Took another group of hog hunters out a couple days ago…8 hunters to be exact.

This time we actually got rolling early in the morning that we weren’t too late getting the guys to their stands.  Philip was walking 2 guys down an old logging road when they ran into a big group of pigs, but there was just enough darkness that nobody could get a good shot off.

Once everybody was delivered to their assigned blinds or stands, we kicked back and relaxed hoping to hear some shooting.

Before 8:00 rolled around, one of our hunters had successfully killed a young boar and another pig that wasn’t even worth taking a picture of…very graphic.

Ryan was a repeat client from the hog hunt about a month ago.

By 10:00, it was time to pick everyone up.  No other shots were fired, but 7 out of the 8 hunters had heard hogs either grunting or squealing close by.  2 hunters actually had hogs within 35 yards of their stand, but brush prevented them getting a clear shot.

Lunchtime came and went, but the rain came and stayed.  Fortunately, we had some ground blinds and had a covered shooting house available as well.

After the jump, more hogs….

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday morning arrived at 3:30 a.m. to wait on our hunters to arrive.  It was a solid hour and ten minute drive to the property where we were planning to hog hunt, but our day started off on the wrong foot.  Hunters were missing… 3 to be exact.  After waiting around for 30 minutes longer than we had planned, we headed out with half the hunters we were expected.  No worries, they’ll just get more attention and hopefully more opportunities as a result.

We hadn’t even pulled all the way across the culvert into the field when the action started.  I threw up my hands and shouted there were pigs in the field.  The brakes were slammed on and I ran back to the other vehicle.  “Get your guns and get them loaded!”

When everybody had a loaded weapon, I led the stalk down a cedar fenceline towards the pigs.  They were probably 500 yards from the trucks, but didn’t have a clue we were in the same world.  Perfect.

400 yards, 300 yards, 200 yards, finally we got as close as we could without leaving the cover of the fenceline at just about 125 yards.  With 3 guns, I needed to get all 3 sighted on different pigs.  I talked with each guy about which pig to put their crosshairs on and then started the countdown.  “3, 2, 1, …”  Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!  Sounded like a dove shoot.

In only seconds, 20 pigs vanished into a sea of high grass and completely dissappeared.  But just as soon, the pigs made a fatal mistake.  Ran right towards us!

I was holding the guys off telling them to hold their fire, hold their fire, don’t shoot, don’t shoot.

80, 70, 60, 40, 30 yards.

“Take em’ boys!”

The second volley was launched with alot more effectiveness.  A big brown sow took 2 solid hits in the midsection, and a piglet was flattened as the herd made their turn only 20 yards in front of us.

Finally, as the herd was thundering off into the woods, we looked back in the field to see one latecomer.  A solid black piggie.  She slammed on the breaks, but the guys were ready.  Boom, boom!  Dusted!

At this point there was a bunch of whooping and back slapping and “I can’t believe that just happened” going on.

The only thing that would have made things better is if just one gun had been a shotgun loaded with buckshot.  As those pigs came by the fenceline, there were pigs overlapping at one point for a solid 10-12 feet.  Can you imagine?!?!?!  I sure can, porkpalooza!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I headed down to a property about an hour south of the house to prep for a guided pig hunt I am helping with tomorrow.  One of my good buddies gathered up 6 clients for a one-day feral pig hunt.  Yesterday, we made sure all the feeders were running properly, brushed in a couple ground blinds, double checked loc-ons, climbers, ladder stands, and trimmed shooting lanes.  Lots of hot, sweaty work, but hopefully it will pay off tomorrow with a truck bed full of pork.  I’ll be taking care of 3 of the hunters and my buddy will take the other half.  Anyways, I’ll post plenty of pictures and stories from the hunt on Saturday hopefully.

Well, today is the day right.  Whether you like the ceremonies in D.C. today or not, an inauguration to hunting in a new state is always a good thing.  I got inaugurated a day earlier on Monday to hunting in Alabama.

Hunting (with my neighbor and the head football coach that he assists) about an hour of our homes in Bullock County, we headed to the woods only after accidentally setting off the alarm in the pick-up truck.  We tried to give the critters a warning shot, but they evidently paid no attention.

After leaving the coach at the edge of an old pecan grove and thicket, we headed 400 yards deeper into the woods and set up behind a blowdown tree stump.  The woods were rather open and several creek crossings led to a green winter wheat field behind us.

With sunrise, the action (or should I say sounds) started.  For the first hour of the hunt, all we saw was a couple of possums attempting to make more possums (if you know what I mean) and some squirrels.

