The Hog Blog

Went off to Parkfield to find a fat hog

Home again home again jiggity jog

The cooler is empty my freezer is bare

But I had a great weekend in the clean, country air

Yeah, it was fun, and really peaceful.   I probably needed that much more than I needed to shoot a pig… although getting a hog would have made the trip even better.  But that was not to be.

I had the whole 6500 ranch to myself for the better part of three days.  I logged some miles on foot, looking in vain for fresh sign.  I guess they didn’t plant the ranch property with barley this year, so the rich, green fields were all located on neighboring places.  I worked the fencelines looking for active crossings, but the ground was so hard and dry that even the cattle weren’t leaving tracks.  Even so, I should have been able to see trails going into the barley fields, and I didn’t see those either. 

They’ve also fixed the dams on a couple of big stock ponds, so there was good water on the ranch.  Even there, though, sign was meager to non-existent.  The cattle had been in the ponds, so it took a lot of deciphering to pick out likely pig tracks from the calves.  My final prognosis though, was that there may have been a couple of hogs, but nothing in the recent past.  Wherever they were, they weren’t here.

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful weekend to get away.  I hadn’t been to this property in a couple of years, so it was fun to get out and hike the new place.  I had coyotes literally come into the camp area on Thursday night, and sing me a lullabye as only song-dogs can do.  I saw deer, including one buck with velvet-covered antlers already out to his ears.  He’ll be a doozy this season if he hangs around.  There were all kinds of birds, lizards, and gopher snakes.  I didn’t find my big rattler, so my Stetson is still without a decent band… but maybe I can fix that at Tejon next weekend. 

The ranch is located just to the east of the San Andreas fault, where the North American Plate is slowly riding up over the edge of the Pacific Plate, grinding and grating and occasionally shaking folks up.  Parkfield is considered the “Earthquake Capital of the World” due to the frequency of tremors and quakes, but unfortunately I didn’t notice any activity during my brief sojourn.

There’s a lot of ground I didn’t get to see on this trip, although according to my GPS I covered about nine miles on Friday morning, walking a concentric square around a perimeter, then closing in as I climbed a high, central peak to a height of around 2000′.  I figured I could see the whole place from there, and I’d have been right, except for the unexpected arrival of a dense fog a few hours after sunrise.  I couldn’t even see the base of the mountain!

Once the fog burned off, the air warmed to a comfortable 67 degrees, and when it made for a wonderful day to stroll the oak meadows, fallow pastures, and creekbeds that make up the majority of the ranch.  The wildflowers had peaked a couple of weeks ago, but there were still occasional patches of lupine and even one nice expanse of California poppies. 

All told, it was a very relaxing, stress-free couple of days away from the grind and craziness of this urban madhouse. 

Oh, and I did see pigs…

boar hunting, feral pigs, Golden Ram Sportsmens Club, hog hunting, hogs, parkfield ranch, san andreas fault, wild boar

This just in… I’ll post in its entirety.  Read, learn, and get active.

U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance

Sportsmen Alert!

For information about the following message, please contact:

U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance

801 Kingsmill Parkway, Columbus, OH 43229

Phone: (614) 888-4868     Fax: (614) 888-0326

Email: info@ussportsmen.org       Website: www.ussportsmen.org

May 9, 2008

 

Urgent – Action from Journalists and Outdoor Industry Required

The following is being issued on behalf of the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA):

Every member of the outdoor industry needs to contact their congressman or congresswoman and respectfully request he or she become a co-sponsor of H.R. Bill 5502.

If passed, H.R. 5502 will greatly reduce the fees and bureaucratic red tape individual journalists and small media crews must pay and cut through to film on public lands in the United States.

The bill is currently in committee. (See details below)

The House Committee on Natural Resources is waiting to hear from the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Department of Agriculture (DOA) regarding the language of the bill.  Neither DOI or DOA is in favor of changes to the existing law.

Congressional co-sponsors for the bill are vitally important.  Without them, this bill could die at the committee level and the current law, which is confusing and economically unfair to journalists, will remain in effect.

