I couldn’t believe it. I had a bobcat, a predator trophy I never expected. It was so much more of a success than 10 coyotes would have been.

While I settled gently back into my chair, I checked my watch; it was eleven thirty. I was now convinced of my failure in this morning’s hunt for a buck.

My eyes popped open as the yearling’s bleat made its way through my sleep-deprived brain. He let out another mewing cry as I slowly lifted my rifle from the arms of my camouflaged sling chair.

“Let’s go hunting.” It was as simple, and complex, as that. My brother, Randy, and I had been chatting on the phone.

The low point of my thoughts coincided with 1) an elevated wind strength and 2) the appearance of the young buck.

As we rolled to a stop, my Dad carefully opened the door on his 1963 Chevy pickup. I slid across the smooth vinyl seat, under the steering wheel, and stepped through his door and into the darkness of the Texas Hill Country.

Even with our self-imposed selectivity, there were so many birds we were able to focus on ducks that would drop on the ground around our blind rather than in the water.

As we pulled out of the driveway in Lubbock, Texas, the ice pellets started rattling off the windshield of the station wagon and the north wind bent the trees toward the ground.

As typical of the hunts that went on at this favorite site, I remember one that occurred when I was eight years old.

In my mind dove season in West Texas is a September sport. It could involve some cool evenings, but more often than not I sweated under the not-yet-winter sun while buried in patches of six feet tall Helianthus annuus (the native sunflower).

If what we experienced for the next hour and a half of our hunt was shown to me on a hunting video, I would assume that it had been spliced together from several sessions.

The one discordant note from the first day came from the lack of elk.

As I considered the soggy dawn, I reminded myself that the rain was melting the ice. My morning had not begun well.

My Dad was no saint. He could (and often did) swear like a sailor. He had a temper that was scary to behold. And he helped me understand the almost indescribable excitement of the hunt.

His next five steps brought him to a brush pile made up mostly of mesquite and willow branches.

Though we saw our quarry in the distance, today the Mourning Doves were victorious.

He bent double and pushed down the next to the bottom strand of barbed-wire. As he did so, he used his free hand to lift first one, then the other, shell pocket of his game vest over the pointed wire.

Growing up reading the wonderful books on hunting in Africa, I dreamed of shooting an ‘elephant rifle’.