Charles Allen recently had me and Ron Spomer down for a multi species hunt in Texas.
We had deer, duck and squirrel hunts going on during the day but were going to be hog hunting at night. If you’ve never hog hunted with a died-in-the-wool hog hunter then you’re in for a surprise.
I’m an early morning bird. I’ve gotten up early all my life. Granted, I’ve shot plenty of hogs during the day time but hunting hogs at night is the ultimate and most productive time to hunt.
As a whole hogs like to come out at night and as it gets into the super-hot dog days of summer in July/August, I’ve seen them not come out until 2:00 a.m. and feed into the early morning. No big deal to a hog hunter, that’s when they come alive and that fit Reno who was going to take us hog hunting to a T.
Ron with a decent sized boar. The first hog shot on our hunt.
But let’s back up a minute before we get into night hunting. Buddy Ron Spomer and I had already both tagged a buck. We were now trophy hunting.
We were hunting with Charles Allen on his ranch in East Texas. It was on the second or third day and Charles suggested that we still hunt along the thick creek bottom.
In the meantime, Reno had told us that he’d seen a big red boar on his game camera every afternoon at a certain time and told us that we ought to go check it out.
The spot Reno told us about was at the end of the creek that Charles was wanting to hunt.
I forget the whole sequence of events but we had barely snuck into where Reno said the boar was showing up on the camera. We hadn’t even been there three minutes and Charles nudged Ron.
A Big red boar appeared working in the grass/brush under some kind of a scent/bait apparatus hanging in a tree.
Ron's hog ended up in our sausage.
Things were happening fast and Ron took a shot before it disappeared into the cedar tree foliage.
We waited a few minutes and then after a short track we came upon him. Good, now we had a hog to mix with our two deer to make sausage. Charles owns Knives of Alaska and DiamondBlade Knives, which are the top two premier knife companies in America.
Unique, he pulled out his little Bobcat (I’d best describe it as a miniature hatchet) and explained how well it worked to skin an animal and open the sternum.
We told him we’d finish gutting the hog so he could go get the side by side and us get loaded up and packed out before dark. I used the Bobcat and finished gutting the hog.
Wow, I guess you never learn everything huh? I never would have thought about field dressing an animal using the Bobcat. I guess it is somewhat like an Ulu knife that the Eskimos use.
The next night Reno (A buddy of Charles) came by for dinner after our day of squirrel hunting. We ate dinner and then Charles sent us out hog hunting with Reno.
The first pasture that we checked had a sounder of something like 15 hogs spread out feeding.
Reno had a nice set-up, a 6.5 Grendel topped off with a nice Pulsar thermal imaging scope.
This picture shows how wild hogs tear up a hay field.
He hooked the rifle up to nice tri-pod with a swivel plate. That way when we stalked in close, we’d have a steady rest plus be elevated.
Being that it was pitch dark and able to play the wind in our favor we snuck within 150-200 yards. Ron was up first so when we got close enough Reno set-up the rifle and Ron got in behind it.
Usually on a set-up like this and you’re in an open field you might get lucky and get 2-3 shots before the hogs disappear.
Unbelievable, Ron got 11 shots. I’ve never been able to get that many ever before.
We next went to another spot and pretty fast spotted a tight sounder of nearly 40 hogs about 400 yards away.
We started our approach but before long they started fading away. Another minute or two and they busted and scattered. Dang, must of winded us.
Well, the night soon came to an end. Charles was going to take us all duck hunting early in the morning so we’d better run back to the lodge and at least get a few hours of sleep.
After the duck hunt then I’d have to bone out the deer and hog and get to making sausage.
Betsy was going to film us using the new KOA Professional Boning knife and then I was going to make a couple of different blends of sausage using Hi-mountain Seasonings.
Some people act like wild hogs are the scourge of the dining table but I’ve never had a bad one. Some people say that the big boars get tainted after they start breeding. It’s easy to tell though.
On the big boar that Ron shot I cut some meat off the carcass and fried it up. Nope, no off odor or bad flavor.
Many times, if a carcass is rank, you can smell the carcass (True on any species) after you’ve skinned it. Morale to the story-if you aren’t eating your wild hogs then you’re wasting some good meat.
Tom Claycomb is a hunting enthusiast and writes a bi-monthly column for Great Basin Sun.