Texaslawman came to hunt for the weekend. We hunted hard Friday and Saturday on 1400 acres of pecan orchards and pasture along with a local 18 hole golf course that backs up to the Red River. We have hunted these areas a lot before and they have always produced a fair number of dead hogs by the end of the weekend. However, the last couple times Texaslawman has come to hunt things have been slow. It had me worried that we had shot too many hogs (if there is such a thing) and they started to avoid our areas all together or the sounders had too low of numbers and the heat was keeping them from moving too far from cover and water.
Fortunately this was only partially true. You see pecan orchards provide a majority of the hog's diet in this area, but only for about 4-5 months of the year. It all came together on why we weren't seeing hogs in their normal spots. It was a food source change. Every place we saw hogs this weekend was in a cut winter wheat field. Every single one!
We have one spot on the east end of a 800 acre pecan orchard that is a cut wheat field that the Wichita River borders the south edge. I have been baiting this spot for about a month or more now with inedible waste pecans, soured corn, table scraps, anis oil, and other food stuff hogs like. This field has produced a few lone boars, but not any large sounders. Texaslawman and I typically drive through the properties and spot then stalk, but this spot you can't drive up to for fear of spooking the hogs before you get a shot. So we were on foot.
We slowly crept across a land bridge that divides a slew and the two fields. As we get about 3/4 of the way across Texaslawman spots a pig in his thermal and holds his hand up to stop. I could barely make out the boar in the night vision in the field because of the very small 8% moon and slight cloud cover we had, but I could tell it was a hog. We double check the wind and scan the field a couple more times for any sign of another hog, but didn't find any. We slowly stalk in to about 50 yards and notice there is a deer about 50 yards on the other side of the hog. This had us worried because deer spook a lot earlier than hogs and will tip off a hog of danger when they blow. I setup the camera to video and Texaslawman says he is ready. We get on target and I start a 3,2,1 countdown. We both connect with good neck shots using 6.8 spc's with handloaded 120 grain hornady sst bullets. The hog goes belly up with a couple leg twitches and is lights out! I was really excited on this one because it was going to be the first hog kill I got on video with night vision.
We walk over and check him out. He was around 150 pounds and stinky. We checked out the entrance and exit wounds from the round and they were pretty impressive. As typical for the 6.8 and 120 sst. So we decided to watch the video to see how it turned out. Well.....guess what......I didn't press RECORD!!!!
We drove to a few other properties Friday night and didn't see anything in an area we had permission to shoot. However, we saw around 15 hogs eating in a cut wheat field on adjacent properties. We watched them for a while hoping they would cross the road, but they just never would.
Saturday we started the day off right with some clay target and snapping turtle shooting. It was Africa hot out so we only did it for a few hours. We wrapped it up around six and headed for some delicious Mexican grub. Our hunt started around 9 PM and we didn't see much right off the bat. We drove our typical loop of the properties and didn't see a single hog. However, we did see a few does, two fawns, a few coyotes, and a bobcat. There were a lot of other animals like raccoons out feeding too. Typically if the raccoons are out feeding the hogs are feeding somewhere. So this got me curious.
There are a few dirt roads that are spread out around the areas I have permission to hunt in. So I decided to just drive the dirt roads with night vision on just to see what was around. Talk about HOGS!!!. We saw around 80 pigs on the surrounding properties, but they were all untouchable. Here I thought all the hogs in my area were staying in the river because of the heat. Nope! They just changed to a different food source for now. Eventually the drought and heat will kill off the wheat and they will be back to rooting in the orchards for bugs and roots until the pecans start to drop. They will start to consistently hit the pig pipe, pig holes, and corn feeders too. It was amazing. Nearly every wheat field we looked in had a boar or two off on their own and multiple sounders ranging from 8-20 hogs.
So after taking a few pictures of the hogs we couldn't shoot and being happy that there is still an abundance of targets in the area we moved back to the properties were we could actually hunt hogs. After all, this is a hunting story!
We were driving the larger 800 acre orchard again and got to the land bridge for the stalk. We get about 1/2 way across and Texaslawman spots another hog. It was a loan boar and was eating off the exact same bait pile and nearly standing on the dead boar from the night before! I guess they don't care about other dead pigs. We stalked up to about 40 yards and the boar turns head on to face us. We waited about two minutes, which felt like forever, for the boar to turn broadside. Finally he did and I started the count down. The boar was hit with two shots at nearly the same time and he takes off running at a full sprint. I let off another round for a miss, Texaslawman connects, then we both get our lead right and shoot at the same time and the hog cartwheels to a stop. This boar was around 130 pounds, stinky, and didn't know how to die. He had four holes in him. one a little back in the gut, two in his vitals and one square in the head. I think the head shot is what finally put him down, but he was dead running!
