asaxon
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Condor down & ungrateful hog soaring! Did I just hear someone at CA DFG have a heart attack? Wait a second, I got that backwards. It is hog down & ungrateful condor soaring*.
It’s all Ltdann’s fault anyway. When we visited, he showed the Admiral his grinding, sausage making and smoking set up. Even worse, he gave us one of his smoked salami’s. That was it. The Admiral was “Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Tusks”. Having grown up in New Zealand where her dad had a full service old time grocery including a real butcher shop, the Admiral can not only make sausage but she can tie them three at a time – at least she used to. She bought a serious grinder so now it was time to get a “sausage sow”. She was dead set on a sow as the Admiral does not like boars – says even the smaller ones have a distinctive smell when cooking – a fact agreed to no less a hog maven than Tom Willoughby. So she called up Tom and arranged to go sausage chasing on Monday morning, May 21[SUP]st[/SUP] as we headed to Pinnacles National Monument.
On the way up, we stopped in Port San Luis where the Admiral checked out the oyster supply, lunch was oysters and French bread. Port San Luis was jammed with people –it was 67 degrees. By the time we’d arrived at Paso Robles 30 min. later, it was 92, 25 degrees hotter. No wonder everyone was at the beach. Dinner in Paso was at the Artesian Restaurant that had been recommended to us by some LA friends. The place had a really nice and inventive menu with almost all the food coming from local ranches, farms and producers. They had a list of local purveyors and who was on the list, Ocean Rose®, the “brand name” of the mariculture abalone operation run by friends of ours and from who I get the baby shells for making ear rings that many of you now have. Also on the list was Hearst beef which is from Jack Ranch where we have been hog and dove hunting. Small world.
During dinner, suddenly around 6:30 pm, most of the staff simply walked out the front door – WTF? Is this a spontaneous strike? Is our dinner in peril? No, it was the solar eclipse we’d forgotten about so we like the rest of the guests then piled out the door and had a “look”. After dinner, it was up to San Miguel to stop at the mission to say a blessing for the hogs and to bed early. A special treat was that we met Padre Larry, the Guardian of the Mission and he gave us a private tour of the inside of the mission buildings that are not open to the public as they are an living quarters for the Franciscan fathers. Way cool.
O’dark thirty (4:30) am on Monday found us 30 miles up the road in San Ardo where Tom was waiting by his truck. But no dogs. “So why no dogs?” He replied; “The Admiral’s shooting, I don’t expect we’ll need to be chasing any wounded animal.” But he brought the dogs the times I hunted with him…. We drove NE in the dark and soon we were going up some steep dirt tracks. Tom was quite concerned as we ran into heavy fog that really lowered the visibility on the ridges where we planned to hunt. The hogs also had not “bunched up” yet as they do later when the food is scare. And we had a very small window of time in the morning before the hogs would head for the brush and we had to go our separate ways.
Tom stopped the truck on a dirt track in thick fog and pitch dark. We then walked the track over a rise into the next saddle and we could see some hog tracks in the dust. We then simply stood there with our rifles waiting for sunrise and hopefully less fog. Well the sun sort of came up but the fog persisted. Occasionally we’d get break to maybe 100 yds but soon it would close in again. Then around 7 am, the fog lifted temporarily in front to maybe 300 yards and there, on the ridge right in front of us stand 3 nice hogs. Tom figured they’d been there all the time, we just couldn’t see them. One was about 220 yds away in the middle of the hillside while the other two were further away on the hi
ll’s edge and just in sight. The Admiral lays her Tikka T3 Lite 30-06 loaded with Federal 110 Barnes TTSX on her sticks, puts the cross hairs on closest hog and cranks up the power (Picture on left, no flash for obvious reasons). The Admiral shakes her head and her exact words were; “Not on my kitchen table”. I look through my scope and yup, the hog has a pronounced “razor back” of hair and tusks are evident. It was a big boar, an “AC” hog, named for a certain hunter from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It certainly resembled him. And then, I swear, the beast looked right at me, grinned and winked. But is was foggy and my eyes are old so I may have been mistaken…
