By Caleb McClain
The brakes screeched on the dusty levee road as we halted next to a couple parked Border Patrol agents and National Guard members on night watch. Juan rolled down the window revealing the two of us and the loaded .308 pointed at the floorboard next to me.
“Hey, vato. ¿Que pasa?” The agent asked.
“Me and the guero are chasing nilgai. You seen any?”
“None tonight. Just crossings.”
“Call me if you see any bulls.” Juan said as he pulled off.
It was unlike any hunt I’d ever been on. The border wall and Brownsville were on my right, and the Rio Grande and Mexico were on my left. We were hiking through trails around cabbage fields and brush thickets looking for the elusive blue bull. It was a buffer zone caught between two very different worlds—like the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, except there was nothing demilitarized about this place. Instead, it felt like the highly militarized zone. Somehow, in this very urban environment, there was a wildlife paradise, and we had full access to thousands of acres of it. What was even cooler is that I had spotters everywhere, as Juan was an ex-Border Patrol agent and current Department of Homeland Security employee. His old coworkers knew that on Friday and Saturday nights he was out hunting, and everyone was more than willing to keep their eyes open for game and report sightings to him in real time. We could use all the help we could get tonight, as this was the second night of a cold front that had all the nilgai bedded down in deep cover.
“We’re going to try this peninsula. It’s got a bunch of bulls, but there are a lot of family crossings.” Juan paused as he cut the steering wheel to the left. “No narcos cross here though, so it’s usually pretty safe.”
The peninsula was a 5-acre clearing in the South Texas brush, devoid of anything except tire tracks and footprints, save the occasional lost shoe or dropped trash from the constant crossings. We scanned with the thermals—no nilgai to be found. A quarter mile away, I could see flashlights cutting through trees, reminding me of duck hunting public land, and having a group of hunters coming into the area after you have already set up.
“Over there, people,” I alerted while pointing off in the distance.
“I see eight, maybe nine,” Juan responded, “let’s go.”
We turned the truck around and pulled back up to the agents we had just left. “Looks like you boys have some customers,” Juan informed them as he passed. The agents gave that here-we-go-again look before gearing up for the impending chase.
We continued through the night, seeing hogs, javelinas, whitetail, and coyotes. Still no nilgai.
“You see that?” Juan asked as he pointed to a white splotch in the air across the Rio that was only visible through the thermals.
I strained my eyes through the thermal.“Is that a person?”
“Monos en las palmas, we call them. They are spotters who hang in the trees and wait to tell people when to cross based on agent schedules. Come on, let’s go. No need to hunt when there’s gonna be a crossing.”
The night finally gave way to another white signature in the optics that appeared a little bit larger; we couldn’t tell exactly what it was in the dense brush. Was it a nilgai? We planned to stalk around the thin stretch of cover and cut it off as it entered the next field.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose, and a startled bull burst out in front of us in the awkward gallop of an uncoordinated baby giraffe. I threw the rifle on the bipod, centered the crosshairs on his neck, and engaged the two-stage trigger. Roughly 160-yards away, the distinct thud of the impact confirmed a perfect hit. I cycled the bolt, but no follow up was necessary; he was dead on the spot.
After the usual pictures, we cleaned the magnificent bull with the faded lullaby of the music from a Saturday night narco-fiesta in Matamoras serenading us in the background.
