On a cold morning in late February, Chip Wagner stalked an African bongo, an endangered antelope with a striking striped coat. Only Wagner wasn’t in Africa; he was on a hilly game ranch in South Texas. And he wasn’t using his usual bow, but a dart gun, which he had never shot before.

“It's like trying to hit an animal with a blow gun—that's how slow that dart goes out,” says Wagner, a Fort Worth businessman who bid $23,000 in an online auction for the opportunity to take part in the world’s first “catch-and-release” hunt of a bongo.

All proceeds from the hunt are earmarked for research and for conservation efforts in Africa, says the hunt’s organizer, Bisbee’s Fish and