The Hog Blog

It’s what all the best, dressed hog hunters will be wearing this coming year! 

Just saw this photo over at Rex’s Deer Camp Blog, and had to share it here (I hope he doesn’t mind).  It’s simply classic! 

Not every day you see something like this at the skinning rack, but it’s sure to set a trend.  Notice the clean, supple, yet elegant lines.  And nary speck of blood or gore to be seen! 

… is paved… etc. 

(Actually, I think I drove the road to Hell one rainy night at Tejon, and it wasn’t paved at all… but maybe that’s a different story.)

I can’t believe it’s Monday already.  The weekend just started… or so it seems.  And it could have been such a good one, even if I did have to contain it between end-caps.  I had to have Kat to the airport early on Saturday, and had to be there to pick up my daughter on Sunday night.  But there’s so much room in-between.

My first intent was to take off as soon as I dropped Kat at the airport and head out to Hedgepeth Ranch for another go at the deer and pigs with my bow.  I figured I could hunt Saturday evening and Sunday morning, and be back home in plenty of time.  And it would’ve worked too… except I got busy on Friday and failed to call Golden Ram to book my reservation.  There’s never been a problem getting onto the ranch, but the rules say I have to book my hunt before going out there. 

“No problem,” thinks I.  “There’s stuff I can get done around the homefront instead.”

By the time I got back from dropping Kat at the Oakland airport, I had a handful of things in mind.  I’d go ride my horse for a few hours while it was still cool.  When we got back, I’d give her a good wash, and get some conditioner to get those tangles out of her tail before it turned into dreadlocks again (last year she was Rasta-horse).  I also needed to organize the trailer, and make sure it’s in shape for some day trips (that I’m always planning but never taking). 

And then there’s the garage. 

I’ve been meaning to get in there and figure out a good way to organize and store my hunting gear.  There are a bunch of cabinets in there, but there’s no place to hang up clothes.  My plan was to set up a rod in the tall cabinet where I could hang my coats and rain gear, and then I could stow the extra ammo, decoys, archery tackle, etc. on the lower shelves.  That would clear up a ton of floor space in the garage. 

But I was pretty tired.  I hadn’t slept well Thursday or Friday night, and work’s been a little stressful.  I got back to the house, sat down in my new recliner, and put on the horn porn. Every time I’d nod off, the phone would ring.  Finally, I zonked out.  It was noon and hot when I woke up.  I went out and started to piddle around in the garage, but the inspiration ran short.  I had a beer and some lunch, and before I knew it, I was back in that recliner.

Sunday morning came, and I forced myself to walk away from the TV and go up to the ranch.  I saddled up my mare, Dolly, and we took off on a nice, three-hour ride.  When I got back, we were both soaked in sweat as the heat of the day was just getting started.  I hosed her off, brushed out her mane and tail, and got the conditioner done.  There, that’s that!  Then I opened up the trailer.

“What’s the buzzing?” I wondered… but only for a moment before I saw the three or four wasp nests along the roof of the trailer. 

I closed it up, put Dolly back out in pasture, and decided I’d head down and pick up some wasp spray, along with another bottle of conditioner.  But first I needed some lunch, and my favorite Mexican place has a buffett on Sundays.  Buffett and beer…

Somehow, after lunch, I drove right past the store and ended up back on the recliner.  The phone woke me at around 16:30.  Where’d the day go? 

Which brings us back to Monday.

Well, it’s Friday already and as I get ready for the weekend, I realized that I’ve been a little slack on the blog-front this week.  Sorry about that, but work has cut deeply into my hunting and my web surfing.  Next week doesn’t look much better.  But with that in mind, I’ve put together a little NC postcard for anyone who’s still around.

First, and foremost, I just found out this morning that I’ll be missing a special event up here in the Raleigh/Durham area!  That’s right, it’s Hog Days in the town of Hillsborough.  I don’t know how I missed it!   

Of course the event hasn’t really got anything to do with hunting, but it does have to do with something else I like a lot… NC barbecue! 

Here’s a little critical information about the event:

While barbecue is the basis of the festival, fun for the whole family is the focus. A variety of activities are held each year as part of Hog Day: fun contests, including Hog Hollering, and Guess the Weight of the Pig contests; the area’s largest antique car show, an arts & crafts area with more than 100 vendors; and a children’s area featuring activities and rides. Hillsborough Hog Day also offers regionally and nationally known musicians, live on stage throughout the kickoff party on Friday night and all day on Saturday.

Hillsborough Hog Day is held each year on the third Saturday of June, in Downtown Hillsborough. The festival is attended by up to 35,000 people. Shuttle service is provided to the Hog Day site from south and north of town.

I’m headed back down to the coast to visit my mom and family over the weekend, so I’ll be missing this one. 

