Well, after an arduous 13 hour drive down last Thursday, we made it to Chestnut Hunting Lodge. Accommodations were quite nice. Jerry (owner) met us at the lodge on our arrival. We (two of my uncles and me) were the only hunters in camp that weekend and the only hunters he had had in over a week. I found this a bit odd and slightly unnerving, but at least we had the entire lodge to ourselves! And there was this quite interesting use for a deer tail!



5am the next morning our guide, Brad, showed up and escorted us up to the hunting area via 4x4 pick up with the dogs following on foot (paw). We caught a brisk morning which was quite enjoyable in the low 40's. We caught sunrise just around 7am as we got to the crest of Whiskey Mountain.





We hunted thickets that were made by a logging team a few years earlier. We would drive up to the edge, get out of the truck, and spread out. Brad would send the dogs in and we would wait for them to bay a hog. After the third or fourth thicket, we hit pigs. One uncle was perched on a log, sitting with a steady rest, as a hog darted out and up an opposite hill at around 75 yards. Two shots rang out from his Rem 740 .30-06 and we were off to tracking as the hog ran back into another adjacent thicket. There was an adequate blood trail to follow and we tracked, and tracked, and tracked. Clear across the property. While heading down a hill towards the lower end of the property by a water hole, we came across my hog. Jerry had told us of two "500+ pounders" on property. I had found the big one. Took a seat at <50yds and put a 260gr accubond from my CZ550 .375 H&H into his shoulder. He sat right down and plopped. 10 seconds later he got back up, sitting on his back haunches, and I let him have another one, 1" forward of the first. Unfortunately, he was on a little big of a slope heading towards the watering hole, and you can guess where all (as estimated by Brad and Jerry) 800lbs of him rolled.....



As I was admiring my new found source of pork and reloading my rifle, I heard my other uncle (the one who needed a bit of convincing about his .30/30 being adequate for hogs from a prior post of mine a few months back) send a 170gr Fusion into this piggy about 200yds to my right.



After hauling my hog out with a Kubota these two headed back to the barn to be skinned, quartered, and packed into coolers. Went down with 4 150qt coolers and ended up having to go to WalMart to purchase a fifth to pack everything home!



The first uncle never recovered his hog as the blood trail doubled back up the mountain and ended in a very nasty thicket that we couldn't physically advance into very far. The dogs ended up ripping up a few piglets from that thicket and made any tracking of the initial blood trail impossible.

All in all, we had a fun hunt. The lodge was clean. There was Yuengling on tap in town at a pretty good steakhouse. Took me 15 hours to butcher up the two hogs when we got them home to CT. Got some fantastic chops, rolled seasoned roasts, crown roasts, ribs, hams, and sausage. I should be oinking by the end of the year at the rate I've been eating pork this week.
Now just trying to figure out where we're going for next years family trip!

Now that looks like some fun!

Damn, those are large hogs. Lots of pork there. Congrats.

I like the fall colors. I sure miss that. We are already deep in snow here, and the colors were short lived.

KB

Yes, quite a bit of pork. And I hear you on the foliage. CT had terrible foliage this year. I normally spend a few days up on a ridge behind my house taking photos, but didn't even waste my time this year.

It's a good thing you had the Kubota. Those hogs look very edible despite their large size. It takes good feed to grow a hog that large. I've seen pictures of giants in Georgia, Florida, and Texas, and in those cases it was a pretty sure thing that the landowner, or somebody, was feeding the hogs, or the hog found a food source that he was sneaking in on, over several months time period. They don't get that big eating just grubs, acorns and mushrooms.

I knew a gentleman cattle rancher in North Florida who had some hogs sneaking in on his cow feed, and instead of running them off, he made arrangments with some grocery stores and resturants to take their throw out produce and scraps, which he dumped in a trough in the woods about every other day. I think he fed fruit too, when he could get it, such as oranges, etc. He told me the hogs preferred the vegies fruit and resturant food over the cow feed. He harvested some mighty fine and fat pigs from that setup, and some of his friends did too. Last I heard he moved to Alabama, and I'm sure he's still doing the same thing.

KB

They're actually quite good eating from what I've tasted thusfar. There were multiple automatic feeders noted throughout the property. The meat was wonderfully light and not at all unlike domestic pork I've butchered in the past. Not gamey at all, but more flavorful than the grocery store variety pork.

I had some reservations of shooting a larger boar at first due to what I've read in the past of larger animals being gamey and in some cases inedible. Jerry and Brad quickly assuaged my fears of this and were spot on. Had a damned tasty roast for dinner last night. Even got my little sister (14) to eat it without great protest.

Just like free-ranging chickens, hogs that can roam about are much better tasting IMO, than pen raised, even if and probably because the feed is supplemented.

I have seen some large free ranging boars in Texas that didn't have a supplemental feed source, or any good farmland nearby, and my hunting buddies wouldn't mess with them. Apparantly some of those old boars will feed on darn near anything including carrion, and other dead hogs, and stuff they can kill too, if better feed isn't readily available. The one I shot looked and smelled OK to me, but I couldn't load it by myself, and they wouldn't help, so I had to leave it where it fell. Probably for the best, since we had several in the 80 to 125 pound range.

However, I'm reasonably sure those you got are primo hogs, especially considering you have tasted some of it. If the first batch is good, then most likely all of it's good. I've never smelled a bad wild boar, but from what I hear and read, if it's bad you know right away, and it smells bad. Those you got just look too good to be bad. That outfit you hunted with has too much at stake to not please the customer.

I was talking to a really nice guy, who was a friend of my hunting buddies, about trapping hogs. He died last year, sadly, but he used to trap lots of hogs and sell them. Apparantly the regulations or laws changed and put a stop to that, but he was telling me that the big ones used to bring the best prices. Apparantly they were butchered and shipped to France or somewhere. I don't know the whole story on that, only part, based on memory and a brief conversation. But he still trapped when I met him, and he showed me the traps. He gave away whatever he could of those he trapped at that time. Usually it was no problem to find someone to come get whatever he caught. He had a long waiting list saved on his cell phone. He gave us two piglets, which were delicious cooked in a charcoal smoker.

To tell the truth, after eating some of those medium size pigs from Texas, I really can't eat store bought fresh pork anymore. When I cook it the smell is just like a pig pin. The stuff stinks. i do buy sausage sometimes, and the spices cover the stink. To me, a fresh killed small wild pig is some darn good eating, and has a much better aroma and flavor than grocery store pork.

I had an invitation to shoot one or more of those North Florida hogs, and a place to stay, but just couldn't or didn't make the trip. I sure wish I had.

Several years ago, from my truck on a back dirt road, I watched a bunch of hogs with my binoculars as they were feeding in the back corner of a harvested corn field, in south Georgia, woods on three sides, no fences. Of course they had been feeding on that corn all summer, as it grew and ripened. The harvesters had left lots on the fallen stalks. I was on a short visit, and didn't have time to ask permission to hunt, but I'm sure those hogs were easy pickings, and permission was there for the asking. There were several large ones in the bunch, big and black, and lots of piglets too.

KB