Well I just went through thrity rounds of 30-06 in different loads, 50 of 38+P, 20 12ga slugs and 10 buckshots... I do love busting out the thundermakers at the indoor range. I was doin my little hand gun thing when some guy got in the stall along isde and started wanging away with a 9mm and sending his casings ove the top of the divider on me.
Damn... didn't he know Deep was on the other side...
I put down the cap gun and sent a hot round from the '06 down the range... You could feel the whole room move as hot gasses picked up burnt powder and sent it spiralling down the hall. Even through the muffs I could hear the 9slinger yelp, "Jeeeeezzzzziiiiizzz Keeeeerrrriiiissstttt!!!!" ... I just had to lay down four more real quick.
The guns were cleaned and are now in the rolling tacklebox converted to the Blam mobile! I have five rounds each of Way hot, store bought and brush cutterfor the '06. The Blamerator 870 is slug fitted and a bandolier of 3" sluggers and copper solids are at the ready... I haven't decided to tote the 38+p or not... Just more weight and junk.
A half dozen PBJ samwiches are at the ready. Five scoops of instant coffee are mixed with water and sitting on the ice for my wake up. New digital picture taker is at ready. As is my vid... Yes they will be comming as soon as I get better with my new device for transferrring stuff...
Tail line turned pig dragger is already in my pants pocket along with gutterator knive...
My shoulder is all loosened up and the ringing in my ears has quit and they are more open than ever... It's blamathon boys... Let the lead fly!
Heading in usually is a quiet thing but opening day of gun quata hunt is always a mad house. Usually I'm in front of the buggies but this year they came about a half hour earlier than usual. The normally quiet axel eating road looked like Rt. 50 heading into Ocean City on a sumer friday night...I was in the center of the pack. About twenty of the bugggies pulled ver where I park and watching them off load off their trailers ranged from watching a well orchestrated symphony for some while others were like chickens f*****g a bunch of footballs! Even watched one guy bury his whole rig truck and trailer right up to the doors in a puddle...
Them being there early meant I wouldn't get the early push that they can provide and I was worried that the animals circling back might even do so before shooting light. In years past usually at legal light you start hearing guns letting lose but it was over an hour into legal light before I heard the first. Another half hour til the second well off in the distance. Nine hundred guys, 60,000 acres and about 4000 deer and pigs on the property and boy was it slow.
I was having a day from hell trying to get comfortable. I tried standing leaning and even sitting which I seldom do but my left leg was cramping and my right kept going numb??? Even my right eye had a weird twitch. I was worried about being some kind of stroke or something but it eventually cleared up. I guess I made my coffee too strong...
At about 8:30 nature called and I moved off my spot to let fly. I did my thing and zipped up. What happened next took less than a second but is going to take a whole lot longer to write...
I had decided to go with the '06 this morn and leave the 870blamerator in the car. I zipped up and grabbed my rifle. Just as I stood up straight I heard a crash behind me. I turned and saw a huge red shape maybe 15 yards behind me. It came from a direction I have never seen an animal come from in twenty years of working the "A"spot. Lots of guys have red dogs out there but this was huge... C'mon Deep process what you're looking at. "Holy shit!" It was a ginormous red pig!!!!
Usually the reds are small sows and the big boars are almost always black but I was looking at an easy 260lb big red feral boar and it was time to go to work. You spend all year thinking about this day. You've prepped and hunted the archery and black powder seasons. You have gone down to the range and burnt up a lot of bullets trying to cover all the angles...You have run a zillion scenarios in your mind but this one being red and comming from a way unexpected place had me out of my rythm.
I snapped the thunderstick up on my shoulder and looked into the scope. The pig was moving like a bat out of hell, was too close and there was too much heavy rush for the scope to deal with. I dropped the gun low on the shoulder for a down the barrel view. Funny I had bracticed this last night even and had done well on the targets.
