All right, all right, I'll do a little telling. Mind you, it doesn't have a happy ending.
Soon I had a lot of company on the road. There were three whitetails behind me picking corn up out of my footprints. They knew I was there and watched me carefully, but the allure of free corn was worth the risk. In front of me were two more whitetails and even at a great distance -- maybe 250 yards -- I could see that one of them was a dandy 5x5. My eyes are pretty good, but to be able to count tines on a buck that far away means he was carrying some impressive headgear. At one point a bobcat crossed the road. He paused halfway across, looked at me, and faded across the road.
There was a lot of traffic on this little road, but no pigs or javies. And the pigs to the south were still raising hell in the thick stuff. The sun was hitting the horizon and I needed to make something happen. I noticed a fence line running south from my road with a good trail beside it. That might be my way to get on those pigs.
I headed south, hustling fast to get close to the noise. I couldn't get in front of them, though, because of the wind. I hoped that some might head my direction as they moved toward the distant stock tank where JC was sitting. Didn't happen, though, they continued south, where I heard lots of screaming, fighting, and the screeching of fenceline as hogs pushed their way through. Not much to do but stand and listen, filing this info away for the next night. Just as it got dusky, hogs started moving through the calf-high grass across the fence.
Most things appear larger in the dark, especially when they're critters that can bite. These hogs were no exception. The first several looked fully grown -- 100 to 150 pounds -- accompanied by flocks of footballs. Then the big boys appeared. They dwarfed everything else in the field. I told my eyes they were lying: those can't be 300 pound hogs (or bigger). Perhaps they were VW buses that hippies had decorated with ears and tails... No way can there be that many hogs of that size in one field... I watched, mouth open in disbelief, until it was pitch dark. I slipped back to the north on the quiet trail along the fenceline.
I ducked through the big gap in the fence and stood on the east-west road where I'd seen the deer and the bobcat. Who was out now in the dark? I dug my SureFire out of my pants pocket and shined to the west. More deer. Was the big buck still down the road to the east? He was gone, but a 100 pound black hog was scarfing corn out of the road 150 yards away. He didn't seem to be bothered at all by the light...
A glass-tipped cane arrow came out of the otter skin quiver as I started his direction. I needed to keep one eye on the hog and one eye on the noisy rocks, but now the hog was feeding my direction and closing fast. I stood on the right hand tire ruts and he fed on the other side of the narrow track where JC had trickled corn out the window. He was coming nearly head-on or quartering hard at me -- no real shot. I had to wait until he turned broadside -- IF he'd turn broadside.
A year earlier I'd killed a hog at night by balancing my flashlight sideways on my head. Not exactly orthodox, but it worked then. Now it looked like time to try it again. At 25 yards, I put the little light on my head and started to raise my bow. My hand and parts of the bow were in the edges of the beam and the hog looked up. We both froze and thought for a minute: his desire for corn outweighed his concerns and he resumed his feeding walk toward me, never turning broadside.
I couldn't believe it... How close would this hog come without ever offering a shot? I stared hard at the base of his neck, wondering if the 740 grain arrow would penetrate into the vitals. I didn't know the anatomy well enough, but figured it was a low-percentage shot and waited. I didn't have long to wait. In seconds, the hog was standing broadside, just the width of tire tracks away. I started to draw the Moab, leaning over to aim down at the hog's exposed shoulder. No longer balanced, the light started sliding off my head. I quickly pulled the bow string back and released the arrow, not sure that I'd hit anchor, but at less than five feet, even I could hit a hog. The arrows slammed home with a loud "thwack," only penetrating five or six inches. It squealed loudly once and spun into the tall grass. I picked up the light and watched it run twenty yards to a small rise where it turned in two tight circles before disappearing into the cactus and mesquite thickets.
I marked the shooting spot in the road with broken branches, one of them pointing in the direction the hog ran. Then I headed down the little road to the west to walk north on the big road to where JC had parked the truck. Far in the distance I saw tail lights headed away and figured that he'd already made a circuit around the big square looking for me. When I walked the 3/4 mile to the corner I decided to stand and wait, enjoying the cool night as the adrenaline rush gradually faded. It was another mile to the truck, but thought JC would be along shortly.
The stars were wonderful to see. They looked full and ripe, like I could reach up and pick a handful. There were the Seven Sisters, the "V" of Taurus, and Orion the Hunter. I wondered how many great hunts he'd watched from his perch in the sky. Off to the northwest, there was a low black crescent of night clouds. I stood there about twenty minutes, picking out the few constellations I could remember and listening to the nightbirds.
Finally ready to walk more, I headed north to find JC, eager to get on the hog's trail. That low black crescent in the sky was climbing higher -- must be a front coming in. It rapidly spread across the sky, black and menacing, eating the stars as it grew. When it was almost overhead, I heard freight trains in the sky. Instantly, all the trees doubled over from the weight of the wind. Sand scoured my face and arms. I pulled my shirt over my face, leaving just a peephole to see through. Leaning hard into the wind, I felt my way up the road. The flashlight was nearly useless: the dust was so thick that I couldn't see more than ten feet. A couple eternities came and went before I saw the truck's lights. One second they'd seem bright and the next they were nearly hidden in all the soil blowing by. JC was relieved to see me -- he'd had hard choices to make: let me find my way back or drive around, possibly missing me. He made the right call by staying put.
We quickly talked about all that had happened and drove back to where I shot the hog. We spent an hour looking for sign, but under those hard conditions we couldn't find anything. I didn't think there would be much (if any) blood from that shot angle, so I spent a lot of time looking at places where the hog might have doubled back to lie in a protected spot. Nothing. Reluctantly, we headed back to camp with a plan to look hard the next morning.
We did look hard. And for the next few days I kept an eye on ravens and vultures, hoping a kettle of them might show where the hog had died. I never found it, though, and after talking with JC, I tend to think that the glass point hit the part of the spine that dips lows between the front shoulders. If anything, the top of one lung was hit, but nothing more. Maybe one day another hunter will be boning out a nice fat black hog and find a sharp surprise buried deep in the backstrap.
There are more stories that I'd love JC to share. Some are hilarious and some are amazing. Good stuff to come!
Topic: Wensel Bros pig gig (Read 42544 times)
