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It was gonna be a quickie hunt. Drive 350 miles in the morning. Hunt the afternoon and the following morning. I have had some shoulder problems and neither Kay nor I had shot our bows since deer season. Small game season is in and we had to use small game weapons such as .22 or .22 mag. I have an old lever action Marlin .22 which used to have a scope but it had been removed for frog shooting at night. It was my first gun, given to me by my late Dad. He taught me to shoot with it, to squirrel hunt and shoot frogs. A 3/4 ton truck wouldn't hall the coons I've killed with it. It's been a fine weapon and severed me well. Kay would tote our .22 mag bolt action with scope. We've never shot hogs with anything besides our bows and weren't sure about the .22s but it was legal. I knew a .22 to the brain would work. We got checked by the game warden and he said the .22s would work fine on hogs 100 lbs or so. I had been itching to go since my broke leg kept us out of the hog woods last year. The recent rains had he water levels in the swamp up but I thought for one day we could find a hog or two. We purposely left our hip boots at home and just wore knee high rubber boots. That was mistake number one. Mistake number 2 came from unloading our bikes after seeing several places like this on the road in.
note to self: if the road looks like this, you might as well walk cause the rest of the road won't be too bike friendly.
After unloading the bikes we saddled up and made it maybe 100 yds till we got to a place in the road deep enough or knee highs were not enough. We went back to the truck and decided to hunt some new areas that were closer to the road and hopefully dryer. We saw lots of sign, really good sign but no hogs. We made a plan for the morning hunt that night and hit the woods right at day break. Our new areas once again showed plenty of good sign but no tracks with the hog still standing in them. Back to the truck again and even though it was mid morning, I told Kay we were gonna try plan C. Plan C was to break out our trash bags and use them for waders them to get the bikes across the deep water. It worked but we were only able to ride about a half mile before the mud and downed trees made it not worth the effort. We hoofed it from there. Kays boots weren't wearing well and she had blisters coming on both feet. I am still not back to full steam from the lastest broke leg so going was slow. We were in a lot of ankle deep boot sucking mud but covered about 2 miles with no hog to show. We decided to turn and hunt back towards the truck. I really hated to give up and about 2:00 in the afternoon I asked Kay to punch in the GPS numbers for the "dump", so named because it looked like everyhog in the county had taken a dump there the day we found it. It wasn't that far and I told her we would hit the "dump" and the call it a day. When we got there, I told Kay I was just going a couple hundred yards further and then we would turn around. She said she would just wait on me there. By now her feet aren't feeling to spiffy. Sure enough, I barely got out of her site and I heard a rustle in a palmetto bush. I strained to see the body but all I could make out was the hogs snout as a big fallen limb and the palmetto was blocking the rest. Just as I was raising the .22, the hog bolted and I shouldn't have but I shot anyway. Clean miss. I made my way back towards Kay. She had heard the shot and was on her way to me. I told her I missed and said, "let's go". She later said I looked very dejected. We just went a short way in the mud and came up on a good log to sit and rest a bit. I asked Kay if she wanted to sit down and she said OK just for a minute. We had no sooner sat down when I saw what I beleive was the same hog I just missed coming our way. I told Kay "there's one". She had heard it coming and was searching for the source. He was gonna pass by about 40 yds but was about to catch our wind as well. He stopped behind a palmetto and offered no shot. Then he trotted forward and stopped again, this time with his whole front end behind a big oak. I guess he was winding us cause didn't take long for him to take off. I really wanted Kay to get the shot but when he busted out I figured now or never and swung the sight just in front of his nose and squeezed one off. I heard the bullet thud, sounded like it hit a watermellon. The hog went into the brush with me and Kay in hot pursuit trying to get another shot into him. He stopped in a little opening and I let him have it again. I could hardly beleive it when just fell over and went to kicking. Kay and I were laughing and high fiveN. We had hunted hard then basically called it a day and here came the hog. Not a big hog, but we didn't go home empty handed either. The young boar eat real good tonight. When we skinned it out, my first shot had entered right behind the front leg, passed through the opposite shoulder and logged in hide. I would never have believed a .22 LR would do that.
the bullet we recover was fully in tack.
I just wish my Dad could have been around to hear this story.
Thanks Dad ...............................
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Originally Posted by weekender
