But for ranchers, potential legal problems pale in comparison to economic benefits.
"Exotics have kept ranchers from losing their property," said Charly Seale, executive director of the Exotic Wildlife Association, the exotic ranches' trade group. Sitting in his office, a low-slung building down the road from Rio Bonito, his walls covered with heads of animals from across Africa and Asia, Seale certainly looked ready for a safari, with a handsome salt-and-pepper beard, a tan cowboy hat and high leather boots. Seale estimated that there are more than 200,000 exotic animals from nearly 70 species in Texas, spread out over more than 1,000 operators. (There are also ranches in states such as Florida and Maine, but Texas has by far the most.) Several decades ago, there were only a handful of these ranches in Texas, Seale said. That industry, Seale said, now brings in more than $120 million in annual revenue. On the Internet, these "Texotics" operations can advertise to hunters all over the country, offering them more convenience and lower rates than African operators.
Bob and 10-year-old Sam Jenkins posing with their kill -- an Asian sika deer.
(David Deal)
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Many exotics ranchers and hunters also believe that they are helping save species; Seale said the ranches place a monetary value on the animals, and by making them valuable they contribute to their conservation. According to Brian Child, an expert on wildlife conservation who worked for more than a decade for Zimbabwe's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, when villagers in places such as Zimbabwe were given the right to own and sell animals, they valued them highly -- refusing to help poachers kill them -- and used them wisely, sell-ing the hunting rights for high prices and plowing the money back into conservation. Indeed, Seale said, one argument for Texotics is that some Texas ranchers could reintroduce African species to places in Africa where they have died off, and several Texas ranchers have been trying to do so.
Still, the blossoming industry has raised the ire of animal rights activists. "We're not interested in reform [of fenced-in hunting]," said Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, the country's largest animal protection organization. Fenced-in hunting "is basically, in our view, an unethical proposition, even by the norms of the hunting industry." In fact, some opponents object as much to the hunting of farm-raised animals released just for hunters, often behind fences, as they do to the use of exotic animals. When Vice President Cheney participated in a hunt for farm-raised pheasants on a private game ranch in late 2003, he was quickly denounced by animal rights activists. But, according to Jan Dizard, a professor of sociology and American studies at Amherst College and author of Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the Contested Meaning of Nature, few hunting groups actively work to ban hunting in preserves with fences, fearing that might simply encourage animal rights activists to target all types of hunting.
Over the past decade, members of Congress have proposed several versions of a bill that would ban trophy hunting of nonnative species in enclosures smaller than 1,000 acres. The 2004 bill did not make it out of committee.
Many Texas exotics owners see animal rights activists as trying to deprive ranchers of their livelihood. The exotics owners, with the backing of the Safari Club International, a group dedicated to exotic hunting, have won many battles in the past. "These animals belong to me. I should be able to do with them what I want," Seale said. "The government just shouldn't be telling us what we can and can't do with them."
ROYCE HAD BEEN TO AFRICA 10 times, and, though he admired Rio Bonito's landscape and habitat, he was more nonchalant about the end result of this hunt. "If I get an animal, that's great -- if not, okay . . . It's the total experience that matters," he said. "I grew up on a farm, with not much money, but close to nature . . . One of the things hunting does for me is it allows me to get away from the tour bus and the path and back to the woods."
After Africa, Rio Bonito might have seemed a comedown for Royce. Sitting in a hunting blind, he said, "When I bush hunt in Africa, I get antelope, kudu, impala, buffalo, even leopard. I'd save for years to get the money to [shoot] a buffalo there." Still, he said, "Africa's getting harder . . . Since 9/11 it's become almost impossible for hunters to bring their own guns there. The red tape is getting enormous. You get there and they charge you more and more, and you arrive at immigration and they have one person there to deal with a whole planeful of hunters, and you wait there for hours just to get in [to a country]." He sighed. "I've almost given up [gun] hunting there. Last time, I just said, 'I'll just pack a bow and bow hunt,' because at least you can get a bow through customs."
Tyjewski had never been to Africa, and the wealth of animals at Rio Bonito disoriented him at first. "I'd see a sika and wonder, 'What was that?'" One afternoon, after a typically large meal, Katzer loaded the truck, and we rumbled away from the lodge. Tyjewski's wife, Phyllis, was along for the ride, on her first hunting trip, and oohed and aahed over the large, regal aoudads. Katzer seemed determined to find animals for Royce and Tyjewski to shoot this time out.
"You'll definitely see what you want," he called back to them, scanning the horizon for game. "Tons of animals have been gathering." He soon came to a stop, poring over a makeshift map and a stars/moon chart, a complex diagram designed to use the phases of the moon to predict where animals will move.
After an hour's drive, Katzer dropped us off in ground blinds. We settled into the tiny enclosures, several hundred yards from pastures dominated by large mechanical feeders, which occasionally whirred and groaned as they scattered helpings of corn on the ground to lure game out of the brush. Royce sat down, uncapped a small bottle of water so as not to make any noise later, and delicately unpacked his Remington and scope, loading the rifle with long, gold bullets the size of a child's finger. He stuck the gun out of the blind.
For hours, no animals arrived, and Royce and I sat crammed into the tiny blind, speaking in whispers. "When I've taken young kids out hunting, at first for them it's all about the gun, about what we're going to get," he said. "But we go out once, twice, three times, they realize it's hard -- stalking, barely moving, maybe not seeing anything. They either get the whole experience and love it, or they don't." I asked whether the same idea applied to hunting at Rio Bonito -- that the experience was as important as the take. Royce paused.
This place is so large that you're not guaranteed to get anything, he said, so it's the experience that counts here, too.
Finally, before dusk, a splotch of white and brown poked out of the brush near a feeder. It inched closer, closer to the corn, until we saw the full body of a white-tailed deer. Behind her, just off to the right, a buck and several exotic animals -- likely sika or aoudads -- waited in the cover of the scrubby woods. The doe may have seen us. She moved two or three steps toward the feeder and then reared up, as if trying to catch sight of a predator moving in the grass -- but still not exposed enough for a clean shot. She did this twice, five times, 10 times, nervously glancing around. "Makes you think -- who has the advantage?" Royce wondered. "Me, with a high-powered rifle and a scope, or an animal with almost perfect hearing who can tell everything I'm doing?"
