Another non paddling tale

[dawallace45]

Last week Shirley had to go out to Longreach to do some work at the Bank out there , her job takes her over a good chunk of Queensland and when she has to go long distances like this 10.5 hour drive I go with her , I had intended to take my inflatable kayak out and paddle the Thompson River but after remembering a few little facts like it's the middle of bloody winter here and freezing cold water from a self bailing kayak around the genitalia tends to take the fun right out of it , also is the fact that I've only ever seen the Thompson in either a flood state or just about bone dry and neither state is all that appealing , as these things happen the water level wasn't too bad and the water temp would have been quite Okay for paddling ,

Of course it was only that way because I didn't take the inflatable kayak , if I had it would have been freezing , I also took a fishing rod and intended to spend my time trying to catch a Yellow Belly but that didn't work out either ,

I have some friends on a sheep and cattle property some 30 or so Km out of town and around midday on Tuesday [ it took all of Monday getting out to Longreach ] I went out to visit , one of the first things I was asked is did I bring a rifle , and of course the answer was yes , I always take a rifle when I travel , mate said good , we've been having a pile of pigs getting about lately and they need thinning out [ pigs tear up a lot of country and play havoc at lambing time ] of course the rifle I bought wasn't really all that suitable for shooting at Longreach , my rifle while a 30/06 is made up to a Scout rifle configuration with a 20" barrel and a forward mounted 2x long eye relief scope , it's made to be light and easy to handle fast at close range , I have trouble seeing iron sights any more and the scout rifle concept suits me fine for close range , very , very fast , unfortunately it's not all that great for long range as the cross hairs pretty much cover a medium size pig at 100 metres , and while the Longreach area has a fair number of pigs it doesn't tend to have a lot of real big pigs , most shots taken around areas like that tend to be around 150 to 200 metres

The country was dry and dusty and there wasn't a real lot of feed about , they have been in drought for some time and while they have had a little rain it was too little and not at the right time to do a whole lot of good , one of the creeks running through the property actually had a few puddles of water in it every so often , about enough to fill a bath tub every half km or so but most of the gullies and creeks were bone dry as was this creek being typical of water courses in the area

Over the next couple of days I checked over the dams for pig sign and they were few and far between and always old , but there was plenty of fresh diggings around the wooded country around the clay pan , but you have to remember that in this country wooded means any place with more than two trees to the acre , even in the wooded country you can still spot pigs several hundred metres away if you are looking carefully ,

The tracks around the property had only just been graded several months before and as it hadn't rained in that time were still fine to take my wife's ford sedan along ,

When I first spotted a mob of pigs they were about 500 metres away and moving off at a angle to me , I very much doubt they knew I was there as the car is very quite and the wind was coming towards me at about 15 to 20 knots , generally far windier than I like to hunt in but I was there and had nothing else to do ,

The wind seems to make the pig beasties a bit twitchy and they seem to either hunker down in a thicket or run about like there is some thing after them , there was about 30 in the mob but they were way too far away for a shot ,
I followed them on foot for a few Km but in the end lost them as I just couldn't keep up , spotted part of the same mob later that day heading south towards the main road at a full run and tried to follow on foot but again lot them after following for a few km , ground was dry and dusty but hard as a rock underneath , wind kept erasing any tracks the pigs left ,

Next day I followed a cully for about 5 km and then cut across to another track a couple of Km west and then followed it for a km then cut across south hoping to come out along the edge of the wooded country around the clay pan , come out about a km east of where I wanted to be and then headed back to the car by keeping parallel to the track but about 200 metres from it so I had a bit of cover , plenty of sign but no pigs , got in the car and drove west along the track ,

It seems I missed a mob of pigs by only about 800 metres , I'd come out too far east to spot them , but this time I did spot them and they were about 500 metres off and probably would have missed them if I hadn't been using binoculars , the trees around there seem to be mainly Gidgee and Sandalwood and really don't provide a lot of cover for stalking in close , this day the wind had died down a bit but was still blowing at about 10 knots straight in my face , luckily there was a little bit of cover between me and the mob of pigs , there was exactly two bushy trees , one was about 120 metres from the pigs and the other was about 200 metres from me , I slowly made my way to the first tree and then carefully made the next 200 metres to the next tree , now I was about 100 to 120 metres from the mob ,

