2019 Hog Hunt Day 5 - So Close (to the wrong thing)

I woke up and finished reading Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli.  Her story entitled "What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill" was nearly as good as "Shooting Dad."  The former reminded me of why I like reading her stuff so much.  Assassination Vacation is the first book of hers that I read and is excellent.  I recall reading it and getting mad, thinking, "Why didn't they teach history in school like this?"

Daylight came and things moved from NPR Fantasy Camp (reading something by a This American Life contributor) to South Carolina Hunting Fantasy Camp (pig camp).  But I can't help but think it is almost a sure thing that I'm the only person on this planet to have read an entire Sarah Vowell book while hunting wild boar.  Prove me wrong...

We dropped Will off at school and went to feed stands.  Another morning of the comfortable routine of hog hunting.  All the stands had been hit except the new one Rick just started baiting; the one where I shot my hog was also licked clean.  Back at the lodge there was a new denizen eyeing the gut bucket from my hog with a longing look - them's good eats!

It turned out that the other guy who was supposed to come into camp, who I've hunted with the last couple years, had a family emergency and wouldn't make it.  I feel bad for him, I've been there before.
Rick and I looked at stand pictures.  Two stands had hogs from daylight on them, and one of them had just about every color imaginable.  Guess where I was to sit that night?

Rick dropped me off and I made my way to the stand.  About 20 yards from the stand a doe jumped up from her bed and ran a few yards into the bush.  She stared at me and sauntered off, not seeing me as much of a threat.

I got into the stand and got comfortable for the afternoon.  Temperatures were up considerably from the beginning of the week and it was a bluebird sunny day.  It was awesome.
It didn't take too long before deer started to come out.  This was a bit surprising since the game camera had shown basically only hogs the previous night.  Still, it gave me something to watch.
One very small deer spent several hours very close the box blind.  I was able to get several good pictures.

The deer on the corn pile were a mix of does and small bucks.  One buck had a giant tine with a crab claw on one side, with a much smaller one on the other.  I guess that is the deer equivalent of adolescent acne and a changing voice.

As it got darker I was hopeful the hogs would come out.  They had to.  The deer left the pile a couple times before walking away, basically right on top of me.  I waited out the remaining light as long as I could but it just wasn't meant to happen.  Deer can be patterned pretty easily.  Hogs ... not so much.

Back at the lodge, Rick was thinking about ducks so he asked for help getting his boat out of the lake.  Sounds simple, right?  It never is.  The boat was nearly submerged and there wasn't a boat ramp (that I could see, because it was now also nearly pitch dark out).  So we ended up tugging the boat out with some tow straps and Rick's truck, after heaving it through some trees, and around some dock obstacles.
I guess it is all part of the adventure that is hog hunting.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 4 - Logging Does Not Lead to Serenity

The mornings are falling into a comfortable routine already.  That is bound to happen after coming down here for so many years.  I guess I'm struggling with that Steinbeck thing, where we spend our lives looking for security and then hating it when we find it.
I bet the hogs don't struggle with such things.  Their lives probably just vacillate between various levels of survival.

Once it got light out Rick and I bagged up corn before dropping off Will at school, then feeding stands.  Most of them were hit well and Rick started a few other spots to keep things going.  The corn pile on the stand I shot my hog the previous night had only barely been hit overnight.  "See what not shooting them in the head does," Rick kvetched.
Yes, not my finest hour.  But it happens and the end result was good (enough).

Back at the lodge I walked down to the river again.  Temperatures were slightly warmer than the previous day.  It looked like a good day to sit on a pig stand.

Rick and I headed out in the early afternoon and I sat on the Fish Snatch stand again.  The temperatures were great and I liked the overcast conditions.
There had been some logging activity in the area but it had all been pretty far away.  After sitting for a while, it moved close.  Very close.  At one point I peeked out the back door of the blind only to see a tree fall across the road.  They really weren't that close, but those machines must be crazy loud and one of them didn't run very well which just made it annoying.  It was not very much fun.

Right around 5:00 they moved on again.  I could still hear them in the distance, but barely, leaving me alone with my tinnitus.  With almost no wind it was almost too quiet in comparison.  I thought I heard something just outside the blind and peaked out the window a bit only to see a doe standing just a few yards away.  She ran another 10 yards down the 2-track and turned around - somewhat startled but not really on edge.  Deer are pretty animals.

Shortly she trotted down to the corn pile and another smaller deer followed.  They stayed around for the rest of the evening.  At some point I lost sight of the larger deer.  I've never seen both deer and pigs on the corn at the same time so they can be helpful to watch for any hogs in the area.  Deer are nervous animals and they kept looking all over as they usually do.  But no hogs ever showed.
I crossed that evil five minutes when it is too dark to shoot but I might do it anyway, without seeing anything.  Packing up my few things, I very quietly exited the blind and headed back to the gate.

