The Hog Blog

Well, the little adventure this weekend didn’t really pan out… which is just as well, I suppose.  I’ve got a freezer full of meat, and a Texas trip coming up at the end of this week.  But it looks like I’m not the only one who’s been out in the field lately.

First of all, there’s my friend Bruce (a friend I’ve yet to meet in person) over in Hawaii.  Bruce has been living the life over there on the Big Island… hunting hogs, goats, and all sorts of birds at one moment, and then out pulling in big fish from the clear, Pacific waters.  Here’s a recent report…

Went up on Mauna Kea yesterday and took a nice pig and a sheep.  I shot the pig with a .270 Nosler Ballistic Tip, the third time I’ve used that particular bullet in the past several weeks to take a hog.  I think it is possibly the worst bullet in the world to use on big hogs and I can back up my claim.  Is there a section on your blog to post such commentary and if so, what is the protocol?

Going back up tomorrow [Friday] to try for a big ram.  We’re experiencing a terrible drought and many animals have moved down into the jungles on the east side of the island.  You need dogs to hunt there and that ain’t my bag.  It’s also turkey season, so I’ll bring along a shotgun.  I saw 50+ turkeys but was way too pooped after a tough hike at 8000 feet to stalk them.  I’ll take some photos or video this time if you’re interested in them.  That pig yesterday was my 46th since I started hunting here 3 1/2 years ago. 

Hope all is well.  I’m really enjoying your hunting site, slowly working my way through it.

There are a couple of interesting points here, beginning with Bruce’s comments regarding the Ballistic Tips… 

My own experience with these bullets hasn’t been great either.  On the one hand, everything I’ve shot with them died quickly, and they were extremely accurate out of my 30-06.  But they were also extremely destructive bullets, and I hate meat loss.  So Bruce, here’s your opportunity to tell us about your experience… 

But you should know we’re going to temper our empathy for your misfortunes with a hot stroke of jealousy… 46 pigs in 3 1/2 years! 

Of course, you should know that Bruce has been enlisted by several neighbors to help with porcine raiders hitting their gardens and yards.  That’s the mixed blessing of being a hog hunter in a place like Hawaii, I guess.  One of these days, I swear I’m going to take him up on the offer to show me around over there. 

Several thousand miles away from Bruce, regular Hog Blog reader and commenter, Brian (Carolina Rig) made a trip into the South Carolina swamps for sus scrofa, and it sounds like he did great too!

Got back last night from the annual public land trip down to SC.  This is the third year in a row I’ve made it down for the SC March hog season.  Its relatively inexpensive for a non-resident ($40 for 3 day license, $76 for WMA permit) since you don’t have to get a ‘big game’ license.  For a DIY’er its great.  26,000 acres of sandy pine ridges, oak flats, and cypress swamp bottoms offer plenty of room to get away from crowds.  The crew I convinced to come down with me managed numerous sightings, and have 10 on the board right now (two guys are still down there!)  Sizes ranged from 15lbs shoats to 150lbs boars. 

Yummy.  As always camping with friends, and wildlife sightings made the trip….including a scat trifecta.  You ever seen a deer, pig, and turkey shit so close to eachother?!  Got another trip planned with family for mid March with an outfitter.  Taking a couple first time hog hunters….I remember my first time…I haven’t been the same since.

Oh, and one last note from the East Coast.  Every week day, I try to keep up on the newspaper from back home, the Wilmington Star News.  The sports pages offer a small section of outdoor reporting, and it’s how I get a regular dose of homesickness remedy (you’d think after almost 16 years, I’d be over that, right?).  Right now is that slow time of year, with hunting seasons ended and still too cold for most offshore fishing… but I still check in.

One Star News feature I often enjoy is a column and blog by reporter Amy Hotz, called It’s Hotz Outside.  Amy isn’t a hunter yet, but it looks like she’s getting ready to change that on Wednesday, with a feral hog hunt in Brunswick County.  When I left NC, feral hogs really hadn’t come back into the area in huntable numbers, so I have to admit I’ve been reading her recent posts about the planned hunt with a touch of envy.

All this talk of jealousy… seriously, I’m glad to see folks out there doing it up, and really looking forward to hearing from more of you.

Heading out in about an hour to meet up with Holly, the NorCal Cazadora.  We’re going to take a look at some private property where the hogs have been making a nuisance of themselves (as they’re wont to do), and maybe help the landowner out by taking a couple of pests home for dinner. .. or at least come up with a plan to eliminate some of them later.   

