At Issue

My next chapter in the Texas outdoors

The first sip of coffee hadn’t quite reached my lips when Ryland came bounding into the kitchen. Bedecked in full camouflage from head to toe — cap, boots and all — he left no doubt he was ready for the deer blind.

“It’s going to be a great morning, Dad!” he said with utter conviction.

“How do you know?” I teased him.

“Trust me, Dad, just trust me. You’ll see.”

His unbridled enthusiasm was infectious, for sure. It also roused memories from my own boyhood, when sleeping before a fishing, hunting or camping trip or some other outdoors-related adventure was a case study in lost causes.

I harkened back to a deer hunt when I was 9 or so, about young Ryland’s vintage. It was a bitterly cold December morning, reeling from a bruiser of an arctic front that had pushed through southern Gonzales County earlier that night. With sleet in the air and a stiff north wind to boot, it really wasn’t the best time to climb up in a tree stand. Dad gave us both a graceful exit, promising to take me again soon, like when the temperatures were tolerable. I wasn’t having any of it. We were going hunting.

Our perch was a couple of two-by-fours nailed up in an old bull mesquite sitting at the edge of an oat patch. The deer loved that winter greenery, and I had grand aspirations of a big buck hitting the ground that morning.

As it turned out, I got something far greater instead.

You see, the deer didn’t really want any part of that rip-roaring wind and subfreezing temperature. Huddled up next to Dad (with my bright red Mickey Mouse sleeping bag), I was thinking about crying “uncle” when I caught a movement at the edge of the brush. I almost fell out of the tree when a big tom bobcat walked up. He sat right down on his haunches about 30-40 yards from our tree stand and stared at us. Every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

It was a great morning. And the hook of the outdoors had been firmly set.

That all seems a bit surreal now as I reflect on another time in my life with the outdoors, albeit professionally. It was the fall of 2007. I needed a nudge to throw my proverbial hat into the ring to be considered as the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s next executive director. My predecessor Bob Cook told me emphatically it would be the best job I would ever have. Andy Sansom, Bob’s predecessor, said pretty much the same thing, as did the late Dickie Travis, the director before Andy.

Fifteen years later, I can say without hesitation — they were absolutely right. But, as they also readily knew, the job really isn’t a job.

It is a privilege, one inarguably without measure or equal. How does one begin to place a value on working for a department whose 3,000-plus men and women devote their entire professional careers in service to a mission that results in people having great mornings in the Texas outdoors?

Come the end of January 2023, I will be moving on to the next chapter of life and work. The separation disorder will kick in immediately, I know that.

Thankfully, TPWD won’t miss a beat as our new director, David Yoskowitz, takes over the reins. David is a scientist—smart, thoughtful, strategic, engaging, technically savvy and an avowed outdoorsman. He’ll hit the ground running.

Meanwhile, I’ll have ample time to reflect upon just what a privilege serving in this role has been to me, personally and professionally.

I grew up captivated by the places, people, stories and pictures within the pages of this very magazine. The subscription was given to me at the ripe old age of 8, courtesy of my grandmother, who recognized my love affair with all things outdoors. It was the source material for my very first book report, a piece about the work to save the ocelot in deep South Texas.

Our Gonzales County game warden and area wildlife biologists were local role models and sources of advice and assistance to our family at the ranch. The Outdoor Annual was considered sacrosanct in our home and at deer camp. Palmetto State Park was the place to go and gather with family and friends. The boat ramp at Goose Island was the summer portal into the trout- and redfish-rich bays of the glorious Texas coast.

In short, TPWD was a vital part of my upbringing, and whether the wardens and biologists and magazine and state park staff ever knew it or not, they helped imbue in me a deep and enduring respect for all things land, water, fish, wildlife, parks, stewardship, conservation and the outdoors. Stewardship takes stewards, as Aldo Leopold famously reminded us. That’s what TPWD does best — steward our fish and game and parks, as well as stoke the fires of the outdoors inside us all.

As I pen this final letter in the pages of a magazine that to this day inspires in me a fierce love of all things Texas, my hope is that I have been able to give back to something that has given so much to me — a calling, a mission, a deep sense of fulfillment and a team of colleagues I care deeply about.

Be assured, I’ll have no shortage of memories to take with me. The men and women of this department have done a lot of good for our home ground — the Guadalupe bass the biologists have put back in the rivers, the bighorns on the mountains, the turkeys in the woods and the trout in the bays; the wildlife and lands protected by our game wardens who have collared poachers and gillnetters, trespassers and smugglers; the thousands of sea turtles our team saved during the big freeze and the thousands of people they rescued during the big floods; the resilience they displayed in the fires of Bastrop and through the hurricane forever known as Harvey; the new parks and wildlife areas they protected like the wind-sculpted oaks and sweeping coastal marshes of Powderhorn and the pristine, impossibly clear and clean waters of the Devils; the new paddling trails they put in on the Neches and the hiking/biking trails out in Big Bend; all the smiling faces they helped generate through the Texas Youth Hunting, Vamos a Pescar, Archery in Schools and Texas Outdoor Family programs; the dedicated private landowners they’ve helped become Lone Star Land Stewards; the restoration of places like Salt Bayou and the recovery of the Bahia Grande.

And, certainly, that glorious day in 2019 when it seemed all of Texas showed up and voted to permanently fund their state parks.

For sure, it hasn’t been all blue skies and bluebonnets. The tragedy of line-of-duty deaths and the heartbreak of uncontrollable fires and raging floods will long be with me. I sure won’t miss the politics, over deer and oysters and red snapper and such. I’ve often called TPWD “the land of 1,000 hills to die on,” some of which I’ll confess seem bigger than others. Our constituents care, and care passionately.

I’m sure proud to be raising one of them, that budding outdoor enthusiast of ours, Ryland.

So what about that recent morning with Ryland? Well, our sit in the blind treated us to a sounder of wild hogs that gave us the slip, along with a nice gaggle of does and their fawns that we enjoyed watching meander around.

When we knocked off the hunting part of the morning to go fishing, we got derailed by the sight of monarchs and other butterflies, massed in trees along the river bottom. The fall butterfly migration was in full force, and the abundant monarchs were a sight for sore eyes.

When we finally arrived at our fishing hole, a smattering of blue teal and a dinosaur-sized great blue heron (Ryland said it looked like a gray pterodactyl) gave us a wide berth. As I looked on from the riverbank and Ryland reeled in a handful of bass, including one we unanimously agreed was his very own “state record,” I realized he had been right.

It was a great morning.

Here’s to many great mornings, and memories, for all of you in the lands and waters of our home ground. I am forever grateful for the privilege of contributing to a few of those for all of you.

Thanks for caring about our wild things and wild places. They need you now more than ever.