Well, I played hog hunting guide this weekend for a young friend of mine who I hunted with and taught to build bows back in Nebraska and his 2 friends. I put the 3 of them where I thought they'd see pigs and put myself where I thought I wouldn't. I was wrong. The stand is close to the feeder, probably 12 yards. When I got in the stand I realized I'd left my tab and arm guard in the golf cart. I keep a spare tab in my back pack and had swiveled the chair away from the feeder to look into the pack when I heard the stampede of pigs to the feeder and the very loud crunching of corn. The trail cam, in a rare moment of perfect timing, captured the sequence of events right up to the shot:
Now, the stand is only 6' off the ground. I abandoned the search for a tab, turned very slowly, extricated my longbow from the branch it was hanging on, pulled an arrow off the branch it was hanging on and nocked it. Then I got to thinking about being the guide, and that one of the young men was in a blind not 150 yards from me that had a trail running directly from this feeder to that one. So, I passed the 2 larger sows and waited for them to move off into the brush. Then I selected the white shoat in the center of this picture...
and sent an arrow right under it's chest. Good grief. As I sat there and stewed, I heard Jeremy shoot (he was using a rifle) twice and it turns out he tagged a nice sow from a different sounder and then a shoat (we always try for the young ones for the grill). So, I got down, picked up my errant arrow and went to collect his prizes. I won't post that picture here since he used a gun.
The next day he surprised me by presenting me with a bow he had built for me. I had worked briefly with another young man that lived across the street from Jeremy but he had stopped working on his bow. Jeremy got that stave and finished it for me.
What a great gift, I had no idea.
It pulls 47# @ 28". The handle is decorated with the rattle liberated from a snake and he used a turkey spur off one of his birds for the arrow rest. It is backed with bull snake skins.
The weather was a little fickle, going from 88 on Saturday afternoon down to mid 40s Sunday morning. I thought that might spark hog movement, but it didn't. We blanked on Saturday night. It was a great hunt with some special guys. And, I'm looking for even lighter spined arrows now.
George
