spdcrazy
Well-Known Member
Where to start, where to start…
A few years ago, I lived in Alaska. I knew I was moving to Colorado and felt like I hadn't used my time in Alaska very well, I went there to hunt fish, explore and wander. I had done very little of this. With my father's health always in an awkward balance, I called him up and said, "Let's go bear hunting". He flew up, we went, we succeeded and all was swell. I soon moved to Colorado to start the next chapter of my life.
Fast forward a year or so and I'm sitting at my desk on my lonely night shift at the local police station. Thinking back to my early hunting years when my dad would take me with him, or I'd draw the tag and he would end up doing most of the scouting and foot work. These flash backs brought me to a memory of seeing some "oversized Javelina" in a cow pasture near Kingman one day. I remember my dad saying, "I thought we got rid of the feral hogs around here years ago, guess they are back". During the next few months we talked about going after them, but responsibilities and such got in the way and we never made it.
Now in Colorado, and planning my move back to Alaska, got me thinking of how I feel like I've wasted my time down here in the states, what kind of hunting should I do before I move back? With my father living just west of the middle of nowhere New Mexico it was a lot easier to get him out of the house for a hunt than it was when I lived in Alaska. However, his health isn't up to hiking around the deadfalls of Alaska anymore, but he is more than happy to sit in a blind. So now the gears were turning to setup our feral hog hunt. I knew I couldn't afford a big guided hunt, nor did I really want that, I wanted a DIY hunt with minimal help from technology, cameras, etc. So I looked around and finally found a couple of farmers that advertised on Craigslist only, and were offering use and limited knowledge of the area. No high fences, no extras. Just land, feeders, and hogs!
I started making phone calls to friends in the area to help me with the 11hr drive , I had a few friends ready to take the drive with me from Denver to Abilene and I managed to get my big brother tom, (whom I'd never hunted with before) to come over from Fort Worth and go hunting. He hadn't seen dad in many years. The way the hunt worked out I would work my standard 10 hour night shift, then drive straight to Texas. At the last minute, my buddies bailed due to work conflicts. Not ideal but I wasn't going to let that stop this mini family reunion. Even if I couldn't hunt that night, I knew if I didn't go, tom and dad wouldn't go either. Family trumps exhaustion any day, always.
All went as planned and I called dad when I was about 50 miles out, he said he was already there and camp was setup and tom was on his way as well (late start).Pops said I was headed right past the "hill blind" and we should just meet up there and go hunting before the sun went down. So we met up and I did some quick adjustments to my bow and we walked in. the pop up blinds were setup at 30 or so yards and neatly tucked in a corner of a barren field. Pops let me sit it alone while he went out to show Tom to the camp.
The neon light on the feeder became more pronounced as the sun went down. I practiced drawing my bow back, and quickly learned I didn't have enough light to see my peep. So I switched to the SKS I had as a backup. Now to sit and wait, the boredom set in for a minute until a swift chill of a breeze blew into the blind. Within minutes the Sky was dark and the rain was coming down in massive amounts. I zipped up the windows in the blind and found myself dumbfounded on the situation. Then came the overly loud cracks of lightning, illuminating the entire field, or what I could see out of my 4x2in hole I had left open. As if Mother Nature wanted to tell me something, she let out 45min of quarter inch hail. It hailed so hard the motion light on the feeder was going wild. Even if the pigs wanted to be out in this downpour, the lightning was so frequent and close I couldn't get my night vision to be able to see. Finally it let up and I walked out distraught with my first outing for pigs. Good thing it was only the first day.
The next day Tom, (not a morning person) and myself (exhausted from the 30+ hours of being awake, didn't get out of bed in time to make a dark morning hunt. So we gathered our ideas and formulated a plan for the three of us to go together. The other blind was pretty much a fully furnished small house. At 6x14 feet or so with a full sized framed in door, sliding windows on all sides, a shooting bench, couch, and a heater, it felt like the Hilton in comparison to the hail beaten single person pop blind I used the night before.
