We have no idea where she came from or how she found us, but a wild turkey hen simply walked into the yard of our ranch house in the brushlands of Webb County one day and adopted us. I named this bird “Mahonia.” I don’t recall why; that’s the scientific name of a prickly shrub common here in the Hill Country called “agarita.”

Of all the game birds in North America, the only one with which I have a real love-hate relationship is the Common (or Wilson’s) snipe, often called “jacksnipe.” Snipe are devious, unscrupulous little birds, and they don’t play fair. When you flush one from his marshy playground, does he fly smooth and straight like any honest bird?

An aspect of African hunting you’ve probably never heard of is the so-called little antelopes. When you see the word Africa, you rightly enough expect lions and leopards, buffalo and elephants, or maybe the big, glamorous antelopes – kudu, sable, oryx and such.

Gzing upon the athetic wreckage fa full-grown moose surrounded by giant paw prints in the snow, the quotation, "What manner of beast do I pursue?" ran through my thoughts. It was April, springtime in the brooding, eerie, icy Bendeleben Mountains 50 miles north of Nome, Alaska.

No African safari could get very far without native trackers. These men are proud professionals, indispensable to the Professional Hunters (PH) they assist, and their talents are admired even among their own people. They are the elite of the safari crew.

Last July I devoted this column to a family of baby raccoons my wife and I befiiended at our home on Johnson Creek. I took pity on the four little guys and their gaunt mother, starving in the worst of the drought, and allowed them to share a little of the food put out for our cats.

Many hunters who snipe their deer from elevated stands seem to believe that elevation alone makes worrying about wind superfluous. (Those who don’t know enough to worry about wind direction and force anywhere, anytime, may stop reading right here, because what follows will probably only confuse them.)

The campfire is the heart of any hunting camp … and a camp isn’t a camp without one. Folks who hunt out of luxurious air-conditioned lodges or, worse yet, motels, are only to be pitied. The fire is common ground where all gather to share and comment on the day’s observations and adventures.

Watch small whitetail twin fawns at play and you’ll likely observe that one is not only slightly larger but that he (it will invariably be a “he”) is also bolder and more alert, more aggressive in nursing and quicker to sample unknown foods. He’ll seem spookier and more curious, and will venture farther from his mother’s side.

As this hunting season unfolds, hunters with a little imagination can amuse themselves on slow days by mentally cataloging the variety of antler shapes, sizes and variations of whitetail bucks.