Long read and a little late posting this.
I was looking for a hog hunt because a friend from Colorado was coming to town and he wanted to do one. I asked the brain trust here on the green screen to recommend a hog hunt in this thread https://discussions.texasbowhunter.c...ight=recommend
I got a p.m. from RiverRat1 (Tim) that said if I couldn’t find a suitable hunt to get back in touch with him. I wasn’t able to find anything on short notice so that’s what I did. Tim set us up to come out to the 587 Ranch on Friday March 6th for the weekend. Chris was pretty excited because he had never done a hog hunt before. In fact, I have never done a hog hunt either. I had only shot hogs when I was out deer hunting previously. Tim warned us that it might be tough hunting because the ranch was so green. The hogs weren’t coming to the feeders on any kind of a regular schedule. But, hey...we’d be hunting so we were OK with it.
Traffic was ridiculous as usual and it took us about an hour to get 10 minutes north of San Antonio. We were hoping to get to the ranch around 4:30 but showed up an hour late. Tim razzed us a little about that. We had a nice surprise though. Let me set this up for you. The 587 Ranch website says “rustic cabin” so I wasn’t expecting much. Two weekend before, I slept in a shipping container that we were converting into a cabin on a friend’s lease. The next weekend I was out in West Texas and slept in a tool shed on an air mattress that had a leak. The rustic cabin is awesome! The place is only slightly rustic. It has real beds in bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a full bathroom with running hot water and a shower! It may be slightly rustic but in no way is it spartan!
We unloaded our gear and went out to the blinds for the Friday evening set. I was in the A&M blind upfront and Chris was in a different blind (I don’t remember the number, 8 maybe). It got dark fairly quickly after getting into the blind and we sat for a few hours without seeing any hogs. I did see a raccoon and a fox. It was about 10:30 or so when I decided to walk back to the cabin. As I’m walking back I shine my red flashlight up ahead and see about 15 pairs of eyes looking at me. I knew it was a small herd of cows that were laying down around one of the trees next to the road. I’m not a fan of cows after almost getting trampled a few years ago while turkey hunting. As I get a little closer, from the right hand side around the tree line a cow comes running across the opening. That spooked the rest of the herd and the stampede ensued! Luckily for me the cows ran the other way to the other side of the open field and then they started growling at me. Did I mention that I don’t like cows? I keep walking down the road and get past the cows and then they started following me still growling. It’s kind of hard to see where you’re going when you’re looking behind you. Luckily I didn’t trip. I got back to the cabin and Chris came up from his blind a few minutes later. He had his own little herd of cows by his blind all night. Neither of us saw any hogs.
We headed out at 5:30 on Saturday morning. Tim recommended we both sit in the A&M blind so that’s what we did. We sat for several hours and didn’t see any hogs but we did see a small deer about 200 yards to the right of the stand.
Tim took us for a ride around the ranch during the middle of the day so we could check it out. What a beautiful place! There are some extremely rugged areas with rocks, cedar, and underbrush so thick a guy couldn’t crawl through it if he had to. And there’s some incredibly beautiful and picturesque areas. During one of our conversations, Tim asked why I didn’t shoot the raccoon last night and went on to say he shoots every one he sees because they tear up the feeders. That was a green light to me.
Chris and I decided to sit in the same blind again on Saturday night. I guess we felt like that was our best chance at getting a hog. About an hour before sundown, six whitetail doe appeared kind of out of nowhere slightly to our right in the opening. They milled around eating some corn and had the older does chasing the younger ones. They got a little bit nervous about something off to our right. They kept looking that way and eventually flagged and ran that way. It seems a little strange to me that they were nervous about something and ran towards it. They veered off and went into the woods and we didn’t see them again. We kept looking off to a right to see if we could see whatever it was that they were nervous about but never did see anything.
After sitting a few hours, we shine the light over at the feeder and saw some eyes underneath. It was a raccoon again. Remembering my conversation with Tim earlier in the day I asked Chris if he wanted to shoot the raccoon. He didn’t want to because he didn’t want to ruin any chance at a hog. We sat for a little while longer focusing on the right side of the stand hoping whatever spook those does would come out. I glanced back to my left and I saw there was an animal at the waterhole. It was the raccoon. It turned from the water hole and started walking directly at the blind we were sitting in. I had my .45 sitting on the shelf in front of me and I grabbed it. Chris said I’ll shine the light on him you blast him with the .45. As I’m trying to open the window the raccoon had come to about 5 yards in front of the stand before he heard the window opening. He stopped looked directly up at me. I didn’t get the window open far enough to aim. I was shooting 45 degrees around a corner! Kris hit the light and I started shooting. I got 3 shots off before the raccoon ran off. We sat there giggling like a couple of school girls! It was hilarious!
After we stopped laughing, I decided to look and see if there might be some blood on the ground out there. As I’m shining the flashlight, I see something shiny about 5 yards from the blind where the raccoon had stopped. It wasn’t blood…it was metallic looking. I asked Chris “Is that a bullet?” Of course, we start laughing again! We knew that we weren’t going to see any hogs anytime soon so we had Tim come pick us up. When I got out of the stand I went over and sure enough it was a pristine .45 bullet laying on top of the ground. How does that happen? It must have been a dud round that went bang like the others but just slid out of the barrel with no velocity. It only has a couple scratches on the nose.