Pops soon realized with his glass eye and lack of depth perception, that he couldn't see well enough to shoot after dark, so it was up to Tom and I to bring in the bacon. Around 9pm the light flickered on, my brother caught it as I was busy looking behind me so help dad to the door to handle the call of mother nature. We quickly focused on the dark abyss as the moon wasn't out yet, luckily it was clear skies this time. Problem was, we didn't see any pigs, nothing illuminated by the light, nothing around. Then the light went dim again, must have been a bird. Then it did it again, and we faintly see a shadow off to the left, a lone piebald boar. We watched him for a while as he skiddishly made his way closer to the neon green light. Then I realized the sweet feed Pops had put down was placed out of the sensor area for the motion light. This piggy wasn't going to be spotlighted. About then we noticed the moon. Coming up from behind us and by the grace of god it was almost full! I was holding my Remington rolling block chambered in .257 Roberts, fresh out of the gunsmith's shop. My brother holding my 300 win mag with 150gr Nosler partitions. With him being further removed from the hunting scene than I was, I looked at him and gave him the option to put this boar down. He looked out at the pig and thought for a second, then stated he wasn't comfortable taking the shot under moonlight. I quickly motioned for my 300wm as I am very comfortable with it. I rested the rifle on the bench, brought the boar into my sights at full broadside and under nothing but moonlight, squeezed the trigger. We heard the hog flop on his side in an instant and squeal for no more than 3 seconds, then silence. I watched him through the scope for a few min, not a move was made. We didn't expect any other hogs to come in being he was alone to start with, and my 300 is less than a quiet rifle.
Next the fun began, it took us over 2 hours to literally hog tie him to homemade sleds and make handles to help us drag him through the thick sticky mud of the unplanted field. Finally we got him close enough to the truck that we tied him up and got him back to camp. After cleaning and quartering him up, we went to bed around 4am. Much too tired to go out again for the am hunt.
The next evening Tom and I went out to the hill blind for some quality time. You know, the one where I was assaulted by the weather a couple days before. The setup was modified a bit, and this time I was ready with my bow. While we had a blast giving each other funny looks, throwing candy at each other and putting on unnecessary face camo. The wind picked up as the moon came out, and our prey was nowhere to be seen. We ended our hunt around 10:30pm and headed back to camp. Loaded up and I was driving back to Colorado around midnight. I now had heavy pressure to get home in time to go to work that evening. Thanks again to the help of redbull, coffee, and chips; I made it in around 4pm with a couple of naps along the way. The pig head will be whitened and the meat is neatly wrapped in the freezer.
Although we only bagged one hog, we had a blast, ate some great home cooked food, enjoyed company and created memories we will never forget. If anyone is interested in booking a hunt where we went, Please call or text (they live in an area with spotty coverage) Rae and Tony at 325-665-1107. They were absolutely fantastic hosts and were more than accommodating. I will be back again.
Texas Hog Hunt 2016 by Rob Drye | Photobucket
A few years ago, I lived in Alaska. I knew I was moving to Colorado and felt like I hadn't used my time in Alaska very well, I went there to hunt fish, explore and wander. I had done very little of this. With my father's health always in an awkward balance, I called him up and said, "Let's go bear hunting". He flew up, we went, we succeeded and all was swell. I soon moved to Colorado to start the next chapter of my life.
Fast forward a year or so and I'm sitting at my desk on my lonely night shift at the local police station. Thinking back to my early hunting years when my dad would take me with him, or I'd draw the tag and he would end up doing most of the scouting and foot work. These flash backs brought me to a memory of seeing some "oversized Javelina" in a cow pasture near Kingman one day. I remember my dad saying, "I thought we got rid of the feral hogs around here years ago, guess they are back". During the next few months we talked about going after them, but responsibilities and such got in the way and we never made it.
Now in Colorado, and planning my move back to Alaska, got me thinking of how I feel like I've wasted my time down here in the states, what kind of hunting should I do before I move back? With my father living just west of the middle of nowhere New Mexico it was a lot easier to get him out of the house for a hunt than it was when I lived in Alaska. However, his health isn't up to hiking around the deadfalls of Alaska anymore, but he is more than happy to sit in a blind. So now the gears were turning to setup our feral hog hunt. I knew I couldn't afford a big guided hunt, nor did I really want that, I wanted a DIY hunt with minimal help from technology, cameras, etc. So I looked around and finally found a couple of farmers that advertised on Craigslist only, and were offering use and limited knowledge of the area. No high fences, no extras. Just land, feeders, and hogs!
I started making phone calls to friends in the area to help me with the 11hr drive , I had a few friends ready to take the drive with me from Denver to Abilene and I managed to get my big brother tom, (whom I'd never hunted with before) to come over from Fort Worth and go hunting. He hadn't seen dad in many years. The way the hunt worked out I would work my standard 10 hour night shift, then drive straight to Texas. At the last minute, my buddies bailed due to work conflicts. Not ideal but I wasn't going to let that stop this mini family reunion. Even if I couldn't hunt that night, I knew if I didn't go, tom and dad wouldn't go either. Family trumps exhaustion any day, always.
