Numerous reasons to hunt Texas exotics
The excitement of spot-and-stalk in the rocky hill country for Axis deer or the wide open grassland of the South Texas coastal prairie for Nilgai antelope makes Al Senteno, Jr. one of those Texas hunters who are wild about exotics. If the beautiful trophy mounts don't do it for you, Senteno said the table fare procured from harvesting Texas exotic game just might.
Senteno, the Port Isabel High School basketball coach and a Tarpon varsity football running backs coach, grew up hunting with his father, Al Senior, from the age of four. The father-son duo, who have hunted nilgai together for years are both completely sold on exotics due specifically to a trophy Axis deer Al Jr. shot on a Hill Country ranch near Bandera over Spring Break. Texas Parks & Wildlife Department lists exotic game as any of the following game animals imported specifically for hunting from Europe and Asia, and other states: Aoudad sheep, Axis deer, elk (wapiti), Sika deer, fallow deer, blackbuck antelope, nilgai antelope, and "Russian" boar, or feral hog. They can be hunted all year and by any means, but do require a valid Texas hunting license and cannot be taken from public roadways, according to TPWD regulations.
The buck that hooked Al Jr. leaves little room for the many hunters all over the United States who get fired up by Texas exotics.
"We had seen one in velvet that might've been bigger, but he wasn't wide, he just went straight up," Senteno recalled. "He was behind a tree and didn't give me a shot, so we drove around a little more and that's when we saw this big boy. My dad and I agreed ‘we need to shoot that wide one.' I got out of the truck and started to stalk him. I had to make sure I had the right one, and he was standing in a gap between two trees at 150 yards, and he spooked because of the other deer and he took off running, and I took the shot. My dad said, ‘you hit him son, you hit him. His back legs bucked, you hit him in the heart.' My dad knows what he's doing. We went to the spot where he had been standing and didn't find any blood, and walked forty yards and there he was. I was speechless. He was the biggest animal I've ever killed, and I felt really fortunate to bet there with my dad. That was a big reward. We were fired up, high-fiving each other. We took a lot of pictures."
That buck, which weighed 240 lbs., scored 145 1/8 by Safari Club International's standards and earned an SCI gold medal.
Unlike Boone and Crockett, which measures outside and inside antler spread, SCI only scores the inside spread, main beams, the points and the bases, and was scored by official SCI scorer Edmundo Gonzalez, of Brownsville.
Senteno's father, a Vietnam Veteran active in Brownsville's Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Knights of Columbus, has taken many fine trophy whitetail bucks according to his son, and raised Al Jr. in the South Texas outdoors, knowledgeable about woodcraft, marksmanship, classic rifles, and the various capabilities of those rifles. By now a veteran whitetail hunter, Al Jr. said he passes up most whitetail bucks he sees anymore.
"Sometimes I don't get to go deer hunting until December. Now I mostly just trophy hunt. If we want meat we'll shoot a doe. But my oldest son is ready. He's six, and he's just like I was, he loves the outdoors, too."
Judging Senteno's newfound enthusiasm for exotics, it seems likely the third generation of Senteno men will have an early opportunity to gain an affinity for them.
"If you do some research on hunting exotics, you'll find it's very affordable," Senteno said. "You think of exotics and you tend to think it's very expensive, but you can shoot one cheaper than you can kill a whitetail. We've never had a lease, because my mom's family has land near Refugio, but (hunting exotics) is cheaper than a lease - more affordable than what people think."
On some ranches, for instance, Senteno said hunters can harvest a blackbuck antelope for under a thousand dollars.
"I'm going to make plans this summer to shoot an Axis doe. You can get those for around 200 bucks."
Senteno also said exotics make for excellent eats.
"Nilgai steaks are delicious," Senteno said. "Axis deer actually tastes better than nilgai. I'm an avid whitetail hunter but Axis tastes five times better than whitetail, and we haven't even tried the back straps yet."
Outdoors Writer Ben Christensen can be reached at bc@riograndeoutdoors.com.
