The Hog Blog

I was reading an article in Tom Remington’s Black Bear Blog  about a bear hunter who was attacked by a black bear after his shot knocked it from the tree, but didn’t kill it.  Apparently the hunters were out of ammunition, and things got ugly fast.  How could they be out there without ammo? 

Well, as I said in my reply to Tom’s post, it can happen.

“The best laid plans of mice and men, g’ang aft agley.”
Robert Burns, To a Field Mouse

In 1989, at a loss for what to get my father-in-law for Christmas, it occurred to me that he might like to go duck hunting.  Many of his stories from his youth revolved around hunting…particularly duck hunting along the Ohio River.  He hadn’t really done any hunting since moving his family to North Carolina in the early ’70s, but he was always very animated when the topic of hunting came up (which was pretty danged often, with me for a son-in-law). 

I bounced the idea off my wife.  “I think he’d love that!” she exclaimed.  “He hasn’t been hunting since we moved here.”

My own folks have a home right on the banks of the Cape Fear River, and my dad, brother, and I often hunted ducks right down the river from their house.  It’s a short, 10 minute boat ride to a couple of islands situated in a bend of the river, and we usually did pretty well on wood ducks, teal, and the occasional mallard.  I figured that would be a good place to take him, since it was close by and reasonably good shooting.

I called my dad and asked if George (my father-in-law) and I could borrow his jon-boat to go duck hunting on Christmas Eve morning, or even better, if he’d like to join us on a hunt.  He said he wasn’t sure if he’d go along, but we were welcome to borrow the boat. 

The week before Christmas, George and I made a quick run over to the sporting goods store where I paid for his license and stamps.  He still had his old Remington 870 magnum, so he didn’t need a new gun or anything.  He offered to buy a box of shells, but I assured him that we had plenty.  My dad always keeps a big ammo box in the deck of the boat, loaded with cases of shells. 

As if by magic, the night before our hunt we got a rare dose of winter in southeastern North Carolina, with heavy snow and icy temps. It would be the first white Christmas in Wilmington, NC in over 100 years.  The television newscasters were all over themselves, and the excitement swept over everyone.

I was doubly excited, because I knew that the near-zero temperatures would freeze the skinny water and push the ducks out onto the deep, fast-moving water of the Cape Fear.  This storm was also joined by another that rolled down from the north, freezing Maryland and Virginia and sending clouds of ducks into North Carolina.  I could barely contain myself that evening as I stepped out to gather some firewood and the first big flakes of snow hit my face.  Read the rest of this entry »