PCA Trail Guide to the West: June 2009

Dan graduates from Reformed Theological Seminary, and Ricky completes his campus course work. In recognition, we head for Oregon.

Mount Hood from our plane, as we approach Portland. We land, collect our belongings, try to find some Chowder (a failure), and head into the mountains and some hot water.

We make our way toward Estacada and Bagby Hot Springs.

This is the main soaking area at Bagby, with the source to the left and the bath house on the right.

We got in a nice soak at the communal tubs.

We filled one log up with cold water for a cold plunge.

We spent some time with Bullet here, listening to his tales of being shot numerous times - hence the name.

The back side of the soaking area.

Dan and the big tree.

Ricky thinking depth thoughts.

Bullet is telling me about his most recent mission. Bullet is explaining how he is a "Sickle Sell, Single Soldier, Black Ops Agent.

You meet the most interesting people in Oregon!

I'm fairly new to hunting hogs. Started in January, helping a friend eliminate the pests from his timberland.

At dusk on Sunday (June 7, 2009), I killed my first pig in Jones County, Mississippi. This 225 lb sow was heavy with piglets. I used my Benelli M4 shotgun (3 in mag. 00 buckshot), with a little help from my .44 mag. S&W Mountain Gun.

I first became aware of the problem with wild hogs this past winter, while deer hunting on a friend's farm in Jones County, Mississippi. In short, the pigs were interfering with the deer and their rooting was damaging the land. The landowner wanted them eliminated, and this began my education in hog hunting.

At first, our efforts were haphazard at best. Asa, my cohort in crime, took a 150 lb sow in February with a head shot from about 10 feet, but nothing since and very few live sightings, despite our best efforts and a lot of evidence that the pigs were there and active. By the way, this pig provided some very tasty meat.

With the end of deer season in February, we contacted our Game and Fish folks and obtained a special permit to hunt hogs at any time, with or without lights, and with any weapon.

We discovered early on that we needed good intelligence, but the game cameras were spent after a hard deer season. The cams were returned to Cuddeback and were replaced with new ones. With the new cams, we started trying to figure the pigs out. With good intelligence, we started learning about our hogs.

We were able to identify two different groups. One group consisted of 3 medium sized sows with about 8 almost yearling piglets. The second group was a couple of medium sized sows. We only have a couple pics of our boar, but he is a nice one, probably about 300 lbs. We started charting our pigs and what times and where there came out. With this good information, we prepared a couple of areas to hunt, a ground blind and a tree stand.

After determining that our hogs were coming out at dusk, we got to our stands about an hour and a half before sunset this past Sunday (June 7, 2009). There was not much activity other than bugs and frogs. By the way, those ThermaCELL units really work. At about 8:40 pm, the light was almost gone, and the almost full moon was not out yet. Out of the shadows, I saw a dark shape moving toward my tree stand. I could tell it was a big pig, but not much else. We have a couple of bait spots here, and I was hoping that the hog would take a turn and head for one of them, which would give me an easy shot. My pig passed up both opportunities, and I had just a few seconds to take my shot. I decided not to use my light, as I was not able to get off a shot using it the week before. I could just make out the solitary shape moving to my left at about 50 feet and let go with four (4) quick rounds from my Benelli M4 Shotgun (3 in mag. 00 buck shot). Immediately, after my shots, I heard this blood curdling squealing. I turned my light on, and I had a pig on the ground. And it was a big one. With all the squealing, it was obvious that my hog was trying to get up and run. I put two (2) more rounds of buck shot into her and this seemed to stop her efforts to get up. I climbed down from the stand and went over to check on my hog. She was immobile, but still very alive. Looked like her back was broken and left shoulder was out of commission. I finished her off with my .44 mag S&W Mountain Gun. We hauled her back to to the barn to weigh and dress her. She weighed out at 225 lbs and was probably a week or so away from producing another litter of piglets. Asa took on the cleaning duties, his first pig to dress out. He soon learned that the buck shot had done its work on the pig, leaving little usable meat. Since eliminating the hogs was our primary goal, not meat, we decided to pass on further dressing. At almost 11 pm, with no supper and the heat, we were pretty spent too.