Hog Huntin with Ray Hammond

[Guru]

Dang Joe...this is good stuff!!!!        

[vermonster13]

We need a milking smiley for this one. LOL

[JC]

So I'm trying to get down the firebreak in the hopes that I can intercept the drag bike before it heads down the quarter mile. Ray is waving at the woods and I'm doing my best to hustle but not run into something big enough to give me stitches.

Dang, was that hog mad we were in his living room. Needless to say, I didn't make it in time and he was gone off through the woods.
Asking Ray if if was a good one, he smiled a mischevious grin and said "All I saw was his hump on his back." ....as he held his palm up to his waist. Doh! (#2)

We headed back to the trailer for some breakfast and made our way around another field. Again, sometime during the night the trailer full of migrant workers had tilled the field. 30....maybe 40 hogs could have done the damage we saw.

A consolation prize was left as I wondered when my luck would change. This was a flower I had never seen before:

 

 

A quick bite and we got in the truck to head to the swamp. The hogs were moving, and it was time for payback....

[knife river]

When I walked that field of fennel with Ray, there was about zip for hog sign.  In fact it was the only place on the 9,000 acres that wasn't cobvered up in hog sign.  But we both saw and heard hogs moving through the pines that border the field...  Come on JC, you're killing us worse than you killed a hog (or two???)...  And I know Ray's grinning like the Cheshire cat.  :D

[JC]

We parked the truck and began walking down the road that lead us past the area next to the swamp we had hunted the first morning. The area was certainly wetter than anywhere else we had been too...at least with the quick rain from last night. The Rose of Sharon greeted us from every clearing along the trail.

 

Here and there, a passion flower poked through the greenery like a diamond among lumps of coal...

 

Ray and I split up, I took a road that Ray said went on and on...turn around when you get tired he said. Ray went another direction. Much of the trail I went down was open on both sides. The understory was not thick so you could see for quite some distance.

 

Here and there in the low spots, you could see areas that had been wet up until just recently.

 

An hour later, and at least a few wind changes, I returned....in time to say Ray casually enjoying a walk with his weapon.

"I don't know what to tell you Joe, it seems they have whupped us." We had a good laugh about the changing fortune of a hunter....feast one moment then famine the next. I had been on a great hunt though, and spent more time really taking in the things I sometimes look over in the quest for blood. Ray appreciated my thoughts and mentioned that he had seen a few great white herons up the creek in an area that still held deep water....maybe a picture of one would top off my trip with another interesting celluloid memory......

[JC]

Sliding through the moist leaves Ray pointed out the magnificent birds up the creek. Well, maybe I should say, long pond since it no longer ran freely. I made a button hook out and around the creek on the left bank, hoping to come out somewhere near the birds to get a good picture.

As I crept closer to the edge of the creek, I heard Ray's words ring through my mind..."Big gators....and they look like a log, be really careful and make sure its wood before you get near it or for God's sake, step over it!"

Movement across the creek caught my attention....PIGS! Right at the edge of the water....right where we thought they wouldn't be because of the big gators that were hunting the stilled creek. It was all I could do to get the camera tucked away safe as I slid towards them....waving to Ray to tell him about the pigs.

[knife river]

and... AND??!!??

[JC]

Two pigs about 50-60 pounds rooted along the far bank.....30 yards or so away. I quickly moved into position....trying to get ahead of them on my side of the bank without alerting them or stepping on some wicked reptile. The wind was right, my arrow had somehow magically appeared on my nock....the STOS head seemingly throbbing with anticipation....

The pigs were wired...like pigs almost always were. Constantly in motion, in and out of the cypress stumps and new growth "knees". My mouth got pasty, my heart was hammerin.....and that was just because of my proximity to the murky water.....the excitement of the pigs within range only added to it.

[Plumbob]

keep typing

[Ray Hammond]

I just fell off my chair!      

[JC]

I started my draw...focusing on the wrinkle behind the shoulder of the nearest pig...now maybe 20 yards away. As I felt my fingers slide into anchor, the shaft lept from the bow.

SCHLUCK! MISSS! Daaaa..ng! 2" right over the back, perfect windage, now buried in the mud bank directly behind the whirling hog. Hogs scurried around....somehow another arrow was on my string now.....the hog was now up the bank and holding still trying to determine what just made the noise zipping past it. Draaaaaaaw......whooosh....the arrow arced perfectly to the shoulder....WHACK!!! Daaaaaa...ng! Deflected into orbit by a piece of cane I could not see in the shadows the hog peered around his shoulder from. With the crash only a sounder of scared pigs can make, my target evaporated....unscathed. Next thing I knew a brown one slightly smaller appeared at the top edge of the bank, and a third arrow was on it's way before I could think about it.....WHIFFF! right through the air the pig had occupied seconds before. Daaaaa...ng! Just too far now for the scared animals. They scattered in the cane.

[knife river]

MODS!!!  HEY, MODS!!!  Isn't there a rule about this kind of thing!!!  (Wait - is JC a mod?)  

[knife river]

MODS!!!  HEY, MODS!!!  Isn't there a rule about this kind of thing!!!  (Wait - is JC a mod?)  

[Terry Green]

Great story telling Joe.....I'm right along beside you....

[JC]

Leaping from log to log across the creek, now oblivious to any alligator dangers, I scurried up the bank in the hopes they would hold in the safety of the brush. They really had not bolted....they never saw me, never smelled me....they knew something was up but maybe.....

Nothing.....

Then up the creek I could hear them....Ray waved from the other side and motioned to his ear, then up the creek. I slipped back down near the water and trotted in the direction of the squeals.

[knife river]

Whoooaa, big fella...  Got kinda excited there. Hog hunting has that kind of effect, ya know.   :eek:

[rawshaft]

Come on.....

[Duckbutt]

[Plumbob]

Doh #3 #4 and #5 lol

[vermonster13]

I was hoping you got to see a gator take a porkchop, instead we get three misses so far! Now I really feel like I'm there.