As the men bumped away from camp in the four-wheel-drive pickup, over rutted dirt roads and through tiny streams, the sun revealed open plains around them, dotted with scrawny oak trees. Paul Tyjewski, Paul Royce and their guide, Kal Katzer, began glimpsing exotic wildlife gathering under the trees, using the cover of daybreak to feed before predators arose. Only, in this instance, the animals' instincts had failed them, since the predators were wide-eyed, eager and getting ever closer with their 7mm Remingtons. In one area, skittish kudu, African antelopes with twisting horns rising two feet out of their skulls, hopped from tree to tree. Nearby, aoudads -- massive versions of sheep from the Barbary rocks of North Africa, with horns curving out and back from their skulls -- playfully butted heads. Katzer pointed out ibex, exotic goats with thick, scaly horns.
Seeing these graceful animals in their native Africa has its own power. But the fact that the group was taking them in -- and hunting them -- near Junction, Tex., only two hours from urban San Antonio, made the moment even more remarkable.
Bob and 10-year-old Sam Jenkins posing with their kill -- an Asian sika deer.
(David Deal)
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Katzer stopped the pickup in a meadow bisected by an oval patch of water. Near here, at dusk the previous day, another hunter had gotten a clear shot at a large aoudad, mortally wounding the animal. Katzer then butchered the aoudad; the meat went back to the ranch, and the horns went to the hunter, to take home in his luggage.
Katzer cut the engine. Having traversed the surrounding area hundreds of times, he decided that this was the best spot for the hunters to shoot. He dropped off Tyjewski at a ground blind, a concealed hut with a slot for a gun, then helped Royce up into a tower blind -- a high structure like a prison guard tower, painted in green-and-gray camouflage, big enough for two chairs and with a narrow slot in its sides to place a gun. Once inside, Royce sat down and waited.
An hour later, no animals had wandered up to the watering hole. Nearly two hours later, still nothing. Then, suddenly, a minor rush. A silvery-brown white-tailed doe, nervously munching grass, emerged out of the low brush across from the blind, still partly concealed by vegetation. In the woods, behind the doe, Royce glimpsed through his owlish glasses a small group of other animals he couldn't immediately identify. He sucked in his breath.
In his claustrophobic blind, Royce had barely moved for two hours. Now, as his prey emerged into sight, several hundred yards from the blind, he slowly raised his rifle as he'd done countless times before, his movement almost imperceptible -- but not to the animals. Each time Royce twitched, the animals skittered off a few feet, threatening to vanish. Still gripping his Remington, he tried to be even quieter.
Now the doe grew less skittish, and Royce focused more intensely. But before he could figure out a shot, the animal put her head up and backtracked, moving closer to the edge of the brush, so a clear shot wasn't possible. For the next hour, Royce never got another chance to shoot, but he didn't seem particularly discouraged. "Listen to the woods," Royce said. "That's a pleasure -- hear the bugle of sika in the distance. It's always so loud just before it gets dark."
The reverie was broken by the sound of Katzer's truck. It was now past 8 o'clock. Tyjewski was already in the vehicle; after spending nearly four hours sitting in his blind, he hadn't gotten any animals, either. He sat slumped, his body slack. Katzer shined a light out the driver's side window, reflecting the beam on the eyes of ibex, sika deer and other animals under the cover of darkness.
Back at camp, the men wandered into the long dining hall. Royce was looking for a bite to eat and a glass of wine before collapsing into bed. But Tyjewski wasn't ready to hit the sack yet. Instead of the dining hall, he walked into the camp lodge's main living room: a long, narrow space with comfortable sofas, a nearby billiards room and walls covered in African animal heads -- kudu, aoudad, wildebeest, antelope, scimitar-horned oryx. He had just experienced the thrilling rush of a pseudo-safari -- the stunning game, the wild setting, the tense waiting of a hunt. But in this strange parallel universe of heartland Texas, he plopped down into the couch, aimed the remote toward the television and scanned ESPN2 for college football highlights.
ONCE UPON A TIME, a safari was a uniquely African adventure, beyond the means of most Americans. A safari meant stalking animals on the broad Serengeti plain alongside regal Masai guides, camping in bush huts near streams full of hippos, waking up in a remote place to the rhythms of Africa. These days, however, an African adventure can be as manageable as a visit to an American national park.
Royce and Tyjewski had come from Michigan to the Rio Bonito Ranch -- a luxurious 25-square-mile property in the Texas Hill Country -- to hunt exotic sheep, deer and goats. Rio Bonito is one of hundreds of similar operations in Texas, some of which offer opportunities to bag or buy such unusual prey as Russian boars, nilgais, barasinghas, oryx, zebras, giraffes and wildebeests. Rio Bonito is surrounded by four-foot fences, with eight-foot fences in some interior pastures. The dry climate and scrubby flora of the Hill Country, a 15,000-square-mile area in south-central Texas, might indeed resemble remotest Africa. Just like Africa, Rio Bonito Ranch offers up-close encounters with wild game. But in a typically American more-is-better fashion, Rio Bonito goes further than Africa in some ways: Hunters can also shoot Asian animals such as the speedy black buck antelope from India, so fast it can top 50 mph, European animals such as the Corsican sheep, and American animals such as the Texas white-tailed deer.
More than 50 years ago, pioneering Texas ranchers began importing species from Africa to keep on their property, breed and occasionally allow hunters to shoot. As real estate boomed and ranchers sold off more property, more people got into the exotic ranching business. In 1997 the Texas legislature let expire Texas Parks and Wildlife's oversight over nonnative animals, turning any regulation over the practice to the localities. Some Texans, including local animal rights groups, objected forcefully, but they had limited effectiveness in a state devoted to property rights -- especially in the late 1990s, when ranchers were struggling through years of drought.
As long as the species were not endangered, the federal government seemed to have limited ability or inclination to regulate the ranches. "It's just not our priority here," said Gary Young, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent in Texas. "Unless there's a big problem with exotics reported to us, we don't seek out regulation." According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife records requested under the Freedom of Information Act, only a handful of investigations have been launched into the killing of exotic endangered species on Texas ranches in recent years. (The animals Rio Bonito carries are not endangered.) One case involved a guar, a massive endangered ox native to Southeast Asia; the head turned up at a local taxidermist, which prompted the Fish and Wildlife probe.
Some investigations, such as the guar case, appear to involve claims that the animals shot on site were "hybrids" -- animals that had been crossbred in captivity with other species. "Hybrids" generally aren't covered by endangered species laws. In the guar investigation, Fish and Wildlife found that the hunters knew guars were endangered but had made an arrangement that "they would come to Texas and hunt guar . . . if [redacted] would write a statement that the guar . . . were hybrids." The case was closed after the primary subject of the investigation died. Fish and Wildlife documents also revealed that at another ranch, staff members apparently used dart guns to tranquilize animals, then herded them toward hunters for the kill. Because the tranquilizer was considered an illegal substance to administer, one individual was charged and pleaded guilty, receiving 90 days' home detention, three years' probation and a $1,000 fine.
