Fugaloo
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- Oct 5, 2009
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I have been a hunter for about 5 years now. My parents wouldn't let me near a gun when I was little. Even as a teenager I wasn't even allowed a BB or pellet gun. We moved to a six acre property when I was 11 and since that time I have been an outdoors-man. There was a creek on the property and I would see all types of animals from squirrels, turkeys, deer and there was even some steel head that came through the creek sometimes. I would manage to get a hold of an air rifle now and then and would occasionally thin the blue jay population, and I might have popped a few quail too, it's hard to remember. But I remember the day I decided to graduate from poaching to real hunting. I was working on a clients 20 acre spread in Healdsburg when my boss at the time said we could go pig hunting after work. The pigs had been getting into the landscaping and the home owner gave us the green light to get rid of them. It was just starting to get dark when we struck out to find them. I saw what looked like a spotted dog about 130 yards off in the distance, and my boss says "nah that's a pig" So we crept up to the fence line that was about 35 yards in front of us in between us and the pig I spotted when no more than 40 yards off to the right of us was another hog. He started running when he saw us and my boss put a 30-06 bullet right through his rear leg. We both ran up on it and he says "you want to finish him off?" Well "Hell yeah" I said and I put a 12g slug right through his skull. It blew most of his dome off, I could see his brains and this thing still wasn't dead. So Bossman says, "He'll die out,let's go see if we can get that other one too." We spent the next two hours looking for pigs and we caught a few glimpses before they would run off. That was the moment I became hooked on hunting. There is nothing quite like chasing pigs through the woods with guns.
I have always tried to run a poor man's hunting operation. I buy used gear, I've never payed for access or guides. Despite not having much for public land close by, I do a fair share of hunting. I will hunt everything I can, upland, waterfowl, big game, small game and predators. I love being outdoors, and we all know how fun hunting can be. But we all know how disappointing it can be as well. I have spent countless hours hiking with a gun with nothing more than piles of poop to look at. I have woken up WAY before I should have to come home with nothing but a very foul stink on the dog that doesn't seem to come out easily. I am not opposed to a guided hunt because of the principle of doing things myself, but rather because the money a hunt usually costs is pretty close to the price of a new gun, and the gun will last, be guaranteed and I love getting new guns. But when I saw that Mel Carter had set up a pig hunt for four hundred dollars, and it was with an old friend from high school, I thought it might be worth the investment. So i ponied up and reserved a spot for the October pig hunt. It snuck up on me rather quickly and I didn't even get the time off of work to head up Friday like everybody else. I was afraid that all of Friday's action would spook what was left into being nocturnal or just off the ranch. Then I found out this place was 20,000 acres and just crawling with hogs.
I showed up Saturday morning and was paired up with a feller from LA who was part of a party of five including his teenage son. Junior was hunting with another guy from their group that day which left him odd man out so we set out together on the search for hogs. He was a pretty cool guy, we got along OK and shared a few hunting stories. We started off by taking a ride in the back of a truck about 15 minutes towards the back of the ranch. We dropped a few guys off along the way and we were the last to drop. That put us the deepest into the ranch I think of anybody there. Fifteen minutes or so walking down a two track road that by the way was very well maintained, I spotted three large black figures trotting over the top of a hill probably 250 yards and 750 feet up from where we were. They disappeared into a tree and never came out the other side. I had already chalked that up to experience when the guy I was with suggested we chase up after them. I said sure and we both started up this hill that wasn't terribly steep but certainly seemed to go for ever. We got about 2/3 of the way up when I figured out that the hogs I saw probably went over the hill, and not just across it like I had originally thought. We had already climbed most of the way up and I would have liked to crest the hill and see what was on the other side, but my partner had at least a decade on me and I could tell he was running out of steam for climbing. So in trying to keep it fun for everybody I conceded to traveling along side the road but I wanted to maintain our elevation since we had already put forth the effort to climb this high I didn't want to to waste it for the sake of walking on an easier trail.
So we traversed the mountain side for another 40 minutes maybe and he was wanting to return to the road so we could cover ground faster. We were going kind of slow so again I conceded to his plan and we made our decent back to the road below. On the way down I saw many bedding areas and sign of hogs, but with the size of the ranch and the dry conditions it was hard to tell how long ago or frequently the hogs used those areas. We ended up hiking for hours until we both were pretty much out of steam and the weather had heated up so much that we figured all the pigs were bedded down for the day.
