As a youngster growing up in rural Texas, just above the Gulf Coast Prairie, hunting and camping played an important role in my early life. My first camp was my dad’s dog trailer. I spread hay on the floor, then laid a homemade quilt on top of it. To keep warm, I used a feather bed, a kind of comforter made from duck and goose down from domestic and wild ducks and geese.

In time, my parents built a camp house on the backside of our property under an ancient oak that had likely lived through at least 300 summers. I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Native Americans and early European settlers had camped under the same tree many years before.

Our camp house was a one-room, uninsulated, two-by-four wooden-framed building covered with tin. While in camp, my mother cooked meals on an old cast-iron wood stove that had belonged to my great-grandparents.

Some of my fondest memories of growing up were those spent in camp during the fall whitetail deer hunting season. We moved to camp the week before the deer season opened — we being my parents, younger brother Glenn, and me. Arriving a week early gave us time to do some last-minute scouting and make sure our deer stands were still sound and our shooting lanes were clear. We still, however, had to take care of the livestock at home. Back then, we were in the chicken, hog, and cattle business, all of which required daily care.

A big part of our camp was the food. Meals prepared on the wood stove always tasted better than those prepared at home, even if they were cooked and fried in the same cast-iron pots and pans. We used lard, rendered from the hogs we butchered each year, to fry our food.

For several years, our hunting camp played an important role in our lives. Unfortunately, in time, life got in the way. Today, the camp is merely an old building filled with memories that still exists on my property.

Part of life had me becoming a wildlife biologist and an outdoor communicator. I’ve been fortunate and blessed to visit a fair number of hunting camps throughout the world. All have been truly memorable, some more so than others.

Back in my early days as a wildlife biologist living in Abilene, Texas, I hunted with Roy Bamberg and Chuck Dalchau, fish biologists with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. At the time, I worked for the TPWD’s Wildlife Division. Each fall, we and often other friends hauled an old Army Command tent to New Mexico’s mountains to hunt mule deer.

Our cots lined the walls, and we knew that Dalchau would soon have a fire going in the woodstove that would turn it cherry red. Bamberg usually appointed himself as camp cook and prepared unbelievably delicious meals. These were followed by sitting outside if the weather permitted or inside if not. After a hard day’s hunt, hunger satiated and plied by a bit of “safe water,” the stories would begin: tales of past hunts, of great stags bested, but also tales of being bested.

We generally took deer on our annual hunting trips. Doing so was important, but perhaps equally, if not more important, was the time we spent together in camp.

As my career in writing and outdoor television progressed, I’ve had the opportunity to experience numerous hunting camps in places like Africa, Canada, Alaska, and elsewhere. Sometimes my “up North” camps meant living in tents barely big enough for my sleeping bag and me, occasionally being secluded there for several days when inclement weather set in. On the north side of Alaska’s Brooks Range, I slept in a wall tent surrounded by moose and caribou quarters hanging from meat poles. Each night, the heavily laden meat poles were visited by a sow grizzly and her two grown cubs, who fed on the moose and caribou. The trees in the area were barely tall enough to hang quarters just off the ground. There wasn’t much that could be done to keep the grizzlies from feeding on the quarters hung there. My hope was that they preferred tender dead meat to tough live meat. I slept with a loaded 375 H&H Magnum at my side and a single-shot 45–70 handgun in my hand.

Hunting camps in Africa were always interesting, some more so than others. In a camp in Zimbabwe on the Savé Conservancy, lions roared just outside my tent and nightly rubbed against its walls. There, too, I slept with a fully loaded 375 Ruger at my side. A couple of years prior to that hunt, in what is now called the Zambezi Strip, formerly the Caprivi Strip in northeastern Namibia, elephants fed nightly on tender leaves practically above our sleeping tent. There, I also slept with a 375 Ruger fully loaded with Hornady 300 gr Dangerous Game eXpandable (DGX) and Dangerous Game Solids (DGS).

While hunting greater kudu in central Namibia, the tent I slept in was, during the day, home to a brown cobra. As I was to learn later, it slithered into my tent at about eight in the morning, after I had gone hunting. After sleeping there for a few hours, it left around three o’clock in the afternoon before I returned.

It wasn’t until the cobra’s rest was disturbed by a woman leaving freshly laundered clothes in my tent that efforts were made to rid my night time abode of that daytime border. The day after the snake had been extricated, I was told of my daily visitor.

The camp manager knew about the snake’s comings and goings, evidenced by the trail it left on the sandy ground around my tent, which was swept daily with a broom so the movement of things could be tracked.

Hunting in the Brush Country of South Texas, I often camped in old bunkhouses and homes. Rattlesnakes in the region were quite common. When fall temperatures turned cool, rattlesnakes headed to their winter dens. Snakes gather where they will be protected from cooler to cold temperatures. It was common for rattlesnakes to den under the floors of ranch buildings we used as our hunting camps.

I recall spending nights in South Texas camps where, when all was quiet for the night, we could hear the slight rattles of snakes as they crawled around under the cabin floor. I can assure you we made certain there were no mouse or rat holes that gave snakes access to the areas we occupied. But we also made sure every time we put on boots or crawled into or got out of bed that there were no unwelcome visitors.

In setting up camps where snakes and other pests exist, I often employ a few things I learned from my grandparents and from hunting camps in Africa. We clear all vegetation and debris near and around buildings or tents we plan to occupy. Next, we scatter sand in a six-foot diameter around the building or tent, which can be swept clean daily. Any snake crawling into the tent or building leaves an obvious trail.

In Webb County, Texas, just outside of Laredo and not far from the Rio Grande, I planned a few years ago to establish camp in an old bunkhouse. I cleaned the grounds next to the building, hauled in sand as I had done before, and swept it clean before heading home.

While I was gone, the first cold spell of the year blew through the area. When I got to camp, where I intended to spend the next several days, I immediately noticed what seemed like hundreds of snake trails crisscrossing the sand to get under the old building. Needless to say, I quickly changed my mind about where I would be sleeping the next several nights.

Interesting camps! Thankfully, not all the hunting camps I’ve stayed in were fraught with adventures. Most of the camps have been safe, comfortable, enjoyable, and great fun. I wouldn’t trade anything for the time I’ve spent in hunting camps. Maybe I should add that all the hunting camps I have been blessed to spend time in were also educational, filled with great stories and friendships developed. Adventurous or not, I can hardly wait to get back to camp! I dearly love hunting camps…

A great place to plan your next hunting camp adventure will be the DSC Convention and Outdoor Expo in January 2025, this time in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, please visit www.biggame.org.

Photo credit: Larry Weishuhn Outdoors