Hex constant definition

["Jeff Wise" <jwise@...>]

I need to define 3 bytes of hex data. I originally used:

      local hunted = 0xD3A8AF

This gave no errors but the program did not work. When I discovered 'hunted'
was the culprit, I used:

      local h1 = 0xD3
      local h2 = 0xA8
      local h3 = 0xAF
      local hunted = h1 .. h2 .. h3

This worked. I can not believe this is necessary. What am I missing?