Last Day of the Season

[Camp Creek]

Sunday was the last day of muzzleloader season for deer in north Florida and also my last chance to reach my goal of harvesting one on my farm with a longbow.  I had come close a few times before but so far, no cigar.  The rut was pretty much a memory with an occasional overly optimistic six point showing up on trail cams, and deer movement had taken a dramatic down turn the past week.
Heading to a ladder stand at the edge of a little food plot named Blood Pocket after one of our guys lost a fight with a zip tie and his pocket knife planting trees a while back, I again thought the blades of oats looked like some Elvish metal out of Middle Earth the way they shown in the light of my head light with the green shing through their silver coating of dew.  Sitting in the ladder stand, the pre-dawn shades of grey give way to the promised colors of the day to come as the world shifted into the hues of green and brown for these woods in early spring.  Wood ducks landed in the beaver pond behind me and after sunrise a doe ran across the field of oats with no indication of anything in pursuit.
Eventually my mind shifted from the task of looking into the woods and shadows to unguided musings on important matters like if the Pink Panther was only pink because he didn't have any fur, or did he just eat a lot of shrimp like flamingoes do and then turn pink that way.  That's when I heard what sounded like a pig grunt behind me.  I had lost most of the hearing in my left ear spear fishing for tuna off of Panama a few years ago which means that not only can I not hear for squat, but I have also absolutely no idea where a sound is coming from when I do hear it.  The grunts became more frequent though, and by turning my head a bit each time, I was able to determine the sounds were actually in front of me but to the right.  The grunts had now merged into a long constant noise which meant either I was going to be visited by the most talkative of pigs ever, or one of the local meth heads was riding a four-wheeler towards my stand for what would prove to be probably my most interesting trespassing interaction to date. Knowing by now to apply about a 60° correction to the left, I turned my head just in time to see a nice sized black pig moving in that ground eating pseudo trot they use all of the time.
The pig was black, the flat light sucking black that only pigs seem to be; like a lump of coal suddenly sprouted four legs and a snout then started running around digging up peanuts and ruining food plots.  My whole, "Pick a spot, set the shot" mantra I'd repeat to myself as a deer would slowly work towards me went out the window as there were only a few more feet for it to go before the pig was gone forever.  God only knows what I used as an anchor point, how I gripped the bow, or anything, but shooting slightly ahead of the pig I watched the arrow sail somehow into its ribs with that absolute unique sound on impact.  No squeal or anything from the pig other than a slight increase in speed was the result.  Thoughts of, "Wow, I actually did it" were replaced by, "Crap, there's another pig"!
Drawing another arrow from the quiver with immediate memories from 1982 of what happens to your father's bowstring if touched with a broadhead, I very carefully nocked the second arrow and this time made sure to pay more attention to my lead as a pig's vitals are supposed to be further forward than a deer's.  This newly found concentration did exactly what one would expect, and I sent the arrow right under its chin.  In a supreme expression of situational awareness, that pig ran after the other albeit with an even greater burst of speed.  At this point it became clear that a whole sounder of pigs was coming through, but they sensed something was not quite right with their world and another one stopped just behind some scrub yaupon as I nocked my third arrow.  Figuring it was so close to the brush that the arrow wouldn't deflect much, I let fly which of course was also the exact moment the pig decided it was time to catch up to the rest. Again the audible thump, but this time I knew it was definitely further back than I'd like.  This pig followed the first two but again no squeals of pain.
Still more pigs appeared, and the only arrows I had left were the field point and judo tip I'd used for stump shooting on the way to and from my stand; not exactly what I needed to be shooting at large game with.  Then, remembering that Florida has about the same restrictions on hunting pigs as Texas does on coyotes as well as thinking of all the destruction these cloven-hoofed bastards had done, I pulled the 9mm out of my waistband just in time to see another nice sized pig disappear into the brush.  This one though was followed by maybe a dozen little black and tan piggies, all about the size of a housecat.  The next six shots had the same effect I had seen last time I had tried shooting at running piglets with a pistol, namely turning little black and tan piggies into very fast little black and tan piggies.
Then, all was quiet.  The pigs were gone, the arrows stuck in the ground, and even the birds had been shocked into silence.  The first arrow I found was the first one shot, covered in bright red blood and buried over 6 inches into the sandy loam.  The next arrow was the last one and it too was covered, but in a thin watery dull blood mix, not good.  I stuck it back into the ground marking the point of impact.  The other arrow was a confirmed clean miss.  All of this took place right in front of a trail cam, so I thought maybe I'm lucky enough to get a video of it all and see better where the arrows hit.  Unfortunately, the camera's sensitivity setting was somewhere between Al Bundy and Archie Bunker, so it never even triggered.  Mental note: Maybe there had been a lot more game moving through here than I had thought.

