Everyone was up early as Nathan/Rachel and Dennis/Claude finished packing and headed for their respective trips home. As is always the case spending time with good, likeminded people is always fun.
Rick and I headed out and fed the stands near the lodge. Most of them had been hit pretty hard.
After on-road fast food, we went to Georgetown and fed the stands there. Everything looked good there as well.
Back at the Lodge, the new people were in camp ready to go. Ethan and Kevin were from Pennsylvania and Brian was from Delaware. I found out a little later that this was Brian's first hunt. I've never hunted in Delaware or looked into it, but apparently the regulations there are draconian enough to be prohibitive to new hunters. Very unfortunate as while hunting regulations are needed, regulations should encourage outdoor activity while protecting natural resources and enhancing opportunities for everyone.
We talked a while at the lodge and then headed out for the afternoon. I was sitting on the back field by Kyle's property. The weather was comfortably warm and cloudy with almost no wind. As the afternoon progressed, the sky cleared.
Nothing showed for the first couple hours until around 5:00 eight small pigs came out. There were definitely more pigs to the right where they came from since every few minutes the pigs looked in that direction before continuing eating corn. After around 15 minutes the pigs headed back to the right where they came out and were gone.
A while later two deer came out down the road to the left. They never went to corn pile but ate greenery in the area for a while before leaving near the far edge of the field to the left.
As it started to get dark, probably too dark, I heard scurrying to my right and I knew what it was. A large group of black hogs came out immediately to the right. They were milling around and difficult to see due to the acute angle. If they were headed to the corn pile, they were in no hurry.
I tried to put the crosshairs on them, but it was getting very dark. Finally one larger animal moved a little more off to the left. I told myself I had enough light, and put the crosshairs on the animal's head. At the sound of the shot, all the animals froze for a fraction of a second and fled to the left, directly in front of me. There was no question that it was an absolute clean miss; I may have even seen the sand behind the animal erupt with the shot.
I texted Rick with shame. After getting out of the treestand I looked for a few minutes but there was no evidence of a hit.
Ouch.
Before this trip, I've never missed a hog. My second hog shirt tail went on to the wall that night.
None of the other guys saw pigs. Perhaps they wisely unloaded before it got too dark; none of them had to loose a shirt tail.
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