Pork Dinner #1

Jay and I want to thank all of the Texas boar hunters for some good meat.  Tonight we enjoyed our first of many pork dinners.  I am not sure what cut of meat this was but it looked like a boneless pork chop so that is what I treated it as.  I rubbed it with a homemade rub and broiled it up.  A little spaghetti squash, wild rice and James' blackberry merlot and we had an amazing dinner!  At dinner I mentioned to Jay how much I enjoy eating venison and now this pork which has been killed and processed at home.  He told me to start hunting.  I bet I could shoot an animal but I would never be able to butcher it.  So until then, we will continue our mooching :)  Yay!  Thanks again.

A Very Successful Hog Hunt

We woke up early on Friday morning after treking across the US to Dos Plumas Ranch in Trent, TX. Roger, our guide, put us in various stands across the 600 acre hunting area and we each hoped to start off on a high note. Ranch owner, Al Williams picked us up again at 9:30 but we each scored a zero. James was the only one to see hogs from the stand but it was a fleeting glance just before pickup time. We did each see other wildlife as Randy had some Blackbuck in front of him while Rob had a group of Orix. James saw two Fallow bucks, one with a really nice rack while Devon had a herd of Axis deer at his stand. We went back to the ranch for breakfast and then headed out to do some stalk hunting.

While Dad was landing bass upon bass in one of the private ponds, the four others of us walked the ranch until 2pm. Rob, Devon and I walked up a dried up creek bed and kicked up about a dozen hogs of various sizes. James missed a big red one that burst out of a cactus patch between Devon and him. Randy was first on the board with a 75 lb hog that he got with his old 30-30. We went back to the ranch again and cleaned it, and got ready for the evening hunt.

At 3:30 Roger, the guide, dropped off Dad and Randy on the south side of the ranch and took Rob, Devon and I to the north side. As we rounded a corner of the road he hit the brakes on the Kubota. We glassed about ten pigs up ahead and since I was the only one with a rifle, I lined up the shot on my dad's .243. I had a good rest and pulled the trigger and the hog dropped on the spot. Roger walked it off at 185 yards, easily the best shot I ever made while hunting. While we were loading and taking pictures another hog shot out of the cover and Devon took a shot at it, narrowly missing. We left Devon there to hide in the trees and dropped off Rob further on to walk the north side. Roger and I returned my pig to the ranch and then he brought me back and put me near a hog hot-spot. By the end of the evening, we had five pigs in the cooler. Dad shot a large red hog, Devon got a big black one, Rob nailed one with his bow, an excellent heart-shot.

The next morning we slept in a bit and headed out after sunrise. First on the agenda was to find a second hog that I had shot the night before but had lost the trail of at dark. I knew it was a black boar and thought it to be decent. After 2 1/2 hours of looking, I found it... alive but seriously wounded. I finished it off and dragged it out. In addition, Dad and Devon each shot themselves a "party pig" during the morning. A "party pig" is about 40-50 pounds and you skin in and cook it over an open fire. They are going to be great this summer.

In the afternoon, Dad, Devon and I went fishing since we had already limited out while Randy went out to find his second pig. Dad and Devon landed some smallmouth bass while I caught a bluegill, smallmouth and large five pound catfish. It put up quite the fight and ended up being quite fun. About an hour later we heard a single gun shot and knew that we were all tagged out. Randy shot the largest pig of the trip and we went back to the ranch, cleaned it, put it in a cooler and left for home by 7pm. It was an amazing trip and if anyone is ever considering going hog hunting, they don't have to research where to go. I spent six months looking at various ranches and thought that Dos Plumas offered us the best package of animal quantity, hospitality, success and affordability. They exceeded our expectations by a hundredfold. Each of us had an outstanding experience and will have memories of a lifetime. Al and Roger were awesome and the hunting was unbelievable. We harvested nine pigs in all for a total of nearly 1500 lbs of Texas hog and had an amazing time.

There and Back Again. A Hog Hunter's Tale

Don't get me wrong, I love my truck, but man, 42 hours in it over the course of four days is a lot. We left for Trent, TX and Dos Plumas Hunting Ranch at 6:00 on the dot on Wednesday night. Dad took the wheel and drove us past Chicago and just south of Joliet where we topped off the tank and Devon and I took the wheel. We drove for about five hours into mid-Missouri, past St. Louis and the arch and through a majority of the Ozark foothills. At about 3:00 am, Randy took over and drove us to Tulsa. Dad went again and took the two hours to Oklahoma City where we stopped for a bite of breakfast at McDonalds. Devon and I then drove the final seven hours to the ranch. It would've only been six except for the one-hour stop at the Texas Wal-mart to purchase our licenses. A little slow is all I'll say. The other interesting thing was that there was snow ALL THE WAY to Texas. The thermometer never got over thirty degrees until the Oklahoma City area and didn't cross 40 until we were almost to the ranch. As we drove off the highway and into the mesquite trees, the anticipation built. It took about ten-fifteen minutes to drive in on the rocky/dirt roads that led back to Dos Plumas but we were all glued to the surroundings and the environment and taking it all in.

When we arrived, we met Roger the guide and ranch hand and a couple from Utah who filled our minds with visions of pigs upon pigs. (They had seen over 200 in just one sitting the night before.) We unloaded into the bunkhouse and met Al Williams, ranch owner extraordinaire. Al was just about to head out for some chores on the property and we offered to help out. I think he was a tad surprised but I don't think we let him down at all. Devon drove the Dodge Ram megacab as we tossed off hay for a two-mile stretch of dirt road. As we did that, we passed huge buffalo, axis deer and some beautiful Orix. In addition we saw several hundred hogs throughout the ranch. We moved ten huge round bales and got atleast a rough feeling for where things were at. We kicked up some HUGE hogs and Dad saw a large red one that he thought would be fun to find again with gun in hand. After chores we went back and crashed, literally. Rob arrived about an hour after we got back. Most of us had only slept about an hour in the past 36 hours so we hit the sack for the 5:30 am wakeup call and hunt.

You'll have to check the next post for how the hunt went itself but the ride home went pretty good. The weather was perfect and we had 40-60 degree temps all the way to Wisconsin. We made a couple of "questionable directional decisions" on the way home but nothing that had a dramatic effect on time or distance. We had left at 7:00 Saturday night and got home at 4:00 Sunday afternoon, the second half of our 42 hour drive for 15 hours of hunting, five hours of gutting/cleaning and memories that will last a life time.