cbosshog79
Active member
Well, I was finally able to get out for a little while this afternoon with my hunting partner. I have had more drama in my life the past few months than I would like and my hunting time has been dramatically cut down so regardless of the conditions I jump at the opportunity to get out whenever possible. Today was one of those days... Summer is getting closer to being here and with the recent monsoon we received last week we are enjoying temps in the 90's with 100% humidity. Between uncontrollable sweating, ticks, snakes, etc... it is difficult to look forward to being outdoors but we sure had a blast today.
Sidney is my oldest and at four is a pretty dang good little partner; she rarely complains and in all honesty will out hunt several of my buddies. Our plans today were pretty laid back and we limited our hunting to "stalking" hogs and checking out deer. Our other plan today was to get a few game cameras set up for the game camera contest that Bees is putting on, hopefully we can get something other than hogs on film...
As I mentioned before we had a heck of a rain this past week, I'm not sure exactly how much we got but it was somewhere in the 9" to 11" range and that was all in just a few hours early Thursday morning. The family place we were on has a pretty large lake and it came up about two feet in just a few hours. Even with a 24" pipe and a concrete spillway (8" deep x 25') we have only gained about four inches on it since Thursday morning. As you can imagine we are loosing a few fish over the spillway so I took the opportunity to set up a game camera at the bottom of the spillway to try and catch something with fur taking advantage of the easy pickings.
Here is a view looking up towards the lake where I have the game camera sitting. Hopefully we will have some neat pictures to look at in a few days, there are several otters in this lake and I would love to get some good pics.
After playing around in the water a little we headed over to one of the fields on the place to walk around a little and look for pigs. The main field where we have been seeing the most hogs is a long narrow field that is probably 30 acres and runs along a 100+ acre duck marsh. The marsh holds water year round but is mostly only a couple of feet deep and has a 10-20 acre island. You would be surprised how much game the island holds and how reguraly you will hear hogs and deer coming across to the field. It is a pretty cool feeling while sitting in a bow stand listening to big groups of hogs trampling across that junk...
This is a close-up view of the field followed by an image of the field looking NW from the perspective of the ground. As you can see there is quite a bit of roll to this country so it is perfect for stalking game.
Anyway, we worked our way through the timber and over a little ridge where we could see the edge of the field and the marsh and sure enough the hogs were just coming out of the water into the field. Once Sidney let me know that her ears were covered I let one loose from the .223 and got the first pig on the ground with a well aimed shot between the eyes. As you can imagine, they scattered after that and there were no more easy shots to be had. I did manage to make a decent shot on another hog that had made it a couple hundred yards to the north before slowing down enough for me to squeze off a shot. Both appeared to have been from the same litter and were very close to the same size probably being in that 50-80 pound range.
We got a couple of pictures of the first pig before we cut out the straps and snapped a quick pic of the second before we drug both into the brush for coyote bait.
I cut the straps out of this hog and not to be outdone, Sidney insisted on cutting some "meat" out as well so I had to snap a quick action picture...
All in all it was a very fun afternoon and great time spent with my girl. We even had a little surprise when we got back to the truck, for some reason the neighborhood on the lake to the north of us was setting off fireworks so we sat up on the dock and eat an MRE and enjoyed the show for a while. Here is a quick picture I snapped of our view from the dock. It was a pretty cool ending to a great afternoon!
Sidney is my oldest and at four is a pretty dang good little partner; she rarely complains and in all honesty will out hunt several of my buddies. Our plans today were pretty laid back and we limited our hunting to "stalking" hogs and checking out deer. Our other plan today was to get a few game cameras set up for the game camera contest that Bees is putting on, hopefully we can get something other than hogs on film...
As I mentioned before we had a heck of a rain this past week, I'm not sure exactly how much we got but it was somewhere in the 9" to 11" range and that was all in just a few hours early Thursday morning. The family place we were on has a pretty large lake and it came up about two feet in just a few hours. Even with a 24" pipe and a concrete spillway (8" deep x 25') we have only gained about four inches on it since Thursday morning. As you can imagine we are loosing a few fish over the spillway so I took the opportunity to set up a game camera at the bottom of the spillway to try and catch something with fur taking advantage of the easy pickings.
Here is a view looking up towards the lake where I have the game camera sitting. Hopefully we will have some neat pictures to look at in a few days, there are several otters in this lake and I would love to get some good pics.
After playing around in the water a little we headed over to one of the fields on the place to walk around a little and look for pigs. The main field where we have been seeing the most hogs is a long narrow field that is probably 30 acres and runs along a 100+ acre duck marsh. The marsh holds water year round but is mostly only a couple of feet deep and has a 10-20 acre island. You would be surprised how much game the island holds and how reguraly you will hear hogs and deer coming across to the field. It is a pretty cool feeling while sitting in a bow stand listening to big groups of hogs trampling across that junk...
This is a close-up view of the field followed by an image of the field looking NW from the perspective of the ground. As you can see there is quite a bit of roll to this country so it is perfect for stalking game.
Anyway, we worked our way through the timber and over a little ridge where we could see the edge of the field and the marsh and sure enough the hogs were just coming out of the water into the field. Once Sidney let me know that her ears were covered I let one loose from the .223 and got the first pig on the ground with a well aimed shot between the eyes. As you can imagine, they scattered after that and there were no more easy shots to be had. I did manage to make a decent shot on another hog that had made it a couple hundred yards to the north before slowing down enough for me to squeze off a shot. Both appeared to have been from the same litter and were very close to the same size probably being in that 50-80 pound range.
We got a couple of pictures of the first pig before we cut out the straps and snapped a quick pic of the second before we drug both into the brush for coyote bait.
I cut the straps out of this hog and not to be outdone, Sidney insisted on cutting some "meat" out as well so I had to snap a quick action picture...
All in all it was a very fun afternoon and great time spent with my girl. We even had a little surprise when we got back to the truck, for some reason the neighborhood on the lake to the north of us was setting off fireworks so we sat up on the dock and eat an MRE and enjoyed the show for a while. Here is a quick picture I snapped of our view from the dock. It was a pretty cool ending to a great afternoon!