I would have like to get closer but there wasn't a scrap of cover between me and them , they were rooting around in a patch of grass and burr about 50 metres out from a group of fairly thick cover that marked a gully or rather a series of dry gullies that extended over a fairly wide area , just gullies , rough grass and waist high burs , of course I didn't know that at the time as the ground was pretty much flat as a tack and you have to be right on those sort of features to see them , about this time the pigs started to move off away from me and the wind started changing direction , there wasn't a hope in hell of getting any closer and I had a steady rest and held the scope on the biggest pig , a sort of black white and brindle coloured pig , the cross hairs pretty much covered the pig but I was confident , at the shot the pig was down but got back up and took off towards the gully , along with the other 6 pigs in the mob , I checked where the pig went down and there was a large splash of bright frothy blood and another a few metres further , good solid lung hit , from the amount of blood loss I'm amazed the pig got to the gully and the burs but it did , there is no bloody way I could fit through the tunnels the pigs had made through the burs so finding it proved imposable , from a hit like that it wouldn't have survived a minute , it had already lost several litres of blood just making it that far ,

I come up on the rest of the mob about a 3/4 of a hour later and about 900 metres further on and this time the wind was once again in my favour and I had a bit more cover to work with and was able to get with in 50 metres or maybe a little less , at this range the scout rifle concept works great for me and I can be on target as fast as I can work the bolt , I was able to take out 4 pigs before they were able to reach cover about 20 or so metres off to the right , I was shooting for pure pest destruction and could have taken another pig with my last round in the chamber but I learnt a long time ago never to empty a gun when shooting pigs , I always leave a round in the gun and fill my mag before I move closer , I had to do some fancy foot work a few times in my younger days when faced with a dry gun and a big pig and I'm just not agile enough for that any more ,

All up that day I probably walked about 20 km that day and the day before , had a good time that week , saw some old friends , got some exercise and saw some interesting country

Not a bad way to spend a week

Here is a picture of the property owners pet feral pig " Mongrel " , pigs do make good pets and are highly intelligent

David

 

[tx river rat]

David
Great tale .
Pigs are my favorite game animal with a bow, I make a trip every year to deep south Texas to hunt them. The country is really very similar.
Our pigs don't see to well and usually you can sneak in to 50 yards pretty easy, but there nose and ears work great and they are gone if they hear you.
We also hunt a little critter they call a Javelina ,he really is a peccary not a hog, about 40 lbs and they run in herds of up to 40.
They will fight a buzz saw, my favorite way to hunt them is using a hand blown varmint call ,if you find a herd with some small animals mixed in
just start squealing on the call as hard as you can, you will hear them coming grunting squealing and popping there teeth together, guess they think a little one is in trouble. I have called them in to as close as one yard now that will make your heart thump. I have also called in feral hogs the same way you might want to try it.
Ron

 

[nobucks]

I'll be hunting feral pigs on a couple of Texas ranches this winter when I'm down in Corpus Christi visiting my parents. Can't wait to do it. Your post provides some tips and some motivation. Thanks!

 

[tx river rat]

Nobucks
Have you hunted them before?
Ron

 

[nobucks]

No, but I'm looking forward to it. I've hunted a lot of coyotes with mouth blown predator calls back when I lived in Colorado.

My dad is a pastor down in Corpus and a couple of church members have feral pig problems, so they're always telling me to bring my guns down and eliminate some pigs.

When I lived in Corpus as a kid we used to see javelina all the time.

 

[bearridge]

Over the next couple of days I checked over the dams for pig sign and they were few and far between and always old

So they put up signs where the pigs like ta hang out. Mitey fancy huntin' spot. :wink: Good shootin' with that 06. I bet Shirley wuz mitey glad ta see the trunk fulla dead pigs. Jest kiddin'. I reckon ya'll dressed 'em out 'n iced 'em down fer the ride home? How much bacon ya reckon iz in the ones ya kilt?

Anuther good trip report.......we been awful lucky the last few days.

regards
bearridge

ps Glad ta see that injury didnt hurt yer trigger finger.