I haven’t been out to this place before, so besides some basic reports from Holly and a little Google Earth scouting, I’m definitely going in cold.  We’ll see how it all pans out.  See ya’ll when I get home!

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out a great little fable about pigs, check this out.  (Sorry, they disabled the embedding for this one… and that’s a shame!)

What a difference a week makes!

After the previous weekend’s tough hunting at Tejon Ranch, with nine hunters coming away with only three hogs, I was a little concerned going into the past weekend’s hunt.  However, on this last hunt, there were a number of different factors involved.  

First, the weather turned cold and wet.  The beautiful, sunny days of the previous hunt quickly became pleasant memories when the rain and fog bored into the hills.  The persistent, icy rain turned the roads into sloppy goo and worked its way right through the best gear.  Even before the rain, the cold wind on Friday night nearly drove me off of my favorite ridgetop. 

The bright side is, the changing weather got the animals moving.  We started spotting pigs by 1130, right out of camp on Friday, and when the fog allowed any visibility at all, we continued to see hogs.  During the previous hunt, hogs were moving almost completely at night, leaving a frustrating amount of sign but heading back to their beds before first light.

The other big difference was the group of hunters on this trip.  The previous trip consisted of nine guys, only two of whom (myself and Ron Gayer) had any experience on the ranch.  Few of the others had much hog hunting experience, especially not in a place like Tejon. 

The group this weekend consisted of 12 guys, mostly long-time hog hunters who have been coming to Tejon for several years.  They came with “honey holes” already picked out.  They knew how to get to the good spots, how to hunt them, and in the end, it all paid off.  The group rolled out of the gates on the last day with a total of 10 hogs for 12 hunters.  Everyone had taken at least one shot (a couple of guys took more than one shot). 

For me, a big part of the pleasure this weekend was hunting with my friend, T. Michael Riddle from Native Hunt.  I’d told him for years about how much I loved hunting the Tejon Ranch, and he said he’d always wanted to get out there.  I think Michael quickly found that everything he’d heard about the place was true.  It’s simply a phenomenal piece of land, loaded with all the bounty and beauty Nature can provide. 

After a couple of false starts, we were able to hang both our tags on a couple of fat sows.  (I’ll write a little more about those false starts over on the Native Hunt blog.) 

And then there were pork chops, and there was much rejoicing!

I know, I’m stating the obvious.  A few posts a week is hardly the pace I’d like to maintain, but it just seems to be the status quo here lately.  No excuses… but I do hope a couple of weekends of hunting will get me back on track. 

In the meantime, here’s the best hog of the three we took this weekend…  A wicked, ugly, old bruiser with one eye and split ears.

Man!  Has it been that long?  It seems like forever since I’ve been hog hunting, and this trip couldn’t come at a better time. 

I’m heading out tomorrow afternoon, driving south to the Tejon Ranch.  I’ll be joining several friends, including Fabio (I’ve guided Fabio over at the Native Hunt ranches a time or two), and we’re planning to put the serious smack-down on some hogs.  I was particularly fortunate that my friend, Ron Gayer wants to join us on the hunt.  Ron’s video series, The Guide’s Guide to hunting, is going well, and he’s hoping to shoot some new video on this trip. 

Of course, it doesn’t hurt anything that Ron was also the Head Guide for the ranch for many years.  I’m looking forward to having him along.

I wish I had cooler stuff to write about right now, but work has been pretty intense lately and it’s taken its toll on the blog.  I’m happy to be busy, but at the same time I’m really glad to be getting back into the field.

Hang tight, and I’ll be posting up stories (and if the weather holds, video) of the hunt!

From the While I Was Out files…  stuff that slipped through the cracks while I was here at the 2010 SHOT Show.

First of all, got this great photo in an email from my friend Matt, who some of you may recognize as De Hog Shootinest Gent’man.  I don’t think Matt ever stops hunting or killing hogs, but I think winter is his special time of year.  I’m a touch envious of his access to some prime hog hunting… and the fact that it’s close enough for him to roll out and hit it when the mood strikes. 

Nevertheless, he’s taken another really nice tusker as you can see here.  Congrats, Matt!  Keep at ‘em!

