Ricardo Longoria has been a sportsman his entire life.

As a child, Ricardo often spent weekends with his father at their family’s ranch in Northern Mexico, “Rancherías”, one of North America’s original game preserves. In the mid-50’s, to facilitate the importation of exotic animals from more than a dozen countries, a partnership was created between the Longoria family and the San Antonio Zoo. Through this partnership, the founding stock were imported to the United States and donated to the Zoo, with the offspring being used to populate “Rancherías”. This is where Ricardo’s love for wildlife conservation and exotic game ranching was born.

This love is equaled only by his passion for bowhunting. During his lifetime, Ricardo has had the opportunity to bowhunt on six continents, collecting a wide variety of big game species. He especially enjoys the challenge of bowhunting at high altitudes for sheep and goats as well as bowhunting for a variety of dangerous game animals, including Africa’s “Big Five” and many the world’s “Wild Oxen” and “Predators”.

In recent years, Ricardo has focused much of his conservation efforts on the creation of “El Sueño”, his family’s South Texas game preserve. It is home to many different species of exotic animals, including endangered species such as the Arabian Oryx, Barasingha Deer, Eld’s Deer and Red Lechwe along with the native Texas White-tailed Deer, Rio Grande Turkey, Collared Peccary and others. His family’s foundation, the Longoria-Wright Foundation, is an active supporter of Conservation Force, in particular the “Ranching for Restoration” program. Ricardo espouses the belief that utilizing revenues generated from the hunting of exotic animals in North America to fund conservation projects for these same species in the wild not only helps conserve these species, but also helps legitimize the hunting of exotic animals in North America.