asaxon
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I had booked a two day boar and varmint hunt for June 8-9 with Native Hunt way back in December 2010 as a birthday present for my wife, Gaye – her first feral hog hunt. I was on the very steep part of the learning curve at the time. Since then, it has become a “tradition” for me to stop in the mission in San Miguel (or another one, e.g. San Antonio de Padua) prior to going hog hunting to get a “hog blessing”. So on our way to King City CA, we stopped at the San Miguel mission. And what do we find – take a look! Some very hairy “women” who had not only facial hair but also body - chest hair that might make a wild boar proud. Turns out the Mission serves as a major rest stop on the SF to LA AIDS bike ride and the entertainment was a group of guys in drag doing Jazzercise. I decided not to post the video as it might get me banned from Jesse’s. Dominican friars and guys in drag – I’ll leave it to your imagination. You will need to click on the pictures to see them in more detail, i.e. all the hair.
We arrived at the Native Hunt ranch on Jolon Road, 15 mi or so west of King City at 5 pm and were greeted by Sam (McGuire) and Colby (Williams) who would be our guides. We went up to the lodge which is really quite nice – it is a real high end “hunting camp like” arrangement with bunk beds, etc. and nicely done in wood and camo. There is ample room for 9 hunters but we were the only two in camp at the moment. We sighted in our 17hmr’s on the range which is right off the porch (our hog guns were already set), and turned in early as wake up was 3:45 am. However, during the night, I bagged my first animal by jack lighting. At 1 am, my wife and I hear a scratching noise. I flip on my flashlight and spot the sound – a little grey field mouse is nibbling on a peach on the counter. I chased and trapped him under a garbage can – first catch of the trip. I let him/her go outside the next morning. At 3:30 am, the generator fires up, the lights go on and we don our hunting gear to the smell of bacon cooking and fresh coffee. Teddy McCormick, who was filling in for the regular chef, had come out at 3 am and prepared a huge diversified breakfast. Those of you who know me can see who wears the “hat” in our family…
We all got stuck into the food and headed off for a Priest Valley property about an hour’s drive away. We arrived just before sun rise, parked the vehicles in the bottom of the property and spit up with Sam taking my wife and Colby and I teamed up. Colby and I are going to hike up to the pastures while the others hunt the bottom land fields.
By the time we meet up again, Gaye/Sam had seen a coyote, a large hen turkey with some chicks that had flown off, a coyote and some pig sign (rooting, rubbing, & tracks) while Colby and I had only seen a set of medium/small pig tracks in the road. However, I did get to hike some at least 3.5 miles up and get introduced to the famous Salinas Valley mud. I got my heart rate to 95% of predicted and Colby who is in his early twenties was very understanding of my panting and did not charge me extra for the Cardiac Stress Test which from a regular doc would have cost at least $500.
So now it is 10:30 am and we decide to go varmint whacking both to help rid the crops of some of the huge numbers of ground squirrels and more importantly for us, to get in some marksmanship practice. Gaye and I had never shot at any small game before with our 17hmrs. Hers is a CZ silhouette with a Weaver 6-24x scope (nice) and mine is a Mossberg 817 – what my friend Boris calls “top end of garbage” with a Sweet 17 6-18x scope. We had a ball. Gaye gets her first shot at about 60 yds and she drops the little bugger cleanly. Then it is shoot at them all around as they poke up their heads in the various fields. In the end, we terminated about two dozen but many were hard to recover in the tall grass/weed bushes that were waist high. Some would perch in the top of a small bush and you’d smack ‘em and they go “flying off” into the bushes. Gaye cemented her marksmanship reputation with one kill where she cleanly and clearly terminated a squeek at 175+ yards. I refuse to accept the distance (my ego you know) but Colby who was spotting said it was so.