Here's where the guide, George Mavrakis, makes the hunt really worth the money. He hands you a radio and a tracking dog collar in the morning before dropping you off and pointing you in the right direction. After that morning hike I was completely spent. Me and my partner for the day took turns napping and exploring at this point. I took the radio to the top of a big hill and tried to call George to pick us up. The radio was out of range, but George knew where we were headed and what time we wanted to be picked up at. After I made my climb to try the radio, I came back to the spot wew were at and took a snooze, meanwhile the other guy went up a canyon and spotted two hogs that never presented a shot to him. He got back just after a fly decided to wake me up by crawling into my mouth(Yikes), and we soon started walking back from the direction that we came. No more than five minutes into our walk back did we hear some squawking on the radio and we could hear the engine of George's truck coming up the trail. Right as we were about to hop in I tell him how glad I was to see him since I had run out of water, and I left a full bottle back at eh spot we originally got dropped off at. He hands me a relatively cold Red Bull and tells me to get in. That was a GOOD red bull.
We got back to camp and I introduced my self to a couple of the other hunters and we started telling stories. After talking to a few of the guys in the morning and then a few more in the afternoon it was obvious that a bunch of them were quite new to hunting big game, and some of them were new to hunting altogether. George was very understanding to this fact and gave everybody some really good advise. He knows those hills really well, and he knows where to find the pigs. It was a semi guided hunt, and he will listen to you, tell you where and what to do, put you at the starting gate and point the direction to follow. Talking to him I could see how truly concerned he was in putting everybody on pigs, and I think it was a lot of stress for him because he usually doesn't deal with so many people at once.
After resting a while, and recharging my water supply the evening hunt snuck up quickly on me. I learned that i would be on my own this time and I was very excited about that. I thought the guy I was with was nice and all, but this way I would be in control of how much noise was made, either by not whispering, or walking loudly, and even gear making noise. In the morning, despite my best efforts to be quiet, I could not control other people. So being in control of all the stealth required and also trash control....Ahem.....and also the endurance to scale a hill in pursuit of hogs, Soloing seemed like the advantage I was looking for. I was dropped off at the bottom of a steep 4X4 trail that went up a good 600 feet in probably 400 to 500 yards. It was so steep at one point that I had to lean forward onto my hands to climb up. Then it leveled out a little and kind of started stair casing. It was steep, I was really sweaty, but I did it in about 15 to 20 minutes when I heard a noise on the side of the road, about 30 yards up. We had been hearing noises all day. The leaves on the ground are really dry, and every little bird that lands makes a huge ruckus, and the squirrels make even more noise.
But whatever made this noise didn't stop making noise like all the other things did. Not only that but the noise started getting heavier and heavier. After 2 or 3 seconds I knew a pig was coming my way. I started my mental checklist. Was my gun loaded? check Was I breathing well enough to make a shot? check Was I concealed enough to not spook it? No! So I kind of hunkered down behind the berm in the road and waited for him to show himself. Like I said before, the roads are in great shape. The are conditioned yearly, and because of this there a nice berm probably a foot tall to hide behind. It doesn't sound like much the the hillside drops off so steeply that it made for really good cover from the approaching hog. I saw his head coming through the bushes. Mostly sparse tall grass with some old dead fall timber littered about. I saw a lot of stuff in the way so I pulled back down the road to get a better line of sight. I got a clear lane and just waited for him to come into it. When i saw him in my cross hairs I squeezed off 100grains of .243 at him and it went in right where I aimed, just behind the inside eye as he was quartered towards me. He went down instantly and rolled about ten feet into a log. He kicked for another ten seconds or so and then fell still.
I knew George was taking two other guys I road out with to their spot, and I was hoping they were all still in the truck when I called it in. I found out later that they had been out of the truck for maybe a minute when they heard my shot. I got George on the radio and he drove up right where I was standing when I made the shot. We got down to the pig which was maybe 35 yrds down the hillside and George pulled out a knife. I was planning on doing the gutting but he jumped in on it like he actually liked doing it. I've done my fair share of gutting and usually take a minute or two to acclimate myself to the situation once that warm blood gets on your hands and entrails are stinking up the air you're breathing, but this guy went at it like he does it every day, and he just about does. So we sat there for a minute talking about high school and the people that we see sometimes, and then we drag this hog up the hill to the truck. I gotta say, I'm not trying to do a commercial for this guy, but he really tries hard to earn your money. I am 6'1 240lbs, George is probably 5'9, no more than a buck fifty, and he did most of the work dragging this pig up the hill that I guess weighed somewhere around 180lbs.
