St. Jude Hunt - A trip down under

[lt-m-grow]

You are probably thinking Oz.  Nope.  Wrong. I took a little trip down under the Mason-Dixon line.   You know that line where below it they eat grits and above it we eat food :-)

Yes indeed, I went down to Georgia to hunt the St. Jude hog hunt offered so graciously by RC last year.

The trip was great.  Arrows flew. Lessons were learned.  Some world problems were even solved - at least in our minds.  

Let me upload some pictures and get my act together a bit more and I will get the story going.

My only hope is I can do this hunt justice.  I had a great time.  I made a new friend. And I fell in love with the Georgian swamp.

Seriously, I have been lucky and I have hunted in 10 different states and canada and this was the best hunt I have been on.  So if RC offers this hunt again, and I suspect he will, bid often and bid high.  The man knows what he is doing.  Works hard.  Is a good teacher.  And is just plain easy to be with.  

The only downside I can say is that the poor folks of Georgia don't have any turkeys.   All they have is one lone female that wonders the swamp looking sad and lonely.

[lt-m-grow]

Let me get this going...

First off this was a long drive - a little over a 1000  miles.  Not complaining, it just sets the tone for the friendly welcome I received as I quickly noticed that Georgia loved the Green Bay Packers.  Even in camp it was proudly displayed.

 

What a nice welcome.   Of course the color was wrong.

 

But I didn't want to point that out and be rude to the fine folks after they went and pasted it all over the state.

[lt-m-grow]

The campground was nice and easy to find.   It also was the location of the 8000 acres we had to hunt and that was a big bonus.

Due to the long drive I told RC that I would arrive sometime on Tuesday and we should plan to start the hunt on Wednesday - first thing in the morning.  I do that because you never know whether you are gonna have car trouble or get stuck in traffic.  I don't want someone standing there waiting for me and I especially don't want to do that to someone I have never met.

RC offered that it was all good and said he planned on setting up his camp Tuesday AM.  So whatever worked - worked for him.  That is the laid back tone of the whole trip which was great.

As luck would have it, I arrive in camp way early than even I expected.  I think it was about 1:00 PM and there was a smiling RC with his camp all set to go.  We shook hands and he said let's hunt.

It didn't take me long to dump the street clothes and exchange them for camo.  Get the arrows out.  Get the broadheads on.  And we were off to the swamp.

[RC]

Ya`ll copied our red sign and when you got it up there in the snow it turned green....RC

[Sharptop]

RC, although my heart is with you Georgia adopted the Green Bay version of the G when Vince Dooley was a young coach at GA who so admired Vince Lombardi and the Packers. Good choice, I think. So your both right. It just looks so much better in red.

[lt-m-grow]

The Tuesday afternoon hunt started as a long trek and my first peek into the swamp.  It was beautiful.  Seriously.  

Don't believe me...
 

 

[Mudd]

How cool is this?   Way!!!! I'm saying...

I'll be hanging on this one watching it as the story unfolds.

Thanks for sharing.

God bless,Mudd

[rastaman]

awesome!
   

[gregg dudley]

Been waiting for this...

[GRS]

Oh boy! Another south Ga. hunting tale! Bring it on.
Gerald

[Benjy]

Looks like it's gonna get good!

[lt-m-grow]

I am not the storyteller like some of the folks on here, but I will do my best...but thanks for the kind words.

So the general plan of RC's is to get back in as far as possible from the beaten path.  

I don't know whether I mentioned this, but this is public land so the plan made lots of sense to me.  So with 8000 acres that is a long ways into the swamp.  Apologies to folks that already know this, but to get a reference for us midwest local boys (like me) 640 acres is 1 mile by 1 mile.

Having said that, I have hunted big timber and big mountain ranges, so getting "way back" wasn't new to me either.    However, the swamp has its own challenges that I wasn't used to.  

These are sloughs and they were of different size and different make up.

Some look like puddles
 

Some look like ponds
 

Some look like creeks
 

RC referred to all of them as simply sloughs...I was learning.  