We added a couple of Jack Rabbits and then headed back to NativeHunt. On the way back to the main road, we came across about 30 bull elk right in the middle of a field. Half were standing around the outside while the others were lying down in the center. An amazing sighting of truly gorgeous animals. At the lodge, Ted had lunch all prepared and some guests had arrived in the shape a group of pure breed Eurasian boars. One large sow missing her left ear with two one year plus old offspring and a large boar. Apparently they hang around camp and are not molested - it gives hunters a great opportunity to see these interesting animals up close and personal.
We followed lunch with a nice 2.5 hour nap, arose refreshed around 4:30 pm and headed off east to different ranch somewhere along Highway 25. Arriving there, we drove to the top of a hill and glassed the hills and the main valley. Sam quickly spotted a group of pigs (actually just the backs of some hogs) across the far side of the valley in the really high mustard so the stalk was on. We drove the truck down across the highway, got out and began to work our way around toward where the pigs might be on a trail through 7 foot tall mustard all very yellow in bloom. Part way there, we get a good fright as a large doe starts out of the mustard right next to us. We then continue to slowly work along the trail that follows the fence line looking for sign. Nothing. Then the trail narrows and starts circling back toward the highway though mustard is so high only Sam at 6’5” tall can see over much of it. This direction will soon put the pigs down wind of us. Ugh. Then all of a sudden, about 100 yards ahead we see several pigs slip cross the trail which is maybe four feet wide and disappear into the brush on the other side. We freeze and Gaye lays her Win Coyote Lite .243 on her Primos bipod and waits. Sam tells her to try to be sure of her shot as a wounded animal is going to be a difficult to find given the terrain. We wait, the brush moves and a couple more black sows cross quickly – but wait, one of them comes back and starts to work her way down the trail toward us sniffing as she comes. It is a nice not too large sow, just what we are looking for. Gaye is waiting to see if the hog will turn side ways to give her a good killing shot knowing if the sow smells/spots us, it will instantly disappear into the brush or if she only wounds in, it is going right into the tall brush and we may never locate it. Finally the sow is only 60 yds or so from us and Sam whispers “Shoot it” and Gaye replies “Where” - it is still facing us head on. He whispers, “Just inside and above the base of the left ear”. “OK” BOOM (damn her .243 is loud for some reason). The pig simply collapses right where she was, kicks her hind legs a few times and is still. One shot, one very dead hog down.
My wife is “stoked”. We have a round of high fives, smiles and hugs (yes guys, women hug). After the obligate photos, I field dress it to practice my skills and we put it on the back of the truck. Turns out the bullet (Federal/Barnes 85 TSX) went through the top of skull (just inside base of left ear) then into the chest in front of shoulder, through one lung, through middle of the liver and likely was somewhere in the pelvis but we couldn’t locate it. Fortunately, there was very little abdominal/intestinal damage and no fecal contamination that I could see – likely because the all-copper bullet stayed a one piece.
