We turned out on a place Saturday morning that usually holds lots of hogs but we don't hunt it that often. We hadn't been there in quite sometime, so we figured we would give it a shot.
I turned out three dogs right at daylight and we waited a bit before starting to move. About 10 minutes later, I hear my older Ben bred male dog open up. I don't hunt him that often, and sometimes he will bump a deer right away. Honestly I've never really given him a chance to shine and I was doubtful about what I was hearing. It wasn't just a little bit and the other dogs joined in. Unloaded catch dogs and before we could get there, they had it caught. Nice sow we were able to tie up and bring out. Weighed 165, and looks to be ready to domino with piglets any day. I was extremely proud of Sam, and gave him a little scratch on the head.
Dogs rolled right out and about an hour later we track to them bayed in a brush thicket close to the river. Turned catch dogs in and caught another sow about the same size. They had covered a LOT of ground, and I suppose were tired why they didn't catch this one without the bulldogs.
By this time the dogs were pretty hot and so were we, so we loaded up dogs in the buggies and decided to ride down to a big sand bar on the river for a little cooling off swim before calling it a day. Just as we got to the river, we look down about 150 yards and see a pack of four hogs swimming across to our side. We haul tail back up out of the bottom, around a corn field and tried to guess about where they would have come out. Dropped a couple dogs and they went to work. In just a few minutes we heard one lone yelp WAY in the distance and so we started moving. By the time we got close, all the dogs were there and singing to what we thought might be a pretty good one. Turned bulldogs in and caught sow #3 about the same size as the others. My little bulldog gyp about ate this ones face off before we called not-it and someone swam the creek to end the chase.
By the time we got everything loaded back up, the A/C at the truck sounded better than the river. It was a good hunt, and we didn't get to cover a third of this place before it just got too darn hot.
Total for the day = 3 hogs (2 killed, 1 tied), 4 nice backstraps, and not a scrape on a dog. This months been heck on our pack, and a hunt like this was sure refreshing.