The other two hogs however appeared to be perfect size dry sows but they were right on the edge of the hill and disappeared from view as they slowly moved to our right. Tom quickly gathers up the Admiral and heads off to get down wind of the sows with me in pursuit. We walk very quickly but quietly around the hillock on the right. When downwind and hopefully some distance below the hogs, we start up hill figuring to see them 125-150 yds away toward the hill top. Well the damn hill is not only very steep but it is covered in tall grass; i.e. tough going and worse seeing. All of a sudden, over a small hummock, - ears! Cr@p, it’s the two sows and they are no more than 30 yds from us. All we can see is their backs and ears but we know it isn’t the boar as there is no “razorback”….So Tom and the Admiral very carefully move up a
bit further to get into a shot position. Tom actually has her by the clothing at the nape of her neck and is lifting/pulling her up the hillside it is so steep. – I only wish I had my video but I’m carrying my ’06 as a back up. But each time they gain a little altitude, the hogs have moved a further up the hill which takes them out of view because of the shape of the hill. Finally, after three such moves, The Admiral sees ears, eyes and back of a hog quartering away from her and Tom whispers; “Pull the trigger” – BAM. The hog leaps and disappears but Tom simply says; “one down”. We scrabble up 50 yards and a nice 130 lbs sow lies dead less than 10 feet from the place where she was shot (lots of blood on ground). In the picture (taken later), Tom is holding the hog’s tail for the hill was so steep that if he didn’t, the hog would have rolled down it. This is the entry wound side.
Tom quickly stationed the Admiral with her gun by the hog and he and I hoofed it back to the saddle, me to see if the other hogs will come around that side while Tom goes for the truck. I waited in the fog. Five minutes later, in a break in the fog, here comes the big boar right along th
e track toward me some 250 yds away. However, before I can even think of aiming, I hear the truck coming over the hill and so does the hog. He dives off the track down into the brush in the deep canyon and is gone. Tom and I went and looked for him but he’d lit out for the next county. We collect the Admiral and her hog. She tells me that she could only see the ears, the eye and about 8 inches of the back so she aimed just into the grass there above where the middle of the animal figuring on the shot going forward and upward given the steep angle. You can see the exit wound on the carcass just behind the shoulder – interestingly, it was smaller in diameter than the entry wound which hit a rib. Shot was a clean pass through, nicked the stomach and continued forward and got the lungs. The Admiral says that after Tom and I left, she’d thanked the spirit of the hog for feeding us.
Tom as usual gutted and skinned the Admiral’s hog before I could even sort out our gear. He then went home to attend to a bunch of matters and hung the hog in his cold room where we collected it on Wednesday as we headed for home. The Admiral and I headed for breakfast at King City and then up to Pinnacles National Monument (PNM) East Entrance.
On the way over to the East entrance to the PNM, we saw coyote, roadrunners, a big Tom turkey just standing by the side of the road (he knew the season was over) and Black Tail deer. We watched a young buck (photo) and doe (insert) for some time and got up real close – I could have hit them with a rock. Look at the close up of his face. He is definitely winking at me! Having only hunted mule deer, we don’t know if it is all black tails or just the ones in this area but they are small.
Once we got to the East PNM, put aside by Teddy R in 1908, we
headed up the Reservoir trail and over the Rim trail looking for Condors. Low and behold, we spotted two juvenile (the front wing feathers were not white but brown/tan) condors. They were way way way up in the sky but we’re pretty sure they were condors after talking to one of the rangers. Look over the tops of the tall rock spires in the photo - No, you can NOT see them – you needed 8x binoculars to make them out. Anyway, the damn Condors were rude as can be. Here we are, being ever so careful to always shoot that expensive lead-free ammo do you think they even said, “Thanks” or even “Hi”. But NOoooooo, they just soared and soared. Ungrateful things ….
We spent the next day exploring the West side of Pinnacles National Monument and Soledad mission. Wednesday we picked up the hog from Tom’s, removed the hams and put the lot in our ice chest. We then headed home via more Oyster’s at Port San Luis and dinner in Santa Barbara with our older daughter. Sally the sausage sow will be processed by us on Thursday including making a fresh pate from ½ meat and ½ liver. Yumm.
