The Hog Blog

Wow, I let Thursday and Friday slip right by without so much as a quickie post.  Sorry about that, folks. 

Motivation is ebbing right now, and it’s been a little tough to get off my butt and write something… although I do appreciate the hog-related news and other info some of you have sent. 

For the first time in over a decade, I’m feeling the pinch of unemployment.  Since I’m self-employed as a consultant (I do instructional design and development work), I’m used to being “between projects”.  That’s a regular part of this kind of work.  But never before have I found myself in the position I’m in now, where the opportunities simply aren’t coming in.  It’s been a few months, and my financial “security padding”  is almost all used up.  So yeah, I’m starting to sweat it a little.

Anyway, not to whine or anything, as I know a lot of folks have it a lot worse than I do right now… but it’s funny how, the less work I have to do, the less motivated I am to do other things, like blogging.  Yesterday was the first beautiful, sunny day in weeks, and instead of getting out to ride the horse or something, I sat here in front of the computer and TV like a lump.  … and still didn’t write a blog entry!  D’oh! 

Our old friend John (formerly of Hunting with Jim) found himself in a similar position, so he and some of his friends found a new outlet in blogging… check out Unemploymentality if you get half a chance.  Good, poignant, and sometimes funny stuff. 

So, against John’s sage advice, I think I’m gonna order me a Snuggie, log onto Facebook, and hibernate in self-pity. 

A Snuggie?

If you’re not getting enough hog-related reading around here, it looks like some of my friends from the blogosphere are doing some hog hunting and writing of their own lately.  This makes sense, of course, since hogs are about the only thing left in season this year.

First of all, there’s Jeff over at LowCountry Hunting.  Jeff hunts and guides down in the Low Country (Southeastern, South Carolina), so he knows a little about hunting pigs.  He just did a great post on the five reasons you might NOT get your hog.  It’s good stuff, and worth a read and consideration.  If you scroll through his recent posts while you’re there, you’ll find that he’s got some other great, hog hunting posts in there too. 

Jeff also writes The Skinning Shed blog, which is a chronicle of the hunts where he guides, the Cypress Creek Lodge.  His clients are slaying the pigs down there. 

Over yonder, across the ocean (the one on the right), the Suburban Bushwacker just did a short post about the “Wild Pig TV” program.  It’s a live, video feed from Estonia where apparently tens of thousands of viewers are logging in to watch, among other things, wild boar coming to feed. 

Down in the land of Faulkner, Rex is waxing poetic about hogs on his Deer Camp Blog.   I got a kick out of his Janis Joplin re-write.  You should check it out.  Keep an eye out as well, as I believe he’s got a pretty big hog hunt coming down the pike here soon.

There’s more going on out there, but this is a good starter list.  Now, I have to get back to vacuum packing my Tejon hog.  Can’t avoid the chores any longer.

Just a note of interest…

Received my Colorado Big Game hunting regulations booklet, and as I was browsing through to see if there were any new regulation changes, I saw their response to the lead-in-game-meat fiasco.  Here’s what they had to say:

 Recommendations to Reduce Potential Exposure to Lead in Game Meat Harvested with Lead Ammunition

A recent study in North Dakota has raised concerns about the potential risk of exposure to lead associated with eating wild game harvested with lead bullets. Ingestion of lead from any of a variety of sources can cause significant health problems, especially in young children and pregnant women.
Studies have confirmed that game meat processed by hunters and commercial meat processors can contain lead bullet fragments that are too small to see or even feel when eating the meat. The North Dakota study showed that blood lead levels were slightly higher in a group that ate wild game compared to a group that did not, although neither group had blood lead levels high enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would recommend some type of intervention or medical treatment. However, the health significance of these slightly higher levels is not known.

