nice wide gravel trails, so they're family-friendly, whether you're on bikes with kids or even strollers.

If you're into a little more challenging hiking or a little more challenging biking, we've got some trails that are back along the Brazos River that offer a little more scenery, and probably a little more challenging for mountain biking, a little topography back there.

We've got a fantastic nature center here where we have some exhibits and live animals that are local to this area.

- GIRL: It's soft like a snake.

- DAVID: Every Saturday and Sunday we do free interpretive programs here at the nature center.

- Oh!

You can see the gold now.

- DAVID: So if you come the park and want to know a little more about something specific, come take advantage of one of our interpretive programs.

- NATURALIST: Isn't he cool?

[indistinct chatter] - DAVID: The George Observatory is located here in the park.

It's actually owned and operated by the Museum of Natural Science in Houston.

But it has a 36-inch research telescope in a dome, and then two 18-inch telescopes in domes.

- ASTRONOMER: Right now, we've got in on Jupiter.

- DAVID: You can come out any Saturday evening and afternoon and buy tickets to view through the big scopes, and there's always lots of astronomer club members that are willing to show you whatever they're looking at that night.

- VISITOR: Oh yeah, very cool.

[upbeat music] - DAVID: We have this diverse package here at Brazos Bend State Park that's less than an hour's drive away from the biggest urban area in the southern United States, being Houston.

[bird squawking] We're kind of off the main beaten path here.

We don't have motorboats and we don't have water skiing, we don't have miniature golf.

People that come to Brazos Bend come here for the nature.

We really are a nature-lover's paradise here at Brazos Bend.

[water flowing] - NARRATOR: It's another utopian day in Utopia... which is an actual place in the Hill Country, west of San Antonio.

- LEE BEVLY: Kind of a small community, a lot of ranching, a lot of hunting business, a lot of retired folks.

[church piano music] In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

- NARRATOR: Every week, Lee Bevly serves a community of churchgoers.

- My main job is the pastor here at the Utopia Baptist Church, and that's my full time occupation.

- NARRATOR: But outside of worship, the Reverend Bevly provides another service in this community.

[light switch clicks] - My hobby is taxidermy.

- NARRATOR: When his focus is not saving souls, it's saving skins, as lasting mementoes of hunting and fishing trips.

- It's not a calling I don't think, but I think it's part of a gift that God has given me.

An eye to see the nature of animals and try to take something that is lifeless and make it look lifelike, look real.

Put a little glue on here.

I know I'm not the best taxidermist in the world, by a long shot, but I know I'm not the worst neither.

[laughs] [violin music] You know, every taxidermist is different.

- NARRATOR: A look around the Bevly home shows just how much Lee has learned about the art of taxidermy.

- The first thing I ever mounted was a squirrel, and I used a paper towel roll and two black marbles for the eyes.

[camera clicks] Ended up about that long.

So it's been a conversation piece.

My sister still has it.

[upbeat music] You know I grew up, my dad was a hunter, and his dad was a hunter.

Kind of a family thing.

So we did it all of our life.

[music] Because I love nature, I love the outdoors... [drill whirs] let's not waste something that's been harvested, and just preserving that beauty so that we get to see it all the time.

The hide, the horns, preserving the memories.

Let's see where we're at.

I've been asked you know well is that a godly thing or not to do?

James 1:22: We're to be doers of the Word.

In Genesis chapter two, God told Man to take care of the earth.

Harvesting an animal, and knowing the numbers that we can harvest, is part of conservation.

I'm usually out here by myself and it's a good quiet time.

Sometimes I'll have to stop and write down some sermon thoughts.

- NARRATOR: While the Reverend's hobby seems at peace with his faith, there is one kind of taxidermy he will not touch.

- I have had people ask me to do a cat and a poodle, and I said "No way!"

[laughs] No pets!

This is a goose.

These are wings for a turkey.

Oh that's my jackalope.

