Day 3 Evening
On the morning hunt my friend richie got another hog and my friend Eddie took a nice sow too. I don't have there pictures though.
They opt for stands since ther have been some nice boars coming into the stands while Roger is going to go stalking with pat and hoppy wants me to try out a new ground blind with him on the far side of the property in a field where they hunt deer.
There is a little oasis of a couple of oaks, a few palm trees and palmettos out in the middle of the field. Sure enough there are three nice hogs rooting around where they throw the corn out. We decide to push some cattle in the field over to them to scare them away so we can get set up. It works and we are hoping they will come back.
About an hour later a different group starts to come in across the field. They are all nice hogs in the 100lb range but one sow is pushing 140 - 150lbs. She is really fat. i'm shooting behind a blind made up of some black cloth and there is a over hanging oak as a canopy that stretches out over where the hogswill be feeding 10 to 15 yards away. The hogs come in and are nervous just moving all over the place and bunching up. I'm trying to draw but the are seeing me and bolting out of there. Unfortunately the over hanging aok is not keeping me from being skylighted and i tell hoppy he needs to put up so more cloth higher up just leaving a shooting window. He agrees and says don't I know i'm the guinea pig. we have a good laugh and the hogs are coming back in and i am crouched down and 5 yards back of the blind. The big sow finally turns broadside after 15 minutes and i rise up as I am drawing and I pick aspot right up the leg and shoot right over her giving her a haircut. I couldn't believe it since i was really burning a hole in her side but I guess my mind was so tricked by the blind and the over hanging oak branch that i thought the hog was farther away. I should have just aimed right at the spot since she was only ten yards away. I was humbled for sure.
That was it for hogs that night but it wasa great time. As we hear back we learn that tommy ended up getting a nice meat sow and my friend Eddie got another sow too.
4th day, last morning hunt since we have to leave at 12:00 noon.
I decide to hunt and so does Richie and Roger. They opt to go stalking with hoppy and they put me on the bird feeder stand hunting out of a ladder stand. it is called the bird feeder stand since a lot of cardinals come in to feed. This is the stand I got my first ever hog out of in 2003. A nice boar that i have a shoulder mount of in my home office.
Well this is a real thick area pretty close to camp that is just sea of palmettos other then the dirt road the feeder is on. The ladder stand is in a live oak tree and you are so blended in you can do jumping jacks in the stand and not get spotted. The stand is made from tubular aluminum and right off I have a problem with my camera and can't get it real secure with the bracket. I've got a new remote that has a six inch wire attaching it to the camera that is clipped to my jacket that i am trying out for the first time.
Well the feeder goes off at 7:00am and here come the hogs a short time later. First one, then two, then three and they keep coming out of the palmettos like you can't believe just going crazy on the corn. there are 15 of them and all about 100 lbs but there are two really nice sows. Well I am trying to get one to turn braodside while the camera is on the shot but the short cable of theremote keeps moving the camera or other hogs go behind the hog i want to shoot spoiling the shot.
At this point i take off the remote and just set up the camera shot on a pot and wait for hogs to come into the frame. Evertime one turns broadside and i start to draw they turn the other way since they are trying to get all the corn they can get. I figure i have to wait until the frenzy calms down and the corn starts getting less. About 10 minutes and the big sow turns broadside and i get the cmaera on her and then she turns slightly quartering away and I am at anchor pick a spot and the arrow hits exactly at the spot i was aiming at.
Unfortunately I went to deer hunting mode and hit her right behind the shoulder and not up the leg. I got good penetration and the the arrow was buried almost to the flethching. I hear them in the palmettos run off and then veer left to where some oaks are. It is so thick you cannot see them at all. I wait about 45 minutes and then walk back to camp to see if anyone can blood trail with me. Sure enough pat isther as well as my friend Tommy and eddie. I show them the shot on the TV and Pat wants to go right now but i convince him to give it another 1/2 hour just in case.
I start the blood trail and it isa good one but it is so thick we are following tunnels in the palmettos. She changes direction a few times and i know she must have travelled with the other group of hogs and this is whaT I was afraid of. Normally a hog with a hit like mine would bed down pretty quick and we would find her dead in her bed but when the follow another group the just keep going. We are about 75 yards in and we lose the trail for a minute but i find some drops after a little clearing on thetrail to the left. We go a little further and i find my arrow and it has a lot of blood but also some gut. Looks like i hit gut and liver. We move alittle more and i see three buzzards that were in a tree take off. We are at a knee high grassy are about a 20 yard circle that Pat says they bed in. We move casually just in case my hog might still be alive and ther she is on the other side of the small clearing....stone colddead in her bed. It seems the buzzards must have smelled her and were waiting in the trees to make sure. The hit did get gut but got liver to and she looks like she expired preety quick after she made itto the bed. Here is the picture at her bed and then after we dragged her out.
Now the challenge was to get all the meat home. Lucky for me my friend eddie had some room in the coller and I had deboned the other hogs the previous day. I also carried everything back except my bow and arrow in my carryon so I could load up my other checked bag with the frozen shoulders of the previous hogs. Hope you enjoyed the story. I decided to post since i really enjoy rerading everyones else's hunt a longs.
Topic: So many pigs, so little time! (Read 856 times)
