FOR A GUY LIKE ME, A WORDSMITH WITH A romantic streak and a fondness for drama, it’s just about impossible to keep from assigning colorful (and lamentably anthropomorphic) characterizations to the dangerous big-game animals of Africa. I know it isn’t scientific, but it’s fun, and—what the heck, nobody takes it seriously, anyway, least of all me.

Be warned: This is not just a fond reminiscence about a long-ago hunt. It's a tale of success and failure. It began badly and ended badly. But, in between, oh, in between there was one unforgettable, shining moment when I steadied crosshairs on the shoulder of a splendid Stone ram and caressed the trigger.

Unlike Shangri-La, Los Cuernos wasn't a mythical paradise. It was a real place. But, sadly, the whitetail ranch near Laredo, Texas, familiar to many longtime HUNTING readers, is no more. Over the last 21 years, Los Cuernos Ranch inspired a hundred deer-related features for this magazine and a hundred more "Buck Sense" columns, plus occasional mentions by writers other than myself.

We spotted the nyati early, before the sun had begun to clang like a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil of southern Africa. They were not the first of the safari–you couldn't travel very far in Mozambique in the early '70s without seeing thousands of Cape buffalo–but those had been mere background for the intoxicating realization that we were, at long last, in Africa. It was the first safari for both my companion, Jack Carter, and me. We'd flipped a coin, agreeing to alternate shooting opportunities as they came, regardless of species... except for two.

As a deer hunter, you're in the mainstream of American history, a contributor, a steward of the resource, on the cutting edge of wildlife management, an instrument of conservation, and a conduit of honorable tradition. Be Proud.

The Author shares his innermost musings about hunting whitetails...and a certain Great Buck!

Whitetail bucks are remembered for many different reasons. Some represent a "First" or a personal best in a hunter's life. Others are memorable because of some physical characteristic, or for their legendary elusiveness.

Some find it as hard to imagine a time when there was no such thing as a manufactured tree stand, tripod or portable blind as they do accepting that a majority of deer hunters might ever have scorned the use of scopes.

Experience, patience and attention to the smallest details ensure recovery. Somewhere out there in the hushed woods is a wounded deer, and it's up to you to follow and find it.

The first vocal sound I ever heard from a whitetail deer nearly ended my deer-hunting career before it was fairly begun, and thus almost drove me to take up honest work! It came from the throat of my first whitetail buck. I was a tender 13, hunting all alone, and the eight-pointer was very close. This was good; otherwise, I'd never have hit him, given the violent case of buck fever that shook me like a seismograph needle in a high-Richter earthquake. When I was finally able to make the rifle fire, the buck went down in a heap, spine-shot... and he bawled! It was a shocking, harsh, dragged-out sound, more like a yearling than a deer, and it horrified me. I could never stand making an animal suffer, and the bawl triggered a wave of remorse and guilt–until I realized that the buck couldn't be suffering, having given up the ghost at about the moment his bawl ended.