last weekend
Andy Bell and Bruce Mercer came down from Maryland last weekend for their first hog hunt and had a real blast, both maxing out with three hogs. We had a lot of fun. I felt like I had known these guys for years from the moment they drove up. We rode around the place Thursday evening and they hunted Friday and Saturday. Andy has already called and left a message, saying that he is coming back in the spring and bringing his entire family.
I got to do a little hunting as well. My wife and I went out Saturday morning and walked into the swamp down a road that deadends on a penisula that juts out into the Ocmulgee River. I initally intended to walk almost all of the way to the river itself and take a hard left into the swamp from there--just amble around a little bit, walk for a while and sit--that sort of thing. After we had walked about 200 yards down the road, a spike chased a doe across the road in front of us, so we went into the woods right there. We eased along and crossed a big slew. At one point a big hog came running right across our field of vision. He never saw us, but something had him spooked, possibly the deer, because he grunted the entire way until he was out of sight. I would have liked for my wife to shoot him, but he was moving too fast for her to even get her rifle up.
After about an hour, I spotted the spike and doe right along the edge of the riverbank. We had been creeping along the entire time and finally caught up to them. They were behind some trees and palmettoes, so it was hard to make them out, but all of a sudden, the spike ran off and a buck stepped into view. I couldn't see his rack very well. I called my wife up to where I was standing and she put her scope on him but apparently couldn't see anything. We sat still for about five minutes and crept forward a little farther. He kept coming in and out of vision, walking behind the trees on the riverbank. I could tell his body was huge and I thought he had a really decent rack, but I wasn't sure. I kept urging Jana (my wife) to shoot him, but she couldn't get a good view of him. Finally I saw his breath blowing behind some trees and asked to hold her rifle, which, unlike mine, had a scope. When I spotted the buck in the scope, I noticed that he was looking right back at me. On impulse, I shot him.
He turned out to be an 11 point buck with a few kicker points, an old deer who was going downhill. His rack really wasn't that impressive and had a very bizzare structure, but he would have been an incredible first kill for my wife, a fact of which she keeps reminding me. I doubt I'll ever be forgiven for shooting him out from under her and she's so disgusted with me, she says she'll never go hunting with me again.
Greg Dailey came back down on Sunday with a friend. His buddy saw two eight points but wasn't buck hunting. He wound up with a trophy boar---huge but lacking the tusk length of the one Greg killed earlier this fall.
Well, I've got to go, but we've got two groups of hunters coming in the next week. There has been a lot of action at Yellow Bluff this year, and I expect it to keep happening.
Michael Williams (cook, guide, website designer, and writer)
Posted by yellowbluffga
at 1:28 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, 11 November 2004 10:42 AM EST