Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 8 all these decades, and I was anxious to compare the chachalacas of the Yucatán to those on Sapelo Island, which were imported from Guatemala. I found them to be identical. On the way back to camp, Javier spotted a crested guan and after a successful stalk, we added it to the bag. The guan is a large gamebird with a head similar to a rooster with red wattles under the beak. Its plumage is dark with white streaks. That night, the champ chefs prepared the guan for dinner, and it was excellent. O n day three, we carefully rounded a bend in the trail and spotted a strutting gobbler 100 yards distant and moving from the path into the thick underbrush. Javier again exclaimed "mucho grande" and led me to the point where the bird disappeared into the dense foliage. We climbed into a large tangle of vines and called for 30 minutes, but the gobbler had none of it. Later in the afternoon, a collared peccary ran across the trail in front of me. I prepared for a fast shot if a second ran across and it did. It weighed about 50 pounds and wound up in the cooking shed. The camp staff happily cooked meat from the field, though the larder had been well stocked with items of a more domestic nature. On the fourth day we listened a lot but never heard a gobbler. Monkeys filled in the canopy and followed us everywhere we went, trying to urinate on us. After scaring my gobbler on the first day, the primates were beginning to try my patience. Late in the afternoon we got lucky, not with an ocellated, but with a curasaw calling from the high canopy. Javier motioned for me to hide against a large tree, while he whistled with his mouth to the big bird. The curasaw answered each whistle and slowly moved into range from tree to tree until it perched overhead. Another bird joined in, a hen, and each silhouetted against the skyline. I shot and brought down the hen hile sitting near a jungle waterhole, Mexican hunter Erwins Ronquillo was thrilled by this encounter with a jaguar. Above: Goolsby holds a coati mundi, which the camp cook later served up as shredded meat in a batch of tacos. W