- NARRATOR: Though the craft has evolved, with creativity and available supplies... - All kind of sizes.

White-tailed deer.

Fish eyes.

- NARRATOR: ...some things have not changed.

- Fixing to do a quail.

It teaches you patience.

I've already skinned it out.

Put the eyes in it, and then I've got wires in the legs and that'll help him stand up.

That's one of the reasons why I picked up taxidermy as a kid: to learn patience.

[drill whirs] And then I can set him in here and have him standing up now.

And then it's just a matter of getting all the feathers in the right place.

- NARRATOR: Preserved with care, a mount like this quail can last a lifetime.

- As long as they don't have a cat in the house.

It still has bird scent.

[laugh] And it still looks like a bird.

So I tell everyone now, if you've got cats at home, beware.

- NARRATOR: Although most work is for clients, the Bevlys keep their own mounted memories.

- Whenever someone goes hunting and they harvest their animal.. Got a bunch in here.

...that's an experience that they have for the rest of their life.

Some of mine and the kids.

This is my son's first deer.

When they take that home and put it on their wall, every time they walk by they look at that, so all those memories come back.

Every hunt with my dad or the sons or even my daughter, she's a hunter too, they all have some kind of special meaning behind every one of them.

So I come in here every once in a while and just look around and remember all the great memories we've had.

Probably one of the biggest problems with the world today is families don't spend time together.

♪ Learning to... ♪ We do a lot of things together.

And because of that, we have good communication.

[uplifting music] - NARRATOR: However you may define Utopia.... As a place of faith or community of friends and family... as a place where work brings joy.... or maybe just a place where the sky is blue and water runs clear... Lee Bevly seems to have found his Utopia, and it's a real place, in the Texas Hill Country.

[gentle music] [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [water splashes] - This is Anders Pond and what's cool about this area is that it is a natural tupelo pond.

- NARRATOR: Biologist, Laurie Lomas, is looking for an animal few folks ever get to see.

She's scanning the trees of this tupelo swamp for the threatened Rafinesque's Big-eared bat.

[splashing] - LAURIE: Being that the Rafinesque's Big-eared bat is a species that depends upon older growth trees, you tend to find them here.

This tupelo tree was discovered about four years ago, we put some radio tracking devices on the bats to figure out where they were going in the winter.

Turns out this is the tree where we would find them almost all the time.

In the winter these bats will all colonize together in the same roost, however in the spring, the males go their separate ways, where the females all stick together and they form a maternity colony where they'll all have their pups in their summer roost.

- NARRATOR: One maternity colony has found the perfect summer home in this rather spooky-looking structure.

[eerie music] - LAURIE: This house was abandoned 18 years ago.

We were going to tear it down.

We decided that we would rather keep it open for the bats and actually keep the house in working order enough so they could use it as a roost.

[whispering] Oh there's some right there, one, two, three.... [bat squeaks] You typically find the bats in abandoned houses in the spring to summer months because they're looking for a warm roost, and we have some towers as well that were built specifically for these bats and this maternity colony.

And they're close by and the bats will readily move from here to the towers depending on the temperature.

[bats squeak] I can hear them, they're in there!

[door creeks] Oh, there's one right there!

[gentle music] The Rafinesque's Big-eared bat has very large ears, as you can tell!

They kind of resemble rabbit ears.

They're used for echolocation.

They're used for navigating in the dark and also for hunting prey and also for communication with each other as well.

[gentle music] - NARRATOR: With man-made roosts, and with further protection of pristine habitats, there is hope that the Rafinesque's Big-eared bat may one day be out of the woods.

- LAURIE: What we know about this bat is that it was in decline.

Because these guys need old bottomland hardwood forest, very old forest.

We've purchased this refuge, we're continuing to purchase more properties and let the properties get older and older and older.

And as the trees mature, that will create more habitat for these guys!

[sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] [sprinklers spraying] 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.