I didn’t know what else to call yesterday other than a nasty, muddy, wet swamp hunt. My neighbor, another buddy, and I headed down to central Alabama for a day of hunting deer and hogs.
I had a doe with 2 fawns come by my stand at daylight but I let them pass in hopes of spotting a buck following them. Nothing doing.
That turned out to be the only deer I saw all day, but the not the only critters.
At 8:00 a.m., I could hear a group of pigs squealing deep in the swamp. I was actually prepared for this style of hunting, so I bailed out of my stand and started trudging through the palmetto fronds, canebrakes, and water puddles.
I was within probably 100 yards of pigs when I ran into my first big problem. My hip waders only keep me dry about 34″ up my body. The creek was 38″ deep at its shallowest point. Somehow, the pigs wandered around in circles long enough for me find a passable sandbar and I made it to the other side still dry.
My second big problem was the wind direction. As soon as I crept up the opposite bank, I could see bits and pieces of a black hog moving through the dense undergrowth but it could smell me. It whoofed a couple times and trotted off.
Quickly, I moved up into the area where the pig had been standing to find unbelievable sign.
Check out this wallow they made between the roots of this tree.
I sat down and waited…not long. Before I had time to get my gear arranged, the black pig was back with a buddy or two. It crossed my shooting hole too fast for me to get my gun up, but the second pig wasn’t so lucky. My crosshairs were already steadied and I wallopped the next hog with my .270.
As it dropped in its tracks, I could see a few “stripers” scurrying off in the underbrush and then all was still. Hogzilla was down. Now, my third problem was figuring out how to extract this wild beast from the swamp it called home.
Monster sow weighing 171 dressed. We figured she weighed easily 210-215 live.
We knew exactly how much she weighed because we made a Herculean effort to get her out of the swamp. We floated her down the creek as far as we could before dragging her out the other side. From there it was a matter of wiggling a 4-wheeler through the woods to where she lay to get her out to the truck.