Although not enough research has been done to fully evaluate potential health risks that may be associated with lead contamination in game meat, data from the recent study suggest these risks are very low for most people. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Division of Wildlife provide these recommendations to minimize exposure to lead in wild game:

• Because lead fragments cannot be eliminated with complete certainty, pregnant women and children younger than 6 years of age should avoid eating meat from any game animals harvested with lead bullets. These groups are more sensitive to the health effects of lead, and ingesting even small amounts may be harmful. Lead can affect the development of infants and young children when present at levels well below those that would cause any noticeable signs of illness in a child.
• Hunters can eliminate lead in their game meat by using lead-free bullets.
• When processing an animal, liberally trim and discard meat damaged by the bullet and an expanded area around the bullet channel(s) because lead fragments may scatter some distance from the visible bullet wound. Discard any meat that is bruised, discolored, or contains hair, dirt, grass, visible bone or lead fragments.
• Because lead is a soft metal, it can be ground along with the meat, spreading lead contamination through an entire batch of ground meat. In recent studies, lead has been found more often in ground meat than in whole meat cuts. To minimize the amount of processed game meat potentially contaminated with lead, clean the grinder frequently, preferably between each animal. Ask your commercial processor to process your animal individually to avoid cross-contamination from batching multiple animals.
• Even if a carcass is processed using these recommendations, whether at home or at a commercial processor, there is still a chance small amounts of lead may remain in the meat.

Personally, I think this is a perfectly sensible approach.  No panic inducing hyperbole.  Just some common sense and a few precautions to protect the most vulnerable… pregnant women and small children. 

When I’m out there in October, I’ll be shooting the same Barnes in the .325wsm that I use for hogs here in CA.  That’s just because I like the bullets, and I don’t want to have to re-zero my rifle for a one week hunt.  The only thing I’ll be thinking about is where to find that big, bull elk!

Yeah, that’s right… SNOW!  (You can click the picture to see it better.)

OK, so first of all, the snow was mostly melted by the time I got there, and secondly, it was all at or above 3500 feet in elevation… which is still not what most of us picture when we think of SoCal, but it’s not really that unusual either. 

I’m rambling.  Let’s regroup.

First of all, my apologies for dropping off the face of the earth at the end of last week.  My plan, on Thursday, was to post up a pre-hunt teaser from the motel down in glorious Buttonwillow, CA.  Unfortunately, their wireless broadband didn’t work back in my room, so I didn’t get that done.  If I had, you’d know that I went down to Tejon Ranch for another weekend of hog hunting! 

Now last year I had scheduled a similar hunt in January, but the ranch was closed due to the heavy snow and ice that made the entire place inaccessible.  That’s a fairly unusual event, so I scheduled our hunt this year with optimism that it wouldn’t happen again.  Man, we dodged a bullet!  Earlier in the week, a couple of friends were barely able to get out of the ranch, even on the paved roads, due to heavy snow and icy conditions.  Several hunters had to leave their campers parked in the camping area, because they couldn’t get them up the hill to the gate… which is just as well, since the interstate was closed down at the summit anyway. 

Fortunately, the weather broke on Tuesday, and by our Friday check-in, it was sunny and comfortably cool.  The worst of the snow was gone from the lower roads, although many of the high-elevation backroads on the ranch were still impassable.  Nine of us (all from JHO) rolled through the gates that Friday morning with the understanding that we’d be burning a lot of boot leather over the weekend… and that’s exactly what we did.   

With the weather still cool and the ground nice and wet , we figured the hogs would be active all day long, so no one wasted time in camp after getting set up.  I went in my camper to put on my boots, and when I came out, the place was already a ghost town.  I quickly followed suit, and headed off to the draw that leads up to my “honey hole”.  I didn’t know if I would be able to drive up there, so I thought it would make for a good hunt to walk in. 

For my hunt, I opted to try my luck with my relatively new, Mathews bow.  Due to the fact that the ranch hasn’t seen a lot of pressure since December, and with the roads closed off to vehicles, I figured the hogs would be fairly unpressured, making for a great archery opportunity.  Several of the other guys were also planning to start the weekend with archery tackle, only switching to firearms later in the weekend if the bows didn’t work out. 

Barely 100 yards into the canyon, I hit a set of very fresh tracks.  The wind was in my face, blowing steadily, and my heart started pounding.  Most of the time when I hunt the honey hole, I’m on pigs pretty danged quick.  With the rifle, the hunt is usually over within a couple of hours.  If I can see a pig, I can usually kill it.  The bow, however, was adding a whole new twist to the experience (which, of course, is why I brought it).  Now here I was, hunting less than a half hour, and I was on a hot track.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s one I didn’t see coming… but hey, I’ll take a topic where I can find it.