OK, it is now 6:45 pm. Let’s get Andy a hog so we can sleep-in in the morning. We start glassing the hills back across the highway and Sam & Colby spot a couple sets of hogs – one with maybe 12 including a very large boar and the second of only two but one is a very very large boar. The first group is 10-30 yds on the wrong side of the fence line marking the property we can hunt while the other two are 400 yds on the wrong side. We decide to wait and see if they will cross either the fence to the West or come down and cross the highway – in either situation, they would then be on land we could hunt. I tell the guides I’d rather not shoot a large trophy boar but if that is what comes on, I’ll do my best to drop it. So we watch and wait and wait and wait. The animals are teasing us. The large group moves right near the fence but not one crosses. The first big boar and then the second big boar drop down toward the brush at the base of the hills where the road is but simply don’t come out. We keep glassing the hills and spot an elk on “our” land but that doesn’t help and then Sam spots a new lone hog coming over the hill side on our side of the fence. OK, the hunt is on. We cross the highway and work our way up through some cows and metal gates (damn they squeak when you want to be quiet) but the hog doesn’t hear us. The wind is at 90 degrees - good. We sneak behind a small silo, come out about 200 yds away and then very quietly in single file creep up to a fence some 175 yds from hog who is slowly working its way down the hillside. I lay my Browning A-Bolt II 30-06 on the fence, adjust the scope to 9x and sight the hog. It is moving in and out of the brush and is far enough away that I can’t tell the gender. Sam tells me I need to be sure the animal doesn’t get across the fence some 100 yards uphill to the east as that is the neighbors property. "OK, got it." And I’m clear to fire. I lay the cross hairs on the animal but with the distance, the goodly amount of high brush and animal walking back and forth, I’m having some difficulty being sure which way the hog is facing. Then the animal reaches an area with lower brush and turns slightly away from me and I figure, I’d better go for it while it is more in the open. I squeeze. BAM. The hog is knocked down and slides 50 feet down the hill on his back – and then suddenly gets on his feet and starts running down hill. I quickly chamber another round and start to line up when the hog reverses direction, falls right over and is very still – very dead. Turns out to be a nice small boar of about 135 lb and my shot was the “opposite” of my wife’s. As the boar was quartering away, the bullet went in the left abdominal wall, went through the liver, through the lung and was recovered inside the upper ribs/right shoulder. No fecal contamination of the meat. Perfect petals for the Hornady Superformance 150 gr GMX. Ah, now we can sleep in, hurray!
Teddy had a lovely BBQ rib dinner made for us when we got back. The hogs were skinned, hung and I thought; “Well I am certainly through hunting for the day.” However, at midnight, more scratching with the result of another successful nocturnal jack-light mouse hunt. This time I found the little bugger in a cardboard tube where he had made his home - all that went outside. The next day, we had our breakfast cooked at 8 am (what decadence) and then rode around the main NativeHunt property in a Polaris ATM looking at their exotics, enjoying the country side and shooting the occasional ground squirrel. The whole perimeter of this property is high fenced, both to keep the exotics in and to keep feral pigs out so as not to contaminate the blood line of the pure bred European hog stock. We saw lots of European hogs, Buffalo (14 of them), 9 fallow deer does (the mountain lions had killed all the bucks) and several types of exotic goats/sheep, Jacob’s goats, Mouflon and a couple others whose names escape me. We also tried my wife’s .243 at some distance shooting – 460 yards at an 8 inch by 16 inch gong. The gong got “rung” 4 times out of about 8 prone shots by Sam and Colby while I was 6” off but my excuse is I was shooting standing with a bipod - at my age I practice NOT lying prone in the dirt. My wife kindly declined to shoot, she didn’t want to show us up. After a late lunch, we put double plastic bags with ice in the carcasses, packed them up in the car and headed for home.
Overall, NativeHunt is clearly different than the few other guided operations I have hunted hogs with in CA. It is more of an upscale overall hunting experience (including the lodging etc) for a couple of days than just a focused hog hunt. If you are interested in just taking a hog or two and want to do it without added cost, this may not be the place for you as it is one of the more expense places at $1000/person for the two day hunt although this does include the food and lodging. There is a 250 trophy fee for large boars. However, if you want to spend the two days hunting and simply enjoying yourself, it is worth considering for once you have your hog (or even before as in our case), they will take you hunting for varmints including coyotes etc. I’d wanted to show my wife a great time and get her out hunting and this is just what we got. The facility is very nice, clean but still “hunting camp” (no computer or wireless, no cell coverage and power from a generator which they turn off at night); all of which we took as “pluses”. The food was excellent and having someone else cooking made it special. Perfect for taking one’s significant other on a holiday hunting trip - vacation as opposed to just “going hunting”. I can see why corporate groups would like this operation as a place to take hunting clients. The only drawback I saw was for feral hog hunting where we had to drive considerable distance (about 1 hour each way) from the main property as feral hogs are not present on the main property for the reasons I mentioned.
