| Wild
Hogs at Rancho del Zorro
The Digital Log Of A Bowhunt - by Robert Hoague | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 2 Last night my laptop acted up. I phoned Dell in the morning and then took it to the closest city, Laredo. The trip took most of the daylight hours. When I returned to the ranch there was still an hour of daylight left. I pulled on my camo clothes and Chad took me out to drop me off at his stand in the Curve. We were in a hurry when we turned onto the road.
Brush and mesquite grow along much of the fence. They provided good cover so I walked briskly for half the distance, but then the cover ran out. Just then I spotted several wild hogs in the brush on the opposite side of the road but they seemed to be going toward the vehicle. There was no way I could cross the road without them seeing me. So that my movement wouldn't be seen by them or the javelina, I worked my way into the brush and cactus. This proved to be slow going because I had to zig zag all over the place to find a path through the thorny cactus and mesquite. A hundred yards further I moved back to the edge of the cactus to see where the javelina were now. Two of them were 50 yards away. Clumps of brush were in just the right place on the fence for me to get a shot. That is, if I could get across 30 yards of open space without being spotted. I did the hands and knees, crawl thing. That's when I noticed that the here-to-fore seen wild hogs were, unexpectedly, walking down the road in my direction. Time was running out, they were closing the distance too fast. To heck with the crawling, and to heck with the javelina, they would run from the hogs anyway ... and the hogs couldn't see me from where they were. I ran to the cover by the road. The javelina ran to the cover across the road. The hogs were almost here. My plan was to find a place where I could shoot between the strands of the fence. There wasn't one of those places. Woops, two big hogs were already past me. A 3rd hog was coming, we're talkin' a 15 yard shot too. Good. I drew from behind a bush and raised up over it so I could shoot. The hog saw me right away. He ran to the edge of the brush on the far side and looked toward the other two hogs, who were standing in the road watching him to see what was up. Thirty-five yard shots, either way. Nah, not what I want to do. Too much chance of wounding one. They all ran into the brush. Chad, who figured I had shot one or them started the truck and drove up. The second day of our hunt
was over. We ate Angie's home made pizza for dinner. It was great
pizza, great like the New York City type. Tomorrow we go after the hogs
again. To Day 3 For information about Rancho del Zorro's whitetail, wild hog and javelina bow and rifle hunts:
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Javelina
were in the road, about 80 yards from the blind and 200 yards from us.
Chad stopped and turned off the pickup's engine. He took this picture as
I grabbed my bow. The old, rusty fence is to the right so I slipped over
to it and stepped over a low place in the fence.
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