That’s right folks, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, alligators and crocodiles…

The NorCal Cazadora and the HogBlog hit the field this weekend for our first television hunting expedition.  I’m sure that after this, offers will be pouring in from all the major sponsors!  Next thing you know, we’ll have our own show, and be chasing wild pork from Africa to New Zealand! 

Or, maybe not… maybe I’m just a little bit giddy from this weekend’s hunt, my first hunt with TV crew in tow.

What the heck am I rambling about?  Let me back up a couple of weeks. 

I’m sitting around on the couch, which I do way too much, when the phone rings.  It’s a number I don’t recognize, so I let it go to voice mail.   I’ll check it later. 

Turns out, it’s an associate producer from KQED, a San Francisco public television station.  (OK, so my first televised hunt is not going to be airing on the Outdoor Channel.)  The station has a weekly science and nature show called, Quest, and they were planning a piece on the pig invasion, and how hunters are helping to manage the population.  Somehow they had seen a video of one of my hunts, and wondered if I would be interested in talking to them and possibly setting up a hunt that they could film.

I called the segment producer at the number provided, and spent about an hour on the phone with him.  At the end of the call, I was pretty sure I knew where he was trying to go with the piece, and offered to set up a hunt.  My immediate thought was to try to get on at one of the Golden Ram ranches where I know there are a ton of hogs and the terrain is reasonably mild.  With at least one producer, a videographer, and a sound-man, I wanted a place with open ground where we could spot and stalk.  Even so, as a back-up plan, I called my friend Michael Riddle and asked if I could possibly take these folks to his Priest Valley ranch if the Golden Ram place didn’t pan out. 

In addition to myself and the crew, we’d have Holly, the NorCal Cazadora along.  She’d offer a great perspective on hunting from a newcomer’s point of view, as well as her position on hunting for the meat versus eating factory/store-bought meat.  The original idea was to have me “guiding” Holly on a hunt.  As things developed, the plan changed (like plans always do), but it seemed like a good one at the time.

Three days before the hunt, the news wasn’t good.  I needed special permission from the Golden Ram ranch owner to do the hunt, and he wasn’t returning calls.  I had Michael’s place as a fallback, but the property is extremely rugged and I was concerned that it would be too much for the crew to handle with cameras, sound equipment and all.  On top of that, the place is thick and close, which would make hunting with such a large group pretty much an exercise in futility.  At least the place has a rustic bunkhouse, so we’d have a comfortable place to sleep.

On Thursday afternoon, Michael called me to let me know he’d sent his guys over to make sure the bunkhouse was in good shape.  He’d also just spoken to a friend of his who has vineyards and barley in the same area, and he was seeing a lot of hogs as the barley was starting to ripen.  The hogs can make a mess of a barley field, and farmers hate them.  Michael’s friend, Ted, wanted to know if he had some hunters who wanted to come kill some of the hogs and put the pressure on them.  Can you say, “Serendipity?”

I think any hunter has to be able to switch things up on the fly, and that’s what I did with this situation.  By the time our Sunday meeting time arrived, I’d re-planned the hunt.  We’d meet Ted and Michael in the early evening, and head out to the barley fields to see if we could catch the hogs coming to feed.  Instead of hiking all over creation, we’d hunt primarily from vehicles, as we had 18,000 acres to cover.  Michael graciously offered his assistance, and brought along one of his guides as well.  As we hit the field, ten people strong, I suddenly found myself in more of a spectator position.  I’d brought it all together, and it was working out.  All I really had to do was let it happen.

I’m hoping Holly will soon follow up with her own side of the story, because she was at the center of most of the hunting action on Sunday evening.  What I will say, for now, is that we had one really close run-in with a group of pigs. but there was no shooting.  We saw some more, big herds on distant hills, but as the dusk darkened to night, we resigned ourselves to going back to camp porkless. 

The curse of hunting this time of year is the long day… or, rather, the short nights.  By the time we got back to the bunkhouse, it was already around 22:30.  We finished dinner, had a chance to socialize a little bit, and folks drifted off to bed around midnight.  I was the last to bed at 01:30, and set my clock for 03:00.  We were scheduled to meet up with Ted at 05:00 to head back to the field. 

