| Hunt Introduction Our Hog & Exotics bowhunt takes place on the Helm Ranch in Live Oak and Bee Counties, Texas. The ranch is a little over 2,000 acres. The ranch is loaded with Hogs, and has a good population of Javelina and Turkey as well. There is a designated high-fenced area on the ranch that has a large population of exotics, including Corsican, Texas Dall, Black Hawaiian, Angora, Axis, Fallow, Red Deer, & Sika, plus more. This trip I'm concentrating on hogs & exotic deer. All hunting for big game on the ranch is bow only I've hunted the Helm Ranch several times previous to this for hogs, and there are a lot. I feel half-crazy hunting down here in the middle of August, with daytime temps close to 100 degrees, but I'm eager to hunt, as always. The moon is close to full right now, and with it being so hot right now in south Texas, I'm expecting to see most of my hog action after dark. It is legal to hunt hogs after dark in Texas. I use a stabilizer light with a red lens for after-dark hog hunting. Friday P.M. Upon arrival at the Helm Ranch this afternoon, the ranch hunting manager, J.J. Reynolds, told me that he had some good areas in mind for me to hunt this evening. The brush on the Helm Ranch is, for the most part, impenetrable. It is in the South Texas Brush Country, and they don't call it the Brush Country for no reason. Just about every bush or tree down here sticks, grabs or pricks you. "Thick" would be understating the make-up of most of the brush on the ranch. The thick brush provides limitless habitat and bedding areas for the animals. Hunting on the Helm Ranch is primarily from tripods, ground blinds, and the occasional treestand, near areas fed with corn. The corn draws the hogs and exotics out of the brush to feed, otherwise you would rarely see them. J.J. told me to go to a tripod that was on the edge of a meadow where some exotics come out to feed in the evening. He said that I should also expect to see some hogs if I waited a while after dark. I got settled in the tripod with about an hour and a half of daylight left. About an hour before dark a group of Fallow deer came out of the brush and started feeding in the meadow. There was one big buck with the group, but he was off-limits because he was in velvet. Only exotic bucks in hard-horn are allowed to be taken on the Helm Ranch. So, I contented myself with watching him and taking a few photos.  the big velvet Fallow that was off-limits The moon was already rising as it was getting dark, and it was pretty bright, so I was able to see pretty well. Shortly after dark two monster white Fallow bucks joined the other group of deer in the meadow. I was able to see them pretty well with the combination of the moonlight and my binoculars. One of them had really tall horns and did not have the typical Fallow buck palmation on his antlers. The other one had the typical palmated antlers, but he also had several non-typical points sticking out horizontally off of his antlers. That was pretty unique and unusual. I'm hoping that tomorrow or the next day I might get a shot at one of those bucks.  the sun sets on the south Texas horizon About an hour after dark I noticed some hogs making their way into the meadow and over to where the corn was. Wild hogs in south Texas are voracious corn eaters. There were about 15 hogs in the group - about five hogs in the 40-60 lb. range, a few closer to 100 lbs., and the rest were probably 15 lbs. or less. When I'm hog hunting after dark, I like my shots to be 15 yards or less. I have a less than stellar success record in the past on hogs after dark, so I like them to be close. These hogs took probably a half hour to work in close enough for a shot. The biggest pig was the momma sow and I could see she was full of milk, so I passed on her. The other biggest pig was one of the farthest away. So, I concentrated on a tan and black spotted pig in the 50 lb. range that was about 15 yards away. I turned my red light on, found my sight pin, aimed behind the shoulder of the pig and shot. What happened next I still haven't figured out. The hog I was shooting at ran off as though un-hurt, but a different pig - a "pig nugget" as J.J. likes to call them - ran off in another direction and fell after about 20 yards. I had a bad feeling about this. I got down and found my arrow laying on the ground at the scene. The back half was covered in blood, but the front half seemed to only have dirt on it. I looked around in the direction the pig I shot at had run, and found no blood anywhere. I was shooting a 150 gr. Magnus Snuffer 3-blade head so if I hit him, he should have left some blood on the ground, but there was none. So, I walked over to the other pig, which was dead. This pig weighed no more than 10 pounds. I felt kind of bad killing such a small pig, but I figured on the bright side that it would be some great eating. How I hit this pig instead of the one I was aiming at is a mystery to me. All I can figure is that my night vision skills were playing tricks on me this evening. I did check the batteries in my light when I got back to camp, and they were getting kind of weak. I replaced them for tomorrow night and it was definitely much brighter.  here is the pig I shot, after about 3 hours of smoking over mesquite coals - yum!
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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