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January 19, 2001

Editor's Note: From the Wildside columns are reprints from Dr. Dale Rollins newsletter, On the Wildside. The column appears once a month in Texas Agriculture.

By Dr. Dale Rollins
Extension Wildlife Specialist

Having lived around pranksters all of my life, I appreciate a good, practical joke whether I'm on the giving or receiving end. Recently I was at the lunch table with Alan Heirman of Albany, who is a real hall-of-famer when it comes to pulling the wool over somebody's eyes. If Alan is ever found knocked out in a back alley, it could be the perfect crime, as the list of possible suspects would be a mile long.

Hunting season often lends itself to some novel pranks. I don't know how many times a stuffed deer hidden partially in the brush has stood bravely while a hunter (usually a city slicker) fired a magazine or two of .06 shells at it. His aim might have been true had his partner(s) not been laughing so hard it was shaking his pickup window rest.

The best "game warden" prank I've heard stems from the South Concho River near Christoval. I heard the story secondhand, and will undoubtedly butcher some of the details, but it involved a ranch foreman who monitored the South Concho as a self-appointed game warden. The local poachers delighted in giving him fits and getting him up in the middle of the night. But one night they came up with a real doozy.

Seems their ruse required a Spanish billy goat, some duct tape, and a flashlight. They tied the flashlight between the goat's horns with the beam shining out the same direction as the goat's eyes. Holding on to the goat, one of them fired about three rounds off with a shotgun about a mile from the would-be warden's house.

Sure enough, in less than a minute, they could see headlights racing down the road, so they turned on the goat's flashlight and released him before skedaddling away in their own pickup truck.

As the rancher came over the hill, he could see the speeding pickup about two hills away and knew he would never catch them. But then he saw the flashlight and figured he'd managed to get one of the slower poachers.

"Hey you!" he yelled, and the billy goat obliging turned his head toward the truck, then started moving away again. Convinced he was finally going to catch one of the lowlifes, the rancher gunned his pickup off the road, negotiating around rocks, trees and stobs.

Just about the time he'd begin to close the gap, he'd yell for the "guy" to stop or he'd shoot, and the jack-lighting goat would pause momentarily and look his way, then head for rougher country.

I don't know what became of the rancher or his truck, but I'll bet he never caught that goat. And the locals probably still chuckle when they think about it.

Or so goes the legend of the Q-beam billy of the South Concho. I wonder if he's ever seen out around Marfa?