We continued our loop through the properties and spotted some more pigs in the adjacent wheat fields, but nothing in our areas. We finally wrapped it up for the night about 5:30 AM. Overall, it was very successful weekend. No, we did not have huge kill numbers or large sounders in our shooting areas, but now I know they are there and they will be back to their old tricks when the winter wheat runs out.
Hope you enjoyed the story and happy hunting!
Fortunately this was only partially true. You see pecan orchards provide a majority of the hog's diet in this area, but only for about 4-5 months of the year. It all came together on why we weren't seeing hogs in their normal spots. It was a food source change. Every place we saw hogs this weekend was in a cut winter wheat field. Every single one!
We have one spot on the east end of a 800 acre pecan orchard that is a cut wheat field that the Wichita River borders the south edge. I have been baiting this spot for about a month or more now with inedible waste pecans, soured corn, table scraps, anis oil, and other food stuff hogs like. This field has produced a few lone boars, but not any large sounders. Texaslawman and I typically drive through the properties and spot then stalk, but this spot you can't drive up to for fear of spooking the hogs before you get a shot. So we were on foot.
We slowly crept across a land bridge that divides a slew and the two fields. As we get about 3/4 of the way across Texaslawman spots a pig in his thermal and holds his hand up to stop. I could barely make out the boar in the night vision in the field because of the very small 8% moon and slight cloud cover we had, but I could tell it was a hog. We double check the wind and scan the field a couple more times for any sign of another hog, but didn't find any. We slowly stalk in to about 50 yards and notice there is a deer about 50 yards on the other side of the hog. This had us worried because deer spook a lot earlier than hogs and will tip off a hog of danger when they blow. I setup the camera to video and Texaslawman says he is ready. We get on target and I start a 3,2,1 countdown. We both connect with good neck shots using 6.8 spc's with handloaded 120 grain hornady sst bullets. The hog goes belly up with a couple leg twitches and is lights out! I was really excited on this one because it was going to be the first hog kill I got on video with night vision.
We walk over and check him out. He was around 150 pounds and stinky. We checked out the entrance and exit wounds from the round and they were pretty impressive. As typical for the 6.8 and 120 sst. So we decided to watch the video to see how it turned out. Well.....guess what......I didn't press RECORD!!!!
We drove to a few other properties Friday night and didn't see anything in an area we had permission to shoot. However, we saw around 15 hogs eating in a cut wheat field on adjacent properties. We watched them for a while hoping they would cross the road, but they just never would.
Saturday we started the day off right with some clay target and snapping turtle shooting. It was Africa hot out so we only did it for a few hours. We wrapped it up around six and headed for some delicious Mexican grub. Our hunt started around 9 PM and we didn't see much right off the bat. We drove our typical loop of the properties and didn't see a single hog. However, we did see a few does, two fawns, a few coyotes, and a bobcat. There were a lot of other animals like raccoons out feeding too. Typically if the raccoons are out feeding the hogs are feeding somewhere. So this got me curious.
There are a few dirt roads that are spread out around the areas I have permission to hunt in. So I decided to just drive the dirt roads with night vision on just to see what was around. Talk about HOGS!!!. We saw around 80 pigs on the surrounding properties, but they were all untouchable. Here I thought all the hogs in my area were staying in the river because of the heat. Nope! They just changed to a different food source for now. Eventually the drought and heat will kill off the wheat and they will be back to rooting in the orchards for bugs and roots until the pecans start to drop. They will start to consistently hit the pig pipe, pig holes, and corn feeders too. It was amazing. Nearly every wheat field we looked in had a boar or two off on their own and multiple sounders ranging from 8-20 hogs.
So after taking a few pictures of the hogs we couldn't shoot and being happy that there is still an abundance of targets in the area we moved back to the properties were we could actually hunt hogs. After all, this is a hunting story!
We were driving the larger 800 acre orchard again and got to the land bridge for the stalk. We get about 1/2 way across and Texaslawman spots another hog. It was a loan boar and was eating off the exact same bait pile and nearly standing on the dead boar from the night before! I guess they don't care about other dead pigs. We stalked up to about 40 yards and the boar turns head on to face us. We waited about two minutes, which felt like forever, for the boar to turn broadside. Finally he did and I started the count down. The boar was hit with two shots at nearly the same time and he takes off running at a full sprint. I let off another round for a miss, Texaslawman connects, then we both get our lead right and shoot at the same time and the hog cartwheels to a stop. This boar was around 130 pounds, stinky, and didn't know how to die. He had four holes in him. one a little back in the gut, two in his vitals and one square in the head. I think the head shot is what finally put him down, but he was dead running!
We continued our loop through the properties and spotted some more pigs in the adjacent wheat fields, but nothing in our areas. We finally wrapped it up for the night about 5:30 AM. Overall, it was very successful weekend. No, we did not have huge kill numbers or large sounders in our shooting areas, but now I know they are there and they will be back to their old tricks when the winter wheat runs out.
Hope you enjoyed the story and happy hunting!
