Perseid Meteor Shower Sow
As there were no hogs at Horn Hill, I contacted my buddy at TBR to hunt his place and he graciously agreed. So I grabbed my new Lone Star Boars lucky cap and headed to his place. When I arrived, I found that his wife was already hunting one stand, a stand that I would have to pass by on the way to hunt the food plot stand I typically hunt at TBR. I sent her a text message and she gave me the OK to cross her field of fire.
As soon as I got to my stand and was set up, I exchanged several texts with my hunting partner about what we were seeing and what had been happening on the property. There had been hog tracks. She heard noises in my direction (probably in the creek bottoms), and she was watching a bunch of raccoons.
Around twilight, I sent her a text saying I could see a deer at a point where both of our fields of view crossed. This was no concern to her as she has seen a hog in the opposite direction. Time passed and she was unable to get a shot. Eventually, it became too dark and she called it an evening.
Over the next 5 hours, I saw a total of 5 deer and one skunk. Storms had been rolling in to where we were and I was going to stay through the storms, but the broke up before reaching central Montague County. There was another group of storms heading toward us and so I decided to go ahead and leave before they could arrive (though apparently they never did.
By this time, the temps were in the mid 80s and the winds were remaining to be out of the SSE with gusts up to 20 mph. This wasn't to my favor walking out because I had to head north and west which means likely being winded by the deer and hogs, but tonight, it worked out well enough.
Leaving the stand I proceeded about 200 yards north and then turned west to cross a large earthen erosion control dam. Montague County has more of these such dams than any other county in the state of Texas. Just off the far western end of the dam is one of the feeders my hunting partner was watching. I could see the feeder light from the opposite end of the dam, but the base of the feeder is several feet lower than the dam and there is a good bit of ground vegetation as well. So I could see nothing under the feeder, initially.
About 2/3 of the way across the dam, I am scanning both sides with my thermal scope and seeing nothing until I took a long look toward the feeder. There were the coons. There must have been 6 or 7 of them, some fairly large, and unusually active. I switched over to my rifle and what I was seeing wasn't coons, but the backs, the top halves of several hogs. The lower portions of the hogs were being hidden from view by the topography. At that point, I sort of had to laugh at myself. My hunting partner said there were a bunch of coons and I was expecting to see coons and so when I first had strange glowing shapes show up on the thermal scope, I immediately and incorrectly assumed they were coons.
The hogs were moving between the feeder and a small grove of trees in which a game camera was mounted. I could see the game camera's IR flash going off from time to time as the camera took pictures of the hogs. Apparently I was far enough north that the SSE winds were not carrying my scent toward the hogs and I advanced about 10 yards toward them and maybe 3 or 4 yards to the side in order to get a better firing solution on the hogs. From my position, shots up and right would head toward where I parked and if far enough right, toward the landowners' home. However, I picked a spot that had previously held a tower stand and so I knew my direction of fire would be safe.
The first hog I picked was a large black hog that was moving from right to left and promptly moved underneath the feeder with a leg between the hog and me. So I searched for another large hog and found one that was moving into a position safe for being shot. I checked my original hog who was still under the feeder and went to the secondary target. From 60 yards, shot her with a quartering toward shot to the neck just below the ear that exited the opposite shoulder. She dropped in place and the hogs started to scatter.
I jacked a new round into the chamber as the game camera flashed another picture. I tracked a moving hog, a somewhat smaller hog, and fired. Sometime just before this happened, the video cut out (again) and so that shot was not recorded. I heard the impact, but was unable to track down the hog.
After scanning and rescanning the area and even going up into my partner's tower to get a better view of the area, I was unable to find the 2nd hog. I verified that the first hog was dead and retrieved my gear for documentation. After all was said and done, I ended up dragging off the sow with my little Celica and using 550 parachord. It was while hooking up the hog to my car that I noticed all the meteors. I saw 3 or 4 in just a few minutes and then I recalled that we are at the height of the Perseid Meteor Shower.
The sow turned out to weigh approximately 110 lbs, was not pregnant or with milk.
Rem 788 .308 Rifle
150 gr. Nosler Accubond cartridge loaded by Silver State Armory
Pulsar N550 NV Scope
unidentified IR Illuminator
60 yard shot, off hand
Lucky hat and Angry Bird has a new eye patch!
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