Last Thursday we took 5 hunters to the woods in search of wild hogs. In terms of seeing hogs, it was quite an off day. In fact, it was plain horrible. Nobody saw a single pig. It wasn’t for lack of sign as there was fresh rooting, tracks, and rubbed trees around most of the stand locations, just bad luck. We were coming off a full moon with clear skies and I wonder if that didn’t have the majority of the hog movement happening after dusk and before dawn. Regardless, everyone still had a great time it seemed. Hamburgers and hotdogs over an open campfire. Everyone saw deer or turkeys. In fact, one hunter saw a decent buck chasing 4 does on the evening hunt. Talk about late rutting activity.
Saturday was a whole lot better hog hunting, but that still doesn’t mean I have a bunch of hog pictures to put up on the blog because this time – the hunters couldn’t shoot straight! 4 of the 7 hunters had hogs within 50 yards of them, 10 bullets were fired, and nary a hair was touched as far as we could decipher. Combined sightings approached 70 different hogs and a few big pigs were shot at but saplings got in the way, shooters flinched, and nerves just got the better of a few of the guys. In their defense, everyone who had shot opportunities had never hunted pigs before and admitted to being at least slightly rattled by how much noise the hogs were making in the underbrush – squealing, grunting, and carrying on. I guess they had what you could call the “swine flu”. We always try to make lunch a highlight of the day on these trips and we pulled out all the stops Saturday by smoking a few wild hog shoulders and Boston butts. Talk about good.
