Hunting Wild Hogs in Florida- Oct 2012

My friend, JRoger, has a 1500 acre wilderness area leased for hunting, When he showed me this beautiful wilderness over by Wacissa, which is about 25 miles from his place, I told him that I would love to shoot a Florida feral "wild hog".  So the other morning way before daylight, he and I found ourselves way out in the middle of this area in the dark! Darker that DARK!!  Wow, I had forgotten how dark it can get down here in Florida....especially out in the "piney woods".   Rog has two tree stands and corn feeders strategically place at very appropriate places.  We parked way back so as not to disturb anything and walked to one of his tree stands….


As we sat in the total darkness waiting for the sun to come up, the strange sounds of the calm forest rung out. Wow, what a neat time of the day.  It was beautiful!!    Here is the view of of one of his feeders from the two person tree stand nearby. We were ready…


The sun was just coming up behind us……..  


Roger said “I think I hear them coming, are you ready”?   "Yes, I am ready", I told him. However, my heart was pounding so loud that I was sure the Hogs would hear it. 


I kept a dead eye on the feeder as I held on to the rail.  I sure didn’t want to get excited and fall out……It was quite a drop to the ground.


JRoger says “Well I’ll be, they went right on by.  I think they must be headed to the other feeder”  He had his favorite “lucky” hunting hat on and everything….


After about an hour and a half and we didn’t see any hogs, Rog says “I got an Idea.  I will walk you over and show you where the other tree stand is and you can stay there.  I’ll come back and get you in about an hour”. Sounds like a plan, so off we went and I got up in his other tree stand and watched for hogs at that feeder.


Here I sat, all by myself not really having any idea where I was for sure. But I was engrossed in this place. I sat quiet as a mouse watching and listening to all the strange sounds of the woods.  Man O Man, I wasn’t seeing any Hogs but I was enjoying the quietness and peaceful solitude of this beautiful place.    

It finally dawned on me to look at my watch and see if it was about time for Roger to come and pick me up.    WOW!!  I had been there an hour and a half!  What the heck??  Where is Roger? I was listening for the truck and didn’t hear a thing.  For one quick second I thought to myself, Oh. No, did I fall for a trick and I am left out here all alone as a joke??  Naw, good buddy Rog wouldn’t do that to me. 

Then I thought, OH, Shucks, I better turn my phone on!! I had been so engrossed in my hunting, that I forgot all about my phone.. Quickly turning it on I found that sure enough, there was a message from Roger. He told me his truck wouldn’t start,.....battery was dead! So he had called the Gals, Ms. Pat and Susan, to come out and give us a jump start.  Ah Ha, that's where Rog is, stranded.   I sat in the tree stand for a little longer and then decided I better get down and walk around as my legs were getting a little numb.   I started walking out towards the main road and just as I got there, Rog picked me up and the gals were right behind him.

So we didn’t get any Wild Hogs that morning.  We spent the rest of the afternoon getting Rog’s truck fixed and ready to go out again.

Today we are all headed over to Randy and Lisa’s (Ms. Pats daughter and SIL) place and have a big seafood feed……….Hip Hip Hurray..

We are having a ball in Florida and time is going way too fast!!

But it was definitely a GREAT WEEK!!!!

Thanks for stopping by.  Come on back Wednesday and hear about more Florida fun!

God Bless you all..

Mike

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