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Originally Posted by 4runner
We went to Brazos Bend SP July 15-17.
This was our first visit, and the park was beautiful. Sadly, some of the lakes are still choked up with vegetation, but park staff mentioned that plans were in the works to drain and clean out some of the lakes. The fishing was disappointing. The trails were nice, and kind of exciting because we kept expecting alligators to charge out of the brush. We only saw five alligators, and they were in the water and were not interested in us at all. On our first night there, we drove around the camping areas and counted 72 deer, from babies up to nice bucks. Raccoons are present, but not near as obnoxious as they are at Goose Island SP and Guadalupe River SP.
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I'm sorry you didn't see more alligators. I was there the Tuesday after you left, July 20th, and saw more than a dozen, many up on the paths. I spotted a juvenile about 2' long at the base of the observation deck. A big 8-9' gator was basking along the western part of Elm Lake Loop and allowed me to get very close. Two or three 4' gators were basking on the northern portion of 40-Acre Lake Trail.
I sat for nearly an hour and observed a 8-9' gator and a 6-7' one tussle over "ownership" of a big alligator carcas in the swamp along eastern bank of 40-Acre Lake. According to the wildlife photographer that was filming it, the big one was a male who'd fought with the deceased gator about the time y'all were there. It was really interresting to watch the big male guard his prize from the smaller female while trying to rip into that tough gator hide. She would swim in on the opposite side of the corpse, take a quick bite, then he'd notice and come around and chase her off. I think the female got more to eat than he did! (There's a lesson in there, IMHO.)
The wildlife photographer said he'd filmed alligators all over the Gulf Coast and felt that Brazos Bend was the best place in the country for it. I've never seen gators so tame.
Unlike you, I didn't see any deer, sadly. I did see a pair of juvenile raccoons playing chase over by Hale Lake which was an unexpected treat. Also saw a blue heron nab the biggest crawfish I'd ever seen in my life. It was so big the poor thing was trying to figure out how he was going to swallow it! He'd crunch on it with his beak, then turn it and turn it, plop it down on the ground, crunch a few times, repeat. I watched for a good 10 minutes through my binoculars before he finally got it down. It was like watching a snake eat as you could see the big crawfish slide down that long neck.
My only complaint about the park was my own squeamishness... I've been stomping around woods all my life, especially the forests of SE Texas and the Florida panhandle, but I've never seen so many spiders in one place in my life. If they didn't give me the willies so much, I could have photographed quite a few species of really big spider in just one day. I saw even more than that at Village Creek SP today. <shudder> Has there suddenly been a boom in the spider population?