But oh, the sounds.

Longbeards gobbling.

Jakes trying to.

Hen turkeys clucking, cutting, prrrring.

Pileated woodpeckers whooping.

A wood thrush serenading.

A buck grunting.

…and whole bunches of piggies squealing, grunting, and however else you want to describe some of the sounds they make.

I’ll focus on the pigs for now.  Two different groups of pigs came within 100 yards or so of our location, but were always just on the other side of a palmetto thicket or just across the creek.

Finally, a bunch of canes started shaking and out came the first pig in the herd.  A nice-sized cinnamon variety of swine followed by 2 or 3 similar sized black pigs and a whole ton of shoats and piglets.  Probably 15-20 pigs in the group.

I whispered that I was going to take the reddish colored one, when it stopped stone cold at 40 yards and stared right at us.  Fortunately, my gun was already up and after raising up a little more so I could shoot over the underbrush, I sent a Hornady SST slug on its way.  Devastating.

When I hit him straight on in the chest, his mouth popped open to squeal but nothing came out and his back end went out from under him.  Down for the count.  My first Alabama animal was this young boar in the 120 pound range.  He made a trip out of the woods and will make some awesome sausage.

Here’s one of 20 or so trees that were rubbed by pigs within 50 yards of his resting place.

Click below to read more, there is one more primer to be fired before the pig hunting of the day is over.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Petzal, a writer for Field and Stream, maintains a blog called The Gun Nut.  I was browsing around the web today and saw his post of a monster piggy!  Kind of makes my 300 pounder look a little bit like a javelina.  That pig is an absolute BRUTE!

Photo is actually from Tom McIntyre, but David was kind enough to share the pics with everyone.  What a HAWG!

Well, another update from Andrew’s exploits up in the Smoky Mountains National Park.  He’s been backcountry camping with another sharpshooter these last 2 weeks on the Appalachian Trail.  Sleeping and laying around camp during the day, hunting at night.  Last week, he killed a pair of giant tuskers!  One weighing in around 400 pounds and the small one at 360 or so!!!  On Wednesday night, he said the pigs were everywhere.  They got into several different groups throughout the night rooting on the wet soil from the day’s rain.  One of the pigs dropped practically ON the Appalachian Trail.  It took them quite a while to drag it off the main route.  Although, he already had quite a heavy pack for a week’s worth of camping, one head was salvaged with 3″+ cutters and Andrew is planning on getting that skull cleaned and bleached for display!  They added a couple other hogs throughout the week, but he was ecstatic about finding some true heavyweight hogs!

Added note, Thursday morning they woke up to a black bear in camp.  Not sure what attracted him, but he just kind of sniffed around, ate some grass that was growing nearby and wandered off back into the woods.  No harm, no foul!

Well, I’ve been chatting on the phone back and forth with my buddy Andrew Partin who is culling pig populations for the NPS in the NC mountains.  After several weeks of inactivity, hogs came out of the woodwork and Andrew and his partner were able to lay the smackdown 14 times last week.

One day, they were hiking a loop trail when Andrew spotted a sow along a stream bank late in the afternoon.  Carrying his 870 Express, he crept closer while his partner kept a bead on the pig with his 30-.06.  Eventually they switched weapons and discovered there were a bunch more pigs that just the one.  Seven to be exact.  I can’t remember the exact details, but Andrew’s first shot from the 30-.06 centered a big sow right between the eyes and then the 870 express took over.  And when I saw the 870 took over…it dominated the entire rest of the herd.  Complete eradication!!!  Another sow and a mess more of piglets/shoats.  Needless to say, mission complete for that afternoon!

Andrew said this week should produce some more piggies but he’s not holding his breath about the kind of action last week produced.  His total is up to 40…which leads all pig sharpshooting teams in the NP so far this year.  This weekend, he’s coming home to switch out his truck that is being worked on and hopefully we’ll be out bowfishing on Saturday.  Stay tuned for those pictures next weekend.

Well, Andrew has had a slow couple of weeks in the Smoky Mountains.  Not much fresh pig sign has been spotted lately and even fewer pigs have been seen.  One pig has become a personal nemesis of Andrew though.  He believes the same pig is using a certain hollow where a trap or two is located.  Several times now, the tusker has rooted within 20-25 yards of the trap, but he hasn’t made the fatal mistake yet.  Hmmm…sounds like he might have had a negative experience with traps before?!?!

Looking forward to this weekend though, Andrew is taking off a couple of days to come back to the Piedmont which means we’ll be doing some bowfishing…weather permitting.  As long as its not raining, I reckon we’ll be out there.

