Headed over to hunt at TBR, my buddy's place. Across the road from his place is a wheat field, hay field, and cattle pens. He has been telling me for months how he sees hogs during the in the wheat field, lots of hogs. I sort of doubted his claims until last week when I saw them for myself. Today, they were in the cattle pen area. I slowed down to get their pic and by the time I was stopped and the camera was ready, they were running for the trees. I only caught these three out of about 15 that I saw. Previously, I had seen about 24 of them. My buddy says sometimes there are even more. Before running, they were eating out of the cattle feeders.
So I hunted with no luck and got chased out of the stand by the storms. I left TBR about 10:30 and drove slowly by the neighbor's property, scanning with my thermal scope. The cattle pen area lit up like Christmas, but nothing was really moving. So I came to a stop and watched and slowly they took notice and started moving out. I watched through thermal as they passed through some choke point (fence?) where they went through 1 at a time to leave this area to the NE. In all, I counted 42 hogs, big ones down to wee little piglets.
Now the sad part. The landowner does not allow hunting on his land. The hogs have carte blanche. They are eating the owners wheat, hay, and getting into the cattle stores, but no hunting is allowed.
After all the hogs squirted through and were in the next pasture, somewhat further back from the road, they all sort of stopped and milled around for a bit as I watched them. I guess they determined that I was not coming after them and so they weren't going to be too bothered to run too far. In all, I watched them about 5 minutes, less than 100 yards away. I left before they did and all I could do was shake my head.
So I hunted with no luck and got chased out of the stand by the storms. I left TBR about 10:30 and drove slowly by the neighbor's property, scanning with my thermal scope. The cattle pen area lit up like Christmas, but nothing was really moving. So I came to a stop and watched and slowly they took notice and started moving out. I watched through thermal as they passed through some choke point (fence?) where they went through 1 at a time to leave this area to the NE. In all, I counted 42 hogs, big ones down to wee little piglets.
Now the sad part. The landowner does not allow hunting on his land. The hogs have carte blanche. They are eating the owners wheat, hay, and getting into the cattle stores, but no hunting is allowed.
After all the hogs squirted through and were in the next pasture, somewhat further back from the road, they all sort of stopped and milled around for a bit as I watched them. I guess they determined that I was not coming after them and so they weren't going to be too bothered to run too far. In all, I watched them about 5 minutes, less than 100 yards away. I left before they did and all I could do was shake my head.