Review the H.R. Bill 5502 on the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA) Web site.

Contact Your Congressman/Congresswoman and ask them to co-sponsor H.R. Bill 5502.

Filming on Public Lands Bill

H.R. 5502 (”The POMA Bill”) was filed in February by Congressman Dan Boren (D-OK) and Congressman Don Young (R-AK), members of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

The bill, should it get out of committee and pass the legislature, would direct the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to create an annual permit for individual photographers or film crews of five or less who photograph on public lands.  The annual permit would replace the exorbitant, arbitrary fees currently assessed for filming, photography and sound recording on public lands.

Passage of this bill will create a uniform process for working media, save the media dozens of hours of time and thousands of dollars and ensure the continued coverage of public-land opportunities and wildlife and public land-use issues.

POMA has worked closely with Representatives Boren and Young on this issue, but to ensure a positive outcome, we need your help.

For more information, contact POMA Executive Director, Laurie Lee Dovey at lldovey@professionaloutdoormedia.org, 814-539-6030.

The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance is a national association of sportsmen and sportsmen’s organizations that protect the rights of hunters, anglers and trappers in the courts, legislatures, at the ballot, in Congress and through public education programs.  For more information about the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and its work, call (614) 888-4868 or visit its website, www.ussportsmen.org.

—  

filming fees on public land, HR5502, Outdoor media, POMA, USSF

Well, I’ve had a lot of downtime lately while trying to set up some new contracts, and it’s had me spending way too much time in the house, waiting by the phone.  The weather has been beautiful the whole time, but the most I’ve enjoyed it is walking out to the mail box.  Well, the heck with that! 

By the time you read this, I’ll be most of the way down to Parkfield, CA… the Earthquake Capital of CA… hoping to fill a pig tag (and get some use out of my Golden Ram membership).  Of course, just spending a couple of days on my own in the CA back country has its own appeal.  It’s not a run to the tropics to chase big fish, but it’ll get me out of the house and away from the computers and telephones that dominate way too much of this modern life.

I know, I know… “You were just turkey hunting a couple of weeks ago!” 

Well, that was guiding, and I like the guiding thing, but that’s hunting for someone else.  Guiding means spending the entire weekend worrying about someone else’s concerns… the client first, the landowner next, and the outfitter after that. It really doesn’t include the opportunity to think about yourself.  But for the next couple of days, I don’t have to worry about anyone else but me.  I can hunt how I want, when I want, and where I want to go.    And sometimes you just need those selfish experiences… at least I do.

I should be back by Saturday or Sunday, and maybe I’ll have some pictures of a big hog and a freezer full of meat.  But regardless of what (or if) I kill, I can guarantee it’ll be a successful trip. 

Well, it’s been a while since the last edition of the Porcine Press, but that doesn’t mean our little piggy friends haven’t been making the news. 

First of all, we’ll visit our neighbors to the north, in the Canadian province of Alberta.  According to this article in the Edmonton Journal, it appears that the bristly beggars have settled right into the Great White North and are making a nuisance of themselves… so much so that the folks at the Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development agency have officially classified wild boar as pests, opening the door for unregulated killing to protect crops and property.  Of course, if you’ll read the whole article, you’ll find that the pest status may be a bit over-stated.  I won’t be packing my hog rifle for a drive to Alberta just yet. 

Speaking of travel…

This is the time of year when my heart and eyes start to wander in search of new places and experience.  OK, actually, my thoughts are usually of warm, tropical beaches, clear water, and big, pelagic fish… but I’m open to other things.   Now it’s been a long time since my honeymoon, but I’d be willing to pretend to be a newlywed if it meant I could sign up for this honeymoon package I just read about on PressReleases.com! 

The 14-day package highlights the adventurous side of Fiji, and takes guests to five different islands throughout the 300+ island archipelago. “I’d categorize some of the activities as ‘extreme’,” explains Marketing Director Susan de Geus, who lives on Fiji’s main island full time to facilitate the tours. “Skydiving and hunting for wild boars in the Fiji bush are definitely not what most honeymooners come to Fiji to experience,” she says. “But while the entire itinerary is adventure oriented, we give couples a break with soft activities like kayaking and snorkeling over the world’s fourth largest reef,” she explains.