Well, I’ll follow through with my promise of a hog hunt diary from last week’s post about Andrew culling hogs for the National Parks Service.  When he came home from his summer internship in the Great Smoky Mountains, one of the things he kept saying was…”Dude, we’ve got to get on some hogs!”  At first, we were trying to get a spot where we could hunt them with archery equipment, but we soon learned that getting a shot at pigs during daylight hours where we had permission would be virtually impossible.  Andrew did the legwork of getting us permission and did an awesome job of networking!

We had permission from a sweet potato farmer whose fields were at least 1/2 mile from the creek bottom where the pigs were bedding.  A week’s worth of trail camera confirmed that the pigs were arriving about 2 hours after dark and leaving again a couple hours before dawn.  Time to devise a plan!

We set up a couple baitpiles and kept tabs on the pigs for another couple of weeks all the while scheming how we would ambush them.  We came up with a plan to hang two climbing treestands side-by-side and wait on the hogs to come in.  When they arrived, we would start a countdown before cutting on a couple of Ductaped flashlights with red cellophane filters.  Then we would initiate a 3-2-1 countdown to a buckshot shower!!! 

The first night we tried our plan, we got rained out…but 2 hours into our second attempt I was the first to hear the unmistakeable sounds of twigs snapping.  Then the muffled sounds of grunting and the occasional squeal could be heard.  Before we knew it, we were surrounded by wild hogs.  We have no way of knowing exactly how many there were, but I would guess somewhere around 10 hogs.  We reviewed the plan in whispers for the 1000th time and started the first countdown.  ‘Let their be light’, zoooommm….all the hogs take off except for 2.  Well, screw the second countdown, we’re shooting.  6 shotgun shells as fast as we could put the bead on pigs screaming across our 25 foot illuminated circle. 

Even though we had to abort mission plans a little prematurely, we both got our pigs.  I dropped a MONSTER sow with my first shot and then switched to throwing lead at other pigs at they cut through the light.  Andrew put a load behind the other stationary pig’s shoulder, put a finishing shot into my sow, then threw the last shell helter-skelter into the melee. 

Here is the end result.  Andrew poses with my 317 lb. sow and his 75 lb. pound young boar.  We butchered the smaller hog into quarters for a BBQ, but had an ex-Food Lion butcher process the sow for us.  Now we have a freezer full of sausage, pork chops, ‘Boston butts’, ribs, and more.  She is delicious!

I had my sow skull cleaned up by my taxidermist friend and I couldn’t be happier with the unique trophy!

Here’s a final picture of me posing with our version of “Hogzilla”

What is really cool is that we have a bunch of pics (35 mm, I haven’t scanned them onto a computer and I believe Andrew has the pictures) of the big sow raiding the sweet potato fields, even a really cool one of her with her mouth open and tusks easily visible!

Hint:  If you plan on conducting a night raid on local feral pigs, make sure you have contacted any surrounding neighbors to alert them of potential gunshots and contact the local game wardens to make them aware of what you are planning.  We covered our hides 100% and it worked out great!!!

So, just wanted to write a blurb about my old roommate (he got replaced by my wife…lol). Last summer, he was an intern with the Student Conservation Agency doing problem bear work in campgrounds at Cades Cove and similar places throughout the park. This involved using scare tactics to ‘haze’ problem black bears and darting and relocating bears caught in culvert traps around human activity. He also ran a series of baited traps for wild hogs later on in the summer. But he didn’t quite get enough of the little piggies.

He graduated from NC State in December 2007 and took a seasonal 6 month job with the National Parks Service in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park doing wild hog control full-time. He was trained in weapons proficiency and is now a full-time hog slaying machine. He has used 12 guage shotguns, AR-15s, and .357 revolvers to kill almost 25 pigs so far in his first 2 months. In fact, he is outpacing all of the other hog control teams throughout the national park. Props to my hardcore brother! His typical day consists of either running baited traps on long loop trails and dispatching caught hogs along the way or conducting night hunts using his infrared night vision equipment and shooting any hogs he can find hiking or driving.

The picture at the top of the post is the result of a hunt that he and I went on in October this year. Yes, I did kill the biggest hog, but he connected on a running shot on the smaller squealer in the foreground. Stay tuned for Monday’s post about our first hog hunt ever.

Anyways, I will try to insert an update every once in while about his hog hunting progress. Thanks Andrew for checking out The Outdoor Smorgasbord in your free time and I’m looking forward to some late March bowfishing!!