Texas Pigs

This past week a group of eight traditional bowhunters from Colorado made their way to Texas to hunt wild pigs.  I was just so lucky enough to be on the trip. We were hunting on the Martin Family Ranch, north of Abilene. 

The ranch we hunted is 20,000 acres, more than enough for eight guys. The ranch house has 13 beds, a large screen TV, large kitchen, and two bathrooms. The lease managers on the property stayed with us at the house the entire time. They were very willing to help with anything we wanted, or just step back and let us do our own thing. They treated us the exact way I would have wanted to be treated.

Mike Koenig taking some warm up shots

The first night in to the hunt Eric Sawyer shot this beautiful bobcat. Man! I would trade a lot of pigs for the chance to shoot a bobcat. What a trophy! Eric also shot a nice pig the following evening.

They told us that there are not many armadillos on this ranch. This guy was too busy digging around to hear me walk up behind him. I gave him a little nudge with my boot right after I took this picture. 

 

Tracy Gullisken right before an encounter of the swine kind

Pictured below is Poke Mountain. Yeah I know...mountain? I guess not everything is bigger in Texas. It ain't even fit for children to climb! Poke Mountain is supposedly a honey hole for hogs but I never made it up there. 

 

Another view of Poke Mountain at a distance

Some of the beautiful country we were hunting
 

Sign of hogs rooting around was, literally, everywhere.
 

I don't remember the name of the plant but this little booger is what the pigs were going crazy for. Keep scrolling down and you'll see why.
 

That big, long root has the pigs going hog wild. I cleaned it up and gave it a try. I would say that it tastes like a very mild radish. It's really not bad. I'm not sure what it would do to my digestive system but I think it would taste lovely in a salad.


On this hunt I used a Chargin' Bull bow, the second one ever made, crafted by my cousin, Chad Graham. I had not owned the bow for a day before it drew its first blood.

Now on to the hunting part! The guys recommended that I come sit by this feeder for an afternoon, claiming that the pigs were hitting it regularly. But as I sat there a strong, strong, north wind kept blasting me in the face. I looked around, trees and limbs and bushes and everything else were moving all over the place. I decided it would be a dang waste of a windy day not to 'still hunt' up a nearby creek .

 

So I started hunting my way in to the wind. I'd move 30, 40, 50 yards, or whatever felt good, and then sit around and look at birds, look through my binos, or do anything I could to force myself to go slow. I had three hours to make my way through an area that I could walk fast in 25 minutes.

An hour into my hunt I knelt down in a likely looking area. While glassing through my binos I spotted some feet walking on a little bald knob. My first thought was deer, I never expected to see a pigs little tiny legs moving around. But sure enough, a little red pig was feeding along. The red pig and another were kind of angling towards me.

My mind and body switched into Panther Mode. I angled towards them, trying to cut them off.

After closing the distance to about 30 yards I sat down to see what they would do. The wind could not have been better - it was still blowing very hard and right in my face. Since the pigs were coming right at me I waited to shoot. I was enjoying the show.

The red pig fed into a little depression about five yards from the tree I was hiding behind. I drew my new bow as the pig turned its head and gave me a broadside angle. Now I've never claimed to be a real dead-eye with a trad bow, but at five yards even I hit what I'm aiming at...usually.

The pig was in that little depression you can see in the picture below

 

The pig ran about 40 yards after my shot. I used an Eclipse 4-blade on a cedar arrow.
 

 

I think this is a good way to start out with a new bow. 
Just hours into its hunting career and we made meat!
 

Of course I had to snap some pictures before the sun went down. So I took a few pics of the pig and got ready to clean it. The Silver Fox (that's what I call my Dad) put a wicked edge on my knife before the hunt. I couldn't wait to use my sharp knife so I pulled it out to gut the pig. Only five inches into my first cut and I was interrupted by pig grunting. I look up and see a small group of pigs walking right towards me. Back into Panther Mode.

But where's my bow!? Not by my side! It's ten yards away in a bush and I am in plain sight of the pigs.

So I started snorting like a pig and crawled over to my bow. The pigs accepted me as one of their own and kept coming my way. Turns out my wife is right, I am a pig (and a good one)!

The first pig to come by wasn't so convinced that I was a bush, so I let him walk on past. The second pig though...he wasn't so lucky. Arrow #2 was put in flight.

My view from where I sat with the first pig.

 

Both pigs fell within sight. They certainly weren't big. But hey, anybody can hit the big ones!

All in all we had a really fantastic time. Of the eight hunters that made the trip six got good shots at pigs, and most got multiple shots. We are definitely going back next year. Anybody interested in a real good time needs to get in touch with us so we can pass along the information for this ranch. There are no high fences, you can hunt however you would like, and the lease manager is a traditional bowhunter. 

My new, 60", Chargin' Bull recurve weighs in at 64@28". I used cedar arrows and killed both pigs with 4-blade Eclipse broadheads. The first shot was a complete pass-through  and the second shot left about 5 inches of arrow sticking out on the near side. Broadheads were 145gr and arrows came in around 570gr.

Time to get ready for one of my favorite times of the year...turkey season! 

Winter Marathon

Danny and I decided to do a little coyote calling in the mountains this past weekend. We had been seeing lots of tracks and thought that our chances would be pretty good. Plus it was a good excuse to get outside, cabin fever is really starting to set in!

Our first set up, seen below, was in the middle of a part of the forest that was recently logged. We figured it would give us a longer line of sight so that hopefully we could see the coyotes before they were right on top of us.

Nothing came in to our first calling sequence so we decided to hike over to another drainage and call again. On our way we ran in to this:

The tracks were super fresh and I had a mountain lion tag in my pocket, so what could it hurt to follow them for a little bit.  A little bit turned in to a long bit, and we spent the better part of the day following mountain lion tracks. 

