CajunL had a permit for a public land hunt and was nice enough to invite me along. It was more like beach weather than hunting weather with the days reaching 82-83 degrees and the lows only about 69-70 degrees. Dave was supposed to hunt with us, but had the flu and couldn't make it.
First day we turned my Spur dog and my Runt female out with CajunL's Cane dog. CajunL had brought a friend with him and he had a pup that was along with us for one of his first times in the woods. We were walking into the block where we wanted to hunt and the dogs went down in a river swamp we were walking parallel to. They left out and crossed a road in the place. My Runt female (young dog) came back at that point. Garmin showed Spur and Cane leaving us so we went back to the trucks and drove down the road until we were even with them. Cane came back out on the road and Garmin showed Spur treed and about 720 yards. Too far to hear him, then he moved some. Garmin would show 712-715-718, etc but never showed him treed. We were going to wait a few minutes to see what he was going to do before heading to him with the catch dog, when he started moving, coming back to the road we were on. He wasn't moving fast so I assumed he got outrun or gassed out as it was warm. There was a white truck parked a 100 yards or so past where we had stopped. Spur was headed towards that truck. In a few minutes a guy walks out of the woods with a couple dogs...including Spur. He yells down the road and asks if we are looking for a dog and I said yes. He said "this one" and points and Spur. I said yes. He said that Spur had the hog and his dogs went to it and caught it. He said since my dog had the hog I could have it. He was going in to get it out, but I was welcome to it. I told him I didn't want it, that he was welcome to it, but appreciated him being honest and giving the dog credit that he was due. We never did see the hog as we re-grouped and started back to where we were originally going to hunt, and as soon as we left the trucks and headed down the dim road with the same dogs, a sow ran across the road not 100 yards from the trucks and committed suicide......
We took her back to the trucks and I gave her to a buddy of mine that was hunting there also, but hadn't had any luck. We hunted some more that day but it was hot...very hot.. and we didn't do anything else that day.
The next morning we took Spur , Sister and female dog that belonged to a different guy that had come with CajunL. As we walked in, a couple hounds opened up and the dogs went to them. All the dogs came back but the female dog. CajunL and his friend went to try and catch her but no luck. We went back to the trucks...once again... and they drove around trying to cut the dogs off. One of the perils of a public land hunt.....other dogs in the woods. It took over an hour for them to get to her and some other guys had caught the hog. By now it had warmed up some but wasn't real hot yet, so I swapped dogs and turned Monkey and Sister out along with the same young dog that belonged to CajunL's friend. We got past the hounds...which we could still hear...and turned the cur dogs loose. They went off hunting in the palmettos and we eased along behind them headed south. We were going down an edge between a palmetto flat and a cypress strand. Monkey bayed and the other dogs went to him. They caught the hog, which was a sow. We leashed the dogs, turned the sow loose and let the young dogs bay her. She didn't run off, just stood and bowed up. Turned my young CD loose, caught her, got all the dogs back together....after Monkey chewed one of my leads as he was mad we let the young dogs mess with the sow and not him.....We continued on and maybe 30 minutes later Monkey barked 1-2 times and we heard a hog break in the palmettos. Sister had gone to him and when she got there she went to baying. Monkey had run off in the palmettos and we thought he was on a different hog, but he was close and came back and caught the hog, another sow. Turned it loose and played with the young dogs again. Good for them. We hunted some more and the dogs were hunting pretty good considering how hot it was. We worked our way back to the trucks and since I had some things I had to do, I headed home. They stayed and hunted and lost the female that had gone with the hounds and had to stay after dark to get her back. I had showered, fed, and cooked and eaten a Porterhouse Steak before they ever left the woods....wise move on my part.....
Third day we hunted Spur, Runt (another young dog of mine) and one of CajunL's young leopard dogs. We walked way into the block we had been hunting, caught two sows and a pig then it starting getting warm. We decided to ease back towards the truck which was like 2-2 1/2 miles away......As we cut through the block, Spur and Runt acted like they could wind something down in a swamp and went in. In a minute we heard a hog get up and run. Now Spur may have faults but that joker CAN run........the hog broke out of the swamp across some open woods and Spur was putting some teeth on that azz end and it wasn't 150 yards and we had a bay. All three dogs were baying good so we figured it was a bigger hog, probably a big sow as thats all we had been catching. CajunL's pup was right in there and as we got close we saw him get knocked out of the palmettos. Hmmmmmm....maybe its a BIG sow...or something better?? Turned CaunL's bulldog loose at 20 yards (we still couldn't see the hog) and he went in and caught. The hog had him stood up and you could see the fight going on. The other dogs were caught also and we ran in and all I saw was blue... and teeth! Get him off his feet, and we stick him quick! CajunL had the tail, I grabbed a hind leg, we got the hog down and CajunL stuck him. Got all the dogs off and tied back and lo and behold it was a BLUE barr hog!! He had pretty good teeth, measured on the tape at 2 3/4" and after we gutted the hog in the field he weighed 130 lbs on the scale at the check station.....so live weight was?
I won't say HOW we got the hog out of the woods.....as it was 1.7 miles from any road you can "legally" drive.....lets just say after 500 yards of dragging.... and fast driving and looking over our shoulders....we got him out......
He did have some marks where the dogs applied the brakes on his rear end too..........
It was a good hunt, we caught 8 hogs counting the first one Spur had, 7 that we actually put our hands on. If it had been cool it would have been more fun but a good hunt just the same. Anytime you hunt with good friends, catch hogs and don't get dogs wrecked.....its a good hunt!
We didn't take any pics of the sows as neither CajunL or I carried our phones the whole hunt. We took a couple of the blue barr after we got him out. Here is CajunL and the barr.
Me and the barr.
Good teeth, 2 3/4" on the tape measure. None of the dogs got cut, which is a good thing!