I woke up and glanced at my clock at 04:22.  I’ve apparently set the alarm on my Blackberry to silent mode, and had slept almost an hour and a half later than I’d planned.  We should have been out the gate and on the road by 04:15, so I started rousting the sleeping camp.  No time for coffee and muffins… we had to roll, and now!  Ted was really doing us a huge favor by agreeing to meet us in the darkness of early morning and take us back to the ranch, and I sure didn’t want to leave him waiting for us.  Also, Sam, one of Michael’s guides, had volunteered to come back and help us again. 

As it turns out, we were only about 10 minutes late, so I didn’t feel too bad.  We made good time getting to the ranch and set up.  This time, we’d set out in three trucks.  Sam had Holly, along with the audio and video guys in his truck.  I followed with Chris, the producer, and his associate producer, Jenny.  Ted and one of his friends brought up the rear. 

After the first couple of hours and a few miles of driving, I was starting to see a “skunk” in the offing.  On the one hand, I was sort of glad because I wanted Chris to see that hog hunting wasn’t as much of a sure thing as some people think it is.  On the other hand, though, I know he really wanted to film a kill for the show, and I wanted to see Holly get herself a hog. 

We dropped down off of one ridge, and I spotted an out-of-place shape in a patch of tumbleweed.  I stopped in the road and put the glasses on it.  Sure enough, at least two hogs were bedded down. I looked more closely, and saw ears and tails of several other pigs in the group.  I looked up to see that Sam had spotted them too, and was already out of the truck.  Holly and the film crew were bailing out as well. 

Originally, I hadn’t really planned to shoot anything on the weekend.  This was about the show, and Holly was the designated hunter.  But at this point, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have two shooters, so I grabbed the 30-06 out of the truck and jogged up to where Holly and Sam were setting up their shot.  We were about 125 yards above the pigs, and with the wind blowing right back to us, they were totally unaware that we were there.  The only tricky thing was the angle, as the two biggest hogs were facing right towards us.

Apparently, Sam thought the hogs were up and alert, so he was in a real hurry to get Holly into position for a shot before they bolted.  What I could see was that there was no rush at all, so I was fairly relaxed as I tossed my hat on the ground and rested the old Savage in the crown.  We’d let Holly shoot first, and then I could try a shot at the other big pig.  I leveled the crosshairs and waited.

When it happened, I knew exactly what would go wrong, and it did.  Holly fired.  At the report, the hogs jumped up.  Even though I knew it was coming, I jumped too, so my shot went right over the back of the pig I was aiming at.  I saw the dust cloud, and jacked in another round.

The pigs scattered, including Holly’s.  It was trotting strongly along with the rest of the herd, and it didn’t look like she’d hit it.  I heard Sam coaching her to take another shot, but she didn’t.  I turned to the hog as it was running up the hill, set the crosshairs in the empty space ahead of the surging chest (you have to lead them) and touched off another round.  Down it went. 

After a moment to make sure it didn’t get back up, we stood and that’s when I suddenly remembered the TV crew and the rest of the “audience”.  From the time I got set up for the shot until the hog was dead, I’d totally blocked them out of my mind.  Now it seemed like no matter where I turned, the camera lens was there looking back.  There were some congratulations and “good shots”, and we went down to pick up our pig.

After the hunt came the video interviews.  I have to say that Chris was a great interviewer, and he made me feel pretty comfortable, but boy… it was easy to see why I should stay behind the keyboard instead of in front of the camera.  It seemed like every time I started answering a question, I caught myself going off-track, or heading down a road full of pitfalls on the complex topics such as the lead ban, and hunters as environmentalists.  My mouth has no backspace key. 

Anyway, it was an educational experience and a lot of fun.  I have to hand out a really huge thank-you to Michael Riddle for the use of his place, as well as for the help in arranging the hunt with Ted, who also gets my utmost gratitude.  What could have been a really tough, fairly miserable couple of days turned into a productive and exciting hunt.

Of course Holly and I will both be posting up when the show airs.  The Quest program shows weekly, and they usually put the finished shows on their website.

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