All went as planned and I called dad when I was about 50 miles out, he said he was already there and camp was setup and tom was on his way as well (late start).Pops said I was headed right past the "hill blind" and we should just meet up there and go hunting before the sun went down. So we met up and I did some quick adjustments to my bow and we walked in. the pop up blinds were setup at 30 or so yards and neatly tucked in a corner of a barren field. Pops let me sit it alone while he went out to show Tom to the camp.
The neon light on the feeder became more pronounced as the sun went down. I practiced drawing my bow back, and quickly learned I didn't have enough light to see my peep. So I switched to the SKS I had as a backup. Now to sit and wait, the boredom set in for a minute until a swift chill of a breeze blew into the blind. Within minutes the Sky was dark and the rain was coming down in massive amounts. I zipped up the windows in the blind and found myself dumbfounded on the situation. Then came the overly loud cracks of lightning, illuminating the entire field, or what I could see out of my 4x2in hole I had left open. As if Mother Nature wanted to tell me something, she let out 45min of quarter inch hail. It hailed so hard the motion light on the feeder was going wild. Even if the pigs wanted to be out in this downpour, the lightning was so frequent and close I couldn't get my night vision to be able to see. Finally it let up and I walked out distraught with my first outing for pigs. Good thing it was only the first day.
The next day Tom, (not a morning person) and myself (exhausted from the 30+ hours of being awake, didn't get out of bed in time to make a dark morning hunt. So we gathered our ideas and formulated a plan for the three of us to go together. The other blind was pretty much a fully furnished small house. At 6x14 feet or so with a full sized framed in door, sliding windows on all sides, a shooting bench, couch, and a heater, it felt like the Hilton in comparison to the hail beaten single person pop blind I used the night before.
Pops soon realized with his glass eye and lack of depth perception, that he couldn't see well enough to shoot after dark, so it was up to Tom and I to bring in the bacon. Around 9pm the light flickered on, my brother caught it as I was busy looking behind me so help dad to the door to handle the call of mother nature. We quickly focused on the dark abyss as the moon wasn't out yet, luckily it was clear skies this time. Problem was, we didn't see any pigs, nothing illuminated by the light, nothing around. Then the light went dim again, must have been a bird. Then it did it again, and we faintly see a shadow off to the left, a lone piebald boar. We watched him for a while as he skiddishly made his way closer to the neon green light. Then I realized the sweet feed Pops had put down was placed out of the sensor area for the motion light. This piggy wasn't going to be spotlighted. About then we noticed the moon. Coming up from behind us and by the grace of god it was almost full! I was holding my Remington rolling block chambered in .257 Roberts, fresh out of the gunsmith's shop. My brother holding my 300 win mag with 150gr Nosler partitions. With him being further removed from the hunting scene than I was, I looked at him and gave him the option to put this boar down. He looked out at the pig and thought for a second, then stated he wasn't comfortable taking the shot under moonlight. I quickly motioned for my 300wm as I am very comfortable with it. I rested the rifle on the bench, brought the boar into my sights at full broadside and under nothing but moonlight, squeezed the trigger. We heard the hog flop on his side in an instant and squeal for no more than 3 seconds, then silence. I watched him through the scope for a few min, not a move was made. We didn't expect any other hogs to come in being he was alone to start with, and my 300 is less than a quiet rifle.
Next the fun began, it took us over 2 hours to literally hog tie him to homemade sleds and make handles to help us drag him through the thick sticky mud of the unplanted field. Finally we got him close enough to the truck that we tied him up and got him back to camp. After cleaning and quartering him up, we went to bed around 4am. Much too tired to go out again for the am hunt.
The next evening Tom and I went out to the hill blind for some quality time. You know, the one where I was assaulted by the weather a couple days before. The setup was modified a bit, and this time I was ready with my bow. While we had a blast giving each other funny looks, throwing candy at each other and putting on unnecessary face camo. The wind picked up as the moon came out, and our prey was nowhere to be seen. We ended our hunt around 10:30pm and headed back to camp. Loaded up and I was driving back to Colorado around midnight. I now had heavy pressure to get home in time to go to work that evening. Thanks again to the help of redbull, coffee, and chips; I made it in around 4pm with a couple of naps along the way. The pig head will be whitened and the meat is neatly wrapped in the freezer.
Although we only bagged one hog, we had a blast, ate some great home cooked food, enjoyed company and created memories we will never forget. If anyone is interested in booking a hunt where we went, Please call or text (they live in an area with spotty coverage) Rae and Tony at 325-665-1107. They were absolutely fantastic hosts and were more than accommodating. I will be back again.
Texas Hog Hunt 2016 by Rob Drye | Photobucket
