Posted: 6/1/2008 6:59:01 AM EDT
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So, I am not the mighty pig slayer I thought I was... My uncle called me Friday and said "Did you ever kill any pigs?" I have been trying to get a wild hog on public land for a year now, with no luck. I don't hunt with a dog (not a pig hunting dog, anyway) and baiting is not allowed on most of the public land available for pig hunting. So he told me that his ranch between Junction and Sonora (Texas) has recently become the home of a large sounder of pigs, and he is not too happy about this. "Come kill the darn things!" he said. For those who don't know, feral hogs are destructive, nasty critters that are aweful hard on fences, root up your land, eat everything they can get their mouth around, and have some rude habits at feeders and water troughs that other more civilized animals don't like too much. When pigs show up at a feeder the deer and other animals usually head the other way. Saturday my girlfriend,Barbi, our female lab, Scout, and I drove out to the place. We found my uncle pushing cedar in his bulldozer on a hilltop that he couldn't get his bobcat onto. He usually shears the cedar with his bobcat. We chatted for a while and he told us where he had been seeing the pigs while a little mouse scampered around on the tracks of the dozer. I think it had been living in the debris stuck in the various corners of the dozer cockpit, as it hadn't been used in a while. It had probably been riding around with him all day. We had a little laugh at that and my girlfriend tried to show the mouse to our dog. Before hunting we poked around some of the old abandoned deer camps on the ranch, as it was midday. There are three huting shacks with outhouses on the ranch. Two are abandoned and one is still kept up and used. We surprised a ring tail that had made one of the old shacks its home. It seemed sleepy and bewildered, and just sat on the rafter and stared back at us. Barbi and Scout also came upon a long, skinny brown snake of the "other" variety at a windmill / water cistern overflow. We weren't sure what kind it was, "other" being not a rattler, moccasin, or copperhead. After the snake excitement Scout happily plopped down in the muddy overflow from the cistern. After rummaging about and noting neat things like the old homemade wood stove made from a 55 gallon drum, ice boxes (not refridgerators), and GIGANTIC pile of coon crap on an abandoned bunk bed, we decided to see about the pigs. We set up on a clearing in a broad dry creek bed with a water trough, salt licks, and a protein feeder for his deer. My uncle is pretty serious about his deer management. He had also told me that this is the area where he consistly sees the pigs in late evening. We were going to be gone all day so we didn't want to leave the dog in our apartment, and it was way too hot, at 97 degrees, to leave her in the truck. So I reluctantly brought her with us, thinking that it would never work with a 1 year old dog with us. I picked a shady spot 50 yards directly downwind and uphill from the water trough and feeder on the side of the sloping creek bed. I brushed it up with some sheared cedar that was laying about. We covered up with some camo mesh smocks, set a cooler on the ground behind the brush, and sat on the ground with our backs to the cooler and the dog next to us. For the next 4 hours we enjoyed the shade and strong breeze in our face while we watched a ton of wildlife come to the water trough. We saw 11 whitetails, all does and fawns, 6 axis deer, one was a very large buck, a decent sitka buck in velvet, and 9 turkeys. Also some squirrels and a lot of song birds. What I couldn't believe was how close the critters got to us with the silly panting dog laying on the ground next to us. The sitka buck came within 25 feet. We were lucky and all the animals approached from upwind of us, and never got our scent, with the exception of a group of 7 young turkeys, who approached from downwind and passed within 30 feet of us, unbothered. Some of the animals that visited our area could hear Scout's lound panting in the 97 degree heat, but we were brushed up well and they seemed unable to locate us. They usually kept going about their business of nevously drinking from the water trough. Scout was really very good and stayed down and still, only panting in the heat. Only about 1/2 the animals visited the protein feeder. It is a demand feeder, it is gravity fed and continues to give feed as animals eat from it. It has some sturdy pens around it to keep cows and goats out, and now, pigs. Everything went for the water, though. It has been a pretty dry summer for us. Of concern were 3 sick whitetail does that visited the water. One was emaciated and about 3/4 hairless. It was the most bizarre thing I have seen with a deer. You could see every single rib bone, her hips, shoulders, she was so thin. She also had a tear in the lining of her bottom jaw, and a large pouch under her jaw where food collects and festers. I have seen the pouch thing 3 or 4 times before. It happens when eating something sharp and pokey, like a cactus or stick, and it pokes a hole in the mouth lining under the tongue. Food can then fall in the wound when they eat, and it eventually developes a big festering pouch of chewed food under their jaw. Gross. The deer I had seen like this before looked healthy otherwise, though. I once shot a doe that had a pouch like that. Anyway, one of the other 3 does was also very skinny and losing hair on her head and neck. I didn't know what to make of it, I immediately thought "chonic wasteing disease", but that is supposedly not in Texas. I am going to do a little online searching, as I really don't know much about CWD. Barbi I briefly discussed plugging the sick does in quite whispers, but decided against it, out of season and all. Finally around 8pm we heard what sounded like pigs in the distance. "What was that?" I whispered. "It sounded like pigs!" she excitedly whispered back. Then out of no where, a medium sized pig burst from the brush on the opposite sloping creek side about 100 yards away. It was leading a large sounder of pigs, and