I was watching LSU play Saturday when I got this picture in a text from our neighbor. Under it was a simple "?". I had mentioned to Mike that I had shot a pig last week and the details surrounding it. Sure enough, that's my spitfire and about 7 inches of my Gold-Tip. Mike says the pig came in and appeared to be just fine. A big thanks to Mike for finishing the job for me and this brings his total up to 16 for the year. He said the arrow entered through the back and was lodged in the opposite shoulder. He has no idea how the pig was still alive, and I don't either after amount of blood loss I saw last week. I was glad that someone was able to get him and the meat won't spoil. Looks like we're in store for quite a year of chasing hogs.
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I left Helena at 1:15 Saturday morning with the intent to be in the stand at daylight. I've made this trip a couple of times with friends, but this would be my first time to tackle the early morning departure alone. Let's just say the coffee break in Vicksburg was very welcomed at 5:15. I pulled through the gate at 5:50 and was driving down the landing strip on the way to the pecan ladder when I almost ran over 2 hogs. I slammed on the brakes and grabbed my bow that I had already uncased and had on the seat beside me. I got my streamlight out of my backpack on the back seat, knocked an arrow and jumped out of the truck. The pigs for some unknown reason stopped about 30 yards away on the driver's side of my truck. I don't know if anyone has ever tried spotlighting with a bow in hand, but if you haven't, it's worth trying at least once. Trying to line up a target 30 yards away while also getting your pins lit with the same light is not the easiest thing I've ever tried. I'm sure I was a sight to see with a flashlight in my mouth trying to illuminate a hog and a bow sight, all the while trying to figure out what I was going to do if he decided to charge. :) Finally I got lined up and let the arrow fly. The shot sounded solid, but I wasn't able to tell exactly where I hit him. The hog squealed and ran right at me. I backed up to my truck and fortunately the hog went into the woods about 15 yards from me and stopped. I got back in my truck as quietly as possible with the hope he'd lay down right there and die. I went on to the stand, where I saw 3 deer; a doe and 2 yearlings. I got down about 8:30 and went back to check on the hog. It was very obvious where he had stopped in the woods, with good blood in several places. I continued on and he crossed duck hole #3 and entered into some thick, nasty, impenetrable brush. That, combined with the snakey/marshy area of the duck hole was enough for me to say, "that's enough." I feel very confident there's one less pig running around now, and we only need to kill 99 more. The rest of the day was spent discing, planting, and dragging 18 acres of fields. We finished up around 5:30 Saturday afternoon and I talked myself into getting back in the stand. At about 6:15 my body told me that the hour and 1/2 sleep I'd gotten on Friday night had finally caught up with it and I climbed down. We made it back to the hotel in Vicksburg at 7 just in time to see LSU start. A great win by the Tigers and a nice cool, dark hotel room makes for good sleep. The alarm went off at 5:00 on Sunday morning but once more, sleep won out. The older I get, the less mad I get at them. It does look like we timed our planting just right as we got about an inch of rain Sunday morning at the farm. I'm anxious to get back to see how the fields will germinate and see how the grazing pressure looks in the next few weeks. Most of our work is done for the year, with the exception of a little trimming that needs to be done and touching up brushing the duck blinds. I also pulled the card at the oak ladder and have added pictures on the trail cam page. I counted up 17 different bucks and 8 different 8 points that visited the oak ladder over the past 3 weeks. I left the camera there, and moved the bow hole (batteries were dead) camera to the rat hole. I feel good about what we'll see visiting the rat hole and look forward to getting in there and hunting soon.
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