asaxon
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Well with the Admiral heading off to New Zealand, I figured I had a chance to slip away to VAFB with LtDan and Trkyhtr3 and the Admiral would never know. However, her final words to me as I dropped her off at the airport were not, “I love you” or even “take care of the house”. She looked me straight in the eye and said: “No Boars!” Damn, we’ve been married too long.
As this was to be my third trip, I figured I pretty much knew the ropes and the MobeVan is all tricked out for camping as my own “mobile home”. But I didn’t figure on one very difficult undertaking......................
.
.
.
.
.
Getting out of be
d without hurting myself. Doh! The result of my lack of planning was one very purple toe. Initially I thought I was going to have to amputate but once I had a boot on, it was held firmly and I figured, what the heck, I can keep up with a bunch of jar heads. An early morning 3 hours run up the road had me at the VAFB Visitor’s Center at 8 am where clearance was obtained for me and no less a famous JHO personality than k_rad who was joining as LtD’s guest.
This time we made camp in a more isolated area where there was a large shelter and regular toilets. LtD pitched the tent under the large shelter so that it wouldn’t get wet. Talk about luxury camping. Next thing you know, he’ll be joining the Air Force. Sitting there at the camp the first afternoon, I spot something unusual in the far distance.
You will see is a very large bird sitting in a tree. It was quite distant - this is magnified 18x on optical zoom. After much discussion and looking through a spotting scope, we agreed that the bird was massive and thought it might be a Golden Eagle. However, once I got home, a quick look at a bird identification book convinced me it was simply a very very large female red-tailed hawk. Indeed, I saw that one or another huge one just like it the last evening when we hunted the back side of that ridge. She was a truly magnificent creature and looked as big as the male Golden Eagle, Pee’ech who is in captivity on Catalina. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rprMZqIhI. The video is long, just go toward he middle/end to see good video of a real Golden Eagle. He is in captivity due to a wing injury such that he can not be released into the wild. Also you look real carefully at the picture I have posted, you can see the number of hogs I saw on the trip.
Well if you saw any hogs, you are hallucinating as I personally didn’t’ see a single hog on the whole trip – those VAFB hogs are smart, they know who to avoid.
We were soon joined by a friend of T3’s, AB who is a retired Navy “pork chop” (now who knows what a “pork chop” is in the US Navy?). We split into two teams, K_rad and LtD in krad’s jeep with T3, AB and I in LtD camo pick up. After glassing lots of great areas, 3. Picture,. T3, AB and I had spread out along the bottom land where we had seen some pretty good pig sign and near where K_rad and Ltd and see a multicolored sow with young (no longer striped) piglets that morning. This was exactly where LtD and shot at the DEDP http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums...-amp-who-is-shooting-at-me.*?highlight=hoggus. I only saw deer and this doe made it clear why they are called Mule deer.
Now what follows as related to me by T3 and AB for I was ¼ mi away at the time. About 7 pm T3 sees a good sized all black hog coming out of the brush. The hog slowly walked toward him but because of the tall grass, he couldn’t tell the gender and much less if it was a pregnant or nursing sow. After glassing the hog for 10 min, T3 decides it’s a sow, has seen no piglets and that it is time to take the shot. Just as he’s putting the cross hairs onto the animal, out of the corner of his eye T3 catches sight of an orange object moving; it is AB closing in on the same hog. He decides to let AB take the shot as AB has never taken a shot at a hog at VAFB. AB gets close to 100 yds and fires but surprise, it is no less the DEDP. How do we know? Because, as soon as AB fired, the pig had “moved” and the bullet missed. Since the bullet was traveling faster than the speed of sound, the damn pig couldn’t have heard it coming so she must have seen the muzzle flash which is traveling at light speed and reacted so fast that the bullet missed. Only the DEDP could move that fast - there can be no other explanation in my view. And it was a good thing he missed for immediately, a pack of small striped piglets appeared out of the deep grass and disappear after Mom. The grass was so high and they were so small that they had not been seen by T3 or AB in spite of careful looking till after the shot. Further proof that she was THE DEDP was that the little piglets were sporting Quaker State oil, Goodyear tire and all sorts of other racing logos. That is what my hunting buddies tell me so it must be true.
Next morning, AB had another brief adventure. He came across some very fresh rooting, followed it and then heard grunting type noises on the other side of a large oak. Off comes the
safety as he steps around the oak only to find a big badger digging up the ground chasing ground squirrels to eat. It did get his heart rate up. No pigs were seen. Around noon, we all headed out to the range continue my Ddupleks slug experimentation (http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums...ce-Intel-Sharing-thread?p=2326258#post2326258. I brought a bunch of both the mono28 and mono32 rounds so that T3 and Ltd could see how they worked in their rifled slug guns. Interestingly AB, being of Latvian extraction, knew all about Ddupleks ammo and indeed, was already using them in his H&R 12g with rifled barrel. Briefly, the good news is that we all found that we good real good repeatability with the Ddupleks rounds. Here is a picture of one of LtD’s groupings at 100 yds. I have put a specific post about the Ddupleks results under “Shotguns” if you want more details.