Another day of hog hunting over.  Life goes on - for all of us on this day.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 3 - Some Kind of Wonderful (Pig Edition)

Rick has been listening to a lot of 80's music, bringing reminders of some of the horrors of high school.
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.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 2 - The Hogs are in the Bahamas; The Snow is in Ohio

It was a very hoggy day, but apparently not hoggy enough.

I slept quite well all things considered and woke up to rain hitting the window.  I thought about trying to sleep some more, but my brain was saying, "coffee... coffee..."

After a shower I get my coffee and read for a little while before making some oatmeal for breakfast.  Instant oatmeal isn't my favorite, but it will work.

Rick and I texted back and forth about going out with the rain and I decided it was worth it since pigs had been seen the previous two mornings; if things got really bad there was a small turkey blind I could escape to.  I suited up in rain gear including my awesome new rain hat and gun rain guard.  Rick dropped me off at the same stand from the previous evening.
I slowly worked my way in, stopping a few times to listen if I could hear hogs, but I never did.  It was easy to get situated although I sort of felt like I was sitting in the middle of the field.  It was surprisingly easy to stay quiet, and it was really nice when I first got out there.  There was some persistent morning fog and a quietness to the air.  Even though hog hunting in the morning isn't typically very productive, I do love morning hunts. 
It rained quite a bit of the morning, and the rain was becoming heavier and more frequent as the morning went on.  Hog-wise the morning was a bust.  By the time Rick came and got me, I was ready to be out of the elements.

We fed the hog stands.  Most had good sign, with no one stand really standing out.  There were a few new ones that I hadn't seen before and a couple which must not be in use this year.

At one point I got an email from SO back home with a picture of the snow.

The few inches of predicted snow had turned into something much uglier.  I guess I should have gotten the 4-wheeler ready for plowing and re-showed SO how to use it.  To say I feel genuinely bad about this is an understatement...

Back at the lodge I had a ferocious headache.  But a sort-of nap and a sort-of lunch mostly cured that. 

After dropping off a corn trailer Rick dropped me off at Fish Snatch - this is a stand I like, and I've taken hogs off of it before.  The afternoon was cloudy with the rain having moved on.  There was some wind, but not too much.  It just felt like a good day for hogs.

The evening was quiet - almost too quiet.  At least the box blind was dry and comfortable.
At one point I used the new "Google Assistant" on my phone and asked it: Where are the pigs
It told me the Bahamas...

Smart-ass damn phone - yes there is a famous cay in the Bahamas with pigs, but I don't think I can hunt there.  Or can I???  We'll see how South Carolina does for now.

Eventually it got too dark to see.  I unloaded my gun and headed back, meeting Rick about half way to the road.  My phone had unhappily rebooted a few times - this is a bad time to have phone problems, but I was finally able to email/text back and forth with SO.  She had been able to do some shoveling, but the snow was just too much.  Thankfully one of our neighbors had a plow rigged up and was able to help.  My guess is he probably thinks I'm either a dumb-ass or a mean bastard now.  And maybe I am.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 1 - An Extra Day of Hunting

I slept better than I thought I would and was up too early.  My plan was to wait for the gratis breakfast to open at 6:00, but after lying awake and watching The Weather Station for a while I realized it was hopeless.  After a quick shower, I packed up and put everything in the Ridgeline.
The woman working the hotel desk had to let me back in since the lobby door was locked, but as I walked in it was impossible not to notice the waffle iron was hot.  I asked if it was OK to have breakfast and she told me to go ahead - score!  I realize they probably cost the hotel only a few cents each, but I do love hotel waffles...

Checkout took too long as the people in front of me moved at the pace of dying snails and were doing something more complicated than checking out.  But I forced myself to be patient.  The previous night's drive allowed for lots of flexibility.  I was on the road a few minutes after 5:00.

There was a bit of snow, but it was above freezing and everything was just wet.  Traffic was minimal so I made good time on my Knoxville bypass.  I've never done this stretch in the dark before; it is a pretty drive in the daylight.

Eventually I made my way back onto the freeway for the bulk of the day.  I was listening to Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.  It is a fascinating read/listen about big data and big data analytics intermingled with what can be learned from what gets searched online or from social media.  The author has an engaging style which is funny and self-deprecating while also being extremely fascinating.  I'm not sure every one of his conclusions were fully supported in the book, but even with that, some of what is revealed from Google Search Trends is more than a little disturbing.  I must be a really, really boring person.
After finishing Everybody Lies, I moved to some NPR podcasts including several from Hidden Brain.  It almost seemed like a natural segue...

