Morning. Time to look for the wild hog. The hill side is thick and rocky, a perfect place to pay a visit to a rattle snake, so I pulled on my snake boots, got my bow, binoculars and video camera (it takes both pictures and video and is a lot lighter than my real camera). I took up the search where I’d seen the hog last.
There was absolutely no sign on the ground. However, I felt confident that the hog was down. Likely, it could turn into a long search because of the denseness of the woods.
A deep canyon begins here and to the right of it there is a grown over road, used year’s ago by the previous rancher, it winds down the hill on the top right side of the canyon.
There was a chance the hog went into the canyon. But something in my head urged me to wa lk the edge first and search the snakey looking canyon later.

Down the hill I went for about 250 yards. My place is narrow and I  and came to the knee high Civil War era rock wall that runs parallel to the property boundary fence. I walked along the fence looking for a place where hogs were coming under the fence. I didn’t expect the hog to be this far but locating a fence crossing could get me a direction for my search route back up the hill.

No luck.

Oh well, I eyeballed a route that didn’t have too many big rocks or rocky ledges and started up. Going up the hill had better visibility than coming down it and I made good headway, scouring the ground level for something hog like.

Uphill 40 yards, a dark object laying on the ground looked different from all the other stuff laying on the ground.  I put the Nikons on it. I couldn’t tell for sure. SoI walked closer and glassed it again.

The dark object had a black leg and a hog’s nose.

The angle of the hill was at least 45  degrees and I slugged my way up to the hog and sat down a few yards from it and took a short break and texed some of my buddies. I thought it would be cool to get a pic when I first looked the hog over. So I laid my camera on the ground, turned it on, got the hog in the viewscreen and walked over to the hog and, well, looked it over.

Kinda weird thing to do I suppose, but it is real and not something faked up from behind the animal and play acting like it was just found. Anyway, I got some big rocks and leaned the hog against them to keep it from rolling down the hill.

Then I rocked in the camera and got the hog lined up in the view. On the way to the hog I pulled up some big leaf plants that were in the way. Somehow I missed that lone skinny twig sticking up at the half way mark and messing up the focus — which I didn’t notice because of the small size of the view screen.

Equipment Notes:

Bow & Its Gear: BowTech 82nd Airborn set at 62 pounds, it popped the arrow through the hog at high speed, it did not realize it was shot and came back to where I shot it. BowSight is the Cobra Archery BoomSlang with fiber optioc pins and an adjustable rheostat light. Just right for the job. Arrow rest is a speed bow drop away from Alpine Archery.

Arrows: Victory Archery V-Force 350 shafts: they fly great and are tough. Fletched with 2-inch Goat Tuff Opti-Vanes: give great arrow flight and are easier than most to work with. Wraps: florescent pink ones from Eze-Crest Arrow Wraps. Easy to put on and look even better than dipped arrows. I made my own arrows, fletched the with the new Arizona EZ Fletch Mini for 2-inch vanes or feathers and used Goat Tuff glue, the best fletching glue made.

Broadhead: Innerloc EXP expandable 3 blade. My hit was a little bit back but still went through one lung. The hog was down and out in 150 yards. Fat plugged up the in and out holes and the hog didn’t bleed externally. But the EXP put that big 3 blade cut on it and the hog went down before it could go any distance.

Binoculars: Nikon Monarch 10 power. They helped me locate the hogs and saved me a bunch of steps checking out black objects during the search for the hog.