We hunted timed spin feeders on a morning hunt and I saw the first hogs approach my ground setup at least a half hour before dark. He specifically asked that we target sows and young boars and although it's legal to shoot a hog before daylight, I couldn't be certain of the gender and let it pass.
Daylight approached and several small hogs appeared and milled around looking for corn, but since my primary interest is putting fresh meat in the freezer, I let them pass as well. The feeder spun out at eight o'clock and three larger sized boars approached and began to run off anything else that came in to feed, until "Elmer" showed up.
"Elmer" is a six hundred pound red boar hog that Chrichton released in the property to breed a better size into the wild hog population and he asked me to keep a lookout for him and NOT to shoot him. Well, Elmer was safe enough with me, but when he came inside five yards to scratch himself on the ladder of an old treestand hanging beside where I was set up on the ground, I was a bit nervous. Turns out that he's well domesticated and didn't give me a bit of trouble, but he did run off the trio of boars that were defending the feed site.
About 10:00am, Chrichton came by on his EZ-Go golf cart to see if I'd killed anything, and told me to stay put while he went and checked on my dad. Not five minutes after he left a long legged black sow came in tentatively and began to nuzzle around for the leavings of the morning corn. She was about twenty-five yards and behind some scrub, but not knowing when Crichton and my Dad would be back, I decided rather than wait for her to get clear, I'd best get myself into a position to shoot, so I got up slowly and took a few slow and shaky steps until I had her chestframed in a nice opening in the brush.
The all-white fletched A/C/C tipped with a 75gr. Muzzy broadhead broke the top of her shoulder and angled up into her spine dropping her on the spot. I hurried to her and stuck her with my belt knife to end it sooner and called Tonya on the phone to tell her I'd gotten first blood. I then called Brian to let him know the same and as soon as I hung up, Crichton came around the corner on his golf cart. My dad had elected to sit another hour, so we loaded my pig and gear onto the back of the cart and sat in the shade talking. I showed him my hog squealer Brian had built for me just this past week and gave him a demonstration of how it sounded. A couple of weeks later, Crichtn had a bad boar hog try to tear the legs out of his britches for blowing that call, lolol.
We took of to get Dad, went back to camp and took a few photos and cleaned the hog. Once it was in the cooler on ice, we enjoyed a nice visit with Crichton and his brother before heading home. We're invited back out again soon; can't wait!
Dad? He saw fifteen different hogs; small ones, one black boar, and a couple shooter sows that passed out of range.
