Since I began writing this weekly column almost 40 years ago, I’ve always tried to ‘take you with me’ each week, regardless what I might be doing in the outdoors. I’ve recounted my adventures fishing in Japan and shared my trips up in the wild of Canada with you.
I’ve shared my North Dakota bow hunting adventure and detailed the days when I guided for elk and bear in the mountain states. But I’ve also shared my day-to-day adventures right here In Texas close to home, sometimes catching sunfish from a neighbor’s pond or shooting ducks and geese along the Texas coast.
I’ve been sticking pretty close to the homestead the past couple weeks but there’s lots of fun things to do in the outdoors that don’t include travel if we look for them. There’s some of the best hog hunting I know of within a mile of my house and I have some great friends that allow me to hunt their land. In the winter after the wild porkers have devoured all the acorns in the wood, I’ve been awakened many times by hogs as close as 20 feet from my bedroom window, feeding under the big oak by the house. During the period of January through March, acorns under the 10 or so big oaks in front of our home pulls hogs in by the scores. But right now, hogs are in the woods feeding on green pecans, hickory nuts, persimmons and acorns the squirrels knock out of the trees.
Through the years, I have devised many ways to hunt my close to home hogs, everything from bow hunting in my yard to using thermal scopes at night on the larger tracts of land owned by my neighbors. A couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to use my Seneca 50 caliber Dragon Claw air rifle topped with an AGM Global Vision thermal scope to put some pork in the freezer. My plan was to smoke the choice cuts of meat and make a huge pot of chili and freeze it for use at upcoming hunting camps this fall. I usually decide just how I want to prepare the pork before each hunt, sometime the dish is a Mexican stew or chopped barbecue and sometimes it’s smoked chili. I love the flavor of fresh pork that has been slow smoked with hickory in chili.
Needless to say, it’s been hot lately and my plan needed to facilitate a quick way to chill the meat. It would also be nice to get up off the ground and away from the swarms of mosquitoes common this time of year. But I didn’t want to hunt at night in one of my tree stands. After much thought, I devised a plan to use my truck bed as a hunting stand. I found a spot about 50 yards from my feeder where I could pull my truck between two big trees, with heavy cover of brush on either side the outline of my pickup was all but hidden from view. The hogs were coming to the feeder around 9 p.m. each evening and by then it is pitch dark. They would never see me and hopefully never smell me with the truck parked to the west of the feeder. No chance of a south or possibly north wind carrying my scent to approaching porkers.
I placed my most comfortable lawn chair in the bed to the truck and pushed it up against the toolbox which serves as a convenient table for my glass of cold tea, and resting spot for my rifle. I have a cooler with ice that serves as a footrest while I am waiting for the hogs. I kick my boots off and get comfortable, with Thermocell to deter mosquitoes, I’m all set to hunt in comfort. I’m always conscious of snakes when hunting at night and slip into my snake proof boots when I step out of my ‘blind’ to the ground. I usually take only the quarters and backstraps of wild hogs when hunting at night. The last thing I wish to do is shoot a hog and stay up half the night butchering the meat. I can remove the back straps and quarters in a matter of a few minutes, place them I the cooler and get back home in time so I don’t miss too much sleep. I have the self-imposed deadline of 10 p.m. as time to fire up the truck and make the five-minute drive back home.
I could use my centerfire rifle with thermal scope and back away 100 or more yards from the feeder but I like getting close to hogs. I like to set up so that I can hear them coming through the woods long before I actually see them. I limit my shots to fifty yards with the big bore air rifle and prefer them even closer. I don’t want to be traipsing around the woods after dark in attempts to recover a wounded hogs. A close shot with precise bullet placement almost always drops the hog in its tracks.
My first hunt was last night from my truck bed blind and I thoroughly enjoyed sipping iced tea while setting out in the woods listening to the coyote serenade and the hooting of a couple barred owls that I spotted with the thermal scope in nearby trees. About 9 p.m., I heard the tell-tale sound of a big sounder (herd) of hogs approaching off to my right. My feeder is on the edge of a field and rather than head to the corn, the porkers went straight across the field, probably heading for the four-acre gravel pit to cool off and quench their thirst. No doubt they would be back at the feeder sometime during the night but I had no intentions of staying past 10 p.m.
I love trying to outsmart hogs and have learned a few tricks through my many years of hunting them. Tonight, I will string corn on the ground from the travel route the hogs use going to water back to my feeder. I am pretty sure they will smell the corn when they cross it and follow the kernels back to the feeder. I’m hoping they will eat first and hit the water later after all the corn is gone.
I will be able to film the entire hunt through the camera on my Rattler thermal scope. Wish me luck! Hopefully I can also ‘take you with me’ via our weekly TV show “A Sportsmans Life” on Carbon TV and YouTube.
Email outdoors writer Luke Clayton though his website www.catfishradio.org .
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