That evening’s hun
ting produced no hogs so after a fantastic dinner of Duck Gumbo prepared by Krad, we turned in.
Saturday AM, of my group, only T3 saw a hog, a large B&W spotted boar but he was too far and moving off. Ltd and Krad had an interesting adventure with some sort of “premature discharge.” The details remain pretty sketchy. Best I can understand there was something to do with LtD spotting and following some extremely fresh tracks/rooting while k-rad was in/coming out one of the ubiquitous VAFB blue Andy Gumps, a sudden extremely loud sound, a big hole in the ground and LtD then find tracks as if a hog had been frightened and headed at top speed for the horizen. No hog was actually seen.
.
By lunch time at camp, things were getting desperate. We had a bunch of buzzards flying quite low around camp so I decided to have a go at them. I lay down in the grass with my knife and pretended to be dead, figuring when one landed next to me, I’d stab it.
However, my plan didn’t work. While the buzzards kept flying low and close to camp, they simply wouldn’t land by me. I thought it was because I didn’t smell bad enough but the others assured me that was NOT the problem. Interestingly, the buzzards headed off following k_rad’s jeep that evening – I think it was the urine from the sow in heat that they were dousing themselves in that had the buzzards all excited. Be aware that is a highly dangerous strategy for if you fall asleep out in the field, given hog’s very poor eyesight, you might awaken to find yourself being sexually molested by some big old boar.
For our last hunt, I donned my special lucky “Sponge Bob” boxers.
It was another gorgeous evening in yet another great looking area
but again the hogs stayed out of sight. I did see one doe with a fawn the size of a rabbit. Couldn’t have been more than a few days old. It kept running about in very non-deer like fashion, then coming up to the doe for a drink and dashing off again. I also spotted a buck that already had 3 points on each side which was remarkable as all the other bucks had small spikes or at most early forks. I suspect he’s going to have huge rack come summer.
So ended another great trip to VAFB. I felt we saw far less hog sign about on this trip and I suspect one factor in that was the amount of pressure – there were and had been a fair number of hunters after pigs. However, hogs were about as three were taken out of C1 area on Thurs/Friday that I know of.
*No animals were harmed in the telling of this tale, only the truth was bruised.
As this was to be my third trip, I figured I pretty much knew the ropes and the MobeVan is all tricked out for camping as my own “mobile home”. But I didn’t figure on one very difficult undertaking......................
.
.
.
.
.
Getting out of be
d without hurting myself. Doh! The result of my lack of planning was one very purple toe. Initially I thought I was going to have to amputate but once I had a boot on, it was held firmly and I figured, what the heck, I can keep up with a bunch of jar heads. An early morning 3 hours run up the road had me at the VAFB Visitor’s Center at 8 am where clearance was obtained for me and no less a famous JHO personality than k_rad who was joining as LtD’s guest. This time we made camp in a more isolated area where there was a large shelter and regular toilets. LtD pitched the tent under the large shelter so that it wouldn’t get wet. Talk about luxury camping. Next thing you know, he’ll be joining the Air Force. Sitting there at the camp the first afternoon, I spot something unusual in the far distance.
You will see is a very large bird sitting in a tree. It was quite distant - this is magnified 18x on optical zoom. After much discussion and looking through a spotting scope, we agreed that the bird was massive and thought it might be a Golden Eagle. However, once I got home, a quick look at a bird identification book convinced me it was simply a very very large female red-tailed hawk. Indeed, I saw that one or another huge one just like it the last evening when we hunted the back side of that ridge. She was a truly magnificent creature and looked as big as the male Golden Eagle, Pee’ech who is in captivity on Catalina. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rprMZqIhI. The video is long, just go toward he middle/end to see good video of a real Golden Eagle. He is in captivity due to a wing injury such that he can not be released into the wild. Also you look real carefully at the picture I have posted, you can see the number of hogs I saw on the trip.Well if you saw any hogs, you are hallucinating as I personally didn’t’ see a single hog on the whole trip – those VAFB hogs are smart, they know who to avoid.
We were soon joined by a friend of T3’s, AB who is a retired Navy “pork chop” (now who knows what a “pork chop” is in the US Navy?). We split into two teams, K_rad and LtD in krad’s jeep with T3, AB and I in LtD camo pick up. After glassing lots of great areas, 3. Picture,. T3, AB and I had spread out along the bottom land where we had seen some pretty good pig sign and near where K_rad and Ltd and see a multicolored sow with young (no longer striped) piglets that morning. This was exactly where LtD and shot at the DEDP http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums...-amp-who-is-shooting-at-me.*?highlight=hoggus. I only saw deer and this doe made it clear why they are called Mule deer.