It started snowing pretty good on us so we had a good idea how fresh the tracks were. About 5 miles (as the crow flies) in to our hike we came across the cat's bed. A little further and we found some pee in the snow, still warm. It looked like the cat knew we were close, it started to lead us through some real gnarly stuff. The cat headed straight down the canyon from hell, and as far from the truck as we were, we decided that the cat had won. We turned around.

It was very interesting to see how the cat traveled through the country. It would often follow the very top of a ridge, or follow a road. Every time it came to an outcropping of rocks it walked to the edge as if to look around...just like I do.

I had not planned on walking that far and was carrying WAY TOO MUCH gear with me.

Danny is still getting over a shoulder surgery and cannot shoot his bow.

 

We were in pretty big and vertical country. We saw lots of deer and even some fresh turkey tracks. I know where I'll be when the turkey season opens in Colorado!

Big Nebraska Buck!

After Tom and Dan got done hunting in Wisconsin they decided to make a stop-over in Nebraska. After all, the deer were rutting, and it was on the way home!

Big bucks seem to materialize out of thin air along the particular river where they were hunting. Chad, Tom's nephew, sees a real bruiser or two every year around the first week of November. This year was no exception.

 

 

Danny had this great looking bobcat meander by him.

On the morning of November 8th Chad was sitting one of his favorite stands. Some noise behind him startled him to attention. Peering over his shoulder he saw a set of antlers quickly moving his direction. As fast as he dared Chad removed his bow from it's hook. In no time the buck moved in to sight. A quick glance confirmed it was a nice buck, and no later was an arrow on the way.

Chad is a deadly shot. This was no exception. The bucks crashed a short ways before dying. He is an absolutely beautiful deer, a perfect example of the species - not a monster, but not a baby. Chad shot this deer with his Bassett recurve, Carbon Express Heritage arrow, and Magnus Stinger broadhead.

 

 

That same morning Tom watched a fantastic buck pass by him at 45 yards - just too far with the recurve. Based on the direction he was headed Tom chose his stand for the evening. Danny posted in the same tree Chad had success in that morning. The general consensus was that was Tom was in the sweet spot, and everybody hoped the big buck would move through that area.

As luck would have it, as luck always has it in this family, the big buck walked right by Danny instead. A shoulder injury forced Danny in to a super light weight compound bow for this season. But it would take a lot more than that to keep Danny from hunting. The pain was almost unbearable, and it was a tough decision to forego surgery until after the season. But clearly it was the right decision!

Danny struggled to pull back that light weight compound as the beautiful buck walked along the edge of the field. Part of what makes Danny such a great hunter is his ability to close the deal in the heat of the moment. And he did.

 

 

November 8th turned out to be the perfect day to cap off this stellar season for Danny and Chad. 

Whitetail Madness

Tom and Dan were in the middle of whitetail madness in the first part of November. And they did pretty good.

Business takes Tom eastward a few times a year to Wisconsin. One of those trips just so happens to coincide with the beginning of the whitetail rut. 

In college I made friends with a couple of outstanding people. Malcolm, who is in his 70's now and still more active than me. And Nick, who is now a Madison Police Officer. Nick's uncle farms in SW Wisconsin, and he has given us permission on some great farms in the area. Between those two good friends we are pretty much set with great deer hunting every year.

Tom and Dan had tons of small bucks cruise past them. They got to witness some great deer behavior while waiting for a nice buck to cruise by.

November 4th has always seemed to be the magical day for us in Wisconsin. So we try to hunt from November 1st - November 7th if we can help it at all. On November 2nd Danny was in the middle of mayhem. A hot doe in the area drew in bucks from all over the place.

Deer were chasing everywhere. Danny was on the edge of some standing corn, and bucks were zipping in, out, and all through the corn. Danny said that the bucks in the cornfield sounded like a pond full of frogs. They were grunting non-stop.

Finally, 12 yards from Danny, a nice buck stepped out in to the open. Danny sent a Muzzy Phantom tipped arrow in the exact place it needed to be.

Three days later Tom returned to the same corner of woods that Danny was in. There were still deer around, and at least one hot doe was still in the neighborhood. She led this neat little buck to within 15 yards of Tom. He mad a perfect shot with his Hummingbird recurve.

This buck had some real neat character, and even sported a 1" drop tine on his left side.

Tom shot his Hummingbird recurve, with a CX Heritage arrow, and Muzzy Phantom broadhead.

Big Kansas Muley

Want to know the definition of patience and discipline? It can be summed up in this picture.

That is our good customer and friend, Brock, and his brother Brett. They're just 12 yards from a monster mule deer in a milo field.

See the antlers?

They had been watching this deer for some time. Never going after him until the conditions were just perfect. Several times they watched him bed down in a stalkable position, only to hold off because something wasn't quite right.

On October 14th they finally got their chance. With a good enough wind to cover their sound they watched the deer bed down. Over the next seven hours they made their way into position, a measly 12 yards from the bedded giant.

They patiently waited the buck out, knowing that he would eventually stand on his own. One time the buck stood up, turned a few circles, and then laid down again before offering a shot. It didn't phase the hunters, they had all day, and with a good wind they felt no pressure to force the issue. 

Towards the middle of the afternoon the buck stood again. Brett was waiting this time, and when the buck turned and offered a quartering away shot, Brett sent an arrow on the way. 

WATCH THE VIDEO!

That's real hunting! Brett made a perfect shot and the deer died very quickly. Brock did good on his own, stalking and killing a monster muley of his own a few days later. These boys are hunters.