| Hunt Introduction This hunt takes place in deep south Texas, near Eagle Pass, less than 10 miles from the Mexico border. We are hunting with outfitter Christopher Roswell on 15,000 acres of private land. Accompanying me on this hunt are Kansas hunters Rick Lyda and Mitch Montgomery. The Live Hunt will be covering my hunts mostly (since I'm the one with the camera!) but I will also be writing about their hunts as well. I will be bowhunting and Mitch and Rick are using a variety of guns. We will be doing a lot of spot and stalk hunting mostly, on long senderos (long, straight trails through the brush) that are fed with corn. We may also do some hunting around water tanks where there is lots of hog sign. Monday A.M.  A group of javelina chowing on some corn This morning we didn't see much but javelina. Hogs are generally not very active in the mornings. I'm going to try and get a javelina, but I want to try for a hog first. The weather was nice today, not too hot, and with a nice breeze. This ranch is made up of LOTS of short brush species, not many trees here above 10 feet tall, and most are less than that. It's a great area for stalking.  javelina are generally pretty easy to stalk close to, if you have the wind in your favor Monday P.M. This evening was one of the more enjoyable hog hunting experiences I've had in a while. I went out early afternoon to do some spot and stalk hunting around a water tank (pond) where Christopher said he had been seeing a fair bit of sign. The tank is usually not very big, but this area of south Texas has had a LOT of rain - much more than usual - since last summer. Consequently, the tank was pretty backed up and had lots of shallow water areas. There was lots of green water-type vegetation around the edges, and Christopher said the hogs liked to munch on that stuff, not to mention that they love to wallow in the mud at water holes.  The tank that I stalked around this afternoon  You can see that there are lots of tracks, mostly hog tracks, and a few wallows too I was getting pretty pumped as I was sneaking around the edge of the tank, as I was seeing a LOT of fresh hog tracks and wallows. I hadn't gone but about 200 yards when I looked up and spied a group of hogs (I could see at least 5 hogs) browsing on some of the short vegetation in the edge of the water. This is where things really started to get interesting. At this point I was about 50 yards from them. Hogs have pretty poor eyesight and hearing, but they are well known for their acute sense of smell. To stalk in on them you have to be downwind of them or it just won't work. I checked the wind direction and I was currently downwind from them. The only problem was that to STAY downwind and stalk up close to them, I would have to cross a creek coming into the tank, and have to complete my stalk entirely while in the water. Most of the hogs were actually out in several inches of water, eating.  Here are the hogs eating in the water as I was planning my stalk Since the hogs were totally unaware of my presence and there was a good bit of brush to cover my stalk, I decided I didn't mind getting wet if it would get me a good shot. So I waded into the creek, which thankfully wasn't much above my knees. When I came out of the creek, I immediately had to wade into the edge of the tank to stay downwind of the hogs. I slowly moved forward, trying not to make any waves or splashing sounds. The hogs were very intent on eating and obviously were not expecting danger to come to them from the water. I had my eye on a certain hog that was closest to me. It went behind a bush and when it started to come out the other side, I drew my bow. It was at about 10 yards. It was standing in 6 inches of water and I was standing in 18 inches of water. I couldn't see the hogs head, but I could see most of the body, and I held for a lung shot. I saw the arrow hit and pass through and it looked like a good hit. The hog squealed and the whole troop (numbering about 10 hogs) took off. I was only able to see them for about 20 yards before the brush swallowed them up, but I saw the trail my hog took. Since the hog was standing in water when I shot, I was not able to locate my arrow after it passed through, because it went into the water. However, I felt like it was a good hit so I wasn't worried. I started looking for blood on the ground and bushes but didn't find any. To make a very long story short, I covered the whole area for at least 100 yards around for at least an hour before finding any blood. I have quite a bit of experience blood trailing and feel that I'm pretty good at it, but this one had me utterly baffled. Finally after about an hour I found some small smears of blood on a bush the hog had passed after going out of my sight. That was the ONLY blood I found, though. I looked for another hour and was starting to get pretty frustrated. Then something happened that I can only think was Providence helping me to find my hog. Three vultures suddenly came into the area and started flying tight, low circles over a thicket about 125 yards from where I'd shot the hog. I watched them for about 10 minutes and finally decided that they weren't flying randomly, they knew something was in there. So I went directly over to the thicket and started a search. It was thick, but I was able to crawl around in there a bit. After about 5 minutes I found my dead hog, laying underneath some of the thickest stuff around. I had walked within 15 yards of it several times in my search but hadn't seen it because of the thick stuff it was in. I was very thankful that those vultures led me to it.  My hog, a nice sized, fat sow I looked all around where the hog lay and there was very little blood at all, either coming out of the broadhead holes or out of the hog's mouth/nose. We field dressed it and found that I had hit the back of the lungs and nicked the liver. I used a Simmons Shark 165 gr. 2-blade broadhead, and I'm convinced that had I used a 3-blade head I would have gotten more blood. The Shark flies awesome, is tough, and sharpens well, but like all 2-blade heads it cuts a "slit" instead of a "hole". Anyway, the important thing was that I found the hog. There was still enough daylight after we took care of my hog for me to hunt a little more, even if my boots and socks were extremely soggy! In the last hour of daylight I saw about 25 hogs eating corn out on the senderos. Only about 5 of them were adult pigs, though, and they were all sows with piglets and were obviously still doing a lot of nursing, so I passed them up. All in all today was a great hunt for me. Mitch saw a bunch of javelina this evening and right at dark saw a good boar, probably 250 pounds, but the boar ambled back into the brush before Mitch could get lined up for a good shot. Rick saw several sows with a bunch of piglets, and then another lone sow. He made a great shot on the lone sow with a .308 and it only ran about 30 yards. It was a good, fat sow, probably over 150 lbs. 
Rick Lyda with his fat sow We're going to hit it hard again tomorrow, we'll see you then.
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. He also arranges exciting hunts through his business Longleaf Hunting Adventures. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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