Homeward Bound

17 04 2012

This post originally was posted in the Ladies in Camo Field Journal:

I have had a wonderful week! My husband Dale and I embarked on a 8 day road trip from Pennsylvania to Florida and home by way of Alabama.
We started with Osceola Turkeys in Florida. I was able to take mine during our hunt, and finished up with a great hog with Billy Henderson in Crystal River, Florida. Billy is the owner of Deep South Outfitters. The turkey hunting was slow, but I connected with a young Osceola. The next morning I am surrounded by 15 hogs of all colorations. Since they were all nice sized, I picked a pretty red sow with black spots. Beautiful hog! The weather was so hot and muggy, we quickly skinned her out and got her on ice.
We were to go bow fishing, but it was not to be. Our stay in Florida was interrupted by high winds, so we joined Ladies in Camo’s hunt at Racknine Outdoors. John had already scored with a turkey and a hog. So while Jeanne and Jenn hunted turkeys, Dale and I stalked hogs!
Our first was first thing in the morning, we had heard rustling, so we both took cover behind a couple of trees 20 feet apart. I was listening to the grunting of a good size hog, and had just started to see his body, when BANG! I thought at first Dale had a better view of this hog. I turned to see Dale facing the opposite direction?? What the heck? I hurriedly go up to him to berate him for screwing up my hog hunt, when he points to a dead coyote 50 yards away. I hadn’t been able to see the coyote approaching from my view point, and Dale loves predator hunting!
Later that morning we joined Nancy Jo and Jeanne. We located a group of hogs in the woods, and all of us positioned ourselves to shoot. Jeanne had a nice grey hog in her sights, but it never presented a good shot. I was watching a small hog, when a big black sow came across my shooting lane. I let everyone know I had a good shot, and fired. She dropped right where she had stood. We tried to get back on that group, but they kept going. It was a group effort to get this sow out of the swampy muck, a couple hundred yards to the HuntVe.
Everyone else had to leave to get back to their lives. Dale and I had one more morning, and we made the most of it. Terry was guiding us, and we spotted a large dark shape. A lone boar. Dale took aim and fired. He had hit his mark, but the hog fled into the nearby pines. When it stopped, Dale fired and the hog dropped. This boar topped the scales at just under 200 pounds.
Reality then interrupted our trip, so here we are, driving 1000 miles north in a tremendous rain downpour. Road trips, gotta love them!