Texas or Bust II: Bushwackin' em and Stackin' em!

[tmccall]

The ranch was quite a bit different from last year.  Drought conditions had been replaced by a bright green landscape all in bloom.  The ranch was beautiful and the pigs seemed to be plentiful:

 

I started putting on my game face!

[tmccall]

I don't wanna get too far ahead of the story, but I do feel like a teaser pic might be in order so here it is:

 

That's what they call a bloody bushwacker!

[tmccall]

When we got there Mike and Gerald were busy plotting how we would attack the evening hunt:

 

We all said our hellos then we finally got to lay our eyes on our new bows:

 

They were incredible!!!

 

Unbelievable!

[tmccall]

After we made ourselves familiar with our new bows we headed out to establish some new stand sites.  We set some stands and put out some blinds.  Our one major shortcoming in this hunt was a failure to take enough photos.  So I don't have any photos of the newly established ambush sites but I do have this picture of Dad exiting a well brushed in blind.

 

Setting these things up is an art and Mike and Jason put a lot of time and thought into the process.  We learned a lot as we worked with them.

[tmccall]

After we returned to camp Jason and I began to transform Mike's truck into a Bowyer's dream vehicle!  I had a short bout with heat exhaustion, I overlooked the need to keep a constant flow of water into my system.  As Jason and I worked, Mike cooked dinner, an exceptional Braised Pork Shoulder and dad shot his windtalker a little:

 

The evening hunt finally rolled around and we all headed out.  That first night, as would turn out, was the most active hunt of the trip for me.  I crawled into my blind and settled in.  It wasn't very long at all until I began to hear the unmistakable sound of corn crunching and pigs grunting.  As my heart raced I began to prepare myself for the coming shot opportunity.  There were 4 hogs in that bunch and they were all pretty decent sized animals.  I originally settled on on a nice brown boar that I was going to shoot as he entered my shooting lane.  
However, at the last minute I decided to shoot a nice black boar that was a few yards closer to the blind and trailing the lead hog by a step or two.  I came to anchor and promptly sent my first arrow of the trip sailing right over the pigs back!  Bummer!!!  I sat there a moment and told myself, "OK, you've got that out of the way, now lets settle in and kill a pig!"

[the Ferret]

"I had a short bout with heat exhaustion, I overlooked the need to keep a constant flow of water into my system. "

Ahhh...you need momma Connie in camp!

Nice capture of that arrow in flight..or are those bows that slow hee hee (just kiddin)

[peak98]

DON'T STOP NOW !!!!!

[tmccall]

Mickey,

I staged that shot and it still took multiple tries.  Mike swears up and down that if Dad had been shooting his Bushwacker instead of his Windtalker I wouldn't have been able to catch it in flight.  As it was I had to try to anticipate the release and shoot the pic at that precise instant.  Dad wasn't aware that I was trying to catch the arrow in flight so it was purely guess work.  I actually caught it twice!

Peak -- more is coming!

[tmccall]

Picking up where I left off...  I sat in my blind the rest of that evening hoping that another opportunity would present itself.  Just a little before dark, I heard pigs coming again,  I tried to steady my heart and focus my attention but it didn't work.  There was a large sow in the lead and lots of smaller hogs in tow,  I readied myself and settled into the shot.  Once again I passed him up.  Night settled in and the first ecvning drew to an end.  Dad and Jason had experiences like mine and Mike managed to drop a pretty good boar...  I'll let him tell that story,

[wingnut]

As Tony said, we all had action on that first night for the boys.  I figured that the boar I'd missed would be my advesary for the evening and at midday put up one of our double bulls right at his access trail.  I figured he'd be real leary of the area of the ground blind I'd used in the morning but might be less on guard earlier in his travels.  I tell you there are two things I love about the DB blinds, first they go up easy and camo well.  The other is with a Thermacell you get a few hours of "NO MOSQUITOS".  One thing I didn't like is it blocked the wind so it was HOT in there.  I was thinking of going ISHI early in the evening but action started pretty quick.

First I had goats and sheep moving too my left and right.  They seemed to not come all the way to the blind area but to cross the road on the way to the waterhole a couple hundred yards away.