Yeah, I could do that!

And moving right along, I’ll close with this great little piece from columnist Bob Terrell at the Asheville, NC Citizen-Times.  This one reminds me of the tales I’d get from my dad and uncles.  It also brings to mind the great stories I read over at the Animal Stories blog.

The anti-hunting post has been occupying a bit of my mind the last day or so, so I haven’t been able to come up with new topics right now.  Hog hunting promises to pick up over the next couple of months, so there’s something to look forward to.

However, I can’t let the day go by without expressing my sadness and my frustration at the tragic news stories coming out of the turkey woods recently. 

First, a Minnesota father shot his eight year-old son.  What happened?  Well, the story doesn’t help the cause of hunters… the man followed some turkeys, the boy followed his father, the father turned and shot at “some movement”… discharging a full, 12ga turkey load into the boy’s chest at approximately 20 yards. 

Then a 19 year-old West Virginian shot a 16 year-old after apparently spotting movement and mistaking it for a turkey… and then he ran away and left him, according to the reports.  I wasn’t there, and I can imagine the panic in that teenager’s mind could have made him react thoughtlessly… not to let him off the hook, but to keep it in perspective.  The worst thing was that he shot the young man in the first place… by mistake. 

Now I hesitate to highlight these stories, because… well there’s just no good way to see it.  As hunters, we go on about our dedication to safety and ethics and all that, but just a couple of these stories take the wind out of those claims pretty handily.  Sure, statistics still tell you that hunting is much safer than almost any other sport you can take up.  But statistics probably don’t mean squat to the family of the dead youngsters right now, and they sure wouldn’t mean anything to me either. 

I could use this to launch another diatribe about the importance of maintaining our image as hunters and how these incidents really give us a black eye… but I really don’t have the energy, and honestly, I can’t see how that would be constructive.  All I can do when I think about it right now is imagine that father’s agony.  I doubt any of us needs to point out his errors to him… or to anyone else. 

Instead, I just want to say to all of you, “be careful out there, folks.” 

I know we all think we’re safe hunters, and I’m sure most of you are.  But it only takes a second…less than a second… and a lifetime of practicing safety is erased. 

hunting accidents, hunting safety, turkey hunting

I don’t know any hog hunter who doesn’t remember the “Monster Pig”, formerly known as “Fred”… the huge domestic hog taken by 12 year-old Jamison Stone with the Smith and Wesson 500.  My last write-up on the topic that won’t go away referenced Rhonda Shearer’s reports on her Stinky Journalism website. 

Anyway, the whole thing hasn’t died down yet, and I received an email from Ms Shearer this morning (apologies for the posting issues… we were undergoing technical difficulties this morning).  I decided to post her comment here as a blog post, rather than relegating it to an old thread.  Here’s what she had to say:

Read the rest of this entry »

I received another comment from an anti-hunter yesterday.  It was loaded with filthy language and curses, so I deleted it as I will do with any such comment to this blog.  And all would have been well, and maybe should have been, but it just caught a nerve somewhere and I couldn’t let it go.

In short, amidst the pre-teen cursewords, the writer took me and all hunters to task with the same old cliches… heartless, blood-thirsty, and cruel.  The comment closed with another cliche, the wish that “someone” would hunt, kill, and skin us like we do the poor animals we terrorize.  It was really sort of cartoonish, and at first all I could do was shake my head.

But I sat around thinking today, and with nothing better to do, scribbled down this rejoinder.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a real, quick note to apologize to several HogBlog readers whose comments never saw the light of day.  

I got an email earlier from a fella, Tom Sorenson who runs the Base Camp Legends blog and online community.  Apparently he’s been trying to post up comments on the Hog Blog for a little while, but they never seen to show up.  I never saw them in the moderation queue, because the spam-blocker on our blog network has been sending him directly to the spam bin. 