And all of them needed to be navigated around in a very unnatural path to me but of course RC was at home and made it all look easy.

[lt-m-grow]

All of this terrain was new to me which was one of the main reasons I wanted to take this trip so badly.  

Ohh I guess I should offer that I really wanted three things on this trip.  I wanted to hunt free ranging hogs - way cool.  I wanted to hunt in an environment that I have never hunted in before - as mentioned.  Lastly I wanted to hunt with RC.  I have always appreciated his stories on here as he comes across to me as a true outdoorsman and not simply as a hunter.  

The trip was a success by every measure and more!

[lt-m-grow]

So all of these sloughs are the result of spill over from the river.

 

Which was interesting for its beauty and how it effects the environment around it - ala the sloughs.  One of the first local things I noticed is everyone watches the river flood level.  The locals discuss it like the weather.  I am sure to them is seems natural.  However, to me it isn't something we think about here as all of the big rivers have so many dams that flooding is well controlled and only becomes an issue once or twice a year.  The river here isn't dammed and ebbs as flows constantly.    

Many times RC would offer that he drove his boat to a spot that we were on that was very high and dry at the time we were there.  It is clearly a fun variable that must add a lot interesting challenges to the "same ole" hunting grounds.

[Jeff D. Holchin]

You are doing a great job, Dave, with nice descriptions and photos.  

[lt-m-grow]

So back to the hunt...

It was Tuesday afternoon.  The temperature was mild. The sky was overcast.  Believe it or not, that was heaven, because when I left Wisconsin it was below freezing and I could still see a snowdrift or two from the living room window.

About 3 hours into the hunt, we hear some rustling off in the distance and we were off. RC knowing what's going on. I wondering whether this is pigs or something else.

A little poking around and we pop over a hill and bust several ducks out off one of the sloughs.    We walk maybe 50 more yards and out races a mama hog and three cute little piggies.  They offered no shot, which was good because I would not have shot.

And that leads us to the first axiom that RC offers upon my confession that I would not have shot because I thought the piglets were too small.

So the first thing he says is "The pigs down here don't have names."

So I say "Umm I know that"

So he says  "So shoot them".  

I say "RC I know that but what about the piglets"

RC replies "If I cannot catch them with my hands they are old enough  to shoot.  And I cannot catch them."

So I think "Well I am glad we got that straight"

Then he offers this gem "If they are shiny.   Then don't shoot mama.  If they are old enough to get dirty, like those little guys, they will be ok on their own".

I offered this little running dialog so you can get the sense of how RC and I "worked" through things.  The conversations were great fun but I always had the feeling he was pulling one over on this yankee because he has that in him.  I am talking playful fun and nothing more.  I will let him tell the story about poor guy jumping in the water after RC's boat that he had tied up...  

We ended the hunt on Tuesday with hogs sighted, lessons learned and very tired.   It was a great first hunt and a bonus hunt too as I wasn't even expecting to hunt until the morning on Wed.

[lt-m-grow]

OOOhhh one more thing before I forget.  Tuesday night I get my first introduction to the pond scoggin.

So I hear the weirdest noise I have heard in the outdoors ever.  So I ask RC what the heck is that and he casually says that it is a pond scoggin.  Now think about that. You just heard a freak noise and some guy with a southern accent calmly says pond scoggin.  Of course my next response was "what?" And of course he says pond scoggin.  Yep I heard it right. So I have to ask "what is it?". And I hear it is a tall bird and that is that.

Over the following days, right at last light, I hear noises that are all different and strange.  It ranges from something that might sound like a sick turkey, to a sick pig squeal, to an old man groaning and evidently all come from this mythical bird (as least mythical to me).   It is so odd I can only imagine that the first people to hear it must have thought the swamp was haunted. Seriously that strange.

So I get back to Wisconsin and I realize I needed to share this with you all and I do some googling and looky here...

 Pond Scoggin

It is so fitting isn't it?  :-)

[LONGSTYKES]

Dave looks great, love the sloughs and swamps. Hope you have a great hunt.

[Cyclic-Rivers]

good story!  bring us Wednesday!   :D