- 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... - To me, I walk out on a grassland, I like to look at the structure.

What does it look like?

Can an animal move through that?

- My great hope is that people will become more aware of this particular species and be grateful for the fact that we have them here in Texas.

- Real good weather for dove.

I hope they like it.

Cause if they like it, then I'm liking it.

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

[light music] [birds chirping] - MARK: We call our ranch the Brown Ranch.

- CHERYL: Where are we gonna go work today?

We are in Ammannsville, Texas, about 10 miles north of Schulenburg and about 10 miles south of La Grange.

- MARK: Kind of in between.

Just north of the coastal prairie, just south of the Balcones uplift.

Blackland, rolling prairie.

- Well I think probably most of our neighbors call our property overgrown.

- A friend of my brothers came up here one time and I said, "Well, I'm not gonna have cows."

And she said, "Well, you're gonna have to mow all this then."

I said, "No, I don't."

[laughs] To me, I walk out in a grassland, I like to look at the structure.

What does it look like?

Can an animal move through that?

Does it have nesting cover?

And saying, that's what I want our land to look like.

Just love living here.

Really do.

- CHERYL: I feel like we're blessed.

- MARK: Isn't that special?

- CHERYL: Yeah, there's that one.

- MARK: It just looks like a lunar landscape.

- CHERYL: Looks like sand.

- It does.

There's nothing there.

So when we first bought this property, it had been grazed intensively.

There was virtually nothing taller than the tops of your shoes.

I mean, it was just, the grass was all gone.

And if we'd have known better, we'd have probably said, "Well, we don't want that."

But we really like the views because of this rolling prairie.

It never started out as we want to do a restoration, but through websites like AgriLife and Parks and Wildlife, I started learning more about the area and once that seed got planted, it became a passion that I can't describe.

[barn doors clattering] The journey became, now we're here, what are we doing?

And why are we doing it?

But then there's a road that goes back to their camphouse.

That would be a good fire break.

Probably my favorite tool would be fire, just I like to see how quickly it changes things and then how quickly it responds to it afterwards.

I'm so happy it's burning.

- CHERYL: And it's always interesting 'cause it's really never the same, that the winds are different and whatever you're burning may be different, but it's really educational.

It's very fun.

- TIM: It's been about two weeks since the burn?

- Yeah, it was two weeks ago Sunday.

It had a lot of green in it.

I didn't think it would burn very well, but I think it did really well.

- These prairie systems and savanna systems that are in this area, they're disturbance dependent.

So when you rest, it's going to transition away from a prairie or from a savanna into probably a woodland or in worst case scenario, to a non-native grass system.

And so the work they do is imperative if we're gonna keep Texas looking like Texas and keep the species that have been here historically existing on this landscape.

This is Atlantic camas or wild hyacinth.

We call it an indicator plant.

Usually what it indicates is that this area has not been continuously heavily grazed or plowed in some time.

This plant is a compass plant and so it's a perennial prairie plant.

It's interesting 'cause in most of the geographic or plant atlases, it's not listed for Fayette County but this is the very southern end of its range.

When we started surveying this area, we found a load of plant diversity and species richness.

So over 180, 200 species of plants on the property, most of them not found in, in the surrounding area.

Prairie penstemon, or prairie beardtongue.

That's bumble bee food.

There's about 20 different species in Texas, but that one exists here.

It's a good indicator of a tallgrass blackland prairie.

Texas is a prairie state.

From the cattle drives that we're known for, to where we won our independence on the San Jacinto battlefield, it's like they're intertwined with what Texas is and what Texas is about.

And so we have to make a decision that are we gonna do the work that's necessary to maintain them.

[upbeat music] - Bison and fire were the two primary disturbances on this landscape for some 20,000 years.

That's what I'm trying to mimic.

My neighbor who has about 50 acres next door, he was grazing, leasing it to somebody and they were using it too much.

And so I called him up one day and I said, "Would you lease me your land?"

And he said, "But you don't have any cows."

