OF HOGS & DEER

It was a comfortably cool mid-December evening in southern Texas as my good friend David Shashy and I stealthily approached the southern edge of a 30-acre grain field littered with oats. We were in Dimmit County, the heart of big deer country, where you never know what you might see at a grain field. I had observed a high-scoring 10-pointer feeding there a week earlier, so I anticipated encountering it again and hoped David might take the buck.

With David behind me, we used the maze of thorn scrub to conceal our movement toward the southern edge of the field in an attempt to see the occupants without disturbing them. Within 30 yards of the edge, brush became sparse, forcing us to crawl. Taking our time, we meticulously negotiated through a minefield