Story and Photos by Brad Fitzpatrick
It was just after midnight and the entire world was dark, except for the sphere of green I could see through my night vision binoculars. Our hunting party was trying to stalk through the piney backwoods of east Texas silently, which is much harder than you might imagine even with our goggles in place (night vision, in case you don’t know, confuses the wearer’s depth of ffield until you’re used to wearing them). Mosquitoes droned in our ears; the rice fields and wooded swamps surrounding us were a breeding ground for the irritating bloodsuckers, and there wasn’t a moment that passed when the buzzing in our ears ceased. But as we made our way through the woods and into the open the buzzing was replaced by the steady sloshing of hogs feeding in rice fields. They were in the darkness just ahead.