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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