My son and I were drawn for a Exotic species hunt on Powderhorn WMA located at Port O'Connor on the Texas coast.

We were allowed to shoot one Sambar or Axis either sex and the always inclusive "unlimited feral hogs". No coyotes which puzzled me. The hunt lasted from Monday afternoon till 11 AM Thursday.

TPWD is in the process of reclaiming the land to a coastal prairie. Poisoning shrubs and doing prescribed burns. It is flat and very wet this time of year. With litle shallow ponds and flooded areas. You need rubber boots minimum to hunt this place.

There are Sambar, Axis, Whitetails, Whooping Cranes, Sandhill Cranes, and many varied Herrons, Egrets, Rails, Quail, various other birds and water fowl. Also lots of Hawks and Mexican Eagles. We also saw some Alligators. Supposed to be a 12 footer at one pond.

On the first afternoon. we went to see what one of the two blinds in our drawn area looked like. By the way this worked different than other drawn hunts I've been on. We were told where we would hunt no picking an area by how you were drawn.

The blind actually looked ok except it needed some brush trimmed. This would hurt me later. After that my son and I began hunting into the wind while spotting with our binoculars. I spotted a red animal feeding on one of the many sand dune mounds or hills that dotted the place. The problem was most of the cattle roaming there were the same color as the Sambar. I've never seen a wild animal eat that long without raising it's head. The Sambar was about a 150 yards away and he was hard to tell from a yearling calf.
I was finally able to positively ID and told my son to shoot. my son Jeff still wasn't sure and gave the Sambar a warning shot. I thought he had missed. Jeff quickly jacked another round in and shot him through the neck. We were both using shooting sticks. Spent the rest of the day cleaning and icing down the spike Sambar.
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The next morning We hunted one of the 4' Elevated blinds. I saw a whitetail come out quite a ways away. Then Jeff saw a nice Sambar stag come out near the whitetail. The brush I talked about earlier didn't allow me to rest the rifle on the rail. I had to put my elbow to raise the rifle up and lean against the post going up to the roof. But my biggest mistake was estimating the range. I was off by at least a 100 yards. The Stag was 450+ yds from me I would discover later when I went to be sure I hadn't hit the animal. I shot at him three times with a 300WM.
Once I figured out I had missed we continued spotting and stalking. We found a Hind and her calf but I decided not to shoot them. We watched as 3 Coyotes checked them out but the Sambar never really panicked and the Coyotes gave up bothering them.

Not long after that we had 2 Whooping Cranes fly over us then 4 more joined them as they were flying away. The rest of the day was a bust.

The last full day we decided to take folding chairs in and hunt around the pond we had seen the Stag at the day before. We were busted twice in the dark trying to walk our way in. One of the other hunters described the Sambars blowing as sounding like a Mule. To me it sounded like a goose honk.

We looked into hunting another area but the ones available didn't seem as good as where we were. We went back to the chairs we set up on a sand dune mound at a pond. At about a hour before dark a large hind came in. I was waiting hoping the stag would follow when my son saw the spike. after about 5 minutes I decided what the heck and shot the spike at about a 120 yards.

The rifles and ammo for you loonies. My son was carrying a 30-06 pre 64 FWT in a Legend McMillan stock A HD 3.5x10 Leupold in Conetrol Mounts. His load was IMR 4350 in Lapua brass with a Barnes 165 TTSX. My rifle was a Stainless Winchester FWT in 300WM. It has a Cabelas Meopta 3x9x40 in Leupold dual dovetail mounts. I used old silver box Winchester 180 grain power points.

Very cool, congrats!

That's awesome! Congrats.

Very cool. Thank you.

Lucky! That is one of the top hunts I'd like to be drawn for. Did any axis get killed?

Nice! How many preference points did you have?

Very cool write up.

Super cool! Thanks for the write up. One day I’ll draw something…

Congrats to y'all.

I hate to say it but i'm not sure. Maybe 3-6. I have well over 30 for gun deer either sex at chaparral.

the only axis i knew of was shot at the adjoining State park. We were told they were scarce and to shoot anything with spots

Dang ! I've got 30 in for the Chaparral also. I'm guessing I'll get drawn a when I'm too old to load my rifle.

Great post !