And I said, "Well, I'll get some."

Never really had this great desire to be in the cattle business, but, it's a great tool.

I want the cows to be fat, happy and the habitat to be managed properly for the benefit of the wildlife.

- So Mark's always had his passions and his passion now is his grasses.

- You know, I find that spraying, spot spraying individual plant treatment of old world bluestem, very relaxing.

It is therapeutic.

Cheryl will tell you, I've done it for hours.

- CHERYL: He's definitely, I would say obsessed.

- [laughs] I like to say I'm committed or should be committed.

[laughs] - ♪ Here we go cutting mesquite today ♪ ♪ Mesquite today, mesquite today ♪ - On a small pasture, it's hard to have a huge impact and we need other people to manage in a similar fashion.

Perfect.

- CHERYL: Yeah, it's probably overgrown, more so than other people's property, but we prefer it because it's all the things that nature needs and all of our wildlife needs.

[upbeat music] - MARK: To me, the land ethic is to be a part of the landscape.

Changing that mindset where people want to be a part of the land rather than to dominate the land.

It just seemed like the right thing to do.

And it's also in a lot of ways easier.

A lot of people might look at this as wasted grass.

[laughs] It's not wasted.

The wildlife are using it, so it's not wasted.

[gentle music] [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - VIRON: We are on the Sabine River, what's called the Sandbar Trail.

For somebody who's never been to East Texas, this river is a good way to see what's out here.

[birds chirping] This river just gives access to big chunks of remote East Texas that are very stereotypical of what this east edge of the state has to offer.

It's a bit of a drive from a lot of the state, but it's certainly worth it once you get here.

- I love to be outdoors and this is a great way to experience the outdoors, especially in this part of Texas.

A lot of good water and the paddling is great.

It's a good way to spend the day.

The sandbars are quite unique.

It's one of the reasons I really enjoy this sandbar trail.

It's beautiful and they change each time we come down it because of the height of the river.

Sometimes they're very tall and sometimes not so much.

Today they're really pretty.

I think it would be a great place to camp sometime.

- VIRON: The river is not a fast river.

There's no class two waters.

It's a river anybody can paddle.

- Yeah, I like being out in nature and you see a lot of wildlife on the river banks when it's quiet.

The unique thing about this is the sandbars, of course, but also that it's a good current.

You can make the trip without too much effort.

- ASHLEY: This is really my first river trip.

It's really nice to just have a space like this in Texas.

Whenever you come out here and you're used to being in a city, it's really quiet, you don't see any people.

We maybe had one or two boats come past us.

- SCOTT: For Texas, it's a fairly unique river as far as having all the sandbars, all the sand.

Almost like a snowy river.

Just beautiful.

[water lapping] - VIRON: Part of being on the river is the tranquility.

This is, for lack of a better term, a very Zen thing.

It's really, really, really hard to get stressed out out here.

There's just no stress and so that's what most of us I think are looking for in our life.

Less stress, more tranquility.

Remote East Texas and time on the Sabine River, it certainly meets those criteria.

[water lapping] [acoustic guitar music] - So what we're gonna do, we'll probably try to get the easiest ones first.

- NARRATOR: Underneath all this mud... - BRETT: Try to get it pried up with these bars so you don't get bit.

- NARRATOR: ...there are some ancient wonders about to be set free.

They just don't know it yet.

- So they burrow up in the mud.

They're real camouflaged, and you have to probe for them and find them.

And you gotta make sure you grab the right end.

- I got him.

- NARRATOR: These muddy ponds have been a temporary refuge for some rare alligator snapping turtles.

And they are about to be released back into the wild.

- Thing about wildlife is when you're trying something like this, they don't know that they're going to a better place.

- NARRATOR: All these turtles are on their way back to Texas, thanks to some serious detective work.

- They are escape artists.

- Yeah, they are.

- Federal and state law enforcement agencies worked together to bust a Louisiana poaching operation.

- We discovered a market in Sulfur, Louisiana.