I made it to Rick's in the early afternoon.  He was busy but texted me asking if I wanted to hunt since I was early - that is why I was in South Carolina.
We headed out and I went to an area I hadn't seen before.  I sat in a World Famous ground blind, but felt sort of out in the middle of everywhere.  Temperatures were cool and cloudy (but much better than the heinous snow at home).
I took a catnap when I got out there, then perked up as the evening wore on.  At one point a deer walked up right on the other side of some live oaks from me.  It wheezed and took off - scaring me more than a little.
But no pigs showed.  As I was unloading my gun some coyotes very nearby started to howl; it was quite loud.  It was magical.

Rick picked me up and we headed back to the lodge.  I ate some noodles for dinner and we talked a bit.  The forecast is for rain overnight, but if it does remain dry I may sit on the same spot again in the morning.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 0 - Drive Day

A guy I work with is retiring soon - his last day in one month.  Most of his work, like mine, is in the trenches keeping the day-to-day business running.  The kind of work management says we need to stop doing so much of so more focus can be made on innovation.  Whatever that is.  As someone who has been in the department forever, he's indispensable.  Management has chosen not to replace him.  His work is being spread among the rest of the department, meaning the rest of the department that already does the work keeping the day-to-day business running.  The kind of work management says we need to stop doing so much of...
It seems like management is looking for an out on this one.  They are hoping people will step up and volunteer for this work to be absorbed into the system with minimal consequences.  I haven't bitten ... yet.  Management gets paid to make these decisions.  Whether they are supported after is another thing.  I'd like to believe that the decrease in bodies makes my job safer, makes my role slightly more indispensable, but if anything it makes it more perilous.  If no one exists to do the day-to-day work to keep the business running, that leaves only the boy-wonders (and girl-wonders) - who scoff at the day-to-day business denigrate those who do it - to work on innovation.  Whatever that is.  The short term implications would be minimal; the long term ... terminal.
Management wants to believe they follow the model of Steve Jobs and Lee Iacocca - charismatically leading to greatness.  But management's decisions often look far more like Jim Jones.  Desiring blind devotion but to what end?  Elon Musk may be a more current management idol, but the ongoing self destruction makes an analogy to Jim Jones almost too pertinent.
So what does all this have to do with hunting hogs?  Increasingly when I go on these adventures, I can't help but look back from some speculative future of unemployment and see it as financial self-immolation.  But if I'm going to live that way, I may as well be unemployed already, or at least underemployed, since at least then I won't have to drink the Kool-Aid (Mr. Smarty-Pants reminds us that Kool-Aid wasn't the drink used in Jonestown, so in deference to Kraft, we should be reminded that Jel-Sert's Flavor Aid was the beverage of choice.  It was cheaper...).

What counts as work, in the skilled trades, has some intrinsic limits; once a house or bridge is built, that’s the end of it. But in white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities—that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs. - Tim Wu

Jim Jones and Elon Musk be damned, I was out the door after work, in the early evening.  I swore I wasn't going to do this; that I was just going to get up super early and head out through the Winter Storm Warning in the wee hours of the morning.  But the cheap hotel about three hours from home and just outside of the storm's impact area started to make too much sense.
I drive in the dark every morning but there is something different at night.  Overhead lights glare meaner, oncoming headlights are angrier.  Still, the drive went well enough with only one backup at the I75/71 split until I thought I was almost to my destination of Corbin, Kentucky, only to look at the GPS and see 82 more miles.

I clicked through the miles one by one, checked into my hotel and got a meatball Subway sub and a Sprite Zero.  I'll have an idea in the morning if Day 0 was worth it.

A MicroAdventure - A Boy and His Dog

Published in 1969, A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison tells the story of a boy's life with his trusted dog in the post-apocalyptic world that will eventually get here.  Given that I'm eagerly anticipating a dystopian future, I'm drawn to parallels whenever I can find them.  As an aside only, while the 1975 movie based on the Ellison novella popularized his work, this is a very clear example where the written work is far superior to the movie - and the movie itself is really good.