When we got the hog back to the campsite I point to the ear and say" do they always have this little nub growing here?" He looks at it for a second and goes"I know what that is" then he grabs for his linesman pliers and pulls out a 2 inch tooth from the base of his ear. Another hog must have broken it off in him while fighting. After a while George went out to pick up the other hunters. Meanwhile I put my hog on the gambrel and got it ready for skinning. He has a skinning shed that has power for lights and a saw from a generator, running water and a stainless steel counter top. He also has all the hardware you need to lift and skin two hogs. I also would have done the skinning but he includes it and it is like watching a pro work watching this guy skin that hog. He and his assistant make quick work of it and help me load it in the truck. I recovered the bullet the next day, it was just poking out of the rib cage, probably stopped right at the armor plate. I do have to thank RugerMac for donating to me a game back to pack the animal in, and my condolences to him for not getting a pig himself.
So there you have it. I came a day late, was unsuccessful in the morning, but scored in the afternoon quick, wearing shorts and sneakers. Then left all of the other hunters to camp while I made the 45 minute drive back to my house with a real toilet, and warm bed. I had a truly awesome experience. I would recommend anybody who likes hunting to get in on the next trip. If you have never hunted hogs or you are an old pro, this ranch is something spectacular. It is crawling with pigs. There are tons of other animals as well. I saw dog tracks small and large, Cat poop, I'm thinking bobcats, but maybe cougars as well, tons of deer, coveys and coveys of quail, and many others. Every twenty feet on the two track roads there is another pile of poop from all different animals. The thing that makes this ranch so unique though is the water. As some of you may know Sonoma County is very dry in the summer. There are some lakes, but other than that most creeks dry up, and even the Russian river is no more than a trickle. But his ranch is loaded with natural springs. This creates quite a diverse cross section of nature as almost animal that could live there does. There were even fish in one of the small creeks that flows through. They were small, but if you know anything about the area you would recognize how rare that is to have a small creek that supports life like that.
On this trip I learned a few things. First of all, hunting alone is a double edged sword. On one hand, the solitude and ownership of all things that go right or wrong is something to value. If a noise is made, you have no one to blame, and there is nobody you have to compromise with. But on the other hand, sometimes it would be nice to share this great experience of hunting with someone else, somebody to high five when you make that perfect shot. Secondly, you can never trust what you hear about and don't see for yourself. Whether it's how beautiful an area is, or how a story about a 250 yard miss was really more like an 80 yard choke, unless you see it first hand you can only take it at face value. And lastly, there is no shame in paying for a hunt, and just because you did does not mean you aren't going to work your butt off for success. Thanks again to George Mavrakis and Mel Carter for setting this all up. I had a great time meeting some of the guys on this site, and even some of the guys from that other site which we won't mention (you know....the one whose members leave trash, can't tell 80 yards from 250 yards and who miss under 100). I know my story was long, but I like telling it and I think some people like reading it.
Fugaloo Out!
Here's a video I took right after the shot...Hog hunt October 2010 :: hoghunt029.mp4 video by Fugaloo - Photobucket
Here's a couple of pics showing the tooth that was stuck in his ear
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt014.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt013.jpg
Here he's loaded up in the truck http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt011.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt010.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt016.jpg
I have always tried to run a poor man's hunting operation. I buy used gear, I've never payed for access or guides. Despite not having much for public land close by, I do a fair share of hunting. I will hunt everything I can, upland, waterfowl, big game, small game and predators. I love being outdoors, and we all know how fun hunting can be. But we all know how disappointing it can be as well. I have spent countless hours hiking with a gun with nothing more than piles of poop to look at. I have woken up WAY before I should have to come home with nothing but a very foul stink on the dog that doesn't seem to come out easily. I am not opposed to a guided hunt because of the principle of doing things myself, but rather because the money a hunt usually costs is pretty close to the price of a new gun, and the gun will last, be guaranteed and I love getting new guns. But when I saw that Mel Carter had set up a pig hunt for four hundred dollars, and it was with an old friend from high school, I thought it might be worth the investment. So i ponied up and reserved a spot for the October pig hunt. It snuck up on me rather quickly and I didn't even get the time off of work to head up Friday like everybody else. I was afraid that all of Friday's action would spook what was left into being nocturnal or just off the ranch. Then I found out this place was 20,000 acres and just crawling with hogs.