[durp]

 

[BruceT]

 Great story ! Hoping there's more !

[Camp Creek]

Rather than begin trailing immediately, I went back to the cabin I had built to enlist the help of a bundle of brown hair, caffeine, and optimism, my three year old pudelpointer, Jackson.

While he has found several deer and pigs, I haven't worked with him enough on the whole concept of trailing versus casting widely about in the hopes that he smells something.  While not the classic NAVHDA approved method for big game, searching the woods a half county at a time is actually pretty effective.  Sure enough, only seconds after taking him to the blood-soaked arrow with the command, "Dead Bird", he had found pig #1, a nice eating sized sow that had made it only 40 yards into the woods.  Her last trail was just what you'd want, consistent large drops and splashes of bright oxygen enriched blood. 

But now for the hard one.  Following along that same line near the tree line, we found a few drops of blood, and not the bright red of a good lung hit.  I let Jackson do his thing out ahead as I slowly picked my way along, sometimes 6 inches at a time, sometimes several feet. We proceeded this way over a quarter mile, me methodically dropping pink flagging tape at each drop, and Jackson covering probably acres at a time in front.

After about an hour, I decided it best to get the first pig skinned, gutted, and on ice then resume the trail that afternoon.
And for the record, I would rather clean three deer now than one pig.
With the afternoon sun making it just hot enough to break a sweat with any kind of physical activity, I went back into the woods along the creek to still hunt along the blood trail and see if I could make better progress on my own.  Slowly following the trail of pink tape markers, I got to  where we had called it off that morning and watched a doe with two yearlings slowly feed along the creek about 80 yards away. The world was definitely shifting towards spring, and I still had a pig to find.  But the blood trail just stopped.  I could follow kicked up leaves for a bit along what was most likely the pig's path, but not a single drop of blood to be found.  Nowhere.  Tons of sign where pigs had been rooting in the mud between the cypress knees didn't help matters either.  I cast about along several possible paths the pig could have taken, but still nothing, not a fresh crossing of the creek, nothing.  Two wood duck drakes kept pressing their case to a hen at the bend by a big oak, but she soon became tired of their advances and left.  Still no pig.  A deep voiced gobbler answered some woodpecker's search for dinner.  Still no pig.  We had been heading into the breeze that morning and those pigs smelled so bad even I could smell them at a distance if they were there.  Every dark shadow turned out to be just that, or a fallen tree stump, but never a pig.  Finally, I had to admit defeat, wherever that pig was, I would never find it, and whether that wound would prove fatal, or it would just have a scar and scary stories to tell the little black and tan piglets, I would never know.  Taking an animal cleanly is part of life, and definitely my objective.  Wounding one like this, probably severely, is something I never want, even if it is what most people, including me, view as a nuisance animal.
Checking my watch, there were about 30 minutes officially left in the season, and I decided to head back and call it a year.  Looking at the judo point arrow in the bow quiver, I pulled it out, thought about all of the clumps of grass, dead sycamore leaves, and fire ant mounds I had shot with on the way through the fields and the woods this year and figured it was time for it to go.  Drawing back, I aimed up through a gap in the cypress limbs and let it go where the orange crest and fletching caught the last rays of the setting sun before dropping out of sight for good.  And with that, the season was over with one pig in the freezer, one to regret, no deer, but a lot of memories and lessons learned.

[Possum Head]

A very well written piece! Thanks for taking us along.

[Alexander Traditional]

Nice shooting!

[rastaman]

Congratulations sir!