It is unusual for a simple dog walk to turn into an adventure, even if that adventure is a micro-adventure.  But it happened.
I'm done hunting for the calendar year, but that doesn't mean everyone else was.  Ohio's deer gun season is split, with a week-long season near the beginning of December and a second weekend in the middle.  In 2018, that second weekend was December 15 and 16.  Late on the 16th, I was walking my dog about a mile away from home and late in the afternoon.  As I was going up a hill, I heard a ferociously loud gunshot to the east and looking over saw an orange-clad dude fire a second shot.  Immediately after this, I saw a doe and a buck running across the field in my direction.  The doe was moving, with the buck trailing significantly.  I watched the deer thinking, "That buck ain't right - he isn't hit well, but I'm quite sure he is hit."
The deer ran across the road right in front of me and made their way down to a brushy, swampy area on the edge of a field to the west.  They milled around the area, with the doe leaving fairly soon.  I continued to watch the buck, becoming more convinced by his body language that he was gut-shot.
I stood there for quite some time, watching the buck and waiting for the shooter (as this tale progresses, you may understand why I don't call him a hunter) to head in my direction.  I never saw the shooter again.  And I watched the buck for quite a while, slowly walking into a wooded area; I caught several glimpses of him as he continued walking.  I wanted to help by pointing out where I saw the deer last and even thought about walking across the field.  But walking around without orange on the last day of the gun-season just seemed like a very, very, very bad idea.  At some point, I decided there was no point in waiting for the shooter, and continued on toward home.

The following day I had several errands to run.  These errands involved deer feet, a bear hide and many rolls of coins - suffice to say it was already a bit of an odd day.  I will also admit that pulling a box of deer feet from the trunk of someone else's car feels somewhat fetishistic - such is my life.
Later in the day, I was again walking my youngest dog in the area where I had seen the deer and was absolutely compelled to investigate that previous day's deer.  I'm normally very conscientious about property rights, but less so for the train tracks and wasn't sure I would even move off of them ... very far.  But as I walked down the tracks near the area I had seen the deer last, my dog pulled hard to the north and a manner that was a bit unusual.  We continued into the woods for a bit, made a small circle around, and my dog led me right to the dead deer.

The deer was a pretty decent 9-point.  Still young without much mass.  But a decent deer.  I had a hard time deciphering the bullet holes, but he was only gut/ass shot.  And he smelled like a gut-shot deer; even with the cool temperature, the meat would be unusable at this point.
I pondered what to do.  I kind of wanted the antlers and felt entitled, as I couldn't see how the shooter made even a tepid attempt to find the deer.  But if the shooter was a young kid or something, the situation would be a little bit different, and I might even feel a bit bad for him.
On the way back home, I decided I should go to the farm where I thought the land was owned through and at least see if the shooter could be located.
Later in the day I did this and it turned out the shooter was from there (a relative who didn't live on the farm) and they had given up after seeing no blood.  I talked with the farmer for quite some time - he said he would get some pictures of the deer and I could have the antlers after that.  I asked how old the shooter was and the farmer thought for a few minutes, "twenty..." and my interpretation of the situation as well as any sympathy I may have had for the shooter's difficult situation evaporated.

The following day I stopped by the farm again after work to see if the farmer had found the deer.  He had, but the shooter had taken it, "I told him he couldn't be bothered to look for it so he couldn't have it, but he took it anyway."
It was his deer - the story had grown so I did want the antlers, but it was his deer.
"Do you want horns?"  (pet peeve - deer have antlers, not horns)
I do use them for projects at times.
"Well, I got a whole shelf of them that my wife made me get out of the garage.  They've just been sitting there for years so they are yours if you want them."

What can I say, I ended up with a pile of antlers to use for wildlife-themed projects now.  Some of these antlers are quite impressive - where are all these monster deer that I never see???  Yes - these ghosts show up on trail cameras all around the whitetail world ... at 2:00AM.

I'm quite troubled about the gut-shot buck.  Sub-optimal hits will happen - I've had them.  But two shit shots at a distance that didn't look that far?  Yeah, I guess that can happen.  Still, a hunter has a duty to expend all resources looking for the animal.  Always!  Even without my dog, I could have found the buck in a short amount of time.  This was also the same buck I've seen several times through the fall and I was kind of rooting for him to make it through the season even if he was young and stupid.

And yet, there is still a silver lining - for me.  The area I live in is very friendly, but talking to people about anything beyond the weather is unusual since people also tend to keep to themselves.  Having a chance to meet a clearly-interesting farmer was a positive.  He was also exceedingly generous to give me the antlers.

Earlier in December, I was starting to contemplate all the things I didn't do with my vacation as I had a bit more left to burn at the end of the year than I had planned for.
At the end of A Boy and His Dog, the dog's life is saved by "sustenance" provided by the boy (read the story, I won't go into details).  My dogs have a lifetime of food so the parallels are basically non-existent.  Adventure is what one makes of it:  A boy and his dog (and a gut-shot deer).