Lessons learned:
We arrived at the Native Hunt ranch on Jolon Road, 15 mi or so west of King City at 5 pm and were greeted by Sam (McGuire) and Colby (Williams) who would be our guides. We went up to the lodge which is really quite nice – it is a real high end “hunting camp like” arrangement with bunk beds, etc. and nicely done in wood and camo. There is ample room for 9 hunters but we were the only two in camp at the moment. We sighted in our 17hmr’s on the range which is right off the porch (our hog guns were already set), and turned in early as wake up was 3:45 am. However, during the night, I bagged my first animal by jack lighting. At 1 am, my wife and I hear a scratching noise. I flip on my flashlight and spot the sound – a little grey field mouse is nibbling on a peach on the counter. I chased and trapped him under a garbage can – first catch of the trip. I let him/her go outside the next morning. At 3:30 am, the generator fires up, the lights go on and we don our hunting gear to the smell of bacon cooking and fresh coffee. Teddy McCormick, who was filling in for the regular chef, had come out at 3 am and prepared a huge diversified breakfast. Those of you who know me can see who wears the “hat” in our family…
We all got stuck into the food and headed off for a Priest Valley property about an hour’s drive away. We arrived just before sun rise, parked the vehicles in the bottom of the property and spit up with Sam taking my wife and Colby and I teamed up. Colby and I are going to hike up to the pastures while the others hunt the bottom land fields.
By the time we meet up again, Gaye/Sam had seen a coyote, a large hen turkey with some chicks that had flown off, a coyote and some pig sign (rooting, rubbing, & tracks) while Colby and I had only seen a set of medium/small pig tracks in the road. However, I did get to hike some at least 3.5 miles up and get introduced to the famous Salinas Valley mud. I got my heart rate to 95% of predicted and Colby who is in his early twenties was very understanding of my panting and did not charge me extra for the Cardiac Stress Test which from a regular doc would have cost at least $500.
So now it is 10:30 am and we decide to go varmint whacking both to help rid the crops of some of the huge numbers of ground squirrels and more importantly for us, to get in some marksmanship practice. Gaye and I had never shot at any small game before with our 17hmrs. Hers is a CZ silhouette with a Weaver 6-24x scope (nice) and mine is a Mossberg 817 – what my friend Boris calls “top end of garbage” with a Sweet 17 6-18x scope. We had a ball. Gaye gets her first shot at about 60 yds and she drops the little bugger cleanly. Then it is shoot at them all around as they poke up their heads in the various fields. In the end, we terminated about two dozen but many were hard to recover in the tall grass/weed bushes that were waist high. Some would perch in the top of a small bush and you’d smack ‘em and they go “flying off” into the bushes. Gaye cemented her marksmanship reputation with one kill where she cleanly and clearly terminated a squeek at 175+ yards. I refuse to accept the distance (my ego you know) but Colby who was spotting said it was so.
We added a couple of Jack Rabbits and then headed back to NativeHunt. On the way back to the main road, we came across about 30 bull elk right in the middle of a field. Half were standing around the outside while the others were lying down in the center. An amazing sighting of truly gorgeous animals. At the lodge, Ted had lunch all prepared and some guests had arrived in the shape a group of pure breed Eurasian boars. One large sow missing her left ear with two one year plus old offspring and a large boar. Apparently they hang around camp and are not molested - it gives hunters a great opportunity to see these interesting animals up close and personal.