I squeezed the trigger but nothing. I had the saftey not quite all the way off and that meant another adjustment. "Click" the saftey was now clear but all I had left for a target was the back half going away into the thick. BaaaWhaammm! I sent lead that direction but all the micro second screw ups sent the round high. I saw a palmetto frond go flying and knew I blew it.
The big pig was haulin ass in the thick. He would have to go right or left to get out . I chambered a fesh round and chose to go right. The pig went left across a open marsh. That meant a quick 40 yard dash for me to get to that side of the thicket. By the time I got there he was a good 300 out and still cookin. I'm good but not that good. I tried to steady off a tree but the wind was humping today and the tree was moving.
I wan't gonna be beat that easy and took off in a dash across the swamp. I lost sight of him at about a quarter mile as he headed for a thick stand of pines and palmettos. I made my way in, worked it and contineued to the next stand and yet another. I was now a mile from my spot when I jumped a big spike deer. Instinct kicked in, I steadied and BaaaWhaammm! Uleashed my second lighting bolt of the moring This one hit right and the buck dropped!
I walked up and it was done. This was kind of a freak . Spike yes but real thick beams and plenty of spghetti at the bases. Even the body was way bigger than most Florida deer.
Now I had to drag him. I wasn't about to go the mile and then some back to the car so I cut through the woods toward the main road. I had only gone a hundred yards when I noticed a guy climbing out of his stand. I recognized him as a friendly fellow I often see at my "B" spot. I knew he was a deer freak. He walked up, congratulated me and started helping me drag. We got to the road and he offered me a lift back to my car. Way way nice guy!
I got a sudden case of guilts. This guy had been staked out waiting for this deer all morning, probably after a lot of scouting during the others seasons. He helped me load it in the car and I headed to the weigh station to tag him. The reading was 98lbs, gutted, but I just felt wrong about it.
From the weigh station I went to my "B" spot where it would make a good late morning/ mid day walk. I walked and walked and my head was spinning. Pissed about missing the pig and not feeling good about wrecking that guys deer...
I walked three hours without seeing a thing and when I got back to the rolling tackle box I saw I had a flat...
Karma? I couldn't take it any more. I drove back to where he was parked. He was eatig a sandwich and drinking a coke. " Could you help me with one more thing" I asked...
"Sure"
"Help me load this deer in your car. You earned him... Not me. I just pulled the trigger."
He was slow to accept but I talked him into it. I got two on ice and he had been looking for that one. A few more seconds and he would have got it any way.
Now I felt better. I tried another quick walk then went back to spot "A" to finish the day. I saw nothing more in the way of pigs or deer but waking out I decided to have fun with a raccoon and drop a round in the mud next to him...
So that was day 1 of blamathon... I'm tired, cramping and my eye is twitching again. I'm totint the long gun and the blamerator both tomorrow. I'm gonna go back to what I used to do. The '06 gets tossed on the long stuff and the blamerator will be my "in hand" gun for the tight and quick shots...
Despite being overly whack tired from yesterdays 13 hours of attempted meat procurement, I was actually about 20 minutes earlier than usual. This gave me a chance to talk with the fellow I gave the deer to yesterday. He was super appreciative. Then he went on to tell me he was talking with the F+G man awho said that some guys in a buggy had shot and hit a giant red pig right in the same thicket he ran into from me.
They had not found it last night...
I slid into spot "A" bone weary and sore from the running and walking yesterday. About ten minutes short of shooting light some damn buggy came down my way and almost ran me over. No biggie Deep... live with it. Then he proceeded to run right through my favorite stand of trees right in front of me. Nothing blew out of there so I really didn't mind. That was until he completed a half mile circle and came through again... Not once but twice!!! I blocked him on the third pass and read him the riot act.
Back over by the stand where my big red pig ran to yesterday I saw two buggies stop and take up standing positions. Two more went zig zagging through the thick but nothing came out.
