Check out our sponsors and advertisers!!
 |
King Ranch
Nilgai by Ken Wilson |
The first time I heard of nilgai antelope in Texas was about the circus that went bankrupt during the Depression and released their animals on the King Ranch. It made me wonder what happened to their elephants.
Subsequently, I read that the nilgai were not let loose for free. The circus actually sold two males and four females to the King Ranch. This made more sense, economically anyway, and also explains why there aren't any tigers on the ranch. Bad for whitetails, you know…and Texans, too!
But when I asked Bill Kiel for more information about the bankrupted circus, I found out that that old rumor simply wasn't true. Bill started as a biologist on the King Ranch in 1961 and then became wildlife manager. He retired in 1989. His primary responsibilities were monitoring game populations and improving game habitat, but he also worked with Texas A&M graduate students doing research projects involving King Ranch game animals, including nilgai.
"Mr. Kiel, is it true that nilgai were released in 1930 by a bankrupted circus?" "No." "No?" "No." "What do you mean 'no'?" "In the late '60s and early '70s. graduate students from Texas A&M dug into all the old records. As near as could be determined, those animals came from the San Diego Zoo. They were brought in by Caesar Kleberg, who was the manager down at the Norias Division for a long time. There were probably less than two dozen released altogether in several releases between 1924 and 1930."
So, there you have it. From a few modest releases Caesar Kleberg, the estimated population of nilgai today, even after periodic meat hunts to supply restaurants, is 6,000 to 7,000 on the Norias Division of the King Ranch and 10,000 to 15,000 in Kenedy and Willacy Counties.
I arrived on the King Ranch in April 1990 with my wife, Lorraine, my 12 year-old daughter, Summer, and my 8 year-old son, Ryan. I had booked a nilgai and turkey hunt with Amos DeWitt's Tio Moya Corporation. In the long history of the King Ranch, no commercial sport hunting had been conducted until Amos was allowed a modest test for the 1988-89 season. Apparently the King Ranch Corporation was impressed by his hunting operation, because Amos is now operating on a long-term contract.
From 1845 to 1851, Richard King made his initial fortune by moving supplies by steamboat for General Zachary Taylor's army fighting in Mexico and by supplying the growing economy in the Wild Horse Desert (the area between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers in South Texas).
King's ranch started with the purchase of a 15,500-acre land grant on Santa Gertrudis Creek. It became the cradle of the cattle industry in the United States.
Bt the end of the Civil War, the ranch had grown to 146,000 acres and, at King's death in 1885, it was more than 600,000 acres. His wife, Henrietta, inherited the ranch and turned its management over to Robert J. Kleberg, Sr., the husband of her youngest child, Alice. By the time of Robert's death in 1932, the ranch constituted 1,175,000 acres.
The King Ranch Corporation was formed in 1935. After the results of estate taxes and the Depression, the ranch was re-shaped to about 825,000 acres, which is about its size today and that means big…Texas big. It's bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island.
There are four ranching divisions, primarily because separate land acquisitions resulted in separated properties, although the Santa Gertrudis Division (the original division, where the main ranch headquarters is located) and the Laureles Division (the largest) are narrowly connected just north of Kingsville. The other two divisions are the Encino (the smallest) and the Norias.
It's almost 20 miles from the entry gates of Norias Division to the Tio Moya Lodge. "Tio Moya" is Spanish for "Uncle Moya" and is the name of a 15,000-acre pasture comprising part of Amos DeWitt's 36,000-acre hunting operation.
Amos chose his land well because it is excellent whitetail habitat as well as home to nilgai, turkey, and some quail, hogs, javelina, and rattlesnakes. Judging from the estimated 150 deer per day I saw white hunting nilgai, the whitetail population must be enormous. Bill Kiel said there is about one deer per 20 acres of whitetail habitat, but you can't divide the 825,000-acre ranch by 20 and arrive at a population because farmland and areas around structures or with sparse cover are not prime habitat.
Fortunately, I was at Tio Moya after all whitetail antlers had been dropped so I could concentrate on hunting nilgai, or so I thought. I had never shot a turkey and the big birds were everywhere, but they aren't allowed to be hunted around the lodge, which is kind of cruel if you have a hard time filling your tag, because you can see big gobblers from the dining room.
I wore camouflage daily in case a set-up looked good for harvesting next Thanksgiving's main course. The first day we concentrated on nilgai, but we also tried calling in some long-bearded birds a couple of times without success.
Back at the lodge that night, I showed my family the beard from the turkey that someone had placed on the neck of the nilgai mounted in the lounge. When I quickly found out that nilgai do, in fact, have a beard like a turkey, I tried to pretend I had been kidding. I also made a note to pay closer attention through my binoculars the next day.
My guide was Bill Kiel's son, Jim, who certainly had the credentials to guide me. He had personally harvested over 600 nilgai in 1988-89 for the Texas Wild Game Cooperative in addition to guiding numerous trophy hunters. Even though meat hunting was primarily cows, calves, and young bulls, head shots were required and a good knowledge of nilgai habits were mandatory. As sport hunters, we hunted during daylight, of course.
Before my hunt, I read an August 1986 article on nilgai in Petersen's Hunting written by Texas' own John Wootters. In later reflecting on my hunt, many of his comments were so perfectly similar to my experience that I received permission from Petersen's to quote from his article. I mean, why try to improve on the definitive observances?
Wootters writes, "Nilgai are as wild as turpentined turkeys! About seven-eights of your nilgai will be running when first spotted." Jim and I found this to be so true that we abandoned the typical African safari method of spotting a trophy from the hunting vehicle and then making a stalk on foot. By the time we could climb out, there wouldn't be a nilgai to stalk." Nilgai are born knowing what you're up to, and remember, they evolved [in India and Pakistan] coping very successfully with such varmints as Bengal tigers" (Wootters).