We got to sleep in an extra hour on Sunday morning with the “spring forward” time change. We knew that Tim hadn’t changed the time on his feeders yet�� so we had an extra hour before the feeders went off. I went back to the A&M blind again and Chris went to a different blind. About 9 AM I look to my right through the binos and about 400yds out see a little six-point step out of the woods into the field. He gets a mouth full of grass, picks his head up and he’s looking across the field. He didn’t like something that he saw so he turned around and trotted back the way he came. I kept my focus to the right of the blind after that. 10 mins later I see a little fork horn come out at 75 yds and run across the field and disappear into the woods. Now I am really focusing to the right of the blind after seeing two deer down that way. They didn’t like something on the opposite side of the field and I thought it might be some hogs. I was hoping they would come out and just march right down the field to the feeder.
I was texting with Chris and he said he wanted to stick it out for about another hour. Tim texted me and asked if we were ready to come in yet. I told him no because I had just seen the deer. I look up and there’s a cow 400 yards out to the right. Wait…I looked again it wasn’t a cow it was a big hog! It was huge! Then I saw more hogs come out. Before long there were 15 of them or so that came out and moved across the field into the woods on the other side. Now I had my hopes up thinking they would work their way down through the woods and come out by the feeder. I still kept my focus to the right of the blind and occasionally would glance back towards the feeder. A few minutes passed and I glanced back toward the feeder and there are two hogs at the waterhole 30 yards from me! Where did they come from? I didn’t hear them come in. They were silent. I grabbed my rifle and slid the window open about 6 inches, just far enough to get the rifle out the window. The hogs moved to the other side of the waterhole and the bigger one presented a shot. I put the crosshairs at the base of his skull and squeezed one off. He dropped and was DRT. I stayed in the blind for a little while thinking maybe the other hogs I had seen off to the right would still make their way down to the feeder.
I got out of the stand and walked over towards the water hole where the hog was set my pack down and leaned my rifle up against it. Tim picked up Chris then came to get me. The three of us are standing there looking at the hog and Chris looks up and says “Look at those hogs!” They were running in single file across the field like you would see at an arcade shooting range! Kris wasn’t comfortable taking a shot at running hogs at 200 yards. I ran over and grabbed my rifle and fired off three more shots. There must’ve been 50 hogs in that sounder! We picked up my hog and went to the cleaning rack. He weighed 135lbs.
We had a great time! Unfortunately Chris did not get to kill a hog. Maybe next time. At least we got to hunt!
Tim is a great guy and a good host! If you’re ever looking for a hog hunt take a look at the 587 Ranch! You won’t regret it!
I was looking for a hog hunt because a friend from Colorado was coming to town and he wanted to do one. I asked the brain trust here on the green screen to recommend a hog hunt in this thread https://discussions.texasbowhunter.c...ight=recommend
I got a p.m. from RiverRat1 (Tim) that said if I couldn’t find a suitable hunt to get back in touch with him. I wasn’t able to find anything on short notice so that’s what I did. Tim set us up to come out to the 587 Ranch on Friday March 6th for the weekend. Chris was pretty excited because he had never done a hog hunt before. In fact, I have never done a hog hunt either. I had only shot hogs when I was out deer hunting previously. Tim warned us that it might be tough hunting because the ranch was so green. The hogs weren’t coming to the feeders on any kind of a regular schedule. But, hey...we’d be hunting so we were OK with it.
Traffic was ridiculous as usual and it took us about an hour to get 10 minutes north of San Antonio. We were hoping to get to the ranch around 4:30 but showed up an hour late. Tim razzed us a little about that. We had a nice surprise though. Let me set this up for you. The 587 Ranch website says “rustic cabin” so I wasn’t expecting much. Two weekend before, I slept in a shipping container that we were converting into a cabin on a friend’s lease. The next weekend I was out in West Texas and slept in a tool shed on an air mattress that had a leak. The rustic cabin is awesome! The place is only slightly rustic. It has real beds in bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a full bathroom with running hot water and a shower! It may be slightly rustic but in no way is it spartan!
We unloaded our gear and went out to the blinds for the Friday evening set. I was in the A&M blind upfront and Chris was in a different blind (I don’t remember the number, 8 maybe). It got dark fairly quickly after getting into the blind and we sat for a few hours without seeing any hogs. I did see a raccoon and a fox. It was about 10:30 or so when I decided to walk back to the cabin. As I’m walking back I shine my red flashlight up ahead and see about 15 pairs of eyes looking at me. I knew it was a small herd of cows that were laying down around one of the trees next to the road. I’m not a fan of cows after almost getting trampled a few years ago while turkey hunting. As I get a little closer, from the right hand side around the tree line a cow comes running across the opening. That spooked the rest of the herd and the stampede ensued! Luckily for me the cows ran the other way to the other side of the open field and then they started growling at me. Did I mention that I don’t like cows? I keep walking down the road and get past the cows and then they started following me still growling. It’s kind of hard to see where you’re going when you’re looking behind you. Luckily I didn’t trip. I got back to the cabin and Chris came up from his blind a few minutes later. He had his own little herd of cows by his blind all night. Neither of us saw any hogs.
