Hunting Season in South Texas

Saturday, November 1, 2008 started this year's deer hunting season in South Texas. While hunting as a sport may be declining in the United States as a whole, it's part of the rhythm of normal life in Laredo. Boys, of course, but many girls also, are taught, before their teenage years, the skills of shooting and the joys of the sport. The best seasons of the year (fall and winter) reward those spending time out of doors, and enjoying the rituals of the hunting life.

First you have to learn the language of guns, ammo, trophy measurements. Next, the firearm skills, the proper setting of blinds, and the necessity of having the proper ranch vehicle--usually old and properly camouflaged. Enjoying campfires, the beautiful star filled night skies, and the listening to coyote howls come easily from earlier fishing expeditions.

Some are squeamish about feeding your deer prey for weeks before with carefully dropped corn. But at least we don't shoot them from helicopters as they apparently do in Alaska!

After the hunting season, Laredoans would gather for an annual "Fiesta Caseria" --a wild game dinner and dance. This event would raise money for the Santander Museum, and later the Children's Museum. Our overly protective "nanny" City Health Department decided, in the 1980's to shut the Fiesta down--for some esoteric health reasons. So now we can take our changes eating our own wild game and to heck with---. Well, real Texans still eat venison, quail, and some rattlesnake.

So, aim well, enjoy the South Texas Brush Country, and eat well afterwards.