Posted By: flintknapper
So hot...almost not worth it.....! - 08/05/16 05:01 AM
Just under 100° here today...and ridiculous humidity. Severe heat index warnings being broadcast.
My older Brother was here visiting and I told him I had a Boar coming into one of the feeders pretty regularly. We debated going....because it is just so blasted HOT, but figured we could handle 2-3 hours on stand before completely melting down.
Sunset here today would not be until 8:15 p.m. and the Boar had come in at 8:30 the night before, so we figured to be 'on stand' at 7:00 p.m.
We knew it would be a hot 1/4 mile walk to the stand....so I put some wet dish towels in the refrigerator an hour before we left, so we could wrap them around our necks for the walk in.
Neither of us sweated during the walk to the stand, but I didn't think to OPEN the stand earlier in the day to let it air out. It is heavily insulated and the insulation was doing an excellent job.
It was probably 115° inside the box stand. We opened the windows and left the door at the rear open, but there was NO breeze to help dissipate the hot air inside.
We were both dripping wet with sweat within minutes of entering the structure.
The efforts we made to reduce our scent (shower before leaving the house, walk slowly to stand with cool towels around our necks) was all for not!
I wasn't sure I would make it the remaining hour of daylight....before the cooling temps of sunset could give us some relief.
We had been on stand perhaps 10 minutes, briefly discussed what the plan of action would be if the Hog showed up from the road to the East, when my Brother says "There he is right there"!
I looked up and the hog is standing about 6' away from the feeder. There is heavy brush around the bait site....but we can usually see the hogs coming. He just appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
The other thing that caught me off-guard...was that he showed up a full hour before I thought we'd see any movement at all.
Not wanting this opportunity to fall apart for any reason, I urged by Brother to go ahead and take the shot presented (Hog was broadside, 100 yds. with 1/2 of his body exposed).
Just as the shot broke, the Boar took a step forward and the resulting hit was tight behind the shoulder instead of right in the middle of it. The Boar whirled on his back trail and started running. He popped out of the brush and onto an old logging road heading straight away from us. Now at about 140 yds. (and getting farther away fast), I told my Brother to shoot again.
He had already racked another round in the chamber and has made this kind of shot before (aim for the base of the tail to break the animal down), but somehow shot just a bit over the top of the hog. Dust flew up in the road just ahead of the Boar...causing it to veer left into the brush.
As it turns out it had not gone very far. We quickly found it about 15 yds. into the brush. No exit hole in the pig, but the 6.5 creedmoor did take it down. We found only one small spot of blood on the trail the pig had taken. It might have been a difficult trailing job had it been dark. I knew the pig was hit hard by the way it was running and knew we would find it within a hundred yards or so, but the vegetation around here can be nasty. Lots of greenbrier, blackberry, honey locust, etc...
In the end....we didn't have to wait very long for the hog to show up, that was a blessing. But I think I'm going to wait until the end of September before going on any more evening hunts.
One less pig.
My older Brother was here visiting and I told him I had a Boar coming into one of the feeders pretty regularly. We debated going....because it is just so blasted HOT, but figured we could handle 2-3 hours on stand before completely melting down.
Sunset here today would not be until 8:15 p.m. and the Boar had come in at 8:30 the night before, so we figured to be 'on stand' at 7:00 p.m.
We knew it would be a hot 1/4 mile walk to the stand....so I put some wet dish towels in the refrigerator an hour before we left, so we could wrap them around our necks for the walk in.
Neither of us sweated during the walk to the stand, but I didn't think to OPEN the stand earlier in the day to let it air out. It is heavily insulated and the insulation was doing an excellent job.
It was probably 115° inside the box stand. We opened the windows and left the door at the rear open, but there was NO breeze to help dissipate the hot air inside.
We were both dripping wet with sweat within minutes of entering the structure.
The efforts we made to reduce our scent (shower before leaving the house, walk slowly to stand with cool towels around our necks) was all for not!
I wasn't sure I would make it the remaining hour of daylight....before the cooling temps of sunset could give us some relief.
We had been on stand perhaps 10 minutes, briefly discussed what the plan of action would be if the Hog showed up from the road to the East, when my Brother says "There he is right there"!
I looked up and the hog is standing about 6' away from the feeder. There is heavy brush around the bait site....but we can usually see the hogs coming. He just appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
The other thing that caught me off-guard...was that he showed up a full hour before I thought we'd see any movement at all.
Not wanting this opportunity to fall apart for any reason, I urged by Brother to go ahead and take the shot presented (Hog was broadside, 100 yds. with 1/2 of his body exposed).
Just as the shot broke, the Boar took a step forward and the resulting hit was tight behind the shoulder instead of right in the middle of it. The Boar whirled on his back trail and started running. He popped out of the brush and onto an old logging road heading straight away from us. Now at about 140 yds. (and getting farther away fast), I told my Brother to shoot again.
He had already racked another round in the chamber and has made this kind of shot before (aim for the base of the tail to break the animal down), but somehow shot just a bit over the top of the hog. Dust flew up in the road just ahead of the Boar...causing it to veer left into the brush.
As it turns out it had not gone very far. We quickly found it about 15 yds. into the brush. No exit hole in the pig, but the 6.5 creedmoor did take it down. We found only one small spot of blood on the trail the pig had taken. It might have been a difficult trailing job had it been dark. I knew the pig was hit hard by the way it was running and knew we would find it within a hundred yards or so, but the vegetation around here can be nasty. Lots of greenbrier, blackberry, honey locust, etc...
In the end....we didn't have to wait very long for the hog to show up, that was a blessing. But I think I'm going to wait until the end of September before going on any more evening hunts.
One less pig.
