Last week was Part I of a two-part series on a Texas Hog Hunt.
We closed as we were about to take Tony out for an evening hog hunt so we’ll pick up there).
At 5:30 Dan ran down and threw out some corn by a pond. We slammed down dinner and then Dan, Clint, Tony and I headed out. We set-up a few hundred yards away and waited on the Slow Glow to illuminate. It’s an ingenious invention. It’s a motion activated LED light. When an animal comes in, it slowly illuminates and is at full power in 2-minutes.
We held tight for a while then Clint and Dan slipped down to see what was going on. They returned and said a group of hogs must have come in right after Dan baited because there was not one kernel of corn left. We hit a couple of other spots but Tony had to leave before midnight due to being the father of three school kids.
I’ll lose track of the sequence of events….the rest of the week since the Slow Glow guys had me up until 3:00 every morning! One group of hogs was coming in at the high blind and they wanted me to use a rifle there. So I carried a 30-06 Mossberg Patriot Revere with a Leupold 3Xi 4-14x50 scope and loaded with Hornady 165 gr. SST.
By the time we climbed up in the blind they were already feeding. They spooked but soon came back. I touched off a round. The hog didn’t run far.
After that it was a flurry of fast paced stalks. They had some unique tricks. They’d throw corn along the edge of a pond. That way cows and deer couldn’t eat it and when hogs come in feeding they make a ton of noise snorkeling for the corn.
We stalked one secluded pond but they were bedded down 50 yards away. We could hear them grunting. I wish we had Bill’s Fox Pro with the hog calls. The next night there were 30 hogs feeding there but it’s hard to sneak in on 60 eyeballs. They busted us and took off, nearly trampling a poor coon.
We were doing multiple stalks each night. Hunting with a Slow Glow is great. It allows you to hunt 24 hrs./day and you actually have to play the wind just like in on a normal stalk. If you sneak in behind the light you can get super close which provides for an intense hunt.
The next day it was all or nothing with the Benjamin Pioneer Airbow. For broadheads I was using a Wasp hammer. We went to pond we took Tony to. This time we were going to play it a little different. We set up an Ameristep Throwdown blind across the pond under a willow tree. Then we sprinkled corn along the pond.
We went back to camp, ate dinner and then slipped into the blind before dark. The sun started dropping and the shadows grew longer. Before long it was dark and still no hogs.
Then we heard a hog in the brush across the county road. Then another one or two grunting. This time we had brought Bill’s Fox Pro.
Clint turned on the feeding hog sounds and not two minutes later hogs started pouring over the dam of the pond and scurrying in to feed.
Clint filmed them a minute and pretty soon gave the thumbs up. There was a big boar in back I wanted but there were always 2-3 other hogs feeding in front of him. Finally a shot presented itself.
I touched the trigger and an arrow arced out at 440 fps. It hit him so hard that he flipped over. Pretty soon he rolled into the pond and was thrashing around.
We waited a minute to let him bleed out but surprisingly he jumped up and took off. We went over to check out things. The arrow had passed through and stuck in the dam. Wow, talk about some power.
There was a good blood trail. Should be an easy track.
Tom Claycomb is an outdoor enthusiast and writes a monthly column for the Humboldt Sun.
