I spent the last 10 days or so chasing elk in Colorado, but was unable to drop the string. My hunting partner and I had several close encounters, and for the first 3 days we were into elk each morning and evening we went out. It was a great hunt, but it got a little frustrating toward the end. We saw two herds of nearly 20 elk pushed across the border into NM by hunters coming up a drainage with the wind at their back, and the combination of hunting pressure, ATV's, and mushroom hunters over the holiday weekend became too much, and I headed home a day earlier than planned. We were seeing far more hunters than elk by that point.
I got home after dark last night, and after taking care of some chores and partially unpacking, I decided to see what the hogs were up to on my place. It rained last night, and there were fresh tracks all over the place, but I decided to sit at a particular feeder that has been good to me. The feeder went of at 7 o'clock, and around 7:30 I heard hogs squealing in the drainage to the east. It didn't take them long to get there, but when they did, they were so bunched up in a black ball of feeding, that it was very difficult to get a shot. Finally a decent sow got a little separation from the bunch, but she was steeply quartering away, but only around 10 yards away.
I will make a little disclaimer here. I have killed a few hogs with similar shots, but usually they need to be found using a grid search or by using one of my dogs for tracking. There are probably a lot of scenarios where this would not be a desirable shot. In any case, I was pretty confident that I could make the shot, and when it comes down to it, one less hog is a good thing.
I took the shot, and the arrow buried in front of the hip to the fletching, and I was confident that it had gotten into the goodies. I was using an illuminated nock, and it was easy to see where the hog had disappeared into the drainage. Hogs scattered in every direction, but most of them came back to finish up the small amount of corn that was left on the ground. A medium sized boar got wind of the wounded sow, and started growling, and making a circle, and eventually all of the sows gathered the younger hogs, and they disappeared into the drainage.
I figured that they would be back, and I had the feeder set to go off for a few seconds at 8. I was hopeful of killing a second hog. 4 or 5 medium sized hogs came into the clearing just seconds before the feeder went off, and when it did they acted like they had been electrocuted, scattering in all directions. I waited, figuring that they would be back. Another 5 -10 minutes, and 10-15 hogs came into the clearing, but they got chased by a nice boar, and unfortunately, they went to my south and caught my scent with the north wind. That was pretty much all she wrote, although I gave them around 20 more minutes to make a mistake.
By now it was dark, and I couldn't find a drop of blood at the spot of impact, so I went to where I knew the sow had gone into the drainage. Still no blood. I eased into the dense cover, and after I had gone around 10 yards, I could see the faint glow of my illuminated nock. I had my headlamp on and another arrow nocked on the string as I slowly ease up on the sow. No need to worry, as she was dead when I got there. She only went 60-70 yards total. Here is how I found her. There was a small amount of blood on her leg, but the arrow had backed out a bit and the hole clogged with intestines.
And here is another pic with my silvertip. She probably weighed 125-150#
Topic: Consolation prize (Read 353 times)
