LOS FRESNOS - At 6 years old, Steven Parker shot a white dove on his grandfather’s ranch in Los Fresnos.

It was the first animal he ever killed.

“It felt pretty nice,” said Parker, who grew up in a Rio Grande Valley ranching family. “My grandpa went out there with me and told me right from wrong.”

For his long-time friend Tony Medina, it was a cottontail at 10.

“I was scared I was gonna get in trouble,” Medina said. “I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot rabbits.”

Late on Sunday, Parker, now 24, called his father to let him know the Christmas hunt was about to begin.

“We’re just gonna kill some little Bugs Bunnies,” he said to his pop.

An hour later, in the bed of Medina’s black pickup truck, the warm body of a brown and white rabbit Parker had killed lay flat, swaying with each bump of the long dirt road on the Parkers’ 6,000-acre ranch.

The air was cold this South Texas night. The friends stood with their knees braced against the back of the truck’s cab as they moved a spotlight back and forth, revealing low cactus, faded green weeds and the occasional glowing eyes of a rabbit.

“People don’t do this anymore,” said 26-year-old Medina, who used to be a hunting guide. “They think food comes from supermarkets. Hunting is a dying tradition.”

For Medina and Parker, though, the hunt for the family Christmas day meal is a more significant holiday tradition than even going to church.

“I’m closer to God than people prayin’ in there,” Parker said. “They have a roof between them and him. On my ranch there’s nothin’ but sky.”

Parker trains horses on another area ranch and says his natural ability with the animals comes from his Sioux heritage. He’s descended from a long line of ranchers who moved to the Valley in the late 19th century.

“Back then, Brownsville was in downtown Matamoros, Harlingen was five or six stores, and Los Fresnos didn’t even exist,” said Parker, whose family founded Rio Hondo.

Each year at Christmas, the Parker family goes out onto their massive ranch with 12-gauge shotguns they can use to bring home meat for meals of rabbit stew and roast pig. The family carries on many traditions that have been lost to the development of the area.

“Grandma still does canning and makes jams,” Parker said.

“Hunting ain’t just about spotting rabbits or cutting down the coyote population or managing the deer,” said Medina, a Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “It’s about a way of life that’s being lost with every subdivision put up.”

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