I took a half hearted peek over the top of the pond bank, but I knew they were gone.
Turning on my heel I covered the short distance to the snag I could clearly see on the other side of the pond.
The wind was right for it and settled in there for the afternoon.
I hardly had time to daydream when I caught sight of more javies headed toward the pond. They came single file till within a few yards of bare dirt and then spread out onto the pan.
While my little friends provided a great chance to study them, they never presented me with a decent shot, so I spent the rest of the afternoon watching and hoping.
As long shadows krept across the pond and daylight turned gray with the approaching night, I resigned myself to the fact that it was over.
The javelina had long since quit the playing field and except for a distant pack of coyotes it was quiet.
I removed my arrow from the bow which had stood ready in front of me and placed it in my quiver.
I picked up my daypack and sat it on my lap to put away water bottle the sharpening kit I'd used to freshen the edge of my arrow.
In the middle of these preparations I looked up.
Trotting past me at 10 yards was a very nice boar hog. He'd come down the dry wash to my right and ran right up to the water and waded in.
He took a drink but wasted little time in the water. Soon he was out and had layed down in a muddy depression to wallow.
Talk about your muddy depressions!!While that was happening I was trying to set down my daypack quietly and get my hands on bow and an arrow which fought coming out of the quiver.
The hog, a rangy black cuss, stood up with a thick coat of fresh gray mud dripping from coarse hair and moved back in the direction he'd entered from.
I had my bow up and arrow strung waiting till he had walked past me.
What happpened next will puzzle me for a long time.
I held low on his side and tight against the front leg when his head swung away from me. The arrow was in him as fast as thought, but as he ran I could see it appeared to be at an odd angle and quite a bit of it sticking out on the entry side.
A second later I heard a stick crack back in the tangle and then silence.
Without venturing toward the exit place of the hog I eased back to my truck and headed on in to camp.
The place was fairly abuzz wit activity. Some guys were getting lights ready for tracking and others were preparing to go into town to meet the new group of hunters.
It seemed that I'd be going back for my hog alone.
Not something I looked forward to as I knew at the very least I'd throw my back out trying to wrestle that hunk of pork into the truck bed.
It turns out that my good buddy Joe Coots was in between appointments and I approached him about going along with me.
Joe seemed tickled to help. He's like that, ya know.
Before long we found ourselves, along with a couple of strong lights, standing beside the snag near the pond.
It was Joe who spotted first blood and I'm not sure I'd have found it at all if he hadn't pointed it out.
It looked really good from the amount and spray pattern on the ground.
The dry earth had sucked all the moisture out of the blood drops and all the red too. It was merely some indistinct brown spots on the dry pond bed.
But there was a pattern to the splatter. About every 6 feet there was another shotgun pattern of blood drops.
We'd barely covered 50 yards when I spotted the dead hog in the brush ahead.
Soon we were shaking hands over my trophy.
Close inspection of the wound showed the broadhead had entered the neck at the point of the shoulder. Must have caught something pretty vital in there... as you can see from the picture.
I would have chosen a different broadhead for the job had there been time. As it was I came out of the quiver with one of my favored Magnus I's w/bleeder.
He had a huge old X on his neck.
It took both of us to get that hog in the truck. Whew! Glad Joe is pretty stout.
Back at camp we scaled the hog at 170 pounds.
Topic: The never ending story - TXS06... Into the breach (Read 30798 times)
