By Brenda Valentine
First Lady of Hunting®
March 25, 2007

The King Spring Slam is what I’m calling my latest south Texas hunting adventure. In mid-March the RedHead Pro-Hunting Team, along with John L. and John Paul Morris plus a cast of Bass Pro videographers and photographers, converged on a portion of the famed King Ranch to hunt with outfitter Jack Fleming. Each spring this group devotes several days to a new product work session but this year we’d be incorporating a full-blown turkey hunt plus much more into our annual meeting.

Visit the King Ranch Web site to learn about the "Running W".

The King Ranch had been an almost mythical place in my mind for many years. I’ve owned several good quarter horses with King Ranch breeding and also receive a catalog from their Ranch Store often, however, I’d never hunted or had the privilege to visit this icon of America. We were instructed to bring archery equipment and personal hunting gear needed to cover any spring hunting opportunities we might encounter. I knew Rio Grande turkeys were on the menu but I really didn’t know what else to be prepared for. Pro-team members Jimmy and Angie Ryan hunt the King several times each year and were a great help in advising the rest of us about the hunting tactics in that area.

Tombstones of famous King Ranch horses mark the cemetery on the spacious lawn of the main office.

Decades ago the King Ranch imported nilgai antelope from India which flourished in the similar habitat of south Texas. We were told that nilgai meat was the ultimate wild game table fare but were also cautioned about the difficulties of hunting them. Said to possess the eyes of a turkey, the nose of a deer, and the ears of an elk, it would be extremely tough to get within bow range of a mature bull. Jack, our outfitter, taught me a lot in a short time about an animal that I previously knew nothing about or could barely spell its name. I learned that, much like most African animals, the vitals of this large mammal lay lower and more forward than whitetail or elk. I also learned the bulls change colors with age, maturing to a steel gray. We were instructed to help lower the abundant wild hog population whenever possible. I was really glad I’d packed a couple dozen arrows with my Parker Pioneer bow. I was liking this place even before we got there.

The Redhead Pro-Hunting Team on location in Texas, L-R: Jerry Martin, Walter Parrott, Allen Treadwell, Bob Foulkrod, Brenda Valentine, Jimmy Ryan, John Paul Morris, Angie Ryan, John L. Morris.

The first two sits were in comfy ladderstands near windmills/water tanks. I saw lots of prime bovines and a few wild turkeys coming to drink but no exotic antelope species or hogs. On the second afternoon I was dropped off at a new stand which was in an ancient oak tree near a shallow pond. I felt a bit out-in-the-open from the seat of the stand and feared I might not be able to draw my bow without being detected, so I climbed a bit higher and sat in the fork of the tree. The temperature was unseasonably hot, rising to the mid 90s, so I felt confident there would be animal activity at this water hole. At 4 p.m. an immature nilgai bull (they are a lighter brown) quietly appeared from the mesquite brush and walked into the pond for a long drink.

A young nilgai bull comes in for a drink.

This was my first opportunity to really study this creature alive and close-up. My first impression is how he looked like he’d been built of spare parts. He sported a beard like a turkey, a mane like a horse, a swinging tail like a donkey, he had high shoulders and low hips like a camel and white markings on his ears and face like a kudu with sharp straight horns like a young Billy goat. This bull was roughly the size of a small bull elk. I slipped a tiny digital camera from my shirt pocket and snapped a few shots whenever I thought he wasn’t looking to show the folks at home who were also new to nilgais. Soon, a tan colored cow joined the young bull for an afternoon drink and I got to examine her and compare the differences between the two. I’ve never seen an animal that had such a fluid movement or one that could walk as quietly. Engrossed in the study of this new specie, I almost didn’t catch the movement of a dark bull slipping through the trees. This guy perked my hunting instincts into gear. Ever so cautiously I removed the Parker from the hook and got into shooting position. When the younger animals sensed his presence they immediately halted their sipping and left in a different direction. The old bull scanned the area with his eyes and threw his nose high, sniffing the air before approaching the water. I waited until he’d waded in a few inches and settled in to drinking before I tried to draw. The next time he lowered his head I let loose the arrow while he was broadside at 32 yards. The Lumenock left a glowing trail to the target — low and tight behind the shoulder. There was a flurry of splashing water through the dense brush surrounding the pond followed by cold silence. I felt confident I’d just taken my first great blue nilgai.

This nilgai bull came back to Tennessee with me so family and friends can also enjoy the delicious meat.

Saturday dawned with the promise of another hot day but it was the opening of turkey season so everyone was pumped with the prospect of filling our multiple Rio tags. The one gobbler I heard on the roost flew down in the opposite direction and quickly shut-up. Not to be outdone by a big bird with a bald head and a worm on his nose, I’d come prepared to spend the day if necessary. Two bottles of water and a granola bar later I still hadn’t seen a turkey and my persistence was waning. It was 11:30 a.m., 95 degrees, and the ticks were plentiful at every place I’d set up to call. The crackling radio in my turkey vest caught my attention. It was Allen Treadwell and his guide, Oscar, coming through my area. When I learned Allen had already shot two gobblers and they’d spotted a bunch more, I was ready to take a ride in their air-conditioned truck. We were miles from camp and I had been bowhunting all morning, but Allen promised to share his shotgun and Winchester turkey ammo if we found more turkeys on the way in. Long story short is that we found turkeys and the borrowed shotgun worked just fine.

Rio Grande turkey hunting is fantastic in south Texas.

Now that I had both red and white meat hanging in the cooler it was time to focus on getting some pork for variety. It was back to the pond for me where there were lots of signs that a good many hogs had been rooting and wallowing in the shallow water. One thing about hogs is that if they are around you’ll usually know it by the grunting conversations they carry on. About an hour in the stand passed before I heard a faint grunt, soon to be followed by a single-file stream of five or six large sows with a couple-dozen soup-can size little squealers trotting behind. They were making a bee-line to the murky water for a relaxing wallow. I readied my bow a couple of times but the brush was thick and the angle was never ideal so I held off for a better opportunity. The sow's sighs of pleasure must have been the signal it took to bring the boars out of the thickets, for soon I spied a solid red boar traveling with a red spotted boar making their way toward me. Before coming all the way in to the watering hole the boars went through the same cautious sniffing techniques as the nilgai. The big red hog made the fatal mistake of stopping within my effective bow range.

John Paul congratulates Brenda on her fine hog.

When Jack returned to pick me up we laughed and he said I now had taken the Spring Slam for the lower King Ranch. The rest of our group had all been busy doing their part to fill the cooler as well. My last afternoon was spent helping Jack and the other guides take care of meat and capes for mounting. On the way back to the ranch headquarters in Kingsville I bought a large ice chest to transport meat on the plane. Luckily, we finished the skinning chores in time for a quick tour around the heart of a ranch I’d only read about until this week. The immediate beauty and history of the place will instantly smack you in the head but a closer look reveals a multitude of working agendas that meld themselves into one huge successful operation, much like that of a well tuned NASCAR engine. I came away from Texas with an assortment of game dubbed the Spring Slam but, more than that, I experienced the aura of the legendary King Ranch.

Steers and jake turkeys share the same water trough.

When checking my extra cooler baggage in at the airport, one went five pounds over the weight limit. The kindly man at the counter took one look and said, “Lady if you’ve had that good a hunt then you deserve to go over a few pounds. I hope you enjoy the meat.” Quite a change in attitude from what I’m usually faced with in airports — but then I was in Texas and should have known that Texas does a lot of things their own way.