In north-central Texas, Kyle grew up dipping tobacco, riding horses and hunting deer, turkey and quail — a cowboy at heart. The son of a Sunday-school teacher and a church deacon, Kyle credits a higher authority for his longest kill. From 2,100 yards away from a village just outside of Sadr City in 2008, he spied a man aiming a rocket launcher at an Army convoy and squeezed off one shot from his .338 Lapua Magnum rifle. Dead. From more than a mile away. “God blew that bullet and hit him,” he said.