My son Ben and I had a blast at Joyce Island. He just turned twelve a month ago and had been talking about how he couldn't wait till the fall to go deer and big game hunting. This kid has been my shadow since he was in a car seat and loves hunting so it was quite a surprise to him when I told him he'd be hunting big game sooner rather than later because he drew for this Jr hunt. Conditions were very tough as the entire island was flooded and there seemed to be a 6ft moat around the levees that made it almost impassable to get to any part of the center of the island. Most of the tracts were flooded so the only way to get to where you wanted to go was to walk the entire island. Ben didn't complain or whine the entire hunt and although we missed a big 200lb boar in the morning his spirit was high the entire day.
As the morning hunt had ended on Saturday I really just wanted to dry out and take a nap but Ben was persistent and told me we needed to walk back to the location we saw the pigs in the morning. We made the 3.5 miles back to that location and started to get on pigs right away. We busted a 75lb brown and blond phase pig at 70yards and he missed it shooting right over him, then two piglets busted out after that one followed by another 75lb brown pig, Ben had unloaded and chambered another shot into the single shot TC by this point and took another pop and shot right under this one. At this point I just encouraged him that it happened to fast and for us to keep working towards them. We never saw those smaller pigs again, but as we got to the back of the island I spotted with the binoculars two 100lb+ pigs wallowing beyond the tullies. We had tried to cross the moat earlier in our waders and found out real fast how deep it really was, so now we had to find a narrow that we could cross. Fortunately we did find a small narrow that was thigh high, we circled around the tullies and cattails, but realized that the more active boar was gone. At 50yrds we could see what we thought was burned out log, even with my Vortex Razor binos I couldn't make out that it was a pig because it was laying so still. Finally as we made our way to 25 yards I looked in the binos and could make out hair on our burnt out log, because we were less than 100yrds from where we thought he had missed his morning hog, we automatically thought this was the pig he shot and that it had died. As we were high fiving it gets up and this is when we realized this sow was just taking a deep slumber. It raises it's head looks at us, I tell Ben to cock the hammer and take it, the pig takes one step towards us like it's going to charge then runs away, just as it runs I hear the gun go off and a squeal from the pig. Ben put the perfect heart shot on a running pig and it piled up 10yards from the shot. As I was gutting the pig and cutting away the diaphragm the heart just slips out of the chest cavity, he had severed the heart, lucky shot I told him. It was 4pm, I gutted the pig, gave him both hind quarters and I packed 3/4 of the pig into my Kuiu 7200 pack and we made a brutal hike back, arriving at the truck at 7:45pm. This hunt gave Ben a proper introduction into big game hunting for sure. I'm a super proud dad as this kid warriored up big time.
As the morning hunt had ended on Saturday I really just wanted to dry out and take a nap but Ben was persistent and told me we needed to walk back to the location we saw the pigs in the morning. We made the 3.5 miles back to that location and started to get on pigs right away. We busted a 75lb brown and blond phase pig at 70yards and he missed it shooting right over him, then two piglets busted out after that one followed by another 75lb brown pig, Ben had unloaded and chambered another shot into the single shot TC by this point and took another pop and shot right under this one. At this point I just encouraged him that it happened to fast and for us to keep working towards them. We never saw those smaller pigs again, but as we got to the back of the island I spotted with the binoculars two 100lb+ pigs wallowing beyond the tullies. We had tried to cross the moat earlier in our waders and found out real fast how deep it really was, so now we had to find a narrow that we could cross. Fortunately we did find a small narrow that was thigh high, we circled around the tullies and cattails, but realized that the more active boar was gone. At 50yrds we could see what we thought was burned out log, even with my Vortex Razor binos I couldn't make out that it was a pig because it was laying so still. Finally as we made our way to 25 yards I looked in the binos and could make out hair on our burnt out log, because we were less than 100yrds from where we thought he had missed his morning hog, we automatically thought this was the pig he shot and that it had died. As we were high fiving it gets up and this is when we realized this sow was just taking a deep slumber. It raises it's head looks at us, I tell Ben to cock the hammer and take it, the pig takes one step towards us like it's going to charge then runs away, just as it runs I hear the gun go off and a squeal from the pig. Ben put the perfect heart shot on a running pig and it piled up 10yards from the shot. As I was gutting the pig and cutting away the diaphragm the heart just slips out of the chest cavity, he had severed the heart, lucky shot I told him. It was 4pm, I gutted the pig, gave him both hind quarters and I packed 3/4 of the pig into my Kuiu 7200 pack and we made a brutal hike back, arriving at the truck at 7:45pm. This hunt gave Ben a proper introduction into big game hunting for sure. I'm a super proud dad as this kid warriored up big time.
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