The final hours of the hunt closed down around me like a shroud and I eased off into the brush at the end of a sendero for one last hunt.
As far as I know, nobody had been back into this place yet. Tracks made by cruising trucks had stopped back at the point where this sendero met the main one. I'd parked the truck there.
There were low concrete tanks at the point that the sendero made another right angle turn and I focused my attention on them as I moved quietly through the bend.
It was a good place for a cottontail and a hog or Javie too. One last rabbit would be a nice touch. A parting shot as it were. But I saw no rabbits and the hogs and Javies were absent as well.
It kind of fit my mood. I'd become part of this hostile and game rich country during the days I'd hunted here.
I'd left foot prints in many hidden spots. Even followed those prints a couple of times to help orient out of a particularly featureless and thick area.
Often my tracks lay on top of hog or deer or Javie tracks and other times they lay under tracks of coyote and snake. Just part of the local traffic I guess.
In time the animals tracks would cover mine and no sign of my passing would exist. It's the way of the world and the way of the south Texas brush country... I accept that.
After a while I retraced steps that had carried me far past the tanks. I'd seen nothing.
As I rounded the bend by the tanks, I glanced off into the brush on the other side of the road and saw what appeared to be piled dirt. Hmmmm. I hadn't noticed that when I came through there earlier. I turned into the brush toward it.
Within 60 yards the brush opened to disclose a small pond. The " piled dirt" I'd seen was the pond dam.
Standing there in the brush on the edge of the pond clearing I took in the sights around me.
It showed obvious signs of heavy use.
Low on the sides of most of the trees was a uniform band of gray... dried mud from the pond.
Large cavities in the mud by the waters edge showed the impression of large bodies.
I'd found the blunt tracks of hogs out in the sendero... this was a hog place. From the looks of things, a very good hog place.
Since I already had the wind advantage on the spot and there was a handy place to carve out a little niche for hiding, I prepared to watch for a while.
Pehaps it was just too late in the morning for hog activity, except for a couple of extremely large doves that sat back in the edge of the brush and made brief flights to the waters edge, the site was empty.
At one point I thought I heard hog squeals back in the brush upwind and across the opening, but I couldn't be sure. The sound had been very brief and muffled by the scrub and a steady north wind.
I concentrated hard on seeing and smelling and hearing all that went on around me. When I walked away from this pond it would be to leave the ranch and head north. I wanted to wring every last ounce of experience out of the country.
Being there was good enough and I realized it didn't really matter if I saw another hog or Javie.
I'd had my chances. Had my successes and failures. Shot my bow with the unerring accuracy of Robin Hood and with the dismal effect of someone from the hood. I'd laughed with friends, ate well and slept like I had no sins.
In the middle of my revery a small form materialized through the mesquite screen to my right. A large coyote trotted down to the pond within 15 yards of me. It gave no hint that it was aware of my presense and I raised my bow to prepare for a possible encounter.
As the dog circled the pond away from me, I could see that it favored it's right rear foot. Undoubtedly problems associated with cactus or something like it. I felt a little sorry for him.
A light squeek with my lips and the dog's ears perked up. Almost in the same motion he turned and trotted toward me.
I knew where I was going to have to take the shot if the coyote came that far. I shifted the bow ever so slightly to that spot and the show was over. The coyote caught the movement and was instantly trotting away. Brush prevented a shot.
Well, that was certainly cool. A very close "almost" with a coyote. With coyotes you have to learn to be happy with the "almosts".
I thought about getting up and leaving at that point. The morning was closing in on the time when I had to leave the ranch and it was sure a good enough final experience... I lingered a while longer.
Closing another chapter in the Texas Sweat would be a bittersweet affair. Friends had become brothers on this trip and brothers even closer in the bonds that tie us. I'd miss them and I'd miss this place in time. Within minutes it would be a memory.
Another coyote ran down to the water in front of me. It was almost as if the brush was trying to hold me there. Bidding me to stay and play. Tempting me with delights I could not resist. I got back in the game.
The coyote was much closer than the first had been and my bow ready. If the coyote continued, he'd pass my best shooting window through the brush.
He drank for a few seconds and turned to go around the pond... directly away from me.
As he presented his back side I started a slow draw. I couldn't see his eyes and I knew he couldn't see me.
When the string was within a couple of inches of my anchor, he suddenly turned to his right, making him broadside.
I had to swing the bow slightly to the right to adjust for this new position and when I did he saw the movement.
The arrow was already in flight as the big dog started to react to the shot. For a moment all was a blurr of movement.
The white fletched shafts blazed through the morning light toward the coyote, a blinding bright beam from bow to coyote. Perfectly shot!
It appeared in my own weird, time warp, perception of the incident, that at one point the coyote was doing cartwheels around my arrow. It flew perfectly through the space he left around it.
I don't know for a fact, but it also looked like the coyote passed the arrow as it careened off hard packed earth and skittered across the dry pond dirt.
The last I saw of him, he was lined out and topping the pond bank in high gear. It's my last hunting memory from that hunt. One final Kodachrome in my mind.
Click!
A white fletched arrow laying spent in the gray dust as a coyote bounds through waxy green prickly pear and the pastel emerald of the awakening mesquite.
It's a picture I'll see whenever I think of Texas Sweat 06.
Topic: The never ending story - TXS06... Into the breach (Read 23932 times)
