You know how in the movie Some Kind of Wonderful, Kieth goes for goes for Amanda only to end up with the girl who is closest to him (Watts) all along? That is how the day ended, except it was pigs not girls and there was more blood. Much more blood.
I was up early and finished reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie. I've read some of his other books - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian was phenomenally good. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was a book of short stories. Some were good, some were OK. A few were forgettable. But it was a good read while drinking too-strong coffee.
At some point I got a text from SO saying she was able to get out of the driveway just fine. I was very glad for this, glad the neighbor was able to help and glad she let me know. The day was starting out well.
Rick and I dropped Will off at school before heading out to feed stands. All of the stands had been hit hard so there were definitely hogs at all of them. Timing is the key.
Rick had trail cams at several of them, so he could see when the hogs were there.
Back at the lodge, I took a walk down to the river. It was a bit cold, but no reason to become completely lethargic. The river was way up from its normal level. Road Ends? More like road has ended already.
Back at the lodge Rick showed me several pictures of hogs, including a couple stands where they were there well before dark. Things were looking promising.
I took a sort-of cat-nap and watched TV before heading out to hunt.
I ended up sitting in a really tall treestand right near the river. I was out there a bit early since Rick had other errands to run. But I was dressed up warm and the wind wasn't bad so it was really a nice afternoon.
The stand was probably not the best. It sat slightly crazy angle and the seat was metal mesh. It sort of felt like I was sitting on a cheese grater. Since I've gotten older, sitting isn't as easy as it used to be. Some time I may have to resort to one of my hunting cushions.
Around 3:00 a deer came out. It is a bit sad that this is the first animal I've seen on the trip, but I'll take it. It appeared to be either a really odd button buck or more likely a buck that had already shed its antlers. This is too early for antlers to drop, but it can happen, especially if the deer is weakened at all. It only stayed around for 10-15 minutes before moving on. Then the waiting continued.
There was something making noise down by the river intermittently as the afternoon wore on. At first it sounded like people shaking out a tarp or something, but when I heard the noise closer I realized it was birds flapping their wings near the water. But it was odd sounding and much louder than I would have anticipated since there was very little wind.
A little before 5:00 I heard a very distinctive rustling to my left followed by some other mammal noises. I knew it was pigs coming in. I could hear them run down to the corn pile and they popped out of the 2-track right near the corn pile.
When deer come in, they flick their ears and saunter around eating corn - always on high alert. When an assload of hogs come in they run around fighting and butting heads and just generally being a nuisance. There was definitely more than 10 of them, so I just let them calm down for a few minutes before looking to pick one off. Or I let them run around hoping they would calm down at least a little bit.
But I didn't want to wait too long since they can leave as quickly as they came. So I started looking through the scope, waiting for one of the larger pigs to isolate itself for a clean shot. This was difficult. This was a very active group of hogs ranging in size from probably less than 100 pounds to right around 200. There were about three that were noticeably larger. I would put the crosshairs on one, only to have it quickly move or a pipsqueak jump in front of it. This went on for several minutes. Adrenaline pumping wasn't making it any easier.
Getting back to Some Kind of Wonderful (pig edition), finally I thought I had my Amanda isolated. It was a pretty cool looking rust colored pig that was quite large. I put the crosshairs on its head and started to squeeze the trigger. As I did this, another smaller pig somewhat closer to me (Watts) ran in front of Amanda. Watts took the bullet, but I sort of thought Amanda had to be hit too?
The smaller Watts pig flopped around a bit before going off to the left. All the other pigs ran toward me and by me to the right, with one going much slower. I was worried this was the larger Amanda pig, may be wounded.
I texted Rick after letting things calm down a bit, and we discussed the situation back and forth. Bottom line, I think Watts was dead, unsure about anything else. Rick and Will came with lots of daylight left. We went down to the pile and easily saw where the smaller pig had gone into the bush. Rick looked for it, while Will and I looked for evidence of the bigger pig. It didn't take Rick long to find the pig. I was quite happy. It was a decent 130 pound sow. There was one other mysterious blood spot, but where it was just made more sense that it came from the smaller pig, not the larger one. We did look around a little bit more, but there just wasn't enough evidence of another hit.
We drove back to the lodge and took some pictures, followed by cleaning the hog. A post-mortem examination shows the Nosler Partition hit the shoulder and probably partially came apart before exiting above the entry wound. Note that I was shooting down, so that bullet must have bounced off the solid hog shoulder. Most likely scenario - Watts took the bullet for the team, Amanda is running around feeling like a total bad ass. Or at worst, Amanda was grazed by a bullet but still feels like a bad ass. I have a very hard time seeing any kind of lethal hit after hitting the Watts pig, or even a wounding hit.
With the pig cleaned and the day done. I headed into the lodge for the night.
The day was some kind of wonderful.
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