Well, here we are in Part Two of our quest to complete the Super Slam of Exotics. My first step was just down the road a ways outside of Houston, Texas. I was hunting with a friend, Mark Strickland for the beautiful native if India and Pakistan, the Black Buck Antelope. I was shooting a Thompson Contender in 30/30 caliber with Winchester 130 grain ballistic tip bullets and a Leupold Gold Ring 4 power scope. I spent three days on this hunt, thanks to a muffed shot the first day. The third day I was set up for an ambush in the waning hours of daylight. Out of nowhere, there he was ghosting along the edge of the brush 40 yards away. I took the kneeling shot and the buck flinched and sped away. I was sure he was hit and we found clipped hair and a few spots of blood where he had been standing. We looked and looked until it was to dark to see but no luck. I headed for home following the tunnel of light cast by my headlights, totally crest fallen. After a nearly sleepless night, the phone rang, just after daylight the next morning. Mark had found the Black Buck just a few minutes after dawn. I had shot a little high and its spine was partly gone. It hadn't went far, but into thick enough brush so we couldn't find it. My smile was a large one.

On a bright clear morning in September, 1991, my friend and outfitter, Richard Lozano, of Lozano Taxidermy in South Houston, Texas, and I rolled through the gate of the Double S Ranch, for a hunt for what was described to us as a "Big Red Deer Stag". We were a little over 100 miles from Houston, Texas, just outside the picturesque town of Halletsville, Texas. Our guide told us the area we were to hunt consisted of dense trees, and dense undergrowth, interspersed with some open areas which would be full of tall grasses and bushes. Luck was with me this day and within a hour we spotted a small herd of about eight Red Deer, deep in the shade of a grove of trees. They were having no part of the interlopers to their territory. Every move we made was mirrored by theirs in the opposite direction, always keeping the same distance and the trees between us. We had identified the stag we were after, our only problem was getting a clear shot. As nothing we had tried so far seemed to work, we decided to try another method. Richard and I would set up an ambush in a large thicket in the middle of a big opening. Out guide would start a mini drive through the trees in the hopes that the stags would separate, move through or around the edges of the opening in the hopes of getting a clear shot. Richard would watch my back in case the stags showed up behind us. Within a pretty short time we saw movement in the trees. Seemed like stags were everywhere, appearing at all the points of the compass. Now all we had to do was to make sure we tried for a shot at the right animal. All of a sudden, "he" was there at the edge of an opening, standing under a tree and looking right at us. I moved the monopod into position and rested the .375 caliber Thompson Contender on it. I took a deep breath, let it out, took another, and let half of it out as the cross hairs of the four power Leupold Scope on the top of the handgun settled on the animals heart area and slowly squeezed the trigger. At the crack of the shot, the stag jumped up straight into the air and came down running at top speed. He only went about 50 yards and stopped with his head lowered. I put an insurance shot into him as he started to go down. His main beams were 42 x 40 5/8 long with an inside spread of 29 4/8 inches. A high gold medal animal.

My agenda now took me near Hunt, Texas and the game rich, scenic, Texas hill country to try for The. elusive Mouflon sheep. I was to hunt this time with a good friend, Thompson Temple, on a ranch he had been leasing for a number of years. We arrived on the ranch on a typical late November day. Hot and clear, and around 85 degrees. This ranch is weird and I emphasize weird! The front half is covered with nice stands of timber and has nice hard sand roads traversing it. The ground is hard enough every where so you can cut across country if need be. The other half is very rocky, very rough, and what few roads that exist are nearly invisible. We searched the flat part first, hoping in vain, that we would find our ram there. Of course, that didn't happen, even though we did see a good number of rams there. So it was to the rock pile we went, as my friend had said that was where the sheep and goat type animals usually hung out. We bounced around quiet a bit and quite awhile seeing many animals and many species. Thompson said, he knew there was a better ram than we had seen so far. We kept searching the rocks and brush to no avail. We both arrived at the same conclusion. "if it's not here, it must be somewhere else". That else, has to be on the other half. So we decided to go back to where we started. Wouldn't you know it, there it stood in an opening not 400 yards from where we started hunting earlier in the day. We were able to get within 50 yards of him. When I touched off the shot from my 30/30 caliber Thompson Contender, with 4 power Leupold scope he dropped like a rock. When we got to him, we found strangely, the remains of the of the Winchester, 130 grain ballistic tip bullet mushroomed and hanging by a few hairs of the rams coat, on the far side if its body. He made the gold medal classification.

I next returned to hunt with Mark Strickland for trophy class Fallow Deer. He told me that he had a big spotted buck he was sure was gold medal class. This turned into a hunt with kind of weird circumstances. It took some time to find it but we did. I was able to get a good solid rest for my .375 caliber Thompson Contender, handgun. Trouble was for nearly 45 minutes my Fallow played hide-and-seek with me behind a big bush, near the edge of a clearing about 40 yards away, never giving me time enough for a shot. In the meantime, my guide and I were visited by eight or ten exotic sheep meandering down a trail within ten yards of us. To make matters worse, eighteen hogs trickled along around us, some within five yards. Finally I got a shot Trouble was it was facing straight at me, and the only shot I had a chance at was a spine shot, when it put it head down to graze. With a lot of luck working, I did make the shot. I was almost there.

Well, here I was back in the Texas Hill country for what is probably in my mind and many others the wariest of all the many exotic species imported and flourishing in our great state of Texas. This animal is the Aoudad Sheep, native of the Enni Mountains of Africa. It is said, that there are more Aoudad in Texas, then there are left in its native habitat. There have been a number of higher scoring animals taken in Texas than the largest ever taken in Africa.

I was again hunting with my friend, Thompson Temple,and my trustty .375 caliber Thompson Contender with it's 4 power Leupold Scope , and Winchester 200 grain Power Point bullets. He had seen what he believed to be a ram that sported horns of at least 32 inches, which is what I had been looking for. After a hard hunt, my final shot in this endeavor came while dangling my tired feet over the edge of a 80 foot cliff. The ram was at the bottom of the cliff going away from me, at about 60 yards away. Miracles and Luck!! I made and offhand shot and the ram dropped in his tracks in the middle of a cool, clear, meandering stream. When we got down to my trophy, Thomson was quick to put the tape to him. He looked at me with a sorrowful expression and said, "I was wrong Steve, he is not 32 inches long after all." Of course my heart dropped into my stomach and my hopes sank as well. Then a big smile crossed his face as he said, "He's not 32 inches long, he's 36 1/2 inches long." Boy did my mood get lighter. We barely got his 300 pound plus carcass into the bed of a pickup truck.

After the scoring was over, this not 32 inch ram, was certified as the new handgun world record. My quest was over and at the Records of Exotic's dinner my Super Slam was declared the Number One and I was named Handgun Hunter of the year.

Written by Steve Mahurin on April 25, 1999.