In other “news”, there’s been quite the uproar up on the edge of the Smoky Mountains as apparently Bigfoot has made a new appearance.  It started with a sighting by Tim Peeler up near Casar, NC.  Apparently while calling coyotes, Peeler had a face-to-face encounter with a man-like creature “about 10-feet tall” and covered in “beautiful hair.” 

Check out the audio of Peeler’s 911 call. 

On the heels of Peeler’s sighting, apparently a bigfoot track was found near the town of Morganton.  In an article about the discovery, farmer Pork Lowman (why couldn’t I have been named Pork?) said he was way out in the backcountry when he found the footprint.

A farmer said he recently stumbled across a larger-than-life footprint near the intersection of Highway 18 and George Hildebran School Road in the southern part of Burke County.

Pork Lowman said he was walking in the woods when he came across the print, which measures 15 by 8 inches.

“It’s out here in no-man’s land, and that’s what really got me,” Lowman said.

I dunno, but I’m starting to get a complex.  Last time I hunted up in Mendocino County, CA, they had bigfoot sightings.  Now I travel almost 3000 miles across the country, and here he is again.  It begs the question:

Am I being stalked by Sasquatch?

The unexpected journey…

It’s something I used to really like.  The unplanned… the spontaneous… the rush of travel. 

I suppose it still has its allure, but when the travel is for work, the excitement isn’t quite the same anymore.  But there ya go…  Thursday of last week, I was thinking about making a day trip to Spokane, WA to meet with an engineer.  Somehow, in the space of two days, that trip morphed into another two-week trip to NC.

And so I find myself back in Raleigh, trying to pull the silver lining out of this cloud.  I get to go visit mom this weekend, and that’s a big plus.  But other than that, well, Raleigh simply doesn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities… especially not at this time of year. 

But, I still can’t help it… I do love North Carolina.

I don’t know why, but this song was playing loudly in my head when I woke up this morning.  It’s foggy and grey, a standard SF Bay summer morning, but for whatever reason I’m not feeling it.

I haven’t really been hunting, or even talked hunting in so long, I feel like I’m turning into a city guy. I’ll fix it and get my fix… and hopefully the next video I post up here will have some more appropriate Hog Blog content in it!

Yesterday, I posted a bit of a rant about the DFG getting the big game books and applications out so late that many hunters would miss the application deadline (today!).  I was particularly angry because my license hadn’t yet arrived, along with my deer tag application (as a lifetime license holder, I get one deer tag along with my license every year).  As such, even if I knew the zone I wanted to hunt, I couldn’t send my apps into Sacramento in time to meet the deadline. 

Well, in the interest of fairness and all, I want to say right now that, once again, I’ve received stellar service from the good folks at the DFG office.  That’s right, this is not the first time the folks working the front lines have stepped forward to take care of me… the paying (and complaining) customer.  This time, the lady’s name was Katy, and apparently she’s in charge of handling lifetime license issues.  

My call to the DFG office yesterday was transferred over to Katy, despite the fact that she was on vacation at the time.  That sort of irked me, since my bet is that the guy who transferred me must have known she wasn’t there.  But maybe he didn’t, I dunno.  Point is, she wasn’t there, so I left a message with my number.  Honestly, I figured with everything going on in that office this week, I wouldn’t be hearing back for a few days.  The DFG office team has always been good about returning calls though, and Katy was right there this morning. 

I explained to her that my license hadn’t arrived, and that I was really kind of upset at missing out on the drawings for this season.  At the very least, I wanted to get my preference points, but ideally, I hoped to be able to get my name in the hat for the Tule Elk hunt at Grizzly Island.  Katy looked up my information, which showed that the license had actually mailed out in April!  Damn, I’m glad I called!  The package wasn’t in her “Returned Mail” file, so it must have been lost somewhere between Sacramento and my home office. 

With that first mystery solved, Katy asked which zones I wanted to apply for.  I had initially planned to put in for X9-A, but since I hadn’t gone through the dates yet, I just asked her to put me in for a point for deer.  Then we turned to elk.  She wasn’t familiar with the elk zones or hunt codes, so she spent a good 10 or 15 minutes going through the booklet over the phone and helping me choose the Grizzly Island, 1st Period Antlerless hunt.  We got that submitted, and she told me that she’d be sending me an affidavit of non-receipt, so they could mail me new license, stamps, and pig tags. 

And that was it!

That doesn’t change the fact that I still can’t believe we don’t have an online licensing system in place in this state, nor does it change my feeling that whoever was supposed to be developing the program has screwed this state’s hunters.  Likewise, it doesn’t alter the fact that a lot of CA hunters sort of got screwed because the application packets and license booklets hadn’t come out on time… although I have to say that taking the steps to advocate for yourself with a phone call or office visit might go a long ways toward helping you get some satisfaction.  Sitting back and being mad won’t change a thing.

