Morning started slowly with coffee. Gary and I chatted a bit before I helped Rick bag up corn and dropping kids off at school followed by grabbing a camera from a stand the Rick deer hunts from. Then it was off to feed pigs. All the stands were hit good.
Back at the lodge I wanted to take a walk and asked Rick if his lab, Dixie, needed a walk. She pulls a lot more than a beagle, but she listens quite a bit better which at least partially makes up for the pulling. It was nice having a dog to walk with. A man walking a dog down a rural road is fine - maybe even quaint. A man walking alone down a rural road is a vagrant.
There was some lollygagging and down time before heading out for the afternoon to hunt hogs. With a SW wind, Gary was dropped at Fish Snatch and I at Sandy Bottoms.
The winds were not insignificant and the blind at Sandy Bottoms had a fabric door - I'm 100% sure it used to have a sliding plywood door. With the wind, the fabric was whipping around making almost a strobe light effect inside the blind. I used a few small sticks to wedge the fabric into a more compliant state. The strongest winds were also causing the metal roof to bang against the frame. A spent .308 shell strategically placed put an end to that.
Then it was time to wait. And I didn't have to wait too long until three deer popped out a short ways in front of the blind. It was between 4:00 and 4:30 so there was tons of light, and I grabbed my camera to try to get some pictures. The deer jumped around a little bit before high-tailing it out of there. I didn't think they heard me with the wind, especially inside the blind, so I wasn't sure what made them so nervous. I was texting with SO and looked up and saw the reason as there was a sow with some smaller pigs on the pile.
I brought my gun up and waited for the sow to calm down. I placed the crosshairs on her head and squeezed the trigger. At the shot I saw her run a small loop and then shoot into the brush to my right of the corn pile. I think I actually said out loud, "She's running??????????"
I stared through the scope wondering if the running pig was a different one. Then I invented scenarios that were somewhat outlandish to understand what just happened. But I knew that the way the pig was running it was most likely that I flat out missed.
I was not happy. I texted Rick that I probably just lost a shirt tail. I looked back on my phone to see when my last miss was (2013). I tried to tell myself she is probably dead just out of sight (she wasn't). I was stewing in my own failure.
The next events can best be told by my texts with Rick:
I've had groups of pigs come back after shooting one, but this was a first for me where the same pig I shot at came back. When she came back, I had serious buck fever as I said to myself, "I am not going to miss her this time!" And I did not.
I had more time to think and rethink then. I was as sure as I could be that it was the same hog since it was the same color, same size and had the same number of smaller pigs with her. I'm not happy I missed the first time and replayed that in my head. I also said a few prayers of thanks.
Right as it was getting dark 2 does popped out right in front of me. They just ran across the track. They were followed shortly by three bucks. The bucks obviously wanted to go to the corn, but they stayed dancing around closer to the blind than anything else. I assumed they didn't want to go down there since there was a hog there. It was getting quite dark by this time and I saw movement down by the corn as one large black hog came out. As I was staring at it through the scope, I saw another three? hogs as well. It was too dark to shoot and wwwwaaaayyyyy too dark to shoot with one on the ground. I was surprised with two shots that hogs were still coming in.
Rick came and got me and we grabbed my hog before getting Gary. I felt a little bad that he hadn't seen anything, but I would have guessed his stand to be the more likely.
Back at the lodge Rick worked his magic cleaning the hog and letting it hang. Overnight temperatures were to be in the low-30's so this was almost perfect.
Gary was kind enough to share his ham crock-pot dinner with me. We both turned in early. As I went to bed I continued to replay in my head how lucky I was in the days events and how fortunate I am in the bigger picture.
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