they were in a hurry! There was a boar, three sows, and about 30 piglets. The piglets were EVERYWHERE, like ants! The pigs moved very quickly, as if on a mission. One sow and her piglets veered from the group and angled at the water trough, but, realizing the rest of group was still trucking, she quickly changed course again and brought her brood back to the main group. They were angling towards us at a 45 degree angle from right to left. We were waiting on the them to stop at the water or the licks or feeder. The plan was for my Barbi to plug a momma with her 30-06 bolt action, then, in the confusion of not having a momma to follow, I would mop up as many piglets as I could with my AR15 for BBQing. Suddenly we realized that the pigs had NO intention of stopping. They were on their way somewhere, and it wasn't here. They were moving at a steady trot and never slowed. We gawked in amazement. The course of the pigs had taken them out of the area we were set up to shoot at, and we now had part of our brush blind and tree in our way. We quickly stood up and moved into position to fire on the trotting pigs. This all happened in 3-5 seconds. And when we stood and repositioned ourselves, taking a few steps to point the right direction and get clear shots, the pigs never saw us and never wavered from their course. They just kept trucking. Barbi and I got lucky in the disorganization of our disentegrating plan, and just happen to fire at exactly the same time, neither of us spoiled the other's shot. Unfortunaly, we both shot the same pig! Barbi's '-06 hit the closest sow under the left eye, and my AR hit her just behind her right shoulder. Total bang - flop. The group was 25-30 yards from us at this point. I moved on and tried to hit the little piglets. Bang, bang, bang! Those little things are hard to hit! They were all 8-10 inches tall and about 12 inches long. They still had the tan and brown splotchy/stripe pattern on them. My rounds kicked up dust all around the little running pigs, just inches from them, but I scored ZERO hits. Barbi worked her bolt and fired once more at the boar. As the pigs ran crazily in the chaos, switched direction 90 degrees and ran away from us. As my gun swept back over the fallen sow, I saw her legs kicking, and shot her once more in the neck, then went back to harrassing the piglets with .223 rounds. I shot at them until they disappeared into the brush about 200 yards away. A total of 18 rounds came out of my AR, two hitting the sow. Barbi fired twice, hitting the sow once and we assume missing the boar. We followed the game trail the pigs escaped on for 300 to 400 yards and found no blood or wounded stragglers. We did find large rooted up areas of ground and some wallows in areas that were previously muddy after a much needed rain. I couldn't believe I didn't make more hits! I quickly learned that the best layed plans aren't a sure thing, and that one needs to think about what to do when things don't go as planned, like when the pigs didn't stop, and when the piglets didn't stop when momma bit the dust - and keep in mind that you have to be quick and adapt and capitalize at every oppurtunity. In retrospect we should have started shooting much sooner, and we should have shot all the big pigs we could have. As long as there was an adult pig leading the way, the piglets were going to follow it. Dropping one sow did nothing to slow the swarm of piglets. Had we dropped all the adults, which were much larger and easier targets, the piglets may have milled about in confusion, unsure which way to go, and made easier targets. I also learned that no matter how much I told myself beforehand, "Take your time, pick one pig, squeeze off a good shot, move to the next pig after you drop it"; that it is very easy for me to be overwhelmed by all the targets running about. I should have taken more time and picked a single pig to focus all my attention on. It was like jumping a cover of quail and shooting the covey instead of one bird, and then finding that you didn't even knock a feather loose. I was dissapointed with my performance, but we were very excited at rush of it all and happily collected our sow. What an UGLY critter! She was skinny - guant is more like it. She was swollen with milk, but had very little meat on her. I imagine she had no fat. You could see many bones clearly under her skin. And the ticks - wow! There were over a dozen in one ear. I guess nursing all those piglets can really drag a sow down in a dry summer. I don't think I've ever seen a feral hog, personally or in pictures, that was so skinny. She weighed about 70 pounds and stunk. I loaded her in the truck and we went to my uncle's cabin. It's the fourth building on the place and is a lot nicer than the abondoned shacks and thankfully has no coon crap on the bunk beds. My uncle gave us his frank assesment of our prize - "I'd throw that stinking damn thing in the brush - I bet the buzzards won't eat it!" We had planned on BBQing little ones, but after only getting this one sow, we were debating the BBQ potential of it. After poking around and feeling how little meat it had on its hams, backstraps, and shoulders, I couln't help but agree with him. As for the sick deer, my uncle was concerned they may have anthrax. They bacteria lives in the soil in his areas, usually dormant, but can become active on the surface of the soil in very dry conditions. He was unsure of what symptoms an animal with anthrax would display, though. One more thing to do a little research on. And for the big let down - we took our camera, and took ZERO pictures. Now I'm kicking myself, as we had a really good time. For those interested, my AR is a 14.5" barreled carbine with an aimpoint clone. I was shooting 64 grain Winchester Power Points. The behind the shoulder shot on the sow passed through, as did the glancing shot to the neck when she was kicking on the ground. Barbi shoots a left handed Ruger Mark 77 bolt action in .30-06. Needless to say it passed through on the under the eye shot and destroyed the exit side. She was shooting 180 grain Remington CoreLokt ammo. I am sure we will go back sometime and remember to take pictures. |