Talk about procrastinating! While cleaning up my shop recently, I ran across a long forgotten memento sitting on a shelf. It was the cutters from my first (successful) hog hunt in the late 1970's or early 80's, so I finally took the time to mount them.
We had very few hogs on the ranch I had hunted for a number of years and had only seen a couple of hogs at a distance. As luck would have it, I was the only one in camp late that afternoon when the boar stepped into the narrow sendero, stopping nearly broadside long enough for a shot at a bit over 125 yards or so.
I was surprised to see him quickly disappear into the very heavy brush bordering the sendero at the shot, as I was confident of a solid shoulder hit. It was not long before dark so I wasn't able to wait as long as I would have preferred before picking up the promising blood trail. I was shooting a 300 Win Mag, so fortunately the trail was easy to follow, even the several times it disappeared under low brush and had to be picked up on the far side.
The hog made it something like 40-50 yards, however the recovery was a nightmare as the brush was almost impenetrable making the route back to the sendero much farther than the route taken by the boar.
To make it much more interesting, I was ill prepared to handle a good sized hog alone. Since there was no suitable rope in the car, I tried several ways to drag him unsuccessfully when I thought of my belt, which I looped through the buckle to form a noose and managed to drag the hog perhaps half the distance when the buckle failed, I fell backwards, hearing the buckle striking several limbs as it flew through the brush.
It was beginning to get dark and I had no idea where to look for the buckle, so I proceeded to lift, pull & drag the hog, which had gained an amazing amount of weight in such a short time after his demise!
Finally got him back to the sendero where I could use the winch on my car to pick him up. That should have been simple, but Murphy was not through with me yet. Ran the winch line over a tree limb, planning to lift the hog enough to swing it into the bed of the car, but first attempt at operating the winch handle and release while swinging the hog into trunk was not successful. Had the rear end in place, but lost the winch handle and head end being heavier than his butt, he fell to the ground so had to start over.
Finally got him loaded and headed back to camp in the dark. After field dressing the hog, turned in somewhere south of midnight. Slept in the next morning and went back to retrieve my belt buckle.
My how a bit of experience in the school of hard knocks has changed the process for the better. Always have plenty of rope in the jeep now and the ATV winch makes for much easy retrieval.
So much for the good old days.
Regards,
hm
We had very few hogs on the ranch I had hunted for a number of years and had only seen a couple of hogs at a distance. As luck would have it, I was the only one in camp late that afternoon when the boar stepped into the narrow sendero, stopping nearly broadside long enough for a shot at a bit over 125 yards or so.
I was surprised to see him quickly disappear into the very heavy brush bordering the sendero at the shot, as I was confident of a solid shoulder hit. It was not long before dark so I wasn't able to wait as long as I would have preferred before picking up the promising blood trail. I was shooting a 300 Win Mag, so fortunately the trail was easy to follow, even the several times it disappeared under low brush and had to be picked up on the far side.
The hog made it something like 40-50 yards, however the recovery was a nightmare as the brush was almost impenetrable making the route back to the sendero much farther than the route taken by the boar.
To make it much more interesting, I was ill prepared to handle a good sized hog alone. Since there was no suitable rope in the car, I tried several ways to drag him unsuccessfully when I thought of my belt, which I looped through the buckle to form a noose and managed to drag the hog perhaps half the distance when the buckle failed, I fell backwards, hearing the buckle striking several limbs as it flew through the brush.
It was beginning to get dark and I had no idea where to look for the buckle, so I proceeded to lift, pull & drag the hog, which had gained an amazing amount of weight in such a short time after his demise!
Finally got him back to the sendero where I could use the winch on my car to pick him up. That should have been simple, but Murphy was not through with me yet. Ran the winch line over a tree limb, planning to lift the hog enough to swing it into the bed of the car, but first attempt at operating the winch handle and release while swinging the hog into trunk was not successful. Had the rear end in place, but lost the winch handle and head end being heavier than his butt, he fell to the ground so had to start over.
Finally got him loaded and headed back to camp in the dark. After field dressing the hog, turned in somewhere south of midnight. Slept in the next morning and went back to retrieve my belt buckle.
My how a bit of experience in the school of hard knocks has changed the process for the better. Always have plenty of rope in the jeep now and the ATV winch makes for much easy retrieval.
So much for the good old days.
Regards,
hm
