One Heck Of A Ride

77 The Texas Exotics close enough to shoot themwas the problem. They were so skittish they would spook at the first hint humans were near, and they never seemed to stop running. In fact, all were moving when I shot. It was easy to see why the ranch had decided Horns on nilgai are small, but their meat is among the world’s finest. This big bull from the King Ranch weighed more than 500 pounds to sell nilgai hunts instead of its original plan to raise them as meat animals when they bought their first nilgai from a zoo in San Diego back in 1924. There was no way to round them up using men on horseback. There were no helicopters back then, and nilgai were too smart to be driven like cattle. The ranch had to hire a professional marksman to harvest and transport them to where the meat and hides could be processed. I skinned and butchered my two cows and the bull myself, and had the meat frozen and packed in 48-quart ice chests for shipping with me on the trip home. For some reason, one of the airlines I flew on the trip home sent the meat to Canada, where it was rerouted back to California. A few pieces were defrosted along their edges and needed trimming, but I was able to salvage the majority of the meat. I was surprised when the manager called me to say he’d heard that my ice chests had taken a side trip and offered me a free hunt to replace the meat. I was impressed, to say the least. When I asked, he agreed I could donate the hunt to our SCI chapter’s annual fund-raising auction. My friend Mike Larson and two of his buddies bought the hunt and also enjoyed hunting nilgai. As had happened with me, they expected these antelope would eventually present standing, broadside shots as “normal” animals do, but none they shot did. The King Ranch was the first to bring Nilgai to Texas, and escapees from that ranch have spread all over the state because they easily jump over typical cattle fences. They may not be the best-looking game animal, nor will their puny spike horns (those on my bull scored 31 1/8 SCI) attract the large numbers of trophy hunters that sheep, goats and other antelopes do, but they will beat anything around when it comes to quality and taste of their meat. Three Exotic Sheep Norm Epley, my partner in our short-lived booking agency business, had enjoyed a red sheep hunt he’d made recently in Kerr County, and said the outfitter he’d hunted with planned to sell his ranch after liquidating his exotic animals. He was offering red sheep hunts at bargain prices, Norm said. Red sheep are small but handsome animals with horns that curl forward and down toward their chins. They are found in the wild only in a small region of northern Iran. It had been fourteen years since the Iranian hostage crisis and the collapse of the Pahlavi regime, and most sheep hunters, including me, believed the country would never reopen its hunting to outsiders, especially Americans. I called the outfitter and booked a hunt to take place in March 1995. As the time grew nearer, I also booked a hunt for a multi-horned sheep with Thomson Temple to take place immediately after I collected the red sheep. Here’s how the SCI Record Book describes “multi-horned sheep:” “Shoulder height about 34 inches (86 cm).