We followed lunch with a nice 2.5 hour nap, arose refreshed around 4:30 pm and headed off east to different ranch somewhere along Highway 25. Arriving there, we drove to the top of a hill and glassed the hills and the main valley. Sam quickly spotted a group of pigs (actually just the backs of some hogs) across the far side of the valley in the really high mustard so the stalk was on. We drove the truck down across the highway, got out and began to work our way around toward where the pigs might be on a trail through 7 foot tall mustard all very yellow in bloom. Part way there, we get a good fright as a large doe starts out of the mustard right next to us. We then continue to slowly work along the trail that follows the fence line looking for sign. Nothing. Then the trail narrows and starts circling back toward the highway though mustard is so high only Sam at 6’5” tall can see over much of it. This direction will soon put the pigs down wind of us. Ugh. Then all of a sudden, about 100 yards ahead we see several pigs slip cross the trail which is maybe four feet wide and disappear into the brush on the other side. We freeze and Gaye lays her Win Coyote Lite .243 on her Primos bipod and waits. Sam tells her to try to be sure of her shot as a wounded animal is going to be a difficult to find given the terrain. We wait, the brush moves and a couple more black sows cross quickly – but wait, one of them comes back and starts to work her way down the trail toward us sniffing as she comes. It is a nice not too large sow, just what we are looking for. Gaye is waiting to see if the hog will turn side ways to give her a good killing shot knowing if the sow smells/spots us, it will instantly disappear into the brush or if she only wounds in, it is going right into the tall brush and we may never locate it. Finally the sow is only 60 yds or so from us and Sam whispers “Shoot it” and Gaye replies “Where” - it is still facing us head on. He whispers, “Just inside and above the base of the left ear”. “OK” BOOM (damn her .243 is loud for some reason). The pig simply collapses right where she was, kicks her hind legs a few times and is still. One shot, one very dead hog down.
My wife is “stoked”. We have a round of high fives, smiles and hugs (yes guys, women hug). After the obligate photos, I field dress it to practice my skills and we put it on the back of the truck. Turns out the bullet (Federal/Barnes 85 TSX) went through the top of skull (just inside base of left ear) then into the chest in front of shoulder, through one lung, through middle of the liver and likely was somewhere in the pelvis but we couldn’t locate it. Fortunately, there was very little abdominal/intestinal damage and no fecal contamination that I could see – likely because the all-copper bullet stayed a one piece.
OK, it is now 6:45 pm. Let’s get Andy a hog so we can sleep-in in the morning. We start glassing the hills back across the highway and Sam & Colby spot a couple sets of hogs – one with maybe 12 including a very large boar and the second of only two but one is a very very large boar. The first group is 10-30 yds on the wrong side of the fence line marking the property we can hunt while the other two are 400 yds on the wrong side. We decide to wait and see if they will cross either the fence to the West or come down and cross the highway – in either situation, they would then be on land we could hunt. I tell the guides I’d rather not shoot a large trophy boar but if that is what comes on, I’ll do my best to drop it. So we watch and wait and wait and wait. The animals are teasing us. The large group moves right near the fence but not one crosses. The first big boar and then the second big boar drop down toward the brush at the base of the hills where the road is but simply don’t come out. We keep glassing the hills and spot an elk on “our” land but that doesn’t help and then Sam spots a new lone hog coming over the hill side on our side of the fence. OK, the hunt is on. We cross the highway and work our way up through some cows and metal gates (damn they squeak when you want to be quiet) but the hog doesn’t hear us. The wind is at 90 degrees - good. We sneak behind a small silo, come out about 200 yds away and then very quietly in single file creep up to a fence some 175 yds from hog who is slowly working its way down the hillside. I lay my Browning A-Bolt II 30-06 on the fence, adjust the scope to 9x and sight the hog. It is moving in and out of the brush and is far enough away that I can’t tell the gender. Sam tells me I need to be sure the animal doesn’t get across the fence some 100 yards uphill to the east as that is the neighbors property. "OK, got it." And I’m clear to fire. I lay the cross hairs on the animal but with the distance, the goodly amount of high brush and animal walking back and forth, I’m having some difficulty being sure which way the hog is facing. Then the animal reaches an area with lower brush and turns slightly away from me and I figure, I’d better go for it while it is more in the open. I squeeze. BAM. The hog is knocked down and slides 50 feet down the hill on his back – and then suddenly gets on his feet and starts running down hill. I quickly chamber another round and start to line up when the hog reverses direction, falls right over and is very still – very dead. Turns out to be a nice small boar of about 135 lb and my shot was the “opposite” of my wife’s. As the boar was quartering away, the bullet went in the left abdominal wall, went through the liver, through the lung and was recovered inside the upper ribs/right shoulder. No fecal contamination of the meat. Perfect petals for the Hornady Superformance 150 gr GMX. Ah, now we can sleep in, hurray!
