I’m in the Texas Hill Country, and it’s hot. They tell you it is a dry heat here, but 96 degrees is still almost a hundred.
Early morning and late evening feels good, and sometimes we have a nice breeze – more than the guides want, actually, because they don’t like too much wind for hunting. I just stay quiet and say a short prayer of thanks in my head for the breeze. Texas, ever the land of contrasts both beautiful and harsh, is doing her usual performance of showing me how wonderful and awful she can be.
I’m here in pursuit of the fabled axis deer, also known as the chital or cheetal. Native to India but since transplanted to other locales, the axis deer is known for a beautiful coat with white spots, very similar to the fawns of our native whitetails. The antlers on the male deer (they call them bucks in Texas) rise up and sweep to the rear much like an elk’s antlers. I found the axis to be very different from the whitetails we saw every day – spooky and more wary. More on this later.
This whole rodeo was organized by Chase Rohlfsen, whose company RubLine Marketing has several clients in the outdoors industry world, including Scent Crusher (a complete scent-elimination system for your hunting clothes and gear), Xpediton Archery, TacTacam (a self-contained camera that attaches to gun or bow to film your hunt), ThermaSeat and many more.
Rohlfsen hosted me and six other outdoors writers for an axis deer hunt. Chase and his son, Keegan, were perfect hosts. I was very impressed with Keegan. Can you imagine being 18 years old and working in the outdoors industry? Filming hunts, editing video, working with photos and taking care of other chores in his dad’s business, this kid has a bright future.