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. [Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.] unknown

 

[dawallace45]

Ron

I prefer more wooded country for bow hunting , I'm a little too stiff for covering a few hundred metres crouched down and crawling on my belly or hands and knees lost all it's appeal the first time I encountered Goats Head Burs , these fun little items are made so they always have one spine straight up , sort of like the metal gadgets they throw on the road to puncture car tyres , they have been known to puncture motor bike tyres , fun little things , the tips tend to break off in the wound and fester ,

Got to admit that stalking in close for a bow shot is getting harder each year , my knees tend to go snap crackle pop when I walk these days ,

Yep agree , pigs don't see well but they do see movement very well and their sense of smell is very good , when it's windy they tend to be extra hard to stalk as they are very twitchy , they tend to be looking up from their feeding every few seconds , and the more pigs in the mob the more chances of one of them spotting you , I don't wear camo gear and really don't find it effective as I think the beasties recognise your shape more than what you are wearing , I find if you stand up straight as you move in closer even if you are able to stand still when they look up they tend to be able to recognise your man shape easily from 50 to 70 metres , crouching down as you move up tends to distort your outline and allow you to move in closer , my knees and back really don't like me doing that any more , I wont take a shot with my bow unless I can get to 15-20 metres of the pig , at that distance I know I've got a kill shot every time but further out than that I can't guarantee it so I don't shoot ,

Bearing in mind what I just said about not liking camo gear I do really like Gillie suit style camo and have found it very effective because it breaks up the outline so it doesn't look man shaped so much

After the trip out to Longreach I've decided that I'm going to sell some of my firearms , these days I'm not 3 minutes from the range and don't have time to cast and reload for all the rifle calibres I used to experiment with , so I've decided to sell off my 6.5 x 55 , my 303's and my Brazilian Mauser in 30/06 , and then I'm going to get a new 30/06 more suitable for long range work , I used to love busting pigs out to 300 metres , it was almost as much fun as shooting pigs with a bow in the sugar cane or the jungle

Have used a Fox whistle to bring in pigs in the past , it does work well some time but not others

Joel

Don't know what the conditions are like where you are going to hunt them but here we mainly tend to hunt along the water courses or if there grain paddocks near by we check them out too , early morning and late afternoon is best as they tend to more active then , they mostly lay up in the heat of the day , when it's raining or a light drizzle tend to be productive for me but after a lot of rain they tend to be hard to hunt as they spread out much more , swampy areas tend to be very good hunting but high reeds make it hard to spot the pigs , I once hunted a swamp area for a week , I knew the place was thick with pigs as I could hear them but the reeds were 7-8 ft high and hard to get through , water was a bit over ankle deep , knew the pigs were only metres away but was lucky to take one a day with the bow , on the last day I took out my 44 mag lever gun and hunted half the day before I spotted a pig even though I could hear them all around me , but as soon as I fired a shot there were pigs every where , I ended up shooting 7 before they scarpered , one of the good things about shooting in places like that is I never had to worry about where my mate was because now one I went shooting with was silly enough to go in places like that

Bear

Pig sign is good , I especially like the ones in the cartoons where the big bad wolf sees a sign that says " this way to the three little pigs houses " , unfortunately we don't get those so we just have to rely on fresh droppings , foot prints and diggings

I've had a 30 year love affair with the 30/06 , it's by far my favourite cartridge , my rifle is set up for fast shooting at close range and that is some thing I can still do fairly well thanks to many years of IPSC shooting

As I said , I was shooting just for pest destruction , many of our pigs carry disease and at the very least worms and other parasites , people who shoot for Game Meat export have to go through a course to be able to recognise signs of disease , and many of the pigs shot for the business are rejected because of this , I don't particularly like pork and have never learnt to spot disease and parasites , that and the fact that one of the times I ate wild pork while out shooting I was so sick just seeing a piece of pork at the butchers made me sick to my stomach for many years , so when I shoot a pig I just leave it lay , I do check back the next day as I'll often get a few pigs , foxes or dingoes feeding off the carcass

When I shoot a Deer or a Goat I take the meat as they taste way better and tend to be disease free

Bear , yeah a all around good trip , this time I didn't manage to hurt my self and didn't poison my self either , all I got was a badly wind and sun burned face , even though I was wearing 30+ sun block


David

 

[tx river rat]

David
I have hunted the feral hogs in a lot of different habitats ,heavy forest in east Texas, rocky canyons in west Texas , around here it is water ways and grain fields and where Joel is going the ranches we hunt are usually very heavy low brush ,everything has a thorn.
They have a saying in south Texas everything ether sticks strikes are stings and it is pretty true.
In south Texas they have right of ways they clear thru the brush usually every mile, they call them senderos down here they are about 20 yards wide. We try to get where they cross so you can see all four ways then sling corn down the center of the roads for several hundred yards, go back sit down and watch , when the pigges show we go stalk them, with a bow it is a blast. I don't do the low crawl any more after crawling up on some long skinny critters. David my favorite distance with a bow is 50 yards.
Ron

 

[Kayak Jack]

All good stories. Makes me value the pork loin at Sam's ($1.92 - 2.16/ pound) a bit more. :lol: