I finished reading BJ Hollars' From the Mouths of Dogs in the morning. It was good - not Midwestern Strange good - but good. I was glad I was alone towards the end of the book when he talks about dogs' death, since I'm still not sure if I'm fully recovered from last year's dogtastrophe. Right towards the end SO texted me a picture of our new dog being brave and getting off the safety of her couch. This made me feel a bit better.
"But the God I know rarely speaks with such booming-voice clarity, and never to tell me I’m right. Rather, he seems to like to keep me guessing, forcing me to mull over my choices in the hope that free will might guide me." - BJ Hollars
Denis and Rick had gone duck hunting in the morning. I knew Rick didn't eat much in the way of ducks, so I had (half joking) asked him the previous evening if he was going to bring me any ducks. He and Denis delivered with six nice woody ducks. Of course that also means I had to clean six ducks, and cleaning ducks is not something I'm terribly adept at. Claude stepped in to help, making much quicker work of them than I did. I ended up with 4 of them breasted out and 2 whole ducks. I've never cleaned wood ducks before - I was surprised both how much smaller they were than mallards as well as how little fat they had in comparison. I'll be especially looking forward to trying to smoke the whole ducks on some future date.
After cleaning up from the duck-gut smell, there was still time for a walk down to the river. I think this pretty Spanish moss covered tree with a sandy agricultural field in the background says "Low Country" as much as anything. After Ohio's cold spell, it felt nice to be out in a warm sunny afternoon.
Rick dropped me off at a stand that I had remarked was an odd setup since the stand set in a group of baby pines, but the corn was in the middle of much larger pines. This made for weird lighting which affected how things looked from the stand.
Temperatures were warm (around 70F) and sunny. I had to shed a few layers of clothes since the box blind felt a little like I was in an EasyBake over - if it had been built by George Utley. The chair was also a bit low for the shooting window. Thankfully I had borrowed a cushion from Denis after the previous evening's cheese grater and this made the height just about perfect for me.
Once settled in, it was very quiet - almost too quiet. But this was also quite enjoyable.
Around 4:00 I looked up only to see something on the pile. I've tried to start wearing my glasses more while hunting and I wish I had done this sooner. There were definitely two pigs on the pile, but they looked really small. It was a bit hard to tell in the unusual lighting so after a few minutes I texted Rick a picture of them through the scope to confirm they were ~35 pounders. There was a similar incident several years ago when I passed on a group I thought was small, but Rick later said they were all around 85 pounds; I didn't want to repeat that. Rick confirmed my size suspicion.
(And in the picture the pig in front has just the remnants of baby-stripes still.)
The pigs hung around for about an hour. At first I was sure more had to come out since these toddlers rarely travel alone, but after around 15 minutes I put my gun down since I can't wait on red-alert indefinitely. Nothing else showed up.
Around 5:00 two deer popped out right in front of me. They peered down toward the pile and cautiously at first, walked toward the pigs. The small pigs wanted nothing to do with the deer and the pigs took off.
I actually think this picture is pretty funny with the deer staring down towards the pigs which can just barely be seen.
Around 5:30 the deer bolted away and I was almost 100% sure that meant bigger pig(s) were headed in. But the pile stayed empty for 10 minutes or so until the deer came back out and stayed until dark.
I had to pack up with quite a bit of light since the pile was so much darker than the area the stand was in. I was actually a little bit grateful to be done since the mosquitoes had gotten violently arrogant in the warm late afternoon. Waiting in the pitch black to be picked up it felt almost like an early summer evening - warm, little wind and noticeable humidity.
Once the truck showed up Denis had shot a big, stinky and wooly boar that was covered in mud. Claude had seen only deer and turkeys.
Denis treated us all to Ribeye steaks which was most awesome. It ended up being a bit of a later night as we talked before calling it for the day.
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