TX pig hunt

[Michael Pfander]

Well all I can say Rob is that I tried Imagelinky with the same level of success that I had with Photobucket...zip.  So I will tell this story without the pics.  With help of Snakewood two members of the Tucson paper league team [Mike and Dennis]headed out to slay a few TX hogs.  We left Thursday and drove straigth thru.  131/2 hours later we were there.  On the Pease river.  We got in about 5:00am. Friday morning.  We  were met with the sight of two hanging pigs, that's always a good sign.  We slept in the truck for a couple of hours got up, set up camp, ate lunch, took a nap and were ready for the evening's hunt.  We had spoken with the other hunters and taking their advise went west and dropped into the floodplain.  We hunted into the wind trying to catch the hogs as they came down the arroyos from their bedding areas to feed.  Dennis got into hogs that evening.  He passed on a couple of moving shots and came back to the truck stoked.  He had seen a group of around 8. I had seen nothing but deer,coyotes, and turkeys.  This area has both whitetails and mulies.  This was to be the pattern for the whole week.  I have never seen so many coyotes and turkeys in one place.  We saw hundreds of birds over the course of the week.  My best day saw me on 5 different coyotes in one morning.  You could do spot and stalk coyote hunting here with no problems.  That night when we got back to camp there had been 3 more pigs taken.  This group was from the Dallas/Ft.worth area.  They had also killed their pigs down in the flood plain. Day two saw us hunting the hills and gulleys north of the river.  We found lots of sign around the outfalls of the stock tanks.  We chose the one that looked the best to set up our bait station and trail cam.  That evening we went back to the area where Dennis had found pigs.  Dennis once again got into them [he saw the monster of the trip 400#+] the wind got him and they blew out.  This evening I only saw one dog no hogs but I did see over 20 deer and picked up the first of many sheds.  All in all we brought back a half a dozen sheds.  So ended day two.

[Bowmag]

Michael, were you hunting the Matador WLM area up by Paducah?

[Mike Vines]

[chopx2]

Send the pics to me and I'llpost for you

[email protected]

BTW imgur.com is very simple and I too had trouble with Photobucket.

[snakewood3]

email me the pics and I will put them up if you want. Glad ya'll had a good hunt and it was a pleasure meeting you and Dennis.

[Michael Pfander]

Day three dawned with the wind howling in.  Did I say anything about the wind?  It blew so hard I couldn't sleep on two different nights.  I am glad I took some 4-fletch arrows. [more on that later]  We checked the wind at camp and made our plans.  When we got down to the river we checked again and changed them.  We headed west to hunt the arroyos leading down to the river.  Once again Dennis got on  a bunch of pork.  This time the weeners busted him twice.  The first time the sows didn't get too worried.  They only moved off a 100yds. or so.  The second time they blew out.  This was the morning I got on 5 coyotes.  Three of them were mine if I had been so inclined.  The biggest group of deer I saw had 11 in it.  Here too I could have killed 2.  They were holding tight in the gullies feeding, out of the fury of the wind.  It was making so much noise I walked right up to them.  Twice I saw turkeys blown off balance as the moved too close to the ridge tops.  Hard to believe.  We checked on our bait and trail cam... no action.  Back at camp Snakewood and his family came by to give us the straight scoop.  He showed us some great finds.  We shot a few arrows and they had to get back to their life.  We decided to watch some of the arroyos that were closer to camp since everybody else had left.  Sunday evening we chose two of the gullies that had so much rooting activety it looked like and artillery barrage had landed there.  This was to be my turn.  I still hunted up my arroyo and pushed a couple ahead of me.  When I got to the top it looked like they had swung over the saddle and back down.  I took a ridge back to the bluffs and decide to glass the flood plain.  Shortly before dark I picked up movement and a sounder came out on to the first step above the river.  I dropped off the bluff, swung wide to get the wind in my favor, cut thru the brush line, and waited them out.  I shot the first pig to come thru my lane.  It turned out to be a young boor.  70-80#s  Good eating.  We got back to camp, cut him up, ate and crashed.
Bowmag thats where we were.

[sore fingers]

Sounds like fun. I love a good huntin story. You have seen more dogs in 3 days than i have in the last 3 years!

[Thumper Dunker]

Sounds like a lot of fun.

[Michael Pfander]

Day four turned out to be the day with the greatest temp. swing of the trip we had a 54 degree difference from start to finish 34 to 88.  We decided to hunt to the east.  Dennis worked the bottom while I hit the canyons.  He found a small bunch eating cattails.  The problem was he couldn't see them.  There was no way to part the waters so to speak.  They fed away from him and went up a gully to thick to stalk or shoot.  I found a bedding area with what at first I believed to be bear droppings all around it.  Turns out pigs in this part of TX eat a lot of juniper berries.  After our morning hunt we checked our bait and trail cam ... bingo.  We put out more bait and reset.  We had coyotes, raccoons, and yes pigs coming in.  That evening we sat the bluffs to the west of where I killed my pig.  I glassed up 4 pigs at the limit of my vision.  As I only had 45 min. of light I stayed put.  I waited until dark and walked out.  The turkeys roost in the cottonwoods down in the bottom.  Where I was I got to watch a hundred or so fly up and perch.

[Bowmag]

That's a cool place to hunt. The terrain is really varied. There are places along that river that look just like a Colorado setting. In the early '90s I killed a P&Y mulie way over on the west side. Congrats on your hunt success.

[Benner]

Sounds like a good time, I hope to do this next year.