EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Got a call from a buddy last night bout ten minutes til quitin time asking me if i wantd to run in a grove..  After hunting palmettos and thick crap for a year i couldnt get home fast enough.  Got my old man and one of my pups and headed out.  Got there got the dogs collerd up and put the old man on the box.  Rounded the corner from where we parked to where the grove started and he bailed off and came bayed 50 yards in a Cypress Head.  rolleyes  Go down and up the 12 foot drainange ditch to find out its not a cypress head but a pepper tree head.  Crawl the whole fifty yards on my hands and knees and he and my buddys pup are caught and no squeeling..  Started to get a little excited only to find a 160 or so pound barr.  Got him flipped and tied, and thirty minutes later we had him drug out..  Took three of us to lift him stright up the bank..

Loaded the dogs, well most of them my old man took right out as i tried to get him loaded.  With the puppy hot on his heels  ;D  Nice to see since this was his second time out...  The got one stopped but the CD didnt get there in time and after a 2 mile race they got smoked..

Decided to try an open over grown field and sure enough Jack balis off with the CD and bam Caught hog.  I couldnt have been happier jumpin off the truck.  AN EASY ONE WOO HOO!  Got thirty feet from the truck and realized I had handed my head light to my girlfriend to get somethin out of the cooler.  Oh well its an open field...  rolleyes  I ran twenty yards wide open and right into a dry draininge ditch and busted my butt....  After the third time hitting one I slowed down  ;D  Got to the dogs and they had a nice little sow caught.  Tied her and waited for the guys with the flashlights.   Let the kids take a couple pics of the hog and loaded her up and called it a night.

No action pics sorry rainin real hard and to be hones i forgot the camera  rolleyes

Got both of them in the horse trailer gonna butcher them tonight so ill post a couple pics of the pork later.

Sounds like a fun night.  I've always wanted to hunt the groves.

Yeah it was alot of fun.  Think my buddy broke his thumb, i bruised the chit out of my hand, and we never actually hunted the grove.. Just the cypress heads and an open field.. Runnin in th egroves is really fun, you can see the dogs work easier.

yeah buddy that sounds like an action packed hunt

Good story bro, them groves ain't as easy to hunt as people might think  ;D

How do you figure?

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OK, I'll play along...

There are "easy groves" and then there are "hard groves" in my experience...

The latter get hunted hard and often, the edges of which, are also often bad thick... making necessary a dog with "stopping ability" to shut the hog down before he can hit the fence.

Excellent testing ground to test for this trait in a dog, a trait that many do not truly understand.

Your talking about pressure on the hogs, that happens everywhere. Doesnt matter whether you are in a grove, river bottom, on a ranch, if the hogs get hunted a bunch they are gonna leave out. A working orange grove is paradise to hunt, good roads, stays mowed, ya might have to get a little wet with the canals, but all in all I couldnt think of a better place to hunt. Maybe ive just never hunted one of these "hard groves"

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I agree with both of yall. The hard part about hunting the orange trees is gettin the hogs to bay up.  When they get in the thick heads is whats hardest on us as the handlers/hunters, but hunting in the groves themselves is generally easy on us not the dogs..  Gotta have some hustle and grit.

Ive never had much of a problem with that, usually if they try and cross a canal, the dogs will get em stopped no problem.

But, those true "trophy hogs" are a different story ::)

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HAHA  ;D   Sounds like you finally got some fine dogs John, maybe mine will be that good some day  ;)

Nope, aint got no "superdogs" to BRAG about!

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Biggest problem ive had was dogs gettin run through crap hogs when
They are runnin one.  True nuff bout them bayin up in canals  >:(

Good story /hunt Ryan hope all is going good your way bud.

Good hunt guys! and I figure, if you're gona feed it you better be proud of it... just sayin...  >:D :angel:

Sounds like a good hunt  8)
I agree with Noah. Not all groves are a walk in the park. There's a big grove I hunt with Gil that's got a couple of  big swamps in it that ain't fit for man or beast. You got to have dogs that know the program & shut em down where they stand. They usually head for those swamps or the ranches that border it. There was some guys trying to hunt it with their ( bay dogs ) that they used on ranches & always come out empty handed & then ask us how we were catching all them hogs in there.  ;)

Almost every grove I have ever hunted has had either cypress, pepper, or willow "heads" dotted  throughout. None of which are easy places to get into. Its nice when they catch in open rows or open irrigation ditches, but that doesn't always happen. Good hunt.

HAHA know thats right.  one of the dogs we had with us, wont catch a shoat if her life depended on it.  great wind dog but thats about it.  We got into a sounder in a cypress head and my old mn had one, my buddy's dog outta my litter had one and she was bayin her foold head off.  Needless to say that particular incident didnt end well for us.  Dogs and hogs runnin every where and we didnt get none of them..  :-[

I cant remember the last one we caught in the trees.  Aint hunted this grove in a few years but i think the ones we didnt get back then schooled the youngins on how to lace their nikes up... ;)

Yeah I always get a laugh when people say you have it made hunting them easy groves. lol

Huntin groves IS easy, if you stick to the trees.  Only problem is the hogs wont stay in the trees if the dogs dont make them..  ;)