All was quiet for about fifteen minutes then I heard back behind me in some way tall grass a piggie blowing out of there. The bresh there is too dense to see anything though. Ten minutes after that. I heard splooshing big time... "Oh boy here we go" I set the blamerator on my shooulder and waited for certain dinner. .. Two otters...
I came of my spot and decided to walk that thicket the buggies had worked in case they miissed something. I was deep in there when it dawned on me that what I was doing was far from bright. I snapped out of my over focused kill mode and did some reasoning. "I'm in way thick snake and spider country here. Wandering around like its a beach and looking for an injured wild hog that has me outweighed by a hundred pounds? I slowed my pace down and gave up after an hour.
I decided to take a walk around the back side of where I can see from spot "A". I have only been back there a few times. Over years of beatings by buggies its a palmetto and pine stand with several pretty dry buggy roads in there. I was a long way from the car but had to give it a try.
A couple hundered yards in I started seeing tracks. Lots of them. Every kind imaginable. Deer, coon, cat, and sevral different sized piggies. Another hundred yardsin and against the heavy wind I hear a distinct "crunch" I shifted dorections towards it and tehre was a second "crunch". I got on a quiet piec of "road" and got in position to head off the next "crunch".
Then I see palmettos moving..."No coon Deep... Not tall enough to be a deer...Safety off... Check.... Shoulder... Check..." It stopped for a couple seconds then stepped out. A delicious red and white meat sized slab of yummy ... Head down sniffing the ground ... Never saw me...
Blam!
The boar went upside down as the copper solid did the job... Just a couple leg twitches...
Ok not zilla but about 110lbs whole weight. It was time for a long hot drag. I don't gut stuff when I have to drag through water its easier when they are whole and you don't have to worry about contaminated water wrecking the meat. About half way back it started to rain. Not bad, but enough to get my poor blamerator wet... Shes been wet before though so no big deal.
Then my right leg started to cramp. Then locked up all together. I could only go a few steps between lock ups...
So what should have been a half hour took more like an hour. I was still a couple hundred yards from the rolling tackle box turned blam-mobile when I saw my friiend from yesterday. "I heard ya shoot... Knew you were lookin for a pig and might need a hand." Karma came around like a champ. As i gutted it and got ready to load it in, I thanked him... He had one more good deed up his sleeve. "You used a deer tag for me yesterday. I'll ride with you and you can use my pig tag today."
Guys just don't get better than that... Days don't get much better than this... And my Dolphins finaly won a game... Aginst an Undefeated team!!!
Something they do down here in the WMAs is to remove the jawbones from the checked in deer to determine age... They take the jaw and match it against other jaws of known age. Mine from yesterday was about 2 1/2 years old...
We have a small resident group of the cinamons... Have no Idea where they came from. They're not in season yet. I see them two places on the property with some frequency. Pretty birds. There were three groups of three yesterday along with two each tgw and bw thta did flybys where I sit in the morn. I could have probably popped them if they had been in season. I only see em fly in the morn. The cinamons I see in those spots I mentioned but don't see where the others hole up.
Our pigs taste pretty much like store bought pork loing but much tougher. No... Much much much tougher on the black ones with more razorback dna... Once in a while you may get lucky and find one that came out of a near by orange grove and they will have just the slightest tinge of orange flavor.
Another thing I have noticed with both them and our turkey's is a real high water content. I cooked a monster ham off a big black slob I took a few years back Had it in like a three inch deep pan, wrapped with aluminum foil. A couple hours into cooking it I heard weird noises from the oven and it was water overflowing from the pan .
The thing had shrunk to the size of a store bought but the bone was sticking out looking like a baseball bat... We slow cooked it for quite a while and I must say that particular ham wasn't nearly as tough as the rest of the pig was...
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I had the saftey not quite all the way off and that meant another adjustment. "Click" the saftey was now clear but all I had left for a target was the back half going away into the thick. BaaaWhaammm! I sent lead that direction but all the micro second screw ups sent the round high. I saw a palmetto frond go flying and knew I blew it. 