Teddy had a lovely BBQ rib dinner made for us when we got back. The hogs were skinned, hung and I thought; “Well I am certainly through hunting for the day.” However, at midnight, more scratching with the result of another successful nocturnal jack-light mouse hunt. This time I found the little bugger in a cardboard tube where he had made his home - all that went outside. The next day, we had our breakfast cooked at 8 am (what decadence) and then rode around the main NativeHunt property in a Polaris ATM looking at their exotics, enjoying the country side and shooting the occasional ground squirrel. The whole perimeter of this property is high fenced, both to keep the exotics in and to keep feral pigs out so as not to contaminate the blood line of the pure bred European hog stock. We saw lots of European hogs, Buffalo (14 of them), 9 fallow deer does (the mountain lions had killed all the bucks) and several types of exotic goats/sheep, Jacob’s goats, Mouflon and a couple others whose names escape me. We also tried my wife’s .243 at some distance shooting – 460 yards at an 8 inch by 16 inch gong. The gong got “rung” 4 times out of about 8 prone shots by Sam and Colby while I was 6” off but my excuse is I was shooting standing with a bipod - at my age I practice NOT lying prone in the dirt. My wife kindly declined to shoot, she didn’t want to show us up. After a late lunch, we put double plastic bags with ice in the carcasses, packed them up in the car and headed for home.
Overall, NativeHunt is clearly different than the few other guided operations I have hunted hogs with in CA. It is more of an upscale overall hunting experience (including the lodging etc) for a couple of days than just a focused hog hunt. If you are interested in just taking a hog or two and want to do it without added cost, this may not be the place for you as it is one of the more expense places at $1000/person for the two day hunt although this does include the food and lodging. There is a 250 trophy fee for large boars. However, if you want to spend the two days hunting and simply enjoying yourself, it is worth considering for once you have your hog (or even before as in our case), they will take you hunting for varmints including coyotes etc. I’d wanted to show my wife a great time and get her out hunting and this is just what we got. The facility is very nice, clean but still “hunting camp” (no computer or wireless, no cell coverage and power from a generator which they turn off at night); all of which we took as “pluses”. The food was excellent and having someone else cooking made it special. Perfect for taking one’s significant other on a holiday hunting trip - vacation as opposed to just “going hunting”. I can see why corporate groups would like this operation as a place to take hunting clients. The only drawback I saw was for feral hog hunting where we had to drive considerable distance (about 1 hour each way) from the main property as feral hogs are not present on the main property for the reasons I mentioned.
Lessons learned:
- It is great fun to hunt with your wife or someone you care about (I knew this already, but this trip reinforced it.)
- My wife is a damn good shot (I knew this already also but wish she wouldn’t rub it in.)
- Practice shooting at non-standard game silhouettes or at least think through how to shoot animals that are not “broadside” before you need to.
- Varmint hunting is great shooting skills practice and fun. The 17 hmr helps - you have a good range where if you can put the cross hairs on the target, you can hit it. If you miss, you know you are off and don’t’ blame the rifle (wind excepted of course with those little light bullets.)
- Shooting at 460 yards with some accuracy can be done given a good rifle, good optics, good ammo and a stable firing position. We currently don’t expect or plan to ever try that distance on big game as I’d rather stalk the game and get it inside my current comfort shooting zone. But if it was necessary, I think we could learn the skill.
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