But most of all, I just want to say, “thanks, once again,” to the good people like Katy who get things done in the DFG office.  Nice job!

OK, not to be a downer, but let’s keep in mind what this holiday means. Our men and women are still fighting and dying on foreign soil, and their families and loved ones are fighting their own battles here at home. Let’s save a place for them in our thoughts.

OK, so I don’t have it quite as bad as Merle does in this song.  Maybe I should count my blessings… but the song suits the past couple of weeks!

It’ll sure be good to get back home!

Another dollar.  Spent.

I’m still here, starting the second week of my trip to Raleigh, NC.  This is a work trip, unfortunately, although I was able to drive down to Wilmington this weekend and spend a couple of days with my family.  The visit was a combination of fun time (freeboarding on the Cape Fear, a little work at my brother’s barn) and fulfilling a promise to my dad by taking his ashes out to spread on the ocean… his favorite place (a love he engrained in me as well).

I’ll be home soon, and maybe we’ll get back to some hog hunting!

It’s Monday morning.

I hate Mondays, but this one is particularly dreary. I’ve been trying really hard to get re-motivated to everyday life, and honestly, I didn’t realize how much I’d set aside over the last couple of weeks. Now I’m trying hard to wrap my head around a new job, which involves revising training for a product I know very little about in a very short time. I’m taking over from a full-time employee who has gone out on maternity leave, and I was supposed to meet with her to get a “brain dump” two weeks ago. Unfortunately, two weeks ago I was in NC, and now she’s gone out on her leave without being able to meet with me. Talk about coming in cold.

Revising and updating a training program isn’t unlike remodeling an old house. You understand the mechanics of construction, but no two carpenters build something the same way… not to mention the fact that no house ever goes up exactly according to the architect’s plan. Little changes are made along the way to address variations in grade or mistakes in layout. The house may look like every other house on the outside, but when you start peeling off the sheetrock and siding, that minor upgrade can take on a whole new aspect.

The new gig also has me travelling a lot, right off the start, and that’s put a monkey wrench into other things, like guiding… not to mention catching up on the home front after my unplanned absence in NC. I’m feeling a bit off-balance, to be honest, and a foggy Monday morning isn’t helping at all.

What’s this got to do with hunting? Not really a damned thing. It’s simply my reality these days, and one excuse for letting the blog sit idle for so long… again. I’ve looked at it every day, but I simply haven’t been able to muster the energy to jump to the admin panel and click the “Add New Post” button.

I thought I’d do something yesterday about Mother’s Day. I mean, I’ve written a lot about my dad, but my mom has an equal place on the dais of my lifetime heroes. She’s an incredible lady, and that’s not just because I “have” to say that because I’m her son. It’s true. Her strength and resolve in the face of all sorts of challenges are an inspiration. She has always encouraged me to take my own path through life, even when that path deviated from the trail she’d have chosen for me. She supported me fully, even at times when I really deserved to be set adrift, and she’s always been there to help pick me up when I busted my butt… whether falling from a horse or falling from a bad life decision.

Her strength has never been more evident than during the last 14 years, as she’s cared for my dad. Always hopeful for positive change, she nevertheless stood fast through his decline. A lot of folks would have been completely justified to hand over that caregiving to a nursing facility years ago, but she tried her best to provide until it was, finally, physically impossible for her to handle him. The things she went through, and the toll it took… yet here she is, still the loving, positive person I’ve known my whole life.

So I tried to frame all of this in my head yesterday, but nothing sounded quite “right”, and none of it seemed to fit the Hallmark Card atmosphere of the “celebration” of Mother’s Day. Hopefully my phone call yesterday served the purpose.

But all is not doom and gloom, and there’s hunting on the horizon!

Thursday night, I’ll hit the road for Tejon Ranch and a long-awaited hunt with several folks from the hunting forums. As a first, I’ll be taking the 15 year-old son of a friend along as a junior hunter. Payton had the chance to tag along on a couple of deer hunts last fall and the bug bit him pretty good. He attended one of the California Waterfowl Association youth camps at Grizzly Island to get some basic training and earn his Hunter Safety card, and then ran right out to get a license. I got him out for pheasants a time or two, but I haven’t, unfortunately, had the time to spend with him at the range with the centerfire rifle. We’ll get a little trigger time prior to the hunt, though, and I expect he’ll do pretty well.

Following that hunt, it’ll be off to NC for two weeks of work in Raleigh. No hunting on that trip, but it will give me a chance to visit with family a little bit. I’ll try to keep things going while I’m there… I’m sure there’s some kind of hunting news, issues, or topics to occupy my downtime in the hotel room. 

What’s going on with all of you folks?  Chasing hogs?  Hunting turkeys?