quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
This hunt is probably going to go wrong somewhere, but God knows where. Just take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of themselves. I believe someone important said that once.

I can’t manage the weather and it’s way too hot. This is bound to be the last hunt of the summer. Look on the bright side. Little chance my Mucks will get sucked off. No chance I’ll have to peel-off my cow-shit covered clothes in sub-zero weather…………I feel better just thinking about that.

This Hunt is going to be different. Screw the fact that last year in July I hunted for three days and never saw a hog. Screw the fact that a hunter a week after me, in July, hunted two nights with thermal / infrared sights, and saw nothing but a raccoon flipping him the finger. This Hunt is different. This is a different July.

I gave myself that kind of pep talk for a week before This Hunt hoping I would develop at least a partial game-face; something similar to the New Zealand All Blacks doing a haka before the big game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKFYTFJ_kw These hogs on THIS hunt don’t know who they’re f*cking with.

I came rolling up to the main gate around 3:00pm on a Friday, ready to do battle with “Sus Scrofa”, otherwise known as the Texas feral pig sumbitch. I had to hold in my overwhelming desire to kill sus scrofa just a little longer while I exchanged pleasantries with Randy. I handed over my offerings of Bud Light Lime, two logs of Kuby’s Summer Sausage, a half-pound of Habanero Jack cheese I personally cold-smoked, and a damn fine camo version of The NASCAR Racing Experience ball cap that I had picked-up the weekend before at Texas Motor Speedway when I had climbed in the side window of a hopped-up Chevy and took four laps at a top speed of 165 MPH, inches from the outside wall. Yeah, it gave me an ear-splitting headache for a short while but nothing like that instantaneous bark of a hopped-up 300 WSM firing a 130 grain TTSX BT. More importantly I was still carrying an adrenaline overload; half NASCAR, half hunter; the perfect mix for This Hunt. I was like Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine. Man, if my wife wasn’t out of town, and could see me now; Hugh Jackman/Wolverine, Wolverine/Hugh Jackman, she would be putty in my hands.

After I snapped out of my fantasy, Randy and I discussed where best to find a hog in the heat. He kept talking about walking around “The Lake”. I kept ignoring him. That’s a “Death March”. We settled on Ashley’s Stand for the evening, with a loaded feeder.

Well that proved to be a waste. I sat there until it was too dark to see. The resident coon didn’t show up. Instead it was a complete “flash mob” of raccoons. I had six on top of the feeder, under the feeder, climbing up and down the feeder legs. It was interesting but also unproductive, and I called it a night.

Next morning at 5:00am I climb on Ashley’s four-wheeler and slow-crawl towards the Hay Barn to the top of The Drop-off. From there I walk through the darkness down the hill through the corrals, and edge into The Bottoms. The double ground-stand is going to be my home for the next few hours.

Something I noticed the evening before was Gato’s Place didn’t look like Gato’s Place anymore. Gato might have been a force of nature, but now his place belonged to Mother Nature. Gato loved to shred a lot of new growth. He opened-up a lot of space to spot hogs and take shots. Now there were pecan and other saplings taking over the place. They were all about four-foot high; high enough to cover the back of a large hog. The opportunities to spot hogs would be severely diminished. The “roads” were almost invisible even. I was in a new environment, and would need to adjust.

The sky began to lighten towards the east, and I got ready. I WAS “The Wolverine”.

Two hours later, after seeing only a lone doe and two coyotes (probably hunting her fawn), I wasn’t The Wolverine anymore. I wasn’t even a NASCAR hero. I was pissed. I had finished a bottle of water and my Gatorade and I needed to take a piss, but 7:30am is prime-time on a hog hunt. You can’t be climbing out of a ground-stand and taking a piss. That could ruin the entire set. So I eyed that empty Gatorade bottle like it was the only life-preserver in a loaded raft. It had to do.

Obviously I lost focus for a minute, but seeing dark movement in the brush brought me back to my senses.

With the moves of a ninja warrior, I capped that Gatorade bottle, zipped up……….quietly……….and brought the rifle up, … without hitting the tin roof of the stand. I could barely see the outline of his back in the tall growth, but he was definitely there, and moving slowly towards a good opening. My main problem was that the wind was at my back, blowing from me towards that opening. The previous afternoon I had even spread a little corn in that opening. If he picked-up on that, he might hesitate in the opening.

But he did the opposite. About the time his nose should have poked out of the brush at 120 yards, he must have caught wind of me, and he started running. He cleared the opening before I could get on him, but before he could reach the heaviest brush on the other side I fired at his shoulder. He turned directly away from me, without showing any sign of being hit, and made it to the heavy underbrush before I could work the bolt and get a second shot.

My heart was pounding now; NASCAR or no NASCAR. I nixed the idea of checking on him. I wanted another hour in the stand. Hogs were obviously moving in The Bottoms.