*Nothing but the truth suffered in the telling of this tale.
It’s all Ltdann’s fault anyway. When we visited, he showed the Admiral his grinding, sausage making and smoking set up. Even worse, he gave us one of his smoked salami’s. That was it. The Admiral was “Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Tusks”. Having grown up in New Zealand where her dad had a full service old time grocery including a real butcher shop, the Admiral can not only make sausage but she can tie them three at a time – at least she used to. She bought a serious grinder so now it was time to get a “sausage sow”. She was dead set on a sow as the Admiral does not like boars – says even the smaller ones have a distinctive smell when cooking – a fact agreed to no less a hog maven than Tom Willoughby. So she called up Tom and arranged to go sausage chasing on Monday morning, May 21[SUP]st[/SUP] as we headed to Pinnacles National Monument.
On the way up, we stopped in Port San Luis where the Admiral checked out the oyster supply, lunch was oysters and French bread. Port San Luis was jammed with people –it was 67 degrees. By the time we’d arrived at Paso Robles 30 min. later, it was 92, 25 degrees hotter. No wonder everyone was at the beach. Dinner in Paso was at the Artesian Restaurant that had been recommended to us by some LA friends. The place had a really nice and inventive menu with almost all the food coming from local ranches, farms and producers. They had a list of local purveyors and who was on the list, Ocean Rose®, the “brand name” of the mariculture abalone operation run by friends of ours and from who I get the baby shells for making ear rings that many of you now have. Also on the list was Hearst beef which is from Jack Ranch where we have been hog and dove hunting. Small world.
During dinner, suddenly around 6:30 pm, most of the staff simply walked out the front door – WTF? Is this a spontaneous strike? Is our dinner in peril? No, it was the solar eclipse we’d forgotten about so we like the rest of the guests then piled out the door and had a “look”. After dinner, it was up to San Miguel to stop at the mission to say a blessing for the hogs and to bed early. A special treat was that we met Padre Larry, the Guardian of the Mission and he gave us a private tour of the inside of the mission buildings that are not open to the public as they are an living quarters for the Franciscan fathers. Way cool. O’dark thirty (4:30) am on Monday found us 30 miles up the road in San Ardo where Tom was waiting by his truck. But no dogs. “So why no dogs?” He replied; “The Admiral’s shooting, I don’t expect we’ll need to be chasing any wounded animal.” But he brought the dogs the times I hunted with him…. We drove NE in the dark and soon we were going up some steep dirt tracks. Tom was quite concerned as we ran into heavy fog that really lowered the visibility on the ridges where we planned to hunt. The hogs also had not “bunched up” yet as they do later when the food is scare. And we had a very small window of time in the morning before the hogs would head for the brush and we had to go our separate ways.
Tom stopped the truck on a dirt track in thick fog and pitch dark. We then walked the track over a rise into the next saddle and we could see some hog tracks in the dust. We then simply stood there with our rifles waiting for sunrise and hopefully less fog. Well the sun sort of came up but the fog persisted. Occasionally we’d get break to maybe 100 yds but soon it would close in again. Then around 7 am, the fog lifted temporarily in front to maybe 300 yards and there, on the ridge right in front of us stand 3 nice hogs. Tom figured they’d been there all the time, we just couldn’t see them. One was about 220 yds away in the middle of the hillside while the other two were further away on the hi
ll’s edge and just in sight. The Admiral lays her Tikka T3 Lite 30-06 loaded with Federal 110 Barnes TTSX on her sticks, puts the cross hairs on closest hog and cranks up the power (Picture on left, no flash for obvious reasons). The Admiral shakes her head and her exact words were; “Not on my kitchen table”. I look through my scope and yup, the hog has a pronounced “razor back” of hair and tusks are evident. It was a big boar, an “AC” hog, named for a certain hunter from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It certainly resembled him. And then, I swear, the beast looked right at me, grinned and winked. But is was foggy and my eyes are old so I may have been mistaken…The other two hogs however appeared to be perfect size dry sows but they were right on the edge of the hill and disappeared from view as they slowly moved to our right. Tom quickly gathers up the Admiral and heads off to get down wind of the sows with me in pursuit. We walk very quickly but quietly around the hillock on the right. When downwind and hopefully some distance below the hogs, we start up hill figuring to see them 125-150 yds away toward the hill top. Well the damn hill is not only very steep but it is covered in tall grass; i.e. tough going and worse seeing. All of a sudden, over a small hummock, - ears! Cr@p, it’s the two sows and they are no more than 30 yds from us. All we can see is their backs and ears but we know it isn’t the boar as there is no “razorback”….So Tom and the Admiral very carefully move up a
