Javelinas in the Trans-Pecos

The days were mild and very pleasant even though it was the middle of winter in the Chihuahuan Desert. I had a cardboard target in one hand, a sandbag in the other and my rifle on my shoulder, looking for a suitable place to check the zero on my scope early in the morning of the first day of my five-day hunt. The desert vegetation came up close to the cabin that I was staying in. The cook had emptied the kitchen scraps about 30 paces from the rear corner of the cabin and there, eating those morsels, was the first javelina that I had even seen. This was a good sign. Just as I laid eyes on him, he was off. The hunt was in the arid Trans-Pecos region in West Texas, close to the Mexican border. I was after javelinas and free-range aoudads (as they are called in Texas) or Barbary sheep, as they are known in New Mexico.

I often try to arrange some pig hunting for the remainder of a hunt if