We saw many bigger fallow deer, but I was more than happy to ambush this average buck while waiting in a creek bottom.

The crucial moment on a long, open-country stalk usually comes when it's time to reestablish visual contact with the quarry after hiking and crawling out of sight behind cover. No matter how carefully you've memorized the landmarks, spotting the animal again at close range before he spots you is always tricky business. Move a bit too fast or pay insufficient attention to every step, and all your efforts can unravel in an instant.

Back when I lived in Alaska, caribou offered a welcome respite from the usual difficulty of close-range stalking. Because of their ridiculously tall antlers, caribou bedded in willows often leave their top tines visible above the brush, even when their vision is completely blocked by foliage.

As I used my binoculars to pick apart the landscape ahead of me one morning last March, I felt an odd sense of deja vu when I spotted polished antlers protruding above a boulder in the rock-strewn terrain ahead. But those palmated top tines didn't belong to a caribou, and I was half a world away from the Arctic tundra. In fact, my quarry was a fallow deer, and I was hunting a unique new destination that already had provided my wife Lori and me with a welcome break from the demands of a long Montana winter -- the rolling hills of central Argentina.

But professional hunter Gonzalo Llambi and I had spotted not one but two bucks bedded in the rocks when we'd started the stalk from the ridge behind us, and I made myself slow down to locate the second animal before continuing my approach. I hadn't crawled all that way to blunder into another set of eyes by mistake.

In the hills of Cerro Colorado, we didn't have to glass long to spot numerous game animals.

Once I'd located the tops of the second set of antlers gleaming in the sun, I rechecked the tricky crosswind and continued on my hands and knees to within 30 yards of my quarry. That's my maximum recurve range, but I felt comfortable with the situation and resolved to take the shot if the buck stood and presented a broadside opportunity.

Gonzalo and I never did determine exactly what happened to scuttle our carefully executed plan, but Lori, who had stayed behind on the ridge glued to her binoculars, later reported that the two bucks simply rose and began to feed away from me. All I knew for sure was that neither one ever offered an acceptable shot as they left the boulder field for open ground.

Stretching my knotted muscles in the wake of their departure, I must admit to feeling a bit of disappointment, but it was hard to feel too sorry for myself. The day was young, and the hills stretching away to the west held game in numbers and variety I hadn't seen since my last trip to Africa. The day's first stalk may have gone south, but we were just getting started.