The hunting was great. I was into hogs everyday except the first. Can't say for sure that I saw a javie, although I caught a glimpse of a black wedge-shaped critter that skittled across a dirt road in the distance. I thought it was a javie, but it looked 17 miles away and the curve of the earth might've deceived the eye. It was a loooong way off...
There were four boars in the first bunch I saw. They were big. Looked like badly-upholstered loveseats. Curtis was kinda skeptical at first -- he didn't think there were hogs THAT big on the place, but a few nights later, he traded insults in the moonlight with one that probably went 300 pounds. Picture this: Curtis was armed with "Sweet Spot" (a pick axe handle) and was swapping challenges with a belligerent boar on the other side of a tiny pond. For a minute, it looked like the hog was going to come over and sort things out...
A lot of things happened by moonlight. On Wednesday I was sitting close to a spill pond next to a windmill. Just as the sun dropped under the horizon, pigs started arriving. The four big boars showed up first, and just as they did the night before, they kept heading north. No shot. About 14 others arrived soon, though, and they were hungry for hors d'ouevres (corn and stagnant water). The corn was on the other side of a hog fence: to get to it, they had to pass in front of me to crawl single-file through a gap in the fence. They knew something was wrong, but they wanted the corn, and they weren't completely certain what I was. By then it was getting dark, but the full moon was rising fast. Seven of them made it through the gap in the fence -- I was waiting for a nice, brown bristly boar that was hanging back. He was smart and ornery. I'd left my pack under a mesquite tree. Twice he went to my pack and shoved it around and then stepped back out in clear view at about 40 yards. He grumbled and growled and blew and blew. Man, did he ever want that corn, but to get to it he had to come within 14 yards of me and turn broadside to skinny through the fence-gap...
He wouldn't do it. He finally left and the others rushed through the gap to gobble corn with the first bunch. I turned my attention to them. The biggest one was about a 90 pound black sow, but they were all over the place, jostling for position. So much corn, so little time...
The moon was almost two handwidth's over the horizon, but there wasn't much light. In fact it seemed to be getting darker, so I broke out a flashlight. What would the hogs do if I turned it on? Amazingly, nothing. No reaction at all... So, with the flashlight balanced sideways on my head, I squatted a bit to shoot between the fence wires. When the biggest sow was standing still and clear of the scrum, I sent a flint-tipped arrow her way. Bad hit. The fletching disappeared low in her hams. She screamed bloody murder and whole mob galloped through an open gate on the far side of the pond. I heard the snap of a cedar shaft.
I climbed up on the fence and sat for a few minutes. Calm down, think back through the shot, look for a blood trail, find the arrow... And look at the moon. It's a lunar eclipse -- no wonder it's dark.
After about ten minutes, I heard hog grunts -- they were coming back and the injured hog was limping hard behind them. I tried to get close enough for another arrow, but it didn't happen. When they left again, they didn't return. I found the business end of the broken arrow, looked at the pools of blood on the ground, and drove back to camp.
Curtis did his damndest to find the hog, but the blood trail quickly dropped to nothing. The tracks in the powdery sand crossed and recrossed like a bowl of spaghetti. There were a thousand directions the hog could have gone and a million mesquite bushes to lay under. I firmly believe Curtis could track a moth through a thunderstorm, but this chore stumped him.
I stumbled across the leftovers on Friday. Coyotes had eaten everything but the yellow fletching. The 265 grain stone point had cracked the left rear femur and exited the off-side leaving eight inches of shaft inside the hog. The stone point had done a good job. I wish I'd done my job better and put it in the right place.
Topic: Workin up a Texas Sweat Hog - PICS from Mitch pg 4 (Read 21583 times)