There was a lady and her sons that were poaching alligator snapping turtles in Texas and then selling them out of their residence in Louisiana.

- Call of the wild, we're gonna release this turtle.

I mean, we're gonna catch this turtle.

[laughing] That's a big turtle.

[phone rings] - JIM: So we made a buy in the parking lot and once we had made that buy, we had probable cause to show that these individuals were carrying on a commercial enterprise out of their residence in Louisiana.

- POACHER: Look, there he goes.

- JIM: So I figured that we would find some but I had no idea that we would find 30.

It took three days of running nets on those ponds day in and day out.

It was a good feeling.

[upbeat music] - Alligator snapping turtles historically have been under tremendous pressure from basically people wanting to eat them.

They've been harvested in massive quantities historically across the Southeastern United States.

In the mid 1970s, recognizing that, the Texas Parks and Wildlife protected the species, they banned the personal and commercial use of that species for any reason at all.

Example in Louisiana, still today, you can take one per person per day and consume it.

In Texas, you've not been able to, you know collect any for what, like four years.

- BRETT: They're very prehistoric.

You can just tell by looking at 'em they've got a lot of armor on 'em like dinosaurs.

It's been around a long time and we don't want to be the reason that they're gone.

- BIOLOGIST: So we're just working it up.

- PAUL: We're able to get some genetic samples from across the range.

- BIOLOGIST: 50 even.

- PAUL: Through a population genetics analysis.

- BIOLOGIST: 20 point 30.

- PAUL: Especially putting these guys back in their drainages from where they came from.

Oh, it's a big one.

Look at the size of it.

- NARRATOR: This is a mature female.

- You ready?

- I'm ready.

- NARRATOR: She's labeled as Sa bine River turtle number one.

- JOE: Oh yeah.

- This is a strong turtle.

It's a strong turtle.

- All right, thank you, girl.

Eyes are good.

I'd say five.

- We try and go from one to nine and five is right where we ought be so big and strong, and amazing.

- Lovely.

- NARRATOR: The team works through the night.

- That's six, right Connor?

- Yeah, I'm gonna give a little rinse first real quick.

- Behind you, man.

- NARRATOR: It's finally time to take them back home.

- Well, that one looks good, really good.

Can't wait to see this one get kick loose.

This is all coming together.

We're just about to head out.

We got the last turtle all loaded up.

Awesome man.

So super excited to get these guys back to where they belong.

So we've got three release sites across the state that we're going to.

We're gonna go then to a habitat that we've scoped out.

We've trapped.

We've evaluated.

- Good.

- NARRATOR: Connor Adams is in charge of evaluating this release site.

He's using hoop net traps to see if there are actually any al ligator snapping turtles here.

- There's lots of good habitats, but we try to set these traps in places where we think alligator snapping turtles are gonna be setting up shop.

[water splashing] We're looking for places that are like have deep holes or that have a lot of structure under the water.

- Oh yeah.

This is a Razorback musk turtle, Sternotherus Carinatus.

So if you look, you can see how the shell comes up to a really sharp point.

Okay I'm gonna untie this.

- Okay.

- Nothing.

So alligator snapping turtles really like these types of environments, these old river channels and oxbows, slow-moving water bodies.

Checking this trap.

We've got a large turtle so we're gonna pull it out.

- Yeah.

- Oh and so we have a big alligator snapping turtle in this trap.

Oh it's a big one.

[grunting] She looks really, really healthy.

She's a large adult female.

This is max curve, right?

- Yeah.

- All the data that we collected on her... - 22.3.

- ...is gonna contribute to helping us understand how alligator snapping turtles are doing here.

Catching these really healthy large adult individuals is really confirming that we know that we're in good habitat.

Feels pretty good.

This site is looking like it could be a really really good release site for these alligator snapping turtles.

[engine revs] [sloshing] [dramatic music] - Think this one's ready to go.

She can smell freedom.

[inspirational music] Kind of hate to see her leave, but I'm happy to see her go.

- Oh yeah.