So we would drive to good starting points and walk into the wind, hoping to spot a blue bull ("nilgai" in Hindu language) before he spotted us. The Tio Moya land is perfect for "fast still-hunting" because of the rolling terrain and intermittent cover.
That first full day, we saw three bulls with at least nine-inch horns. I'm not saying I could have shot them, but we saw the,. I decided not to try for any of them, and after the last one, Jim said, "I don't think you're ready to shoot yet." He was right. I really didn't want to end my hunt when I was just getting to know the animal and how to judge its horns.
A mature nilgai bull can weigh 600 pounds and is a magnificent-looking animal with its muscular frame and sleek, dark hair (to me it seemed that the darker the hair and bigger the neck, the bigger the horns). "Magnificent" is saying something when an animal has shoulders higher than its rump and grows horns that average only about eight inches. Maybe part of it is the nilgai's attitude. Wootters writes, "If he carried a set of horns like a kudu's, he'd be considered one of the world's most desirable game animals, and if he had the temperament of a Cape buffalo, south Texas hunters would be afraid to leave camp in anything less than an armored personnel carrier."
On the morning of the second day, we were driving to a likely starting point when we saw a single Rio Grande turkey leave his roost. Jim stopped the Jeep and said, "Let's give him a try." I grabbed the shotgun and quietly chambered a 3 ½-inch shell. Then we walked half the 300 yards separating us and set-up in a good spot. Jim pulled a camo cover over his face and started talking turkey on his slate box. I sat in front of him wearing my tan, brown and camo nilgai outfit with camo war paint on my face just in case such an opportunity arose.
I really didn't think the big bird would come in. But after a few minutes he did, and when he got to 50 yards and kept coming with his 9 ½-inch beard dangling in front, I started to get turkey fever. He played hide-and-seek for awhile, which allowed me to calm down so I could raise my shotgun the last few inches when he walked behind a bush at 35 yards. When his head and neck emerged, I fired and he went right down. I didn't expect the gobbler to be that heavy (live weight guessed at over 25 pounds). And he flapped his wings so much I asked Jim if I should wring his neck, but Jim assured me the bird was clinically dead.
 Ryan Wilson with headless 6 foot, 9 inch rattler |
Later in the day, we were walking back to the Jeep after a
fruitless walk into the wind for nilgai, when Jim stopped me. I
surveyed the horizon, but he pointed eight feet in front of us. A
big rattlesnake was poised right in our path. We backed off and
Jim killed it with a log. He carefully cut its head off and tossed
the rest of it in the back of the Jeep where it coiled and
uncoiled all afternoon. I kept looking back at it to make sure its
head was still off. That rattler measured six feet nine inches and
had 14 rattles. Jim skinned it for my son, and, after tanning, it
now adorns his bedroom wall.
Late that afternoon, we were walking over some sandy dunes near the Laguna Madre. As usual, I followed Jim single-file into the wind. Suddenly he dropped to one knee and I did the same. "There's a big, black bull over the hill. He's feeding about 120 yards away." |
Jim carries two sticks, about four feet long, so his clients can cross them at the top while holding them with one hand to form a rifle rest in open country. "You won't have enough time to use the sticks. We'll crawl about 60 yards. Then you'll need to stand up, make sure the horns are what you want, and shoot." As we moved forward on hands and knees, I thought, "Okay, this is it. You know what nine-plus-inch horns are supposed to look like. You know to look for the big neck that separates mature bulls from the younger ones. And…if you shoot this one, you'll have some extra time to take the family to South Padre Island. But…don't shoot a small one because the family won't enjoy you sulking on the beach."
Fortunately, the sandy soil was actually comfortable to crawl on and we closed the gap quickly. I already had a 400-grain soft point up the spout of my Weatherby .416 rifle, so I pushed off the safety, double-checked the variable scope setting at 1 ¾ , and stood up.
I found the bull in the eyepiece with the crosshairs in the middle of his body. Elapsed time: 1.5 seconds. I swung left to check the horns, but they weren't there! So I swung right and found his big neck in feeding position and took a quick look at his horns. They were heavy, black, and long. Elapsed time: 3.0 seconds. I could see the neck of the bull moving up as I swung the crosshairs back left. Jim had told me shoot low in the chest; that most people shoot too high. So I lowered my crosshairs to just about the crest of the hill as I aimed down. When they crossed the shoulder, the rifle exploded and the bull was literally blown off his feet. I jacked in another round as the animal kicked on its side and then lay still where it had dropped.
Wootters says, "The nilgai of Texas just might be the strongest animal you'll ever hunt. So far, I haven't heard of a nilgai bull that went down in his tracks and stayed down with anything other than a spine or brain shot…" Credit my shoulder shot kill to Weatherby and Kiel. But credit my nilgai bull with keeping, in tact, Wootters observation of never having "seen an exit wound in a nilgai carcass, regardless of the bullet used." My 400-grain soft point ended up next to the skin on the far shoulder.
 Ken Wilson with the new SCI #1 Nilgai |
"What a bull," Jim said. "Look at those horns!" We looked at them, touched them, and measured them. Sixty days later, SCI master measurer Joe Krausz measured them as the new SCI #1 (10 3/8 inches long with bases of 10 2/8 inches and 10 4/8 inches) after conferring with Jack Schwabland of the Record Book Committee. But let's face it, the nilgai is an animal whose body outshines its horns and there are no doubt bigger horns out there. When I hunted, we couldn't find the bull that Jim called "the long-horned one." |