In other news, so to speak, Montana is the latest state to face new restrictions on lead ammunition.  I don’t know what I’d do without the Outdoor Pressroom, which is where I found the link to this article in the Missoula, MT Missoulian newspaper. 

You can read it yourself, but it looks like the MT Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks has floated a proposal to ban lead shot for upland and migratory birds on all of the state’s 72 wildlife management areas.  So far, it looks like the Department is just checking the water.

There’s nothing to suggest lead shot poses any risk to those or any other upland game bird species, Aasheim [Ron Aasheim, a spokesman for the MT DFWP] said. Montana’s tentative ban was proposed only to be “consistent” with the federal ban and other lead shot bans on certain tribal lands.

“We’ve got restrictions on using lead shot for waterfowl, and do we take the next step on the wildlife management areas?” he said.

Aasheim also stressed that the ban was very tentative and proposed more like a “trial balloon” to see where Montanans stood on the issue. There are no “biological reasons” to ban lead shot on the areas, but people simply may not like it, Aasheim said and commissioners want to know about it.

The majority of hunters interviewed in the piece are pretty strongly opposed, of course.  That was no surprise.  The thing I didn’t like to read is that the folks in MT are seeing lead ammo bans into a “California thing.”  It is NOT a geographical issue… it’s a very real topic that will continue to come up all over the country.  CA hunters and shooters missed their best opportunity to block the ban here, because they didn’t come together and form a united front.  Hunters need to pay attention and learn from the mistakes made in CA, or they’ll be repeated every time.  But that’s enough preaching for now.

One last thing, and this actually relates to the 2010 SHOT Show.  I was remiss in not reporting that Dave Petzal, of Field and Stream was the recipient of this year’s Grits Gresham Shooting Sports Communicator Award.  I’ve often referenced Petzal’s blog, the Gun Nut, and I’ve always enjoyed his writing in the magazine as well.  It’s much-deserved recognition, and I offer my congratulations to Mr. Petzal. 

Well, my flight leaves in a little while.  I need to finish packing and get out of this crazy town.  Vegas is fun… for a little while, but it’s no place to be flying solo (particularly not given my age and relationship status).  I’m looking forward to being home.

OK, so I won’t be winning any Golden Moose awards for this one, but who really cares? I managed to bring the video camera along on my short-lived hog hunt at the Golden Ram’s Hedgepeth Ranch on New Year’s weekend. As you’ll see, the weekend didn’t pan out quite like I’d hoped it would.

Oh well, lots more hunts on the horizon this year. I expect we’ll come up with something a little more “action packed” than this one!

And once again, many thanks to T. Michael Riddle for the Hog Blog Theme Song!

I got an email recently from a newer hog hunter, and he asked a question that I’ve heard a few times now.  I thought I’d share his letter, along with my thoughts.  

Here goes:

I’m a new hunter (at 40 yrs old!) and have had the opportunity to hunt pigs on a friend’s land a few times this winter west of Lake Sonoma. It’s been amazing. No pigs taken yet, but we’ve seen a bunch.

We even got a few shots off a few weeks ago, but they were bad shots– we got surprised by bedded-down pigs as we dropped into a gully.

Just went again this weekend and I think we’ve created a little too much hunting pressure. Wallows are not being used, maybe a couple fresh tracks, but not much activity.

Brings me to my question — baiting for pigs. I ask this bec my buddy’s land is 170 acres, and while we wish we could roam onto the neighboring properties, we can’t. This past trip we discussed digging a bait hole with a post-hole digger, tossing some corn and water and sugar in and seeing if we can’t get the pigs to come to us. Is this legal in California?

All in all, I’m hooked. Even if we never get a pig, I’ll go as many times as my friend (the landowner) wants. I’ve spent a long time hiking, camping and fishing, but hunting is definitely the best way to spent time outdoors in my opinion.

Thanks for your blog. I really enjoy reading it!

First, the short and clear answer… baiting game animals is NOT LEGAL in CA.  Technically, even feeding big game is illegal in this state. 

You can find the regulations and laws on the DFG website for details.  (This prohibition does not apply to fenced preserves, such as those operated by Native Hunt, Big Horn Ranch, Cedar Canyon Ranch, and others.  On fenced preserves, animals are considered hoofstock, and regulated by the Department of Agriculture, not the DFG.)

