8/17/8

took my dad to roadhouse last night for his birthday. michael called my cell during dinner and said one of our landowners called to say the hogs are back on his place. he'd shot at one, but didnt know if he'd hit it, and he wasnt going to go check because it was HUGE.

i asked if he wanted to go after 'em when i got home, and he said he cant, he's got plans. i said break 'em (seems easy enough to me). he didnt want to break his plans, apparently a lady friend was envolved. im gonna have to have a serious talk with him about priorities.

he called back a little while later and asked if i wanted to go early this morning. i thought to myself 'no, i want to sleep late', but i said yeah, ill be ready.

my strike dog is out with a skin infection, so all we had was an AB, a pit, a pit/lab, and a real short range weimeraner.

michael, shawn and i get there, unload, and there's fresh sign around. you could still see trails in the wet dew from where they left some rooting and went to the woods. the dogs picked up the track and went about 150 yards and barked a couple times. every one of these dogs will catch. we found out later that they barked because the pig was in some brush and they couldnt get to it.

we got there just in time to see the pit/lab and the weimeraner trying to get in and catch. a nice boar, about 150, broke out of the back side from where the dogs were, and they never saw it. he went about 30 yards to a big brush pile. we led the dogs to the pile, and they couldnt get in to get him.

we noticed the pit and the AB were gone, so we looked at the tracker. the AB wasnt moving, but the pit was. both were about 200 yards away. Shawn was concerned that his AB was cut, or dead. We went to him, and the pit got to him before we did. when we got there. they were caught in a creek on a fat little boar, about 100-125 pounds. the other two dogs jumped in and we got him tied.

we went back to the brush pile, and the other hog was still there. michael climbed up on one of the dead trees and saw him for a split second. the dogs tried for 30 minutes to get in there, and just couldnt get to him. a terrier would have worked great to flush him out.

we finally gave up on him, and went to load the other pig. we're all pretty pumped up. after a little over a year, this was our first successful free range hunt without help from anyone else's dogs. we like to hunt with other people, but it's nice to know we can get it done on our own. it's been a long hard road.

shawn's wife is gonna try to get a pic off the cell phone later.