Shooting God's Creatures

Friday, November 21, 2003 -- Cathi and I picked the boys up from school at 2:00 for the trip into Sonora to visit Angie & Johnny. After stopping for dinner at a little Chinese restaurant in Beorne, we arrived in Sonora at around 8:00 pm. On the way to the ranch, on a road in the middle of nowhere, we were stopped by a highway patrolman who claimed I was speeding in a 45 mph zone. He let me slide on the speeding but gave me a ticket for an expired inspection sticker. Cathi explained to the officer "I just TOLD him take care of that last week!" Zach piped up from the back seat with a helpful "I told him he was driving too fast!" In a surreal turn of events, a big buck walked up to the fence just 20 feet or so from the car as we were stopped. He seemed unfazed by the flashing lights of the patrol car. "Are all the deer around here domesticated?" I asked as the officer returned with my ticket. "Yeah, that's a nice one" he said turning his flashlight on the deer. Sometime during all this Cathi noticed that the officer's zipper was down but decided to withhold comment until after we pulled back onto the road. Uncle Johnny met us at the front gate of the ranch and escorted us the remaining 35 miles to the house where Aunt Angie was waiting for us with tamales, beans, jalapeno cornbread, and divinity (yes!). The boys and I spent the rest of the night hunting skittish Black Buck antelope out of the back of uncle Johnny's pickup. I felt a bit like Barney Fife after Johnny handed me the gun, one bullet, and instructions not to chamber it until we were ready to shoot. It was midnight when we finally called it a night and headed back to the house. Zach was the only one to shoot an antelope but unfortunately it was too small to keep. He did make a nice textbook shoulder-shot though. Josh and I took turns missing a couple of antelope that seemed wholly unconcerned about the bullets whizzing past their heads. After about the tenth shot, they decided to wander a bit further out of range. Cousin Garrett and buddies where hunting in another truck and bagged us a nice doe so at least we won't be going home empty handed.