Sure enough, I opened up the spam collection to see what I could see.  In the past 15 days, the system has collected over 3000 suspected spam messages.  However, after scanning through them I found several from Tom, as well as a few from other legitimate readers.  I couldn’t go through all 3000 messages in detail, so I may not have rescued all of your comments.  Also, the messages are automatically deleted after 15 days, so I’m sure I’ve missed an awful lot of your comments over the past couple of years… and this kinda bums me out. 

Anyway, now that I see what this thing is doing, I’ll try to monitor a little more closely.  I am most sorry to those of you who took the time and effort to post up a comment, only to have it ignominiously devoured by my spam blocker.  I hope you are all still around, and I look forward to reading your comments in the future.

Last fall some of you may remember the “Spur of the Moment Buck“, the blacktail deer I took on my last-minute run out to my favorite public land spot , the place I call Kokopelli Valley (and no, it’s not on any maps). 

Well, this buck is one of my best in CA, and while I don’t go in for full-head mounts, I wanted to something a little nicer than just cutting off the skull plate and hanging him on a board in the garage. 

Well, it happens that my friend and hunting buddy, Scott Plunkett, has a little side business called “High Desert Skull Works“.  He uses dermestid beetles to clean skulls and create some really nice european mounts.  For those folks who want to go a step further, he can also add a metallic finish to the skull.  This makes for a really unique and nice-looking trophy.

I contacted Scott and told him about my deer, and then he and I worked it all out.  I sent the deer head to him, and told him to use his own discretion on the type of metal-finish to use.  I’d seen several of his other pieces, and they all looked so cool, there was no way I could decide which one I wanted. 

Anyway, after a few months to do the work (he’s got a busy queue and the beetles work at their own pace) he dropped the finished product off to me last weekend while I was down at Bryson Resort.   I expected it to be cool, but I didn’t expect it to come out as awesome as it did!  It’s a really nicely done piece of wildlife art! 

You can click on the image for a slightly larger picture with better resolution.  The thumbnails below offer a couple more looks. 

For more information, or to contact Scott on your own project, go to his website at www.hdskullworks.com.  Scott does skulls for all sorts of game, including wild boar, bear, antelope, and exotic species. 

Well, the turkey hunt was tough, but my hunter went home with his bird.  Without going into too much detail, it was a learning experience for the both of us, I think… at least I’m certain I learned a lot as a guide, and I sure hope he learned a bit as a hunter and a client. 

As a guide, I learned that you have to take control of the hunt from the beginning, because if you let the client take over you’ll be run ragged and frustrated.  I made that mistake this weekend and it made me look pretty bad.  It’s important to give the customer what he wants, but you have to decide where the line is drawn between letting him learn the hard way and doing what it takes to ensure that the hunt ends with success. 

As a guided client, there’s a golden rule that you should always observe.  Don’t try to guide the guide!  The guide is the expert.  He (or she) knows the animals in the specific area… their behavior and their eccentricities.  The guide knows how to hunt those animals.  When the guide suggests a tactic or a location, it’s best to go with the suggestions. 

Sure, ask questions.  You can even challenge the guide’s recommendation.  But do so knowing that, when all is said and done, you are the customer.  Most guides will give you what you want, because you’re paying the bill.  Very seldom will your request be flat-out denied, so you’d do well to consider carefully before going contrary to the guide’s advice. 

If you want to do things your own way, why would you pay so much for a guided hunt in the first place?  Hunt public land, or pay a tresspass fee for an unguided hunt on private property.  To do otherwise is a waste of your money, and of the guide’s energy. 

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.  As much as I may enjoy it, I have to remember that guiding is a job.  It’s not about me. 

Meanwhile, during the weekend I got an email from my little brother, Scott, back in NC.  He got drawn this year for the limited entry turkey hunt on the Roanoke River, and couldn’t wait to share his success.  Two turkeys in two days… one of which was this really nice tom, sporting an 11-inch beard and 1 1/2″ spurs! 

He said that the area was a madhouse of gobbling and fighting birds, including two toms who were gobbling their heads off at each other across the river!  Sure sounds like fun to me!