Many hunters scorn exotic game animals on grounds that they’re not “sporting,” meaning, I suppose that they’re too tame to be a real challenge. It may be true of some exotics, but definitely not all.

We live in the very heart of Texas' exotic-game country. More free-ranging foreign beasts are frolicking around in Kerr County than anywhere else in Texas.

We in West Kerr County undoubtedly enjoy the presence of the largest herd of free-ranging axis deer in North America – and maybe in the new world. They are not an unmixed blessing, however. Yes, they’re magnificent beasts, beautiful to the eye, and, yes, they provide perhaps the finest wild meat on this continent, but there is a downside.

I know how it feels to be the target of automatic weapons fire in infantry combat. I have seen the eyes of a drunken man, armed with a machete, bent on taking my life. I've looked wounded Cape buffalo bull in the teeth at just 15 yards. I've endured the stunning silence after a light airplane's one engine quit without warning. I once had the reserve air valve of a scuba tank jam and leave me literally breathless 85 feet below the surface of the Caribbean. Altogether, I can recall a lot of times when the seconds seemed to drag by like a convict's weeks... but _the _longest ten minutes I've ever lived through were in a blind in an African dusk, listening to a leopard feeding just 45 steps away!