We just wrapped up an interesting Veteran’s Day hog hunt in east Texas.
Last weekend, my father and cousin Brian managed to make it up to our property in East Texas for a quick weekend hunt. My cousin is in the Air Force and has had the last few deer seasons messed up by deployments and extended training events. He had some time off for Veteran’s Day weekend was able to go hunting. Unfortunately, I was unable to take the trip with them, but I’m glad that they were able to have a successful trip regardless.
The first morning, Brian was sitting in one of our new stands and saw two does come to the feeder. They came from where we thought they would, and had no idea that he was there. Since it was the very beginning of the hunt, he decided to let them pass.
That afternoon, he moved to a different stand (very close to where I shot a nice hog several years ago) about 200 yards away from the one he hunted in the morning. After sitting for a couple of hours, three small (approximately 50 pound) feral hogs emerged from the woods and began eating from the feeder.
After a few minutes, the hogs completed their snack and moved back into the woods. Almost immediately after they left, three larger hogs arrived and began to eat. Brian took aim at the largest of the three, a sow, with his CZ-550 (chambered in 9.3x62mm Mauser). Since the hog was quartering slightly towards him, Brian placed the crosshairs of his scope just in front of her right shoulder and fired.
The 285gr soft point bullet smashed into her neck and exited just behind her left shoulder. The hog dropped on the spot, as if struck by lightning. After getting her back to the cabin, Brian and my dad weighted her on our game scale at 105 pounds (live). They butchered her on the spot and she will provide some very tasty pork for the family over the next few weeks.
The next morning, they went out to two different stands on opposite sides of the property for one last hunt. During that morning, Brian heard a buck grunting very close by in the woods. Unfortunately, he was never able to observe the buck through the thick vegetation and the buck moved off after a few minutes.
Meanwhile, my father was sitting through an uneventful morning in his stand and decided to head back to the cabin after a few hours of seeing nothing. However, during his walk back to the cabin, he encountered a very large buck in the road. Unfortunately, the deer quickly spotted him and vanished into the woods before he had the opportunity to take a shot. While the encounter was too brief to count antler points, he did see that the buck had a wide rack and a thick body before he disappeared.
While they only had time to hunt for one and a half days and conditions were not ideal, my father and Brian ended up having a pretty successful hunt. Not only did Brian manage to down a very nice meat hog, but they confirmed that there are at least two mature bucks active on our land right now. Between the two of them, they saw one nice buck, heard another, and saw two does along with six hogs. Luckily, deer season in Texas continues through the end of December, so we will have a few more chances to fill the freezer and tag a trophy before the year is out.
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John McAdams is a proficient blogger, experienced shooter, and long time hunter who has pursued big game in 8 different countries on 3 separate continents. John graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and is a veteran of combat tours with the US Army in Iraq & Afghanistan. In addition to founding and writing for The Big Game Hunting Blog, John has written for outdoor publications like Bear Hunting Magazine, The Texas State Rifle Association newsletter, Texas Wildlife Magazine, & Wide Open Spaces. Learn more about John here, read some of John’s most popular articles, and be sure to subscribe to his show: the Big Game Hunting Podcast.
