Seldom are stories of "how good a new place is gonna be" true... today was certainly the exception!!!!
One of my ranchers has been trying to get us out on this place for a while now, finally got things together with the owners and made a hunt today! Started out early, this place is a little over 8k acres, borders a major trophy gator lake on one side
and some small ranchettes on the other... lot of history to this place... Indian mounds all over... found stone structures built in the 1800's when the place was an indigo plantation.. turned cattle operation... turned organge grove... back to cattle... and now pine rows and a handful of deer hunters... Mixed into the (still cattle ranch like) terrain are strips of BAD sawgrass that the hogs are defenitely inclined to run to
Still scratchin' my head on how to deal with that stuff... caught 2 out in the middle of it and that stuff is wicked bad.... I can see dogs gettin' wrecked big time in it... no room to move once you get in the hog tunnels that run beneath it...
When I get the chance, I would love to just ride around this place and take pictures so yall could see how perty the place is, hog heaven....
Anyways... back to the hunt! Turned Shine, Camo and Snook out, Shine rolled in a couple hundred yds and bayed up right off the bat, pups got to her, red boar 'bout 150 broke in front of us trying to get to the sawgrass... dogs stretched him out about 5 steps from the edge thank god!
Owner and his daughter got to see it all and she got to stick her first hog(with a bit of help
) Real good people, had never got to hog dog hunt and stuck with us the whole morning! Both a pleasure to hunt with!!
Had our "professional"
videographer with us all day and got a bunch of awesome footage!!! Now we just have to figure out how to get it off the camera onto here!!!
Switched back and forth with Shine/pups and the Meatheads, ended up with 5 hogs 100-150# and 2 squeelers... had to call it from the heat around 11am. Caught one right on the edge of the lake in about a 2 foot wide gator slide.....
... was waiting on the ol' boy to come runnin' up on the bank the whole time we were pullin' dogs off!!!
We'd just killed another one a bit bigger than this one that Chub had caught, Garmin showed Snappa caught a few hundred yds away, so Robert and Seth went to her while we got the other dogs off... Seth got there first(Snapps had been caught a while and was just walking with the sow)... soon as the sow saw Seth she ran him up a tree(with Snapps still on an ear
) and actually got aholt of his boot and about pulled him out!!! MAN wish I'd got that on video!!! I could here the little titty baby yellin' for help and thought my dogs were gettin' murdered!!!
Some bad wet spots on the place...
Bucho got some good reps in today... think I'm finally figuring out why Argentinians don't use any cutgear on their dogos... he moves through the thick stuff much, much better without a vest... not how I'd like it, but with a vest on he's about useless... gonna try just a cut collar for a while this summer and see how it goes...
Kicked this sow out for the Shine pups... they damn sure know how to stop one... that's a fact!!!
If I can get full access to this place, these pups are gonna be superstars in another yr... Got a hunt lined up in another mnth with a fishin' show guy out there.... REALLY lookin' forward to it!!!!!!!!!!
