Cornered & in danger, hunter at Webb ranch realizes everyone should do this!!

By Mike Leggett for the Austin American Statesman

THE BRUSH COUNTRY — Mike Leggett is a native Texan and veteran Statesman outdoors writer who has compiled ‘A Texas To-Do List: 24 Things Every Texan Should Do Before He Dies.'
This year, he's taken us to every corner of the state to fish and hunt, search for artifacts and endangered birds, mountain climb, hike and camp out.
Today we reach the halfway point of the To-Do List on a small hill in the desert north of Laredo, where Mike hunts for deer the way the Indians did it hundreds of years ago.

A skin-flaying north wind whooshed through the low desert brush, turning my cheeks Santa red, but muffling the sounds of my trek north to a low gravel hill.
A heavy, steel-gray sky threatened to begin pelting Webb County with sleet at any moment. From the top of this slight bit of elevated ground, I could see down into a draw. Visibility was limited by the waist-high ceniza, or purple sage if you're a Roy Rogers fan. But the draw was directly upwind.This would be the place.

I pulled out my tools. The horns, of course. A grunt call. Leather gloves to ward off the thorns. A face mask and the rifle. I was ready. I was alone. Or was I?

Facing the draw, I smashed the horns together like cymbals. I wanted the first sound to be loudest and most shocking. Then I began grinding the horns together using motions that I hoped would imitate the sounds of two whitetail bucks, head-to-head, pushing and shoving and trying to beat the other into submission.
As I worked the horns against each other, I kicked some rocks and waded through some brush, cracking branches and adding some depth and reality to the sound track.

When two bucks fight, the battle is unrestrained, noisy and sometimes to the death. In a grand sense, it is survival of the fittest. In the reality of the moment, it's all about who gets the girl. No more than 30 seconds into my masquerade, a medium-sized buck exploded out of the draw about 50 yards away and began coming directly at the bushes where I was hiding. His hooves were flinging rocks and gravel, and he was knocking down bushes as he came. His muscles rippled, his eyes were wild and slobber slung from his mouth, caught in the wind and spider webbed around his head.

Honestly, at that moment, I was a bit concerned.Here was a couple hundred pounds of armed and irritated buck, looking to beat down on a pair of interlopers trespassing in his territory. In that instant, I could visualize being trampled, then pounded by that buck.

And, in that instant, I knew I was right. This is one of the 24 Things Every Texan Should Do Before He Dies. It's wild. It's natural. It's real. It's invigorating.