My brother just picked up a new piece of property from a rancher that is getting eatin up by hogs. Our party consisted of Clay, Courtney, Tait, Sticker Dan, Cull Buck, myself, and the rancher. Cut'em loose about 930 and started roading the dogs through some beautiful river bottom. For the first hour the dogs continually rolled out about 900 yards but never struck anything up. Finally Clay's two dogs Birdie and his pup Riley opened up about 600 yards out, but it broke and they were out of range of the GPS in no time, so we made our way in their direction. We still were not picking them up on the GPS, so we stopped in an overgrown field to use the Quicktrack. All the curs that were with us got extremely gamey and all of the sudden a boar busted out of the high grass directly in front of them.... and its on now. They ended up getting it bayed solid a little under a mile a way, McLovin and Jug got sent in from 150 yards. Each swallowed an ear and caught about a 150# boar. After regrouping we realized that Clay's dogs were not at this hog and had been gone now for about 45 min, but we were showing them on the GPS at just under 1000 yards to our South. As we were figuring out the best way to get to them we noticed that all the other curs were now between 400-700 yards to the North. The decision was made that Clay and I would track to his dogs, and the rest of the group would head to the North following the curs.
Clay and I....make our way the 1000 yards to his dogs, and find Birdie and Riley hammering down on a big sow. At this point they had been on this hog for well over an hour and a half. Clay sent Jug in from about 150 yards out, and I got to see it all go down from about 30 yards away. I had a front row seat to one hell of a good fight. I am extremely impressed with Clay's dogs, especially his pup Riley, for staying with that hog for so long. It ended up being about a 220# sow.
The other group... by the time they got on a path to head the curs direction, Tank and Wiley had joined back up with them, but Peachez was off the GPS, and Reggie showed 0.9 miles away. They make their way there and Peachez is 400 yards to the right and Reggie is 850 yards to the left. As they turn a bWend in the road they could faintly hear Reggie hammering down about 550 yards out. Tank and Wiley take off like rockets and it is not long till there is a beautiful bay going on. Wiley caught out on a little shoat but Reggie and Tank were still hammering about 15 yards away. McLovin was cut loose at the squealing, and honors Reggie and Tanks bay. He slams a 190# boar and all hell broke loose next to a blown down tree. Jag was sent in as backup, but as he closed in another big boar jumped out behind the blown down tree and Jag was hot on his a$$. They got Mclovin's boar legged and stuck, and Jag ended up catching a shoat about 400 yards away.
As we were finally all meeting back up a good sized hog ran across the road about 300 yards in front of us. We quickly drove to where we thought it crossed and cut Peachez, Tank and Reggie out. They all immediately took the track and Peachez opened up about 500 yards out. The hog broke, and about an hour later and 2 miles further we cut McLovin and Jug loose from 150 yards out. What we didn't know is that we had made it all the way to the river and the bay was actually Peachez and Tank on the other side. We never thought the river would be an issue with where we were hunting. But of course the catchdogs swam the river and caught out of eye sight. The river was way to wide and swift to consider swimming, so we marked the spot on the GPS and made a 45 min long ATV ride to the nearest bridge. When we arrived at the hog, McLovin and Jug decided that catching a 150# boar was not fun enough for them, so they had a snack and waited for us to get there.
Awesome hunt, the rancher was extremely happy with the 5 hogs we caught. We told him to let us know the next time he wants us out, and he replied "Can you be here tomorrow?"
Hope to have more to report tomorrow.
Clay w/ Jug and Riley
Boar that McLovin caught
3 of the hogs