Cruising around my blog roll, I had a chance to stop by Jim Braaten’s Sportsman’s Blog and read a pretty interesting entry.  Apparently the Minnesota Deer Hunters’ Association is considering asking the MN Department of Natural Resources to allow hunters to use dogs for recovering wounded deer.  The rationale, to quote the quote that was quoted by Braaten on his blog, “deer hunters are not as good at tracking as they used to be.” 

This is from Mark Johnson, the executive director of the MDHA.  It’s pretty telling, but how accurate is it?

First of all, how good has the average hunter ever been at trailing wounded game?  Did our forefathers really have the preternatural bloodtrailing senses of the Saharan bushmen?  Could they follow a deer for two days based solely on a cut hair and a scuffed hoof mark, across rocky ground and flowing creeks? 

Or is it more a matter that people today are a lot more concerned about losing an animal… about making sure they do everything possible to recover an animal?  Is it about a changing perspective about our responsibilities as hunters and our relationship to the game we pursue? 

It’s kind of a tough call for me to make.  On the one hand, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen our general hunting ethic swing across a pretty wide arc over the past few generations.  I know a lot of old-timers who, to be honest, wouldn’t give a second thought to an animal that ran off after the shot.  A few minutes in the brush looking for blood would be considered a reasonable effort, and after that there was a very commonly shared idea that “possums gotta eat too.”

Of course that’s a generalization, and there have always been the hunters out there who’d give it everything they had to recover a wounded animal. 

I’ve also hunted with a fair number of people, of all generations, who couldn’t follow a blood trail if it were spray-painted in neon.  Some of them were new to the sport, but others had been hunting all their lives.  I find it difficult to attribute this to any generational de-evolutionary trend… and I hesitate to blame it on any personal failing of the individuals either.  There are a handful of very good reasons that many hunters don’t have this skill, not the least of which is the rapid urbanization of our society, and the lack of mentors available to hunters who come to this sport late in life. 

Now I have a lot of respect for Jim Braaten’s opinions and experience, but he and I apparently don’t see this issue the same way.  Here’s part of what he had to say about modern tracking skills:

But has the typical hunter in today’s world become so lazy or lax in certain skill sets that we must change the long-standing rules of the hunt?   In my opinion it’s sort of a dumbing down of the hunter to think that the use of dogs is sometimes THE ONLY option for the recovery of game.   Honestly, Mark’s  [Johnson's] comment is sort of a sad commentary on our sport if indeed it happens to be true.

Besides laying the problem of poor tracking skills at the feet of the new generations of hunters, Braaten also feels that using dogs to locate wounded deer is wrong, and should not be permitted at all.  I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

First of all, I don’t care how good you are as a tracker, you’ll never be as good as a dog.  If you’re trying to find a wounded animal, particularly one that’s provided a challenging trail (or no trail), and you can use a dog… well, you’d be kind of silly not to do so.  In fact, I’d go so far as to challenge the ethics of anyone who didn’t take that extra measure if a tracking dog were available and legal. 

Need some real-time examples?  My little NC buck from September is a perfect illustration.  My brother and I trailed that deer from the point where I took the shot, and didn’t find first blood until almost 100 yards away.  After that, the trail was a matter of tiny droplets spaced as much as 50 yards apart.  Most of the trailing was a matter of picking out fresh tracks, and a little knowledge of deer behavior and movements through briar thickets, nearly impenetrable brush, and across a running creek.  Finally though, I had to catch a plane and my brother was left on his own to continue the trail.  A few hours later, he finally gave up. 

Those of you who read the story when I wrote it up know how this ends… It turns out he’d stopped less than 20 yards from where he later found my deer… three days old and mostly eaten by a bear.  A dog would have found that deer, probably in half the time it took us, and it would have been me eating fresh venison, not Smokey. 

Want one more example?  I’ll give you Braaten’s own story.

