As some of you know I volunteer with a charity called Texas Outdoor C.H.I.L.D. We provide hunting and fishing trips to youngsters who have a terminal illness, are in remission from one or have experienced a life altering medical event. A few weeks ago I posted what is best described as a plea for help on our forum here trying to find a hunt for 10 year old Gonzalo Doria from the Castroville area. Gonzalo is almost 3 years into remission for leukemia. If you will recall, back on December 9th TOC hosted his friend Hiromi Avila who lost her left leg to bone cancer. After hearing about her hunt Gonzalo wanted to go hunting also. To show you how great the folks on this forum are, I had over 15 responses in a matter of days. The first to respond were Rusty and Martha Kimbrell of Big Iron Ranches off of FM 1340 and FM 41 in the Mountain Home area. They graciously offered to host Gonzalo's dream hunt. The only stipulation that they had was that he could not hunt their addax, Pierre David deer, oryx, buffalo or in the "big deer" pasture. All other species on the ranch were fair game as well as the native hill country whitetails. And yes we could hunt the whitetails because they have MLD permits. This meant that he could hunt aoudad, axis, sika, fallow, blackbuck, etc.

Now let set the scene for you. Prior to last Friday Gonzalo had never even held firearm with a caliber bigger than a BB let alone shot one. I took along an Encore in .223 and .7mm-08 as well as a bolt action .243 for Gonzalo to try. He chose the heavy barreled .223 to hunt with and it turned out to be a great choice for him.

Right out of the box, as we entered the hunting pasture, we spotted a herd of aoudad grazing about 150 yards away from us down in the creek bottoms. Now remember, this a young man who had never shot a gun or hunted before. Rusty decided to try and put a stalk on the aoudad as we would be unable to approach close enough for a shot in the noisy Ranger. He and Gonzalo eased down through the brush as momma and I watched through our binoculars as they slowly made their way toward the aoudads. As they were easing into position to set up for the shot they disappeared behind some brush and momma and I could no longer see them. A few minute later one of the aoudad threw its head up in the alert position and I thought oh man, the gig is up now. But suddenly we heard a shot and the aoudad scattered.

I knew that he had not missed because I heard the round hit an aoudad; it was little hard to tell which one at the distance though. We kept looking for Rusty and Gonzalo to come back but we saw no sign of them. Momma was starting to get a little l worried I told her not to worry as they were probably tracking his animal. Sure enough, about 30 minutes later we heard a loud shout from up on top of the hill back beside the ranger. And about 30 minutes after that I spotted Rusty and Gonzalo dragging aoudad #1 towards us through the brush. They had blood trailed it for about ½ a mile or so. Gonzalo had shot it through the neck and hit a major vein.

Aoudad #2 came Saturday evening as we set up in a box blind overlooking a feeder. About 4:45 p.m. a herd of aoudad came in to feed and I could tell from his face that Gonzalo wanted to try for one. After looking them over with our binoculars he chose the one that he wanted. After setting him up to shoot, he made a clean heart shot and the aoudad dropped in the dirt right where it stood; never to move again. He was a very happy young man.

I cannot begin to thank Rusty and Martha enough for hosting Gonzalo’s hunt for us. They have helped to create two new members of the hunting community as not only does Gonzalo want to go hunting again, but now his mother is planning hunting of her own.


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Congrats to the young man.

Congrats on a great hunt! Rusty and Martha are great people!!

Great follow up story. Congrats to the new hunter along with kudos to Rusty and Martha for hosting!

Congrats to the young man!

Great job all around!

Yes sir, a big thumbs up to all!

Congrats to Gonzalo, well done!

Very nice of y'all Rusty.

Outstanding!

OUTSTANDING!!!

Outstanding to all involved. Congratulation on the Aoudad and good luck on the health.

Outstanding!

Cool!!! Good job on every one evolved.

Great story

Absolutely amazing story! God bless all that made this possible and helped with the successful hunt. Love this and thank you for sharing

Gonzalo is a good looking tough kid. Bright future for him.

Amazing story. There are so many outstanding people in the hunting community.

great story, congrats

great job, congrats to the hunter and everyone involved