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Thanks for all the help and advice from the other thread, thought I would share a little background on the place/situation we are hunting for these pigs.
The property belongs to a friend of my friend's father. It is a 1600 acre cattle ranch, mostly flat or gentle rolling hills. Probably 25% wooded, 75% open fields.
Though it has lots of hogs, deer, turkey and coyotes, the landowner does not allow any hunting on the property at all. He has another ranch that he and his family hunt, but no one can hunt this property.
He very generously has allowed us to come and hunt hogs and coyotes (only) on this property, to a great degree because encouraging youth hunting is important to him (he hosts the Texas Youth Hunting Program on his other property at times). He is a super nice guy.
My sons get to hunt out of blinds/over feeders at other hunts, but we have been wanting something different. So despite the difficulty, we decided to hunt this place spot and stalk only.
We recently bought some lights to see if we could locate the hogs and went out two weeks ago in the early afternoon to see what we could find, and then planned to setup at a couple spots with a lot of sign.
As we got to one field that has a brushy creek that runs along it (the property line), we spotted a huge white hog and a black one in the field about 650 yards out. Keep in mind, other than a few small islands of brush dotted in the field, there is NO cover at all. Just an open field probably 900 yards wide from the fence we were at.
We studied the situation and checked the creekbed to see about going down it to close the distance. While doing this, pigs kept coming in and out of that creekbed, and it was pretty covered up in brush, so we were pretty certain they would hear us if we tried to use it to close the gap. In the meantime, a flock of turkeys came out of the creek at about 200 yards and began feeding in the field, so the creekbed was right out.
The other alternative, driving to the other side of the ranch and making an approach that way, would take 30-45 minutes, and would give us wind problems.
So we snuck carefully down the fenceline to where there was a small patch of brush between us and the hogs and we crossed part of the field and got into the brush (with deer 200 yards in the field to our right!). Once we got to the edge of that island, the pigs were now farther away in the field, so they were still 550 yards away.
At this point, behind the first ones I saw, at 700 yards, I saw a massive boar. He looked like a calf. Pure black and with visible tusks (through the 7x rangefinder), he hung close to the far brushy corner of the creek where it turned sharply to our right. There were several other big pigs with him, but he towered over the rest, including the big white one we had seen.
Being that it was open country from where we were to them, our only option was to back out of the brush, and head down the fenceline where were had been, crouching very low and heading away from the creek, to a spot where the land gently went down hill, then try and use the elevation difference to close the distance back towards the pigs, and finally crawl to a large solitary tree that was probably 300 yards from the nearest pigs. The problem is that the elevation difference was probably no more than 1.5 or 2 feet, and there were a dozen or more deer in that direction. Nonetheless, we waited them out as they jumped the fence and then moved in.
Slowly, bent over, we moved down the field and then started across the field. At first, we were able to make some progress quickly, but soon, the land began rising up towards the pigs. My hands were almost touching the ground, so I decided to start crawling the last couple hundred yards to the tree. As I dropped down the the ground with my son doing the same, I felt searing burning pain in my hands and knees. I crawled back as fast as I could so I could squat and look down and found that the field was covered in some sort of nettle that went right though my pants. Crawling was not going to happen.
So we angled to keep the tree between us and the big pigs, and squat walked the last couple hundred yards towards the tree. Unexpectedly, some smaller pigs came out of the brushline to our right and in front of us about 400 yards, but the wind was directly from our right and they did not notice the odd lumps moving across the field.
Finally, we were just yards from the big dead tree and I started to unfold myself when I felt the wind fall, and then come again, just a puff this time, but now on the back of my kneck. As we reached the tree I peered around it and the pigs continued to feed. But then suddenly a strong gust, directly at our backs and straight to the white boar in the field. He lifted his snout up to the air, and he and his friends turned and bolted for the creek. Bye bye whitey, bye bye Ivan (what my son named the giant black one), who was already sitting way back by the creekbed.
The property belongs to a friend of my friend's father. It is a 1600 acre cattle ranch, mostly flat or gentle rolling hills. Probably 25% wooded, 75% open fields.
Though it has lots of hogs, deer, turkey and coyotes, the landowner does not allow any hunting on the property at all. He has another ranch that he and his family hunt, but no one can hunt this property.
He very generously has allowed us to come and hunt hogs and coyotes (only) on this property, to a great degree because encouraging youth hunting is important to him (he hosts the Texas Youth Hunting Program on his other property at times). He is a super nice guy.
My sons get to hunt out of blinds/over feeders at other hunts, but we have been wanting something different. So despite the difficulty, we decided to hunt this place spot and stalk only.
We recently bought some lights to see if we could locate the hogs and went out two weeks ago in the early afternoon to see what we could find, and then planned to setup at a couple spots with a lot of sign.
As we got to one field that has a brushy creek that runs along it (the property line), we spotted a huge white hog and a black one in the field about 650 yards out. Keep in mind, other than a few small islands of brush dotted in the field, there is NO cover at all. Just an open field probably 900 yards wide from the fence we were at.
We studied the situation and checked the creekbed to see about going down it to close the distance. While doing this, pigs kept coming in and out of that creekbed, and it was pretty covered up in brush, so we were pretty certain they would hear us if we tried to use it to close the gap. In the meantime, a flock of turkeys came out of the creek at about 200 yards and began feeding in the field, so the creekbed was right out.
The other alternative, driving to the other side of the ranch and making an approach that way, would take 30-45 minutes, and would give us wind problems.
So we snuck carefully down the fenceline to where there was a small patch of brush between us and the hogs and we crossed part of the field and got into the brush (with deer 200 yards in the field to our right!). Once we got to the edge of that island, the pigs were now farther away in the field, so they were still 550 yards away.
At this point, behind the first ones I saw, at 700 yards, I saw a massive boar. He looked like a calf. Pure black and with visible tusks (through the 7x rangefinder), he hung close to the far brushy corner of the creek where it turned sharply to our right. There were several other big pigs with him, but he towered over the rest, including the big white one we had seen.
Being that it was open country from where we were to them, our only option was to back out of the brush, and head down the fenceline where were had been, crouching very low and heading away from the creek, to a spot where the land gently went down hill, then try and use the elevation difference to close the distance back towards the pigs, and finally crawl to a large solitary tree that was probably 300 yards from the nearest pigs. The problem is that the elevation difference was probably no more than 1.5 or 2 feet, and there were a dozen or more deer in that direction. Nonetheless, we waited them out as they jumped the fence and then moved in.
Slowly, bent over, we moved down the field and then started across the field. At first, we were able to make some progress quickly, but soon, the land began rising up towards the pigs. My hands were almost touching the ground, so I decided to start crawling the last couple hundred yards to the tree. As I dropped down the the ground with my son doing the same, I felt searing burning pain in my hands and knees. I crawled back as fast as I could so I could squat and look down and found that the field was covered in some sort of nettle that went right though my pants. Crawling was not going to happen.
So we angled to keep the tree between us and the big pigs, and squat walked the last couple hundred yards towards the tree. Unexpectedly, some smaller pigs came out of the brushline to our right and in front of us about 400 yards, but the wind was directly from our right and they did not notice the odd lumps moving across the field.
Finally, we were just yards from the big dead tree and I started to unfold myself when I felt the wind fall, and then come again, just a puff this time, but now on the back of my kneck. As we reached the tree I peered around it and the pigs continued to feed. But then suddenly a strong gust, directly at our backs and straight to the white boar in the field. He lifted his snout up to the air, and he and his friends turned and bolted for the creek. Bye bye whitey, bye bye Ivan (what my son named the giant black one), who was already sitting way back by the creekbed.
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