We were beat having walked through some of the gnarliest vegetation known to man.   Just as the sun was about to set, the deer came to a plowed field lacking any vegetation.   Blood on dirt just doesn’t work to your advantage, let me tell you.   We came to the conclusion that we had given it a full and proper effort.   Several times earlier in the day we thought we had reached a dead end…but our persistence eventually paid dividends in finding new blood trailing evidence.

A dog would have been able to follow that trail across that plowed field.  Sure, maybe they wouldn’t have caught up with that deer anyway, particularly if it wasn’t too badly wounded, but a dog would have let them keep on the trail even when their human faculties were stumped.

I’m not quite to the point of saying that every big game hunter should run out and buy a blood-tracking dog.  That’s not realistic for many of us (although you’d be surprised at the abilities of your current bird dog, or even a house pet).  And several states besides MN don’t permit it anyway.  But it should be permitted as one more tool in our bag of tricks.  I’m all for MN and any other state to allow hunters to utilize any realistic means to recover wounded game.

One of the things I’ve always had a hard time adjusting to since I moved to CA is the winter rainy season.

Most of my life has been in the semi-tropical/temperate zones of the southeastern US (North Carolina to Puerto Rico). I’m used to rain being a year-long phenomenon. It comes and it goes. But no so, California.

No, here the spigot is turned off some time in April or May, and it doesn’t really get turned back on until sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving. The real stuff seems to hit in late winter (which means right about now), and we’ll see days on end of gray skies and rain. For a child of the warm oceans like myself, it’s a challenge to get through it with my sanity intact. More than two days without sunshine tends to drive me down, and as the storms continue it’s hard to stay clear of outright depression. I start to dream of Mexico or south Florida… and I understand the motivation of the east coast “snowbirds” a lot better.

The rain here is a double-edged sword, of course. Without it, large segments of this state quickly return to a desert condition, and with the millions upon millions of people living here, water shortages ensue. Water rationing becomes the norm, and people start to struggle to keep their water use to a minimum or face fines. Agriculture suffers, wildlife and habitat suffer, and things get a little touchy until the wet cycle returns.

Point is, I know we need the rain. But dangit, I’m not made for this! And what’s worse… for the second year in a row this weather is threatening my upcoming Tejon Ranch hog hunt. The hills at the ranch are snowed under, the freeway was closed last night, and the storm is still moving through. Right now, the end of the week looks promising, but that’s subject to change at any moment. My fingers are crossed.

So Rain King, if you’re listening… just a short break. I’ll trade you another week of sun-deprived depression for a few days of reasonably dry weather at the ranch. It doesn’t need to stop altogether. I just need the roads to be safely passable, so we can get in there and do a little hog hunting for a couple of days. Is that too much to ask?

Just saw this AP article today in the local fish wrapper. 

Four college students from Birmingham-Southern College are working their way through the “best” barbecue restaurants in the South as part of an english course.  They’ll chronicle the adventure, tasting bbq from place to place, and blogging, writing, and shooting photos and video of the experience! 

What have they learned so far? 

…3,100 miles is a long, long way to drive for dinner in a 1998 Ford Expedition with a plastic pig’s nose attached to the front.

I want one of those plastic pig noses for Petunia! 

Despite a brief bout of food poisoning, the foursome has been steadily at the project, and their professor/advisor apparently thinks they’re doing a great job.  Barring something unforeseen, the four will probably get an A for the project… not to mention a few extra pounds to carry them through the rest of their college careers. 

Personally, I’m jealous.

So what does this have to do with hog hunting?  Very little, actually, although as anyone worth their salt knows, BBQ IS PORK.  It is NOT a verb, and it is NEVER made of beef, chicken, or fish.  Check out this video… these boys get the point!  The sauce is only meant to complement the meat, it is not the meal!

You can see more on their YouTube Channel at, http://www.youtube.com/user/BSCbbqboys

You can read more about the adventure at their website, SouthernBBQBoys.Com.

Occasional Hog Blog commenter, Jake, sent me the following notice, regarding an event down in Hollister, CA to demonstrate some of the lead-free ammo options. 

According to Jake, it’ll give the public a chance to try some of the ammo in their own guns, as long as the ammo holds out.  Here’s the notice (you can click it to enlarge the image if you can’t read it here):

Who is the hunter in this line-up? 

Of course, some of you know the truth here.  You probably recognize someone in these photos.  For those of you who don’t, here’s a quick run-down.

The Korean woman is Holly’s  friend and protege, Hellen K.    You can read about her adventures on her own blog if you’d like. 

The white guy in the hat is me, of course.  Nothing more to say there.

The black man is Stephan Boles, alias Sniper99, who is very active in the world of big-bore airgun hunting.  You can read more about Stephan at his own blog (not recently updated), or you can find his posts over on the Big Bore Airguns website and forum. 

Finally, the blondie at the bottom of the line-up is none other than Kat, whom you have read about in these very pages. 

If I had wanted to, I could have added in my friends Jesus, Xiao, or Enricio for a little more of a selection, but I think the point is clear.  Hunters come in all genders, races and colors. 

If you look at most of the demographic data on hunting, you’ll find a pretty disproportionate segment of the population is white men.  Economic class seems to be fairly widespread, and education tends to range from the four-year degree and downward, but if you asked anyone to pick a hunter out of a lineup, they’d almost all point at the white guy. 

But is hunting the sole domain of the white male?  Obviously not, if you’ve been following along at all. 

Where’s all this going, or where’s it coming from? 

The impetus for this post comes from two places, the most recent Bloggers’ Challenge from the Outdoor Bloggers’ Summit, and from Holly’s latest post on her NorCal Cazadora blog.  All of this, in turn, was spurred by a recent blog in which the writer suggested that men hunt to get away from women, and that women belong in the house or shopping mall rather than in the field.  (I won’t provide a link to that article, because the author and site owners do not deserve the additional traffic a link would generate.) 

The challenge then, was to write about why the outdoors is for everyone.  It’s a celebration of diversity, of sorts, and one I can fully get behind.

It’s also an interesting and challenging topic for me, in some ways.  I mean, here I am, a white male in a sport that is still largely dominated by white males.  Sure, in my lifetime I’ve seen racial and gender barriers knocked aside, but the fact is that guys like me still have pretty easy access to the catbird seat.  What do I know about discrimination and prejudice? 

I know a little. 

I’ve heard the comments, whispered just loud enough to be barely audible.  I’ve seen the sidelong glances and occasional sneers.  I’ve even witnessed blatant rudeness and unabashed sexism.  I’ve seen individuals snubbed for no reason other than the color of their skin or the cast of their faces. 

And I know the impacts of this kind of thing.

I know that discrimination in the field hurts everybody, just as it does in any other segment of society.  It creates a self-perpetuating antagonism, because the oppressed resent the oppressors, and the discrimination and bigotry begin to work both ways.  Walls go up, and those walls prevent progress and growth.

In the hunting community, these walls serve quite handily to keep people out of our sport.  With our numbers declining, this senseless exclusion is the worst kind of self-destructive behavior. 

Who belongs in the outdoors?  Every outdoorsman and woman.

Oh, and here’s something that I really should have mentioned in my last post, regarding the FGC meeting and video. 

Chief Nancy Foley, from the DFG Enforcement Branch, presented a summary of lead-ban compliance and enforcement efforts.  While most of us are aware that the DFG has a pretty serious shortage of wardens, Foley reported that the Department still managed to make approximately 6500 “contacts” in the field last year.  Of those contacts, the wardens gave out 63 warnings and only wrote nine citations for violations of the lead ban.  Most of those cited were also being cited for other violations (poaching, tresspassing, etc.). 

72 hunters out of 6500 field encounters is, as Commissioner Rogers noted, almost a 99% compliance rate! 

I want to join the Commissioners in congratulating California’s hunters for their efforts to work with the law, despite the fact that many of them disagree with the law or its necessity.  This kind of thing goes a long way toward showing the non-hunting public that we do care about doing the right thing, and that we do comply with the law even while we debate its merits. 

Kudos to all CA hunters who have taken the effort and accepted the challenge of complying with a tough and unreasonable law.