Trinity students enjoy hunting for sport, social aspects

Two Trinity students tell their hunting tales, reasons for partaking in the activity

by Margaret Browne

Sophomore Colton Parnes and first year Brian Kovacs affirm that to them, hunting is not just a sport, it’s a lifestyle. However, it plays a different role in each of their lives.

Kovacs has been hunting for about four years, since he joined his high school rifle team and some family friends took him hunting. He doesn’t typically use a rifle to hunt, though, despite the fact that it provided him with his first hunting experience. Kovacs instead hunts wild boars using a knife and trained dogs, usually on family-owned land in Gonzales, Texas.

“In the type of hunting I do, I’m not like sitting in the blinds,” Kovacs said. “I go and flush the animals out. Instead of waiting in the blind, it’s the thrill of the hunt, more of a sport.”

For Kovacs, hunting boars is also appealing because it provides a means of pest control.

“It’s not only for sport, but it also needs to be done to keep the boar population down because they’ll tear up your property and eat your crops,” Kovacs said.

Hunting boars can prove a dangerous task as well. The average wild boar weighs about 200 pounds. The largest Kovacs has killed, though, weighed 400 pounds. The animals don’t travel alone, either, but gather in groups, Kovacs said.

“If you flush one out, you’re going to flush 10 to 12. One time the dogs had pinned down a hog and we were chasing after it and a hog crossed the path and nearly bowled me over. It was pretty surreal,” Kovacs said. “But you have a ton of adrenaline running through you and you don’t really think about what’s going on until it’s over.”

Parnes has been hunting since the age of about four, that is 16 years, with his family.

“We’ve always had a place to go hunt,” Parnes said. “My dad hunts, my grandfather hunts; it was a family activity. It was really no surprise that I wound up doing it.”

“I definitely see hunting more as a lifestyle. There’s sport in it, and it’s definitely a rush, but it’s more about the cool places you get to go, and the people you get to meet. You never know the friends you’ll get to make,” Parnes said.

Parnes’s family leases land on King Ranch, in Kingsville, Texas, where they keep game and sell hunts — meaning that customers pay to come and hunt game, usually deer, on their land while Parnes and his friends will shoot the game that is genetically inferior.

“I go down there almost every weekend if I’ve got nothing to do at Trinity,” Parnes said. “I go just to hang out and hunt with friends and get out of the city.”

In addition to the deer on the ranch, Parnes enjoys shooting a variety of animals including birds, hogs and big game. Many of his hunting trips lead him to new places and new experiences. He has hunted in Canada and plans to travel to Zimbabwe to hunt zebra, leopards, Cape buffalo and antelope.

“It’s different from just going on a vacation to these places because you’re not staying in hotels and doing all of the touristy stuff; you’re out in the country and it’s a basic, being-in-nature kind of a thing,” Parnes said. “It tests your skill because it takes a lot of effort to do what you do and you’re hunting something that could potentially kill you.”

Parnes said that for him hunting isn’t so much about the sport as the people he meets and the stories he exchanges. His favorite story involves his first big trip when he was about 15, when he went to Canada during Thanksgiving break with friends.

“I went to Canada and I shot a moose. It was the last day, we hadn’t seen a moose yet, and it was freezing — like 20 degrees below. We caught up to a herd of moose and it just felt like everything fell into place,” Parnes said. “You don’t really realize how big a moose is until you get up close to it, and you get to appreciate the animal.”

Parnes said that he sees a difference between killing and hunting.

“I could pay to go to Africa and not come home with a leopard. So it’s dependent on your skill. But it involves the social activity, and if you follow the regulations and think about the population control then it will be fine. The government takes precautions to protect the animals and their populations.”