Over the past quarter century I've guided deer hunters from all walks of life: doctors, bankers, CIA and FBI agents, a Night Stalker helicopter pilot, an F4 fighter pilot, hunting show personalities, etc. But some of my most memorable hunts have been with blue-collar Joes like myself; the kind of folks who saved their hard-earned money to go on a fully guided trip of a lifetime.

My favorite line in Scott's welcome speech to a new group of hunters goes something like this: "We don't care whether you are a brain surgeon or a ditch digger; you are all simply deer hunters out here. Let's go out and have fun."

Camouflage and orange transforms diverse individuals into soldiers of equal rank. My second round hunters last week drove in wearing Stetsons, my first hint that they were Texans. Four o-clock the next morning, they blended in with all the other hunters from Indiana to California, dressed for the day's hunt.

On the hour-long drive to the hunting ranch that morning I learned that these two Texans were retired cafeteria cooks. They normally hunted public land in west Texas and New Mexico for mule deer and elk, so they were looking forward to their first guided hunt.

I asked them if they could walk, since we can only drive our trucks on the windmill trails. "That's how we hunt in New Mexico," Gary replied. "I had heart surgery three years ago so I have to stop and catch my breath every few minutes."

"I'm glad you told me that," I replied. "We are at nearly four thousand feet of elevation here, so the air is quite a bit thinner than Ft. Worth."

We got lucky and spotted a shooter buck not long after sun up. We put the sun behind us and wind in our face and inched our way through the grassy dunes. Peeking over a high knob, we spied antlers ninety yards below us in a shaded bowl. The bedded buck was tending his doe which lay a few yards away. Gary quietly jacked a round into the chamber, cradled his rifle in my shooting stick, and sent the bullet to it's precise destination.