Morning had Rick and Denis go shoot ducks until they, plus Claude and I went out to feed stands. Doug had gone into town to eat breakfast. All the stands had been cleaned out; daylight is always the question.
Weather forecast was for the day to be a transition day. It was cloudy but nice temperatures. Rain was coming into the area for the afternoon.
Back at the lodge there was very slow down-time. Usually I have something to read, but I didn't this year - trying to find something on TV seemed like too much work. I don't do "nothing" well, so I was glad when early afternoon came ... sort of glad - since it had also started raining. Intermittently, the rain was quite significant. Rick had told me I was going to sit at the Church stand in a world-famous ground blind. I wasn't excited about sitting in the rain, but one of my rules is to never "guide the guide" - so I was suited up in my rain gear. I wasn't able to find either of my waterproof hats, so I must have accidently left them at home.
Rick dropped me off and I had to hoof it the short distance back to my spot with my gun, bag, chair and gun tripod. It was a bit unwieldy but I made it work. It took me a few minutes to get my world-famous stand situated. I was sitting next to a turkey box blind. I thought about turning the turkey blind 90 degrees so it faced the corn, but it would have made too much noise - plus the condition of the blind was suspect at best, so even if I could have lifted it, I wasn't sure it would have held together. I was able to sit right by the door, allowing me to keep my bag and gun inside the blind. I was in the rain - at least my crap wasn't. All world-famous ground blinds look a bit silly, but this wasn't the worst I'd ever been in. Tucked in next to the turkey blind with live oaks around me, I had reasonably good cover.
Time passed in spurts as did the rain. The trend was for the rain to come to decrease. It wasn't terrible sitting there but somewhere between uncomfortable and miserable. I made the best of it.
Around 4:00 I looked up and saw something on the corn, "What the..." I grabbed my gun to look through the scope and sure enough, there were four small hogs on the corn.
The largest was probably in 50-pound range. I almost thought about shooting him, but that size can be hard to judge. I watched them for about 20 minutes until a few more the same size came out. This is a good sign.
Sure enough, a good sized sow walked out, "She'll work." But with all the little porkers running around, it was really hard to get a bead on her and just her. No hurry, I just took my time until her head was by itself towards the right. Bang. She dropped and did the 100-yard dash on the ground. The little guys left and almost immediately came right back. One or two of the little pigs actually pushed the bigger one away from the corn.
They fed for a little while until they ran out of the area. One very light-colored pig was struggling to leave with the group and I'm a little afraid I may have winged it when I shot the sow. I have no ethical qualms about hunting - especially pigs since they are a non-native, feral, destructive species. But I don't ever want to cause an animal to suffer. It is hard to know exactly what happened since little pigs running around is always a little chaotic.
Pigs always look small on the ground and in this case it was almost worse. The area is thick with water and deep mud, so all I could see was a small spot of black in slop. The rest of the afternoon passed quickly enough. Rain had almost stopped. A few deer came in, but they seemed nervous of the pig still laying there. At one point the little guys popped out closer to me than the corn. I didn't see the light-colored pig with them, but it was getting quite dark by this point.
Just before dark Rick came to get me. Denis was already in the truck. We drove down to the pile. Rick got close and pointed to my pig in the heavy mud, "Fetch." I walked over and had to unstuck her from the mud. At least I could see it was a very clean head shot. It took a few minutes to pull her to the back of the truck. When Rick asked what took so long, my response was not fit to print...
Denis had shot a really nice eating boar. My hog was loaded next to his. No one else saw any pigs. Back at the lodge cleaning both of the hogs was an exercise in mud as much as anything else. We left both pigs hanging since temperatures overnight were to get down into the lower 20s.
Denis and Claude generously shared their roast with me - saving me from another noodle bowl. As the night wound down, I had to laugh at myself since I was a bit surly initially about sitting in the rain, but it all worked out.
Didn't The Weather Girls sing the song "It's Raining Pigs"?
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