- My great hope is that, through this case, people will become more aware of this particular species and be grateful for the fact that we have 'em here in Texas.

It's truly a privilege to have these things in our waters.

I feel like this is gonna be a great home for 'em.

They're gonna do well here.

- So every turtle counts.

All right, time to set you free.

Very few make it to adulthood.

Those adults live a very long time and they reproduce for many years and basically help maintain a healthy population.

There goes the bubbles, she's booking it now.

So by returning these adults back to this population, we're improving the health of this population here and introducing more adult females.

- NARRATOR: And look who's here.

Sabine River turtle number one.

Remember her?

Well she's almost home.

- Come on.

- Kind of a long time in coming, being able to set 'em loose.

I feel great.

Wonderful feeling to see 'em walking out under their own power, to see 'em head into the water and not look back.

They're ready to go.

They're ready to be home.

They belong in Texas and we've done our part to, to get 'em back where they belong.

[crickets and birds chirp] [dramatic music] [bird calling] [dramatic music] [bird calling] - We're at the Roger R. Fawcett Wildlife Management Area.

We're about 65 miles west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

It's in the Southern part of the cross timbers where we've got a lot of unique habitats here.

We've got open grassland prairie habitat, bisected with post oak, blackjack oak woodlands.

We've got a lot of water on the area, provides good habitat for waterfowl.

And here on the south end of the area, we've got some dove fields.

We've been planting native sunflowers here for doves, provide good feeding area.

Also provides good public hunting opportunity.

The Fawcett Wildlife Management Area is just one of many public hunting lands that are open for public access in Texas.

We now have just over a million acres of land that's accessible with the annual public hunting permit or the limited public use permit.

This time of year we offer walk-in dove hunting with the use of the annual public hunting permit.

You self-register, and you just go find a good a spot to hunt.

[wind blowing] [dramatic music] - EVAN: Oh, I like this spot a lot.

Where do you think they'll come in from?

- I think they're gonna be coming from the creek behind us, and coming into the sunflower fields, and kind of landing.

I think we're in a perfect spot.

You know, to wake him up to go to school, I have to tell him a couple times.

Now, to go hunting, wake up at 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning, I just barely have to tap him and he's out of the bed.

[Evan laughs] He beats me out the door, you know, so, and that's, it's our time to get away and spend some quality time together as father and son.

And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

- The birds ain't coming.

It's a real nice breeze.

- It's perfect.

- I love when we go hunting, because it's always a good time, and if we don't get something, we're at least happy to go or get out of the house.

It's like real good weather for dove, I think.

And I hope they like it, because if they like it, then I'm liking it.

[shooting] - He was at a pretty good distance.

Wasn't he?

- EVAN: Yeah.

- He was farther than usual.

- That one got away.

That's, that's the fun part about dove hunting, you know.

It's just, all of a sudden, you're just blasting away and just trying to get one.

So, it's fun.

To have access to public land like this, I mean, it's a dream.

It's perfect right now, because we're the only ones out here.

So it's ideal.

And the scenery behind it, with all these hills?

I mean, it's, it's just beautiful.

You couldn't ask for a better place right now.

[shooting] - EVAN: Did you get one?

- I did, you, you bumped him up for me.

- Ha!

Where'd he come from?

- He come from right, right beside you, he flew behind you.

- Oh!

I didn't even see it!

[laughing] - Oh yeah.

It's a good one.

Actually, he helped me out.

He kind, he kind of scared it out, you know?

It come in behind him and I, I took him down, one shot.

- EVAN: Well, when the birds are active, it keeps you active, and it's just a fun time, really.

- JEREMY: It's perfect.

It's memories that we will both remember forever.

[dramatic music] - ALAN: Thanks you guys.

[playful music] - DON: It's Gumby and his pal, Rumby, out fishing.

It's late.

[playful music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [crickets chirp] [crickets chirp] [crickets chirp] [crickets chirp] [crickets chirp] [gentle wind, birds chirping] [gentle wind, birds chirping] 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.