With an hour of light left and the sun getting towards the horizon, I heard animals moving in the jungle to my right.  This had to be the boar.  I readied myself and began to remind myself to look low in the shoulder because the shot would only be 10 yds.  I see movement off to the right in the small slit window.  Wait a minute it's way to big to be the boar.  Dang it!  It's a red deer hind moving purposefully down the trail.  I relax a bit, then caught movement behind the female.  The boar was using it as a blocker alarm and feeding right at her heels.  Smart fellow!!  The red deer are pretty wary and I was afraid it would spot the blind even though we had brushed it in well.  As it closed to the 10 yd shot window, it never even looked my way and the boar was confident in the deers awareness.  It was a mistake and I needed to take advantage.  The elk sized deer passed the window and I started to draw as the boars head entered.  Dang they look big at this range!  I hit draw and concentrated on the knuckle of the shoulder.  At release, a loud crack, a squeel and a cloud of dust.  What happened?  I'd hit it alright but didn't see the arrow hit.  The dust cleared and there he was down with a broken back.  The arrow was high. . .again.  I got out of the blind and circled to get good angle.  The second arrow caught double lung and I walked away for a few minutes to let the arrows finish there job.

He was a fine boar about 100#s in the prime of his young life and will make good table fare.

I crawled back in the blind to reflect on what had just happened and to wait for darkness to fall.  Soon I heard the truck off in the distance towards Jason's location so I headed down the road to see if he needed blood trailing help.

Tony had a couple of pics of this pig I believe.

Mike

[the Ferret]

Raise your anchor point big boy.

Waiting for the pics

YO TONY.....

[T-Mac]

I think tony is catching up on sleep this morning. I am sure he will be us a little later.

[tmccall]

Lets see... a picture of Mike and a pig...  might of broken my camera...  it's gotta be in here somewhere...  Ah Ha!  Here we go:

 

Finally, there was pig meat in camp and it looked like the pigs were going to be plentiful.  Everyone got a chance to blow a shot that evening and we anticipated many more opportunities in the next few days!

[tmccall]

While we are posting pics I reckon I could go ahead and post a good shot of the hanging tree...


 


What a mess of Dryad bows!

[tmccall]

Here's another good shot of my bow -- it's the prettier of the two!

 

*****

[bayoulongbowman]

Mike nice P I G ...Hog!!!! those are bows are some pretty!!!Marco#78

[T-Mac]

Look at that "Bow Tree". All you have to do is go out there and pluck your chose of bows from the bow tree.    That is the secert of all those great bowyers they have
"Bow Trees".  

[tmccall]

The next morning came TOOOO early!  We piled out of bed early and headed out to our stand sites.  I elected to go back to the site I had visited the night before.  Surely there was at least one more shot waiting to be taken from that blind.  I went out that morning and shot my bow at the target by the light of the moon and convinced myself that I was capable of hitting what I shot at!  My confidence had taken a beating the night before as I shot at two decent sized hogs, yet missed my mark each time.

That morning i had the goods.  Arrows smacked home right where I was looking.  My confidence came roaring back and I headed out to hunt sure that if I got another chance I'd make it count.  I slipped into my blind before daylight and waited...

And waited...

And waited some more.  I was ready, I was shooting good, my mental state was good, but the pigs never showed up!  Figures!  They are coming out of the woodworking the night before when I'm tired from driving and all shaken up and jittery but now that I all settled, calm cool and collected, there are no piggies anywhere around.  Me and Dad and Mike met up at about 8:30 and between us there had been no pigs seen.

We headed into camp and got ready to work some more on our "wrap" job that was going on, when along came Jason smiling from ear to ear.  He scored that morning after the rest of us had given up!  I'll let him tell that story...

[wingnut]

Well Jason headed for Houston to visit with his girl so I'll fill in the blanks.  He'd seen nothing for hours but had told himself that the pigs would move if he waited long enough.  The other three of us were out and about by 9:30 but Jason sat it out and at about 9:45, sure enough the pig were moving.  He had a group of shoats come in and mill around.  He decide to test his shaky shooting with a shot at the small target and smacked it down dead center in 12 ring.  The 20# pig hit the ground and stayed put.  That's what we like a short bloodtrail and another pig on the ground.  We're going to put him on the grill whole here soon and see if they are as good as we have been told.

Here is a pic of the wrap job on the trailer Tony and Jason were working on.

 

Mike

[the Ferret]

Man that's COOL Mike.