And a note: In some cases, like this one, the law is quite clearly spelled out.  However, any time you have a question about the details or interpretation of a law, the best place to get your answer is right from the source… the DFG (or applicable law enforcement agency).  I know I do my best to be as accurate and specific as I can when answering questions like this, but I’ve seen some insane interpretations of Fish and Game Law out here on the Internet.  And I wouldn’t blame anyone for validating the information I offer as well.  I’m no lawyer. Going off half-cocked on bad info can land you in a world of trouble.

Now the longer response…  I’m gonna ramble here.   Read the rest of this entry »

Photo courtesy of Jamie Cameron

I often ask folks to share up their pictures and stories of successful hunts, and I do appreciate when you do. 

This past week, Brian (who goes by the handle of Carolina Rig in the comments section) returned from a pretty awesome hog hunt down in Florida (one of the states on my MUST HUNT list).  Brian carried both his rifle and his bow, in hopes of scoring with both.  But heck, why should I tell the story when he tells it so much better!

Got back from Florida yesterday.  Had a hell of a trip.  Drove down after work Thursday night, hunted Friday and Saturday, and drove back Sunday.  10 pigs between the 5 guys hunting.  We stuck to spot and stalking orange groves.  Did manage one out of a trap our host set up.  That was quite the experience. 

Photo courtesy of Jamie Cameron

I dropped a nice 200 lbs boar with the H&R, but managed to miss a pretty sow with my bow.  Put a perfect stalk on her with the wind in my face.  Shot sailed just under her.  I held my draw way too long and figured I missed due to muscle fatigue.  Oh well.  It was a clean miss, and I was tickled I managed to get within 25 yards of her.  Going to have to wait until March in South Carolina before I get to throw another arrow at a pig.  Here are a few pics my buddy Jamie took.

In this season of giving thanks, here’s something many of us CA bowhunters can be thankful for… Chopper Snyder is re-opening his Wild Hog Adventures for bowhunters. 

Chopper’s place is set in the hills just below Hollister, and for several years he ran semi-guided archery hunts.  I was fortunate enough to hunt there several times over the years he was in business.  I can honestly say I missed more pigs there in all the times I visited than most public land hunters have ever seen. 

OK, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but hey… hunting hogs with a recurve on open land is no mean feat.  It may have something to do with the phenomenon called “target panic”, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, the hunting can be pretty danged good there.  It’s open land, and pigs can come and go from the property, but they’re generally on the place somewhere for those who are willing to put in the effort.

What started as a once-in-a-while deal evolved into a full-time, day in and day out business.  That was a little more than Chopper had bargained for, as he suddenly found himself working with hunters every weekend (and many weekdays).  Between the hunts and his regular job, he didn’t have time to spend with his family, so he finally put it to a stop… always with the idea that he might re-open later. 

My friends Steve and Kirk with a nice boar from Chopper's place

And now he has.  While he’s only planning to run a limited number of hunts, it’s a great opportunity for bowhunters who want to hunt hogs without competition from gun hunters. 

The hunts are generally for two days, beginning at 0900 on a Friday and running until noon on Sunday.  The hunt cost is $400/hunter, and included in the cost is a stay in the hunting cabin (a comfortable cabin in a beautiful spot, with room to sleep seven, a fireplace, gas stove, grill, and hot-and-cold showers, and a temperamental electric generator that may or may not provide electricity for the evening), access to a covered skinning shed, and a walk-in cooler. 

The hunt itself is totally unguided.  Chopper will do an orientation tour of the ranch when hunters arrive, and after that, the hunters are pretty much on their own.  Pay attention during the orientation, because while there are plenty of roads, they can get confusing.  You probably won’t get totally lost, because all roads either hit the fence or loop back to where they started, but it sucks to burn up good hunting time trying to find your way around.   This is the voice of experience speaking, by the way.

You’ll also need a decent 4-wheel drive with good clearance, especially during the wet, winter months.  I was able to hunt most of the place with my stock, Dodge Ram 2500, although it’s more comfortable in my Samurai as some of the roads get a little tight.  Most of the hunting will be on foot, though… if you think you’ll drive around and kill hogs, you’ve got another thing coming. 

Anyway, it’s a great hunt opportunity.  To set up a hunt, shoot Chopper an email at: chopper1709@yahoo.com or you can call at:  831.682.0468

Remember, there will be a limited number of hunts, so if you’re interested, you’ll want to get in on it quickly.