Along about 8:30am I saw hogs moving on a tree line at about 275 yards. I got on one of the larger hogs and when he hesitated, I fired. I felt confident, but you never know. I gave it time for the running hogs that had turned-back towards me to either reach me or show themselves somewhere. Neither event happened.

I started my search. I knew there was little chance I was going to find a blood trail. The brush was too thick and most hogs seem to have a thick layer of fat that I think keeps the blood from flowing like it will on a deer. All I had to go-on was where I had seen them last.

I went after the closer hog. I had a clear vision in my mind that I was going to find him. I was sure of it. I went to where he disappeared and started fanning-out. Fifteen minutes later, I was out of ideas. I turned towards the farther hog and climbed the hill. Again, nada!

Oka-a-y. I turned back on a line to where I last saw Hog #1, but lower on the side of the hill thinking maybe if either hog were hit they might have turned downhill at some point as they bled-out. Halfway between where I thought Hog #1 and Hog #2 might be, I found a freshly killed hog. No, not just a hog, a HUGE boar. (270+ it turned out.) I don’t know which hog it was really. I suspect Hog #1. Both would have been hit in the left side. The dead hog was definitely shot in the left side.

Who cares? I started my hike back to The Drop-off to get the four-wheeler to drag my prize back to the skinnin’ pole.

Thirty-five minutes later I’m back with the 4-wheeler, backing up to the big boar. I get him tied-on, take-up slack on the rope and the 4-wheeler died. What now! I try every combination of everything I can think of. I look under it to see if a wire is hanging. The starter is not making a sound. I pull the phone out to call Randy…..No Service…… Damn!

I hike back to The Drop-off. I call Randy. We walk through every possible idea of what could have gone wrong.

He finally tells me where to find a Polaris Ranger in another barn and how to get that electric sumbitch running. He tells me to be careful though because they haven’t put any anti-flat goop in the tires yet and there are a lot of thorns between the road and that dead hog when I go to get it.

I walk back to camp, find the Ranger, fire it up, as best you can fire-up an electric ATV, and head back to the big boar, which I despise now. (I’ll say one thing for Gato. He was a thinker. He planned to use the electric Ranger to sneak-up quietly on his hogs.)

I decide to push the Honda 4-wheeler off the hill as far as I can so that I don’t have to go so far off-road with the Ranger which is missing the tire goop. All I need is one 4-wheeler broke down, and another one with four flats. I finally cut the distance in half. I then get the Ranger to the boar, kick him in the nuts (just because), tie him on, and drag him back to the hanging pole. He’s so heavy, the simple gallows / manual hoist arrangement will hardly lift him off the ground. Unbelievable! I expect the pole to collapse, the hoist to break, or both, but it holds.

Now I don’t know who I’m madder at, Randy or the boar. Randy knows how much I hate skinning and quartering hogs, and I’m beat. I mean certified worn-out. But, being the trooper that I am, I start the project without him. I forget how many hours later, I have the hog skinned, two shoulders and two hams are in the ice chest, and THEN Randy comes driving up.

“You got a second hog?” Randy says as he steps out of the truck.

“No, I don’t have a second hog.”, says I.

“You mean you’re still on the first hog”???

“Shut the fuck up Randy” is what I wanted to reply, but at that point he stepped-in, an in about 2 ½ seconds removed two of the biggest backstraps I’ve ever seen on a hog. He was right. They looked like they came off a cow.

(One thing interesting during my skinning was that I found the piled-up 130 gr., .30 caliber TTSX under the skin on the off-shoulder side. It was .80 caliber when I dug it out and weighed exactly 130 gr. with a small amount of shoulder muscle attached to it, and four cutting petals peeled back as advertised. https://www.barnesbullets.com/bullets/ttsx/ )

While I was thinking about taking a break after my arduous task of skinning & quartering, Randy convinced me to go back with him for the Honda and drag it out. I told him that I pushed it off the hill, but as near as I could tell, I got no credit for that. (Randy’s not as hard as Gato, but he’s still hard.)

When we got back to the Honda, I feared Randy would fire it up in a heartbeat, but after about twenty minutes he gave up, said it might be a battery or a starter issue, and we tied a rope between them and headed for camp.

By then it was time for Randy to head home. We pushed the Honda onto a trailer for him to carry in. I told him I was headed back to that double stand. Maybe hogs would be moving as the sun went down. He teased me by saying that if I shot one to give him a call. (Bullshit, he’s not comin’. I already fell for that one.)

Didn’t matter. Nothing moved that evening; not a hog, not a deer, not even a raccoon. Tried it again Sunday morning. Nothing. Just sign to the west that hogs had been there. A half sack of deer corn I spread around was gone to the last kernel.

I drove home later in the day and about the time I stepped out of the shower, Randy called. He said he was watching TV and it dawned on him that the Honda had a kill switch. He walked out to the trailer, reset it, and the Honda sprang to life.

Thanks Randy. That was just what I needed to hear. That was the cherry on the top of This Hunt.