Featured Hunt
Matt & Jake
A tip of our hat goes out Matt & Jake. Hunting as a family brings the meaning of providing into a real place. When you bring your children out into the hunting world so much happens, even on days when nothing is harvested. This hunt was a great hunt! We started out by first light and hit the hill in search of hogs. Amber was on video and I was up front with Matt & Jake. Jake is 7 years old and likes to hunt with his dad. He climbs even the big hills with ease and does much of the glassing. Matt is a high school football coach, a husband and a dad. He enjoys bow hunting as well as rifle and shotgun hunts and spends time in the fall pursuing waterfowl. But today they were out in the northwest after the elusive wild boar. We all hiked to the top of the rolling hills to get a view of the land. As we crested the hill where we thought we'd find pigs when Matt say, "Hey, the brush is moving!" We all turn our eyes down the slope before us and sure enough, several hogs were moving through the thistle. The thistle was a real menace, the thorny non-native plant grows thick and tall to the point where you cannot see what's in or behind them. The hogs, of course, stayed in the thistle to be covered from view. We could hear the grunting and occasionally we would get a glimpse of hide as they would get near the edge of the thorny patch of foliage. We had to keep our wind above them so we were limited to a small grassy hilltop above them. After waiting 45 minutes for one of them to show outside the thistle we could tell that odds were low for a clean shot. We were only 27 yards away and at time only 10, and still could not see enough for a shot. We took a chance and moved to the side of the ravine to try and get a good position. It worked, as the hogs moved to the edge we started to see two black hogs moving out of the brush. In the distance Amber & Jake saw two large, brown boars cross the big field and slip into the very thistle patch the rest of the hogs were in. We were surround by hogs! Grunting and the sound of brush breaking filled the air. Every few minutes we would all look at each other and smile because it was really cool to be that close to the hogs. Suddenly the large red boar with huge tusks came out of the brush right next to Matt. Matt was all lined up for the two smaller black pigs and couldn't adjust enough to the left to try for the big red boar because the red boar was 11 yards away staring right Matt! Everybody froze. We were too close! We had hope we could fool them with our camo and stealth, but the wind gave us away and the big red boar made a grunt and vanished. The two black pigs never came out enough for a shot and decided to listen to the boar and slipped back into the thistle. Our hearts were pounding! The hogs seemed to lie down in the thistle and get quiet again. At least that's what it sounded like. After a bit of careful surveying of the thistle we realized they had disappeared into the brush. We tried to find them again but with the heat of the day and heavy cover the pigs had the upper hand. We resolved to try to find some other hogs and started off the hill. While were passing some rocks and downed tree we heard the buzz of a rattle snakes tail, right next to the trail!
Snakes are part of being out in the wild. They are harmless if you give them space. Rattle Snakes hunt mice and other rodents and are very important to the circle of life. Moments later on another hill, Amber found another Rattler coiled up sleeping in the grass. After a few picture we continued our hunt. Hill after hill we glassed the base of every tree trying to find hogs that would be bedded in the heat of the day. The sign was everywhere! So much so that it was hard to follow it. No matter where we went there were droppings, rooting, tusk marks and mud rubs. But it was just so hot that nothing was moving except a black morph Red-Tailed Hawk who was flying around screaming to it's young in the nest as if to be show the chicks what it looks like to fly.
In the evening hours we had a black tail buck come up out of a creek at 20 yards. We all froze once again and watched as he made his way across our trail. The moment the buck cross to the down wind side of us he turned inside out! He ran back the way he came so fast it was hard to see him leave. The amazing thing was, while the buck ran through the creek side, oak forest, he made nearly no noise. No matter how hard w tried to be quiet, the crunching of dry leaves dominated the audio part of the hunt. At one point we were sure that a deer or a hog was fast approaching! Our hearts beating hard again! As the crunching of leaves got close we prepared for the encounter. And once again we were fooled. The notorious California Towhee fooled us! It's a small songbird that spends its time using both feet flip the dry leaves in search of bugs and other nibbles, which it and its mate were doing very vigorously. The whole time all of this was going on, Jake was into it! He was into looking through his binoculars, he was into the tracks and the bugs and the snakes. He was listening to the forest and alerting me when he would hear something. He was also into the safety of the whole experience. He stayed near and to the back of the shooters. He was good about being quiet and never complained about the heat and the steep hills. And when the afternoon heat had us pinned down for a couple of hours, he just curled up and slept.
When he woke he was ready to go again. He also spent much of the time admiring his father. I noticed the looks he would give his dad. Puzzled when he was questioning what had just been said or sometimes amazed, like when he ate his first wild black berry. Sometimes while they were walking along, Jake would take his fathers hand and lean in to him a little. The two of them made it clear why we hunt. After the hunt was over Jake mentioned how much fun he had and how he wants to go again.
Hunting is a quest for food, but not only, we had an amazing day in spite of the fact the hogs gave us the slip. We will all remember the day for years to come and when we reflect on our lives, the little memories from every hunt will guide us and give us perspective about ourselves and the wild world, what's right and what's important. I look forward to watching Jake grow into to a hunter, following in his father's footsteps.
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