Now what follows as related to me by T3 and AB for I was ¼ mi away at the time. About 7 pm T3 sees a good sized all black hog coming out of the brush. The hog slowly walked toward him but because of the tall grass, he couldn’t tell the gender and much less if it was a pregnant or nursing sow. After glassing the hog for 10 min, T3 decides it’s a sow, has seen no piglets and that it is time to take the shot. Just as he’s putting the cross hairs onto the animal, out of the corner of his eye T3 catches sight of an orange object moving; it is AB closing in on the same hog. He decides to let AB take the shot as AB has never taken a shot at a hog at VAFB. AB gets close to 100 yds and fires but surprise, it is no less the DEDP. How do we know? Because, as soon as AB fired, the pig had “moved” and the bullet missed. Since the bullet was traveling faster than the speed of sound, the damn pig couldn’t have heard it coming so she must have seen the muzzle flash which is traveling at light speed and reacted so fast that the bullet missed. Only the DEDP could move that fast - there can be no other explanation in my view. And it was a good thing he missed for immediately, a pack of small striped piglets appeared out of the deep grass and disappear after Mom. The grass was so high and they were so small that they had not been seen by T3 or AB in spite of careful looking till after the shot. Further proof that she was THE DEDP was that the little piglets were sporting Quaker State oil, Goodyear tire and all sorts of other racing logos. That is what my hunting buddies tell me so it must be true.
Next morning, AB had another brief adventure. He came across some very fresh rooting, followed it and then heard grunting type noises on the other side of a large oak. Off comes the
safety as he steps around the oak only to find a big badger digging up the ground chasing ground squirrels to eat. It did get his heart rate up. No pigs were seen. Around noon, we all headed out to the range continue my Ddupleks slug experimentation (http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums...ce-Intel-Sharing-thread?p=2326258#post2326258. I brought a bunch of both the mono28 and mono32 rounds so that T3 and Ltd could see how they worked in their rifled slug guns. Interestingly AB, being of Latvian extraction, knew all about Ddupleks ammo and indeed, was already using them in his H&R 12g with rifled barrel. Briefly, the good news is that we all found that we good real good repeatability with the Ddupleks rounds. Here is a picture of one of LtD’s groupings at 100 yds. I have put a specific post about the Ddupleks results under “Shotguns” if you want more details. That evening’s hun
ting produced no hogs so after a fantastic dinner of Duck Gumbo prepared by Krad, we turned in.Saturday AM, of my group, only T3 saw a hog, a large B&W spotted boar but he was too far and moving off. Ltd and Krad had an interesting adventure with some sort of “premature discharge.” The details remain pretty sketchy. Best I can understand there was something to do with LtD spotting and following some extremely fresh tracks/rooting while k-rad was in/coming out one of the ubiquitous VAFB blue Andy Gumps, a sudden extremely loud sound, a big hole in the ground and LtD then find tracks as if a hog had been frightened and headed at top speed for the horizen. No hog was actually seen.
.
By lunch time at camp, things were getting desperate. We had a bunch of buzzards flying quite low around camp so I decided to have a go at them. I lay down in the grass with my knife and pretended to be dead, figuring when one landed next to me, I’d stab it.
However, my plan didn’t work. While the buzzards kept flying low and close to camp, they simply wouldn’t land by me. I thought it was because I didn’t smell bad enough but the others assured me that was NOT the problem. Interestingly, the buzzards headed off following k_rad’s jeep that evening – I think it was the urine from the sow in heat that they were dousing themselves in that had the buzzards all excited. Be aware that is a highly dangerous strategy for if you fall asleep out in the field, given hog’s very poor eyesight, you might awaken to find yourself being sexually molested by some big old boar.
For our last hunt, I donned my special lucky “Sponge Bob” boxers.
It was another gorgeous evening in yet another great looking area
but again the hogs stayed out of sight. I did see one doe with a fawn the size of a rabbit. Couldn’t have been more than a few days old. It kept running about in very non-deer like fashion, then coming up to the doe for a drink and dashing off again. I also spotted a buck that already had 3 points on each side which was remarkable as all the other bucks had small spikes or at most early forks. I suspect he’s going to have huge rack come summer. So ended another great trip to VAFB. I felt we saw far less hog sign about on this trip and I suspect one factor in that was the amount of pressure – there were and had been a fair number of hunters after pigs. However, hogs were about as three were taken out of C1 area on Thurs/Friday that I know of.
*No animals were harmed in the telling of this tale, only the truth was bruised.
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