Actually, every hunting trip is an adventure of some sort, but some turn out to be more adventurous than others. Regular readers may recall tales of the Deep East Texas Bear Hunters Association, a band of ruffians and misfits who insisted on hunting with muzzleloading rifles.

Actually, every hunting trip is an adventure of some sort, but some turn out to be more adventurous than others. Regular readers may recall tales of the Deep East Texas Bear Hunters Association, a band of ruffians and misfits who insisted on hunting with muzzleloading rifles.

The bobwhite quail is a gentleman. He’s polite; he goes by the rules and plays fair. The scaled quail (AKA “blue quail” or “cottontop”) of south Texas doesn‘t know the word “fair;” his keyword is “survive,” and he’ll do anything to accomplish that.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Anote in a recent magazine stated that the feral hog has become the second-most popular big-game animal in California. It struck me that he may be approaching that status in Texas, too … if not also in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and several other Appalachian states.