I initially fulfilled Kevin Costner a number of years ago when I was welcomed by a representative friend to sign up with a handful of Hollywood A-listers for a feral boar hunt in the main coast of California. The respected pigs had actually outbred their welcome and the farmers and red wine growers required relief in getting the swine populations under control. Having invested a reasonable quantity of time around stars who had interest—however typically not a great deal of experience—with outside pursuits, I constantly approach such getaways with a degree of care. That’s specifically the case when guns are included.
Terry Allen
Prior to our hunt, we did the required check of our rifles to ensure both the weapon and hunter were on. It was apparent that Costner was more than a Hollywood cowboy—he was comfy around his rifle, safe and fluid in its handling. The factor for that was easy—he matured a hunter and fell hard for the way of life at a young age.
He shared the story of his origins in the field sports at the yearly Park Cities Quail Coalition banquet just recently in Dallas. The occasion is billed as, “Conservation’s biggest night,” owing to the amazing quantity of money raised (some $3.5 million this night) for bobwhite quail research study and management. More than 1,200 who’s who of Texas business owners and benefactors ended up for what has actually turned into one of the preservation world’s can’t- miss out on galas.
“We’ve raised more than $18 million for conservation since 2017,” says occasion visionary and organizer Joe Crafton.
If the hunting world has an Oscars comparable, it is this occasion where, each year, hosts bestow the T. Boone Pickens Lifetime Sportsman Award (called for the famous financing mogul and quail connoisseur) to the icons of the hunting and preservation world. Previous receivers of the award consist of notables Tom Brokaw, Ted Turner, George Strait, and Bass Pro Shops creator Johnny Morris, a preservation giant in the Teddy Roosevelt custom, amongst numerous others.
This night it was the opportunity for among Hollywood’s ever popular and most renowned stars to take spotlight in the heartland, far from the lights and exteriors of Tinsel Town. Instead, he was covered in the radiance of his starring function in television’s most popular series, Yellowstone.
For Costner, nevertheless, maturing in a modest California home with little access to hunting ground made his genuine- life experience closer to his function as Robin Hood than that of John Dutton.
“I never saw myself standing in a room like this quite honestly,” he said with a wry smile. “Truth is, I stood a better chance of meeting your property managers than the people here. I often had to run from them when I would just try and get a taste of world-class hunting ground—land that not only looked the part but delivered.”
Dorsey Pictures
When Costner turned 12, his daddy purchased him a shotgun, an influential minute in his sporting life.
“The next day I took my hunter safety course. All I knew was that I wanted to hunt—all day and every day. I didn’t care about seasons or limits. Everything I knew and dreamed about came from watching Curt Gowdy’s American Sportsman TV show. I was in awe of all the places around the world featured on that program. Did they really exist? I had to know.”
Grant Miller Photo
His daddy’s job, nevertheless, featured a great deal of relocations at a young age, so it was hard to constantly leave old buddies and make brand-new ones. He had a hard time to suit. Then an opportunity encounter set him on a brand-new course.
“My junior year of high school I found myself living in the Central Valley of California. I was having a hard time with everything. My older brother was in Viet Nam, and I was tired of trying to fit in…I was lost, but then something changed. As I was driving one day, I saw a man out in the fields near Visalia with a dog. He was hunting and I could see him carrying his shotgun across his chest. It was like art to me—like poetry. It was picture perfect and the scene was frozen in time forever…but it wasn’t on TV, it was right in front of me. At that moment my life changed forever.”
“The next day I went out and bought a bird dog…a little German shorthair pointer. Suddenly the world wasn’t flat anymore—it was just me and that dog. I think we hunted every ditch in that county, scaring up maybe one pheasant if we were lucky before school. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was out hunting.”
From there, Costner’s hunting horizons started to grow, which caused another turning point in his young life.
“It was the first day of pheasant season in California and I was in yet another school in Orange County. There were no pheasants in Orange County, so I drove out by myself to the Salton Sea on the other side of Palm Springs. But it didn’t look like the kind of ground Curt Gowdy would hunt with his friends.”
“Instead, Fish & Game had dropped 300 confused birds in the dessert and let the first 200 guys with guns hunt them. It was public land…it just didn’t look right and there was no beauty to it. It was a mess, and I was miserable and so was my dog. It was also dangerous, so I left.”
“On my way home, however, I saw something off the highway that looked like reeds in the distance, and I could see some water. I pulled off and headed down the dirt road…right past a ‘No Hunting!’ sign. I scared up a mallard that my dog retrieved perfectly. It was then that I saw the flashing blue lights coming at me. There wasn’t much that I could do with that truck bearing down on me, so when the vehicle took a dip out of sight as it was coming down the road, I flung that duck as far as I could without my dog seeing it.”
“The game warden stepped out of his car and said he heard a shot and asked me if I got anything. I said ‘no’…that I had missed, but behind him I could see my dog had left us and was hunting the duck I tossed. It was a slow death for me as I watched him work back and forth, and when I saw him catch the scent of that bird, I knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d come back with that duck in his mouth—no doubt confused about how it got so far away from where he’d dropped it.”
“It didn’t take long for him to cover the ground trotting back. For me it was a lifetime. There were no words, really. I lost my gun that day, the warden taking it and I had to come back a month later and go to court to get it. I found myself sitting in a row with a bunch of guys dressed in orange. They weren’t hunters. The group around me all had handcuffs on…all of us criminals waiting for our turn to go before the judge.”
“I could tell one guy was looking at me, and then he whispered, ‘What are you in for?’ I was tired of lying at that point and all the trouble it had caused me, so I said, I killed a duck, and they took my gun. For all I knew, the others may have been in for murder. There were enough laughs which caused the judge to look over. As I walked out with my gun that day, I got a thumbs up from the guys in handcuffs.”
“From that point on I was determined that I would never have to run off land that I was hunting, and that I would take my father and brother to the best places in the world if I was able. I was blessed to be able to do that, to take them to places that were as God intended.”
Terry Allen
The next chapter in Costner’s script will consist of hunts with his young kids Cayden and Hayes, 15 and 14. There’s little doubt that the Costner kids will become aware of their daddy’s stories and concern comprehend their grandpa at the same time too. If that is shared while afield, when the world has distinct clearness, it will be the natural order of a hunter’s life and tradition. It will be the sort of excellence just such a life can provide.