bit further to get into a shot position. Tom actually has her by the clothing at the nape of her neck and is lifting/pulling her up the hillside it is so steep. – I only wish I had my video but I’m carrying my ’06 as a back up. But each time they gain a little altitude, the hogs have moved a further up the hill which takes them out of view because of the shape of the hill. Finally, after three such moves, The Admiral sees ears, eyes and back of a hog quartering away from her and Tom whispers; “Pull the trigger” – BAM. The hog leaps and disappears but Tom simply says; “one down”. We scrabble up 50 yards and a nice 130 lbs sow lies dead less than 10 feet from the place where she was shot (lots of blood on ground). In the picture (taken later), Tom is holding the hog’s tail for the hill was so steep that if he didn’t, the hog would have rolled down it. This is the entry wound side. Tom quickly stationed the Admiral with her gun by the hog and he and I hoofed it back to the saddle, me to see if the other hogs will come around that side while Tom goes for the truck. I waited in the fog. Five minutes later, in a break in the fog, here comes the big boar right along th
e track toward me some 250 yds away. However, before I can even think of aiming, I hear the truck coming over the hill and so does the hog. He dives off the track down into the brush in the deep canyon and is gone. Tom and I went and looked for him but he’d lit out for the next county. We collect the Admiral and her hog. She tells me that she could only see the ears, the eye and about 8 inches of the back so she aimed just into the grass there above where the middle of the animal figuring on the shot going forward and upward given the steep angle. You can see the exit wound on the carcass just behind the shoulder – interestingly, it was smaller in diameter than the entry wound which hit a rib. Shot was a clean pass through, nicked the stomach and continued forward and got the lungs. The Admiral says that after Tom and I left, she’d thanked the spirit of the hog for feeding us.Tom as usual gutted and skinned the Admiral’s hog before I could even sort out our gear. He then went home to attend to a bunch of matters and hung the hog in his cold room where we collected it on Wednesday as we headed for home. The Admiral and I headed for breakfast at King City and then up to Pinnacles National Monument (PNM) East Entrance.
On the way over to the East entrance to the PNM, we saw coyote, roadrunners, a big Tom turkey just standing by the side of the road (he knew the season was over) and Black Tail deer. We watched a young buck (photo) and doe (insert) for some time and got up real close – I could have hit them with a rock. Look at the close up of his face. He is definitely winking at me! Having only hunted mule deer, we don’t know if it is all black tails or just the ones in this area but they are small.
Once we got to the East PNM, put aside by Teddy R in 1908, we
headed up the Reservoir trail and over the Rim trail looking for Condors. Low and behold, we spotted two juvenile (the front wing feathers were not white but brown/tan) condors. They were way way way up in the sky but we’re pretty sure they were condors after talking to one of the rangers. Look over the tops of the tall rock spires in the photo - No, you can NOT see them – you needed 8x binoculars to make them out. Anyway, the damn Condors were rude as can be. Here we are, being ever so careful to always shoot that expensive lead-free ammo do you think they even said, “Thanks” or even “Hi”. But NOoooooo, they just soared and soared. Ungrateful things …. We spent the next day exploring the West side of Pinnacles National Monument and Soledad mission. Wednesday we picked up the hog from Tom’s, removed the hams and put the lot in our ice chest. We then headed home via more Oyster’s at Port San Luis and dinner in Santa Barbara with our older daughter. Sally the sausage sow will be processed by us on Thursday including making a fresh pate from ½ meat and ½ liver. Yumm.
*Nothing but the truth suffered in the telling of this tale.
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