Most of you guys that know me, know that I don't hunt much in the summer anymore. I used to, but the older (and hopefully wiser) I get, I have decided its just not that much fun. I hunt because I like to see a good dog work and like being out in the woods, especially when its cool. I don't care much for the 95 + degree days, skeeters, deer flies, snakes, gators, etc that go with summer hunting. And on top of that you have to worry about heatstroke for your dogs.
Well, my buddy Dave called this week, said there was sign of a good hog at his deer lease, but he wasn't going to any feeders and he didn't have any game camera pics of the hog, but the hog had a big track. So , hearing about a good hog and Dave telling me the hog needed to go, made me get up at 3:30 AM this morning and drive two hours south to be there by daylight.
Got there, collared dogs up and turned out Monkey and the young dog Stitch. It was 78 degrees at daylight, should have told us how warm the day was going to get.......Anyway, we started heading towards the big swamp. Daves lease has about 600 acres of high ground and about 3500 acres of rough swamp with no roads.....so you can guess where the hogs stay. As we got close to the edge of the swamp, Monkey starting making big loops smelling, like he was trying to figure something out. He finally went off down in the swamp. stitch went for a while, then came back out. Monkey was gone maybe 15 minutes by himself, and he opened up bayed off down in the swamp a pretty good ways. As soon as he barked, Stitch tore out and went to him. Just good daylight and Monkeys barks carried a long way . Dave and I headed that way and you could tell when Monkey didn't try to catch when Stitch got there,that it was a bigger hog.
I had invited Noah on this hunt so he could bring a catch dog, but he had plans to go out in a boat in the gulf for some fishing and bikinis....so he begged off this hunt. Can't imagine why....
We have to kill the hogs on this place, so with no catch dog, Dave had a pistol and I had my .22 magnum. ....just in case. We got close to Monkey and Stitch baying and saw that the hog was backed up under the roots of a fallen tree in the swamp. Lots of vegetation and hard to even see the dogs let alone the hog. I tried to ease around so I could see the hog and Dave got up on the fallen tree and walked down it to the root ball. He could look down on the hog and it was a good one. You could smell boar hog too. I backed off as I didn't want to be the other side of the hog if Dave shot. I got up on the tree and came up behind Dave just about the time he shot. Monkey tried the hog and got slung about 20 feet. The hog broke out but it got too hot on him and he came right back where we were. I like a biting dog when a hog breaks...
Dave got off the tree and eased around to the side. He could see the hog, took careful aim and shot again. This time the hog broke out, came around the tree to Dave, and I mean TO Dave, like he was going to hurt somebody! And Dave was popping off rounds so fast it sounded like a string of firecrackers going off!! Dave could have reached out and touched the hog as he blew past. Hog almost got Dave too, if Monkey hadn't been eating on his rear end he may have stopped to work on Dave!
Hog was leaving town and you could hear Monkey applying brakes now and then. Monkey would bite the hog, hog would spin and stop and Monkey would bay. Stitch didn't know what to think of all the shooting and had backed off but now was back with Monkey. They were moving on and getting away from us. Bite, stop bay, run. Bite , stop, bay and run....repeat. The hog knew we were there and Dave had shot at him several times so he wanted no part of us now. I thought Dave had a big pistol when we left the truck, turns out all he had was a .22 pistol!
I would have never thought it, but the hog actually came out of the swamp to high ground. We can't figure out why he would do that with miles of swamp the other way, but fortunately for us, he did. He ran down a creek bottom with the dogs fighting him the whole way. Crossed an overgrown pasture with briars and sage grass and into another creek bottom. Monkey stopped him in the creek bottom for a few seconds, long enough for us to hot foot it to them....dang its getting warm now.....and the hog breaks out into another overgrown field headed to another swamp. I cross the creek bottom where he had stopped and came out in the next field just in time to see Monkey try him again and get slung off.
Dave is to my left and I see Monkey try the hog and get slung off. So at about 60-70 yards I take aim with my .22 magnum and POP. Hog stumbles, goes down on the front end, then gets back up. Monkey catches and we run in and leg the hog. Stitch made the whole trip, just wasn't too keen on the gun. It is now REAL hot, about 8:30 am or so, and we head to the trucks to cool the dogs off. Dave took some pics and I took some pics so I will post more later but here is a pic Dave took with my phone. Good hog.
We moved later and turned Spur and Scarlet out and made a loop through another block, but all we saw were deer flies....LOTS of deer flies!
Here is the one pic, I will post more tommorrow. I sure wish I had someone with a video camera with us today...LISA....
