Hunters spend far more time searching for deer and passing on shots than they do actually killing anything. So what's the lure? David Sikes/Caller-Times
ENSINAL — Ahhh, the glory and thrill of the kill. Or not.
It would be difficult to chart exactly how many hours or days, on average, Texas hunters spend at deer camps each season compared to the number of whitetails they kill. But you can bet the ratio tells a story very different than any myth held by non-hunters.
There may have been a time decades ago when many or most hunters shot the first legal deer that walked within gun range. And I'm not necessarily referring to sustenance hunting.
For many hunters, the practice of killing deer early and often has mostly faded into a thoroughly modern version of free-range hunting. And this cultural shift often results in fewer shots fired. Again, this conversation does not involve high-dollar hunts of manufactured bucks.
Such is the attitude I found during a late-season hunt at the storied Callaghan Ranch near Encinal. This 90,000-acre low-fenced property was established after the Civil War as a homestead for Charles Callaghan, a veteran of the Confederate Army.
He raised sheep. Lots of them. And before Callaghan died in 1874, he appointed another veteran and former Confederate officer, Col. William R. Jones, as his ranch superintendent. Jones continued operations after Callaghan's death, adding 6,000 goats to the ranch's 100,000 sheep.
This didn't set well with area cattlemen. Differences between the two groups resulted in the bitter and deadly Sheep Wars in the 1880s. All of this is according to an article written by Paul I. Wellman and Hal R. Taylor and published by the Texas State Historical Association.
The Callaghan Ranch survived the dispute, along with Indian raids, and later was incorporated as the Callaghan Land and Pastoral Company. Ultimately, it was converted into a cattle operation.
"In 1946 the ranch comprised 218,500 acres owned outright and 31,500 under lease, in a single block of 250,000 acres, upon which the Swinging Eleven brand was carried by more than 20,000 Hereford cattle," according to the Texas Historical Association. "The Callaghan was one of the best improved ranches in the country, and many of its employees, chiefly Mexican Americans, were born and lived their entire lives on the ranch."
Today, the ranch is divided into about 20 leases, ranging in acreage, but roughly of equal size, give or take several sections or more.
One of these leases is held by an interesting young man, who I met at a modest camp house during my visit. Actually, the lease is held by Steve Torrance's family company. He was relaxing there with his girlfriend and his two Labrador retrievers, Cuatro and Gus.
Some of you may have heard of Torrance, a champion, top-fuel, dragster driver involved in a spectacular 300 mph crash last year at the Texas NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis. He wasn't hurt.
Admittedly, I was not familiar with his impressive career. Torrance drives for Capco Contractors, his family's oil and gas construction company out of Henderson. After races, Torrance returns to his real job each Monday as Capco's operations manager.
I also didn't know Torrance is a cancer survivor, who overcame Hodgkin's lymphoma 17 years ago, when he was a very young amateur racer. He's 34 now.
The likable Torrance with a boyish grin was at the Callaghan recently, not to kill a deer, but to host a dream hunt for Jaxson Jerrell, a 16-year-old kid with cystic fibrosis. A San Antonio nonprofit called Trinity Oaks helped arrange this.
Unfortunately, I missed the hunt. But my brief visit with Torrance provided a glimpse into what a hard-working, charitable, thrill-seeking, lover of speed and competition seeks from a deer lease.
Above the couch at his camp hangs a serenity sunset scene. The silhouette of a deer blind stands in the foreground. It's his blind, I assume.
A copy of this photo is fixed within the cockpit of Torrance's race car. It's the last thing he sees before screaming down a 1,000-foot course. The image calms him, just as visits to the Callaghan Ranch melts away stress and lends perspective to his hectic life.
Oh yeah, Torrance also killed the biggest buck every taken on the ranch by any means. He got it with a bow. Torrance enjoys a successful bow-hunt, from time to time. But there is no photo of that trophy buck in his race car.
I didn't see anything that came close to the Torrance buck or the many other bucks that grace the wall of glory at the ranch's check station. Every deer killed on the property must be inspected there. Ranch officials enforce rigid rules regarding the age of animals taken off the property.
Me? I witnessed a sky similar to Torrance's spectacular sunset. But mostly I rode around with Austin Piepryca, whose family oilfield company holds another lease on the Callaghan. We sat in a blind one afternoon and spent time at another blind the next morning, mostly watching wildlife, looking at does and bucks that didn't qualify for taking. Yes, my rifle was loaded.
We paused to catch a few bass at one of the tanks. And drove up on flocks of ducks, just to watch them feed or fly. Back at camp, we learned one of the other hunters got a nice buck while we were killing time.
Later, we hunted for arrowheads, drove on miles of dirt roads, peering through binoculars at whatever walked into view. I truly enjoy killing time like this, even when nothing dies. Many times, I leave empty handed, but never empty.
I'll probably take to the field again before long. But this'll be a grocery hunt. I enjoy those, too. Plus I like the taste of venison.
If you're wondering about the ratio of time spent afield compared to the number of deer killed, the folks at Texas Parks & Wildlife interviewed 738,713 white-tailed deer hunters last season. Those hunters spent 7,259,736 days afield. And they killed 720,645 of the state's 4 million deer.
This means each hunter spent nearly 11 days at deer camps for each deer killed. There is no gauge to measure fulfillment.
But I predict most of those hunters will return next season to do it again.
Maybe it's the sunsets.
Contact David Sikes at 361-886-3616 or david.sikes@caller.com.