We headed out at 5:30 on Saturday morning. Tim recommended we both sit in the A&M blind so that’s what we did. We sat for several hours and didn’t see any hogs but we did see a small deer about 200 yards to the right of the stand.
Tim took us for a ride around the ranch during the middle of the day so we could check it out. What a beautiful place! There are some extremely rugged areas with rocks, cedar, and underbrush so thick a guy couldn’t crawl through it if he had to. And there’s some incredibly beautiful and picturesque areas. During one of our conversations, Tim asked why I didn’t shoot the raccoon last night and went on to say he shoots every one he sees because they tear up the feeders. That was a green light to me.
Chris and I decided to sit in the same blind again on Saturday night. I guess we felt like that was our best chance at getting a hog. About an hour before sundown, six whitetail doe appeared kind of out of nowhere slightly to our right in the opening. They milled around eating some corn and had the older does chasing the younger ones. They got a little bit nervous about something off to our right. They kept looking that way and eventually flagged and ran that way. It seems a little strange to me that they were nervous about something and ran towards it. They veered off and went into the woods and we didn’t see them again. We kept looking off to a right to see if we could see whatever it was that they were nervous about but never did see anything.
After sitting a few hours, we shine the light over at the feeder and saw some eyes underneath. It was a raccoon again. Remembering my conversation with Tim earlier in the day I asked Chris if he wanted to shoot the raccoon. He didn’t want to because he didn’t want to ruin any chance at a hog. We sat for a little while longer focusing on the right side of the stand hoping whatever spook those does would come out. I glanced back to my left and I saw there was an animal at the waterhole. It was the raccoon. It turned from the water hole and started walking directly at the blind we were sitting in. I had my .45 sitting on the shelf in front of me and I grabbed it. Chris said I’ll shine the light on him you blast him with the .45. As I’m trying to open the window the raccoon had come to about 5 yards in front of the stand before he heard the window opening. He stopped looked directly up at me. I didn’t get the window open far enough to aim. I was shooting 45 degrees around a corner! Kris hit the light and I started shooting. I got 3 shots off before the raccoon ran off. We sat there giggling like a couple of school girls! It was hilarious!
After we stopped laughing, I decided to look and see if there might be some blood on the ground out there. As I’m shining the flashlight, I see something shiny about 5 yards from the blind where the raccoon had stopped. It wasn’t blood…it was metallic looking. I asked Chris “Is that a bullet?” Of course, we start laughing again! We knew that we weren’t going to see any hogs anytime soon so we had Tim come pick us up. When I got out of the stand I went over and sure enough it was a pristine .45 bullet laying on top of the ground. How does that happen? It must have been a dud round that went bang like the others but just slid out of the barrel with no velocity. It only has a couple scratches on the nose.
We got to sleep in an extra hour on Sunday morning with the “spring forward” time change. We knew that Tim hadn’t changed the time on his feeders yet�� so we had an extra hour before the feeders went off. I went back to the A&M blind again and Chris went to a different blind. About 9 AM I look to my right through the binos and about 400yds out see a little six-point step out of the woods into the field. He gets a mouth full of grass, picks his head up and he’s looking across the field. He didn’t like something that he saw so he turned around and trotted back the way he came. I kept my focus to the right of the blind after that. 10 mins later I see a little fork horn come out at 75 yds and run across the field and disappear into the woods. Now I am really focusing to the right of the blind after seeing two deer down that way. They didn’t like something on the opposite side of the field and I thought it might be some hogs. I was hoping they would come out and just march right down the field to the feeder.
I was texting with Chris and he said he wanted to stick it out for about another hour. Tim texted me and asked if we were ready to come in yet. I told him no because I had just seen the deer. I look up and there’s a cow 400 yards out to the right. Wait…I looked again it wasn’t a cow it was a big hog! It was huge! Then I saw more hogs come out. Before long there were 15 of them or so that came out and moved across the field into the woods on the other side. Now I had my hopes up thinking they would work their way down through the woods and come out by the feeder. I still kept my focus to the right of the blind and occasionally would glance back towards the feeder. A few minutes passed and I glanced back toward the feeder and there are two hogs at the waterhole 30 yards from me! Where did they come from? I didn’t hear them come in. They were silent. I grabbed my rifle and slid the window open about 6 inches, just far enough to get the rifle out the window. The hogs moved to the other side of the waterhole and the bigger one presented a shot. I put the crosshairs at the base of his skull and squeezed one off. He dropped and was DRT. I stayed in the blind for a little while thinking maybe the other hogs I had seen off to the right would still make their way down to the feeder.
I got out of the stand and walked over towards the water hole where the hog was set my pack down and leaned my rifle up against it. Tim picked up Chris then came to get me. The three of us are standing there looking at the hog and Chris looks up and says “Look at those hogs!” They were running in single file across the field like you would see at an arcade shooting range! Kris wasn’t comfortable taking a shot at running hogs at 200 yards. I ran