I showed up Saturday morning and was paired up with a feller from LA who was part of a party of five including his teenage son. Junior was hunting with another guy from their group that day which left him odd man out so we set out together on the search for hogs. He was a pretty cool guy, we got along OK and shared a few hunting stories. We started off by taking a ride in the back of a truck about 15 minutes towards the back of the ranch. We dropped a few guys off along the way and we were the last to drop. That put us the deepest into the ranch I think of anybody there. Fifteen minutes or so walking down a two track road that by the way was very well maintained, I spotted three large black figures trotting over the top of a hill probably 250 yards and 750 feet up from where we were. They disappeared into a tree and never came out the other side. I had already chalked that up to experience when the guy I was with suggested we chase up after them. I said sure and we both started up this hill that wasn't terribly steep but certainly seemed to go for ever. We got about 2/3 of the way up when I figured out that the hogs I saw probably went over the hill, and not just across it like I had originally thought. We had already climbed most of the way up and I would have liked to crest the hill and see what was on the other side, but my partner had at least a decade on me and I could tell he was running out of steam for climbing. So in trying to keep it fun for everybody I conceded to traveling along side the road but I wanted to maintain our elevation since we had already put forth the effort to climb this high I didn't want to to waste it for the sake of walking on an easier trail.
So we traversed the mountain side for another 40 minutes maybe and he was wanting to return to the road so we could cover ground faster. We were going kind of slow so again I conceded to his plan and we made our decent back to the road below. On the way down I saw many bedding areas and sign of hogs, but with the size of the ranch and the dry conditions it was hard to tell how long ago or frequently the hogs used those areas. We ended up hiking for hours until we both were pretty much out of steam and the weather had heated up so much that we figured all the pigs were bedded down for the day.
Here's where the guide, George Mavrakis, makes the hunt really worth the money. He hands you a radio and a tracking dog collar in the morning before dropping you off and pointing you in the right direction. After that morning hike I was completely spent. Me and my partner for the day took turns napping and exploring at this point. I took the radio to the top of a big hill and tried to call George to pick us up. The radio was out of range, but George knew where we were headed and what time we wanted to be picked up at. After I made my climb to try the radio, I came back to the spot wew were at and took a snooze, meanwhile the other guy went up a canyon and spotted two hogs that never presented a shot to him. He got back just after a fly decided to wake me up by crawling into my mouth(Yikes), and we soon started walking back from the direction that we came. No more than five minutes into our walk back did we hear some squawking on the radio and we could hear the engine of George's truck coming up the trail. Right as we were about to hop in I tell him how glad I was to see him since I had run out of water, and I left a full bottle back at eh spot we originally got dropped off at. He hands me a relatively cold Red Bull and tells me to get in. That was a GOOD red bull.
We got back to camp and I introduced my self to a couple of the other hunters and we started telling stories. After talking to a few of the guys in the morning and then a few more in the afternoon it was obvious that a bunch of them were quite new to hunting big game, and some of them were new to hunting altogether. George was very understanding to this fact and gave everybody some really good advise. He knows those hills really well, and he knows where to find the pigs. It was a semi guided hunt, and he will listen to you, tell you where and what to do, put you at the starting gate and point the direction to follow. Talking to him I could see how truly concerned he was in putting everybody on pigs, and I think it was a lot of stress for him because he usually doesn't deal with so many people at once.
After resting a while, and recharging my water supply the evening hunt snuck up quickly on me. I learned that i would be on my own this time and I was very excited about that. I thought the guy I was with was nice and all, but this way I would be in control of how much noise was made, either by not whispering, or walking loudly, and even gear making noise. In the morning, despite my best efforts to be quiet, I could not control other people. So being in control of all the stealth required and also trash control....Ahem.....and also the endurance to scale a hill in pursuit of hogs, Soloing seemed like the advantage I was looking for. I was dropped off at the bottom of a steep 4X4 trail that went up a good 600 feet in probably 400 to 500 yards. It was so steep at one point that I had to lean forward onto my hands to climb up. Then it leveled out a little and kind of started stair casing. It was steep, I was really sweaty, but I did it in about 15 to 20 minutes when I heard a noise on the side of the road, about 30 yards up. We had been hearing noises all day. The leaves on the ground are really dry, and every little bird that lands makes a huge ruckus, and the squirrels make even more noise.
But whatever made this noise didn't stop making noise like all the other things did. Not only that but the noise started getting heavier and heavier. After 2 or 3 seconds I knew a pig was coming my way. I started my mental checklist. Was my gun loaded? check Was I breathing well enough to make a shot? check Was I concealed enough to not spook it? No! So I kind of hunkered down behind the berm in the road and waited for him to show himself. Like I said before, the roads are in great shape. The are conditioned yearly, and because of this there a nice berm probably a foot tall to hide behind. It doesn't sound like much the the hillside drops off so steeply that it made for really good cover from the approaching hog. I saw his head coming through the bushes. Mostly sparse tall grass with some old dead fall timber littered about. I saw a lot of stuff in the way so I pulled back down the road to get a better line of sight. I got a clear lane and just waited for him to come into it. When i saw him in my cross hairs I squeezed off 100grains of .243 at him and it went in right where I aimed, just behind the inside eye as he was quartered towards me. He went down instantly and rolled about ten feet into a log. He kicked for another ten seconds or so and then fell still.
I knew George was taking two other guys I road out with to their spot, and I was hoping they were all still in the truck when I called it in. I found out later that they had been out of the truck for maybe a minute when they heard my shot. I got George on the radio and he drove up right where I was standing when I made the shot. We got down to the pig which was maybe 35 yrds down the hillside and George pulled out a knife. I was planning on doing the gutting but he jumped in on it like he actually liked doing it. I've done my fair share of gutting and usually take a minute or two to acclimate myself to the situation once that warm blood gets on your hands and entrails are stinking up the air you're breathing, but this guy went at it like he does it every day, and he just about does. So we sat there for a minute talking about high school and the people that we see sometimes, and then we drag this hog up the hill to the truck. I gotta say, I'm not trying to do a commercial for this guy, but he really tries hard to earn your money. I am 6'1 240lbs, George is probably 5'9, no more than a buck fifty, and he did most of the work dragging this pig up the hill that I guess weighed somewhere around 180lbs.
When we got the hog back to the campsite I point to the ear and say" do they always have this little nub growing here?" He looks at it for a second and goes"I know what that is" then he grabs for his linesman pliers and pulls out a 2 inch tooth from the base of his ear. Another hog must have broken it off in him while fighting. After a while George went out to pick up the other hunters. Meanwhile I put my hog on the gambrel and got it ready for skinning. He has a skinning shed that has power for lights and a saw from a generator, running water and a stainless steel counter top. He also has all the hardware you need to lift and skin two hogs. I also would have done the skinning but he includes it and it is like watching a pro work watching this guy skin that hog. He and his assistant make quick work of it and help me load it in the truck. I recovered the bullet the next day, it was just poking out of the rib cage, probably stopped right at the armor plate. I do have to thank RugerMac for donating to me a game back to pack the animal in, and my condolences to him for not getting a pig himself.
So there you have it. I came a day late, was unsuccessful in the morning, but scored in the afternoon quick, wearing shorts and sneakers. Then left all of the other hunters to camp while I made the 45 minute drive back to my house with a real toilet, and warm bed. I had a truly awesome experience. I would recommend anybody who likes hunting to get in on the next trip. If you have never hunted hogs or you are an old pro, this ranch is something spectacular. It is crawling with pigs. There are tons of other animals as well. I saw dog tracks small and large, Cat poop, I'm thinking bobcats, but maybe cougars as well, tons of deer, coveys and coveys of quail, and many others. Every twenty feet on the two track roads there is another pile of poop from all different animals. The thing that makes this ranch so unique though is the water. As some of you may know Sonoma County is very dry in the summer. There are some lakes, but other than that most creeks dry up, and even the Russian river is no more than a trickle. But his ranch is loaded with natural springs. This creates quite a diverse cross section of nature as almost animal that could live there does. There were even fish in one of the small creeks that flows through. They were small, but if you know anything about the area you would recognize how rare that is to have a small creek that supports life like that.
On this trip I learned a few things. First of all, hunting alone is a double edged sword. On one hand, the solitude and ownership of all things that go right or wrong is something to value. If a noise is made, you have no one to blame, and there is nobody you have to compromise with. But on the other hand, sometimes it would be nice to share this great experience of hunting with someone else, somebody to high five when you make that perfect shot. Secondly, you can never trust what you hear about and don't see for yourself. Whether it's how beautiful an area is, or how a story about a 250 yard miss was really more like an 80 yard choke, unless you see it first hand you can only take it at face value. And lastly, there is no shame in paying for a hunt, and just because you did does not mean you aren't going to work your butt off for success. Thanks again to George Mavrakis and Mel Carter for setting this all up. I had a great time meeting some of the guys on this site, and even some of the guys from that other site which we won't mention (you know....the one whose members leave trash, can't tell 80 yards from 250 yards and who miss under 100). I know my story was long, but I like telling it and I think some people like reading it.
Fugaloo Out!
Here's a video I took right after the shot...Hog hunt October 2010 :: hoghunt029.mp4 video by Fugaloo - Photobucket
Here's a couple of pics showing the tooth that was stuck in his ear
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt014.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt013.jpg
Here he's loaded up in the truck http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt011.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt010.jpg
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g341/Fugaloo/Hog hunt October 2010/hoghunt016.jpg
