Weds evening walk in the swamp. Todd ahead of me.
An owl overhead. I used the flash. His eyes glowed red.
The next day walking a fire road I look over and see this guy.
Here his mouth is open and he's hissing "This is my space!"
Later in the day as I just stepped into my climbing stand I hear movement to my left. I look and the cane is moving all around about 30 yards away. It starts moving closer to me. I'm standing on an inward leaning Ol' Man climber and had just stepped into it to start my climb. My bow is on the ground and tied to the tether. I steady my feet and while still facing the tree I get my bow in hand and draw an arrow from my back quiver. I get it nocked as they near. I have to raise the bow to get it to the left side of the tree trunk that's a foot and a half in front of me. I see a little porker appear that's tan and spotted black. It turns broadside to me and I twist as much as possible for a lefty to shoot to his left while balanced on a leaning climber base. I draw and lose the arrow. It flies true and I hear flesh slice and a squeal from the small hog. It tears back through the cane as the others scatter. Cane is moving all around. I hear it blindly crashing through the cane as it tries to keep up with the rest of the bunch. The sound disappears in the distance.
I get unhooked from the stand and tree and jump down. I find good blood and go get Todd. When we finally start tracking the blood is very good but hard to follow in the cane. We eventually find the arrow about 30 yards from the shot. It's soaked. But once the arrow comes out, the blood nearly dries up. We search for nearly two hours. We go get help and come back just before dark. Still nothing. We return in the morning to the last marked blood and about 20 feet beyond the previous night's blood we find this. This is about 60 yards from the shot.
NO more is found by five searchers and Harry. The cane was so thick we may have walked by it and never saw it. A heart wrenching failure to what seemed like in-the-bag success.
Here's a view from the tree I eventually did climb. The hog was just past the downed log when I shot. It was about 10-12 yards away. (edit - had the wrong pic linked)
More pics later.
Topic: Hunt Wild Things Week 1 (Read 519 times)
