Well, it has been hot and dry here for a while now and I just can’t get motivated to hunt. There is no water in the woods, hogs are scarce and the skeeters and deer flies are really bad .Snakes and gators are out looking for water and gators are hungry. Not exactly good hunting conditions.
My buddy Dan invited me to come down and hunt with him “the easy way” out of a swamp buggy. No walking, drive over palmettos, trees, etc and drive right to the dogs and hog. Sounds like a plan to me! Of course, I had a few misgivings as my dogs have never hunted off a buggy (and the deck was like 12’ above ground), my dogs don’t like strangers, etc. Anyway, we set a day and I invited John (SFBoarbuster) to ride down with me and go for a hunt.
Dan wanted us to be at his house at around 5 PM so we could get organized, loaded, etc and get to the woods about dark. So John and I loaded dogs and gear in my truck around 1 PM and headed south….for 4 hours. Dogs were hot when we got there, but we parked in the shade and unloaded our overnight bags at Dan’s house. He made a few phone calls, got the owner of the buggy up to speed, called the lease holder and made plans.
We headed to the lease with a stop along the way for some liquid refreshments for the evening ( I don’t drink but they do…….) finally got to the property which is divided by a highway. The buggy was on the opposite side of the highway from where we were going to hunt, so we loaded gear and dogs ( and LOTS of refreshments) on the buggy and left the trucks. Now this isn’t an ordinary buggy……There is a 2” hole in the middle of the floor. I thought it was maybe for a flag pole to be mounted there. Turns out it was there for a pole, but it is a pole for attractive young ladies to dance around…and on…if you get my drift…seems they do more with this buggy than hog hunt…
But I digress…….
There were 5 guys and 8 dogs on the buggy. Then through the woods down to a gate. Then out onto the highway and down the highway (yes DOWN the highway) for about a ¼ mile until we got to the gate on the north side of the highway. We went through the gate and the lease holder explained to me where he thought the hogs were going to be. Sounded like a plan so off we went. Lots of liquid flowing….and once we got off the road Dan turned his dogs out. They hunted out good, about 500 yards or so an stayed out. Dan thought they ran a hog but eventually both came back. We loaded up and moved to another area they thought was holding hogs. Dan let his dogs out again and once again they left. The dogs had split up and both seemed to be running. Eventually one came back from one side and one from the other without us hearing a bark. Dan said the hogs were bad to run and it was still hot. It was now about midnight, my dogs had not been on the ground in about 12 hours and I needed to let them out to empty, or we were going to have a mess on that buggy…..
We were driving along and saw some old rooting in the road that had been rained on. Dan said it had rained there the last three nights so I hoped the hogs were still around. I got them to stop the buggy and I turned Monkey, Spur, Scarlet and Stitch out. A recipe for disaster…..the dogs ran around and emptied out, ran down the woods road and back. I didn’t see Monkey so I loaded Stitch and Scarlet back up; I didn’t need 4 dogs out at once. Spur came back by then left. I still hadn’t seen Monkey. I had walked down the road to get away from buggy to listen and the guys started hollering for me to come back, said we would drive closer. I said for us to wait on Monkey, he had been gone for about 10 minutes. They then told me they could hear a pig squealing….so off we went. Over palmettos, 12’ high trees and anything else between us and the dogs! Sure beat walking through all that stuff!
We get to a dried out marsh and the lights shine on Monkey and Spur caught on about a 30 lb boar shoat. Dogs are hot, pig is out flat so we grab the dogs load them and let the pig go. Hopefully he survived as he was up trying to bite John after we got the dogs off him….
Loaded dogs, moved and let Dan’s dogs out again. The dogs pulled out and crossed a creek. They wound up on an adjoining property caught on another small boar pig. It was now about 2:30 AM and we decided to call it a night.
We drove back out the way we came in (back down the highway at 3 AM after all the refreshments had been consumed…….) through the gates and back to the trucks. We unloaded dogs and gear, shook hands and thanked everyone and headed to Dan’s house to crash for a few hours before heading home.
We had a good time and I have to admit, it was an interesting hunt. Waaayyy different from what I am used to but still a great time. Now John and I just have to plan another trip down….to see the pole in use…..
Here are a few pics of the buggy. Sorry no pics of the pigs. One guy took some pics of the pigs, if I can get ahold of them I will post them.
