Hawkeye, know any of these fellow?

[Liquid Amber]

I have to tell on Brian Cole.  The part of the property we were hunting is about 8,000 acres and has a good network of roads.  One is apt to encounter hogs anytime and as I showed him some of the property, we spotted a group rooting around in a road ditch.

I give Brian the honors and he bails out and begins his stalk down the right side, in and out of the woods.  At this point it became obvious he hadn't much experience with hogs as he was sneaking like an Indian at 200 yards.  It took him awhile to close the distance.  

When he is about half way to the hogs, they decide to cross to the opposite side of the road from Brian.  I'm parked in the middle of the road watching through the windshield of my old Suburban and the next thing I see, is Brian "low crawling" across the muddy road.  He would have made a gator proud.    

As it turns out the hogs became bored waiting on Brian to close and disappeared in a cane thicket.  Brian returned, muddy and happy as a pig in slop over his encounter.

"Next time," he says.

"Next time, just walk down the road ditch and shoot one of those   hogs," I says.

An eclectic group of "pig men."

 

[twigflicker]

Cliff,

Did you ever bloody a Huntington self bow...  

I was just re-reading that article two nights ago in Traditional Bowhunter...

Jonathan

[Hawkeye]

Too funny!  Brain approached every aspect of life with great passion, and crawling through mud was no exception!  

It is a real paradigm shift for a whitetail hunter from the North to learn what you can pull off on pigs in the swamp when the wind is right.  I remember seeing our host, Robert, close on a group of a dozen hogs with selfbow in hand the first day I hunted with him.  When we spotted them at 150 yards, he took of as what I would best describe as a fast-but-quiet walking "bee line."  He was using intervening trees as cover when convenient, but not worrying about much except closing the distance. I stood with my mouth open thinking, "You can't do that!"  

Well on hogs, you can (sometimes). At thirty yards, it looked like it was all going to come together.  At 29 yards, a shift in the breeze caught up, a smart old sow snapped to attention, and it was Game Over.  In an instant, they were gone, and we stood all alone.  Robert shrugged, came back, and said, "Let's go find some more."  It was a blast to have a whole new species to hunt in a whole new way after 30 years of chasing Illinois whitetails and fox squirrels.  All y'all are better at it than we were!

Wish we were all there again today, Cliff, that much younger, stronger, healthier, and very much alive.  That was a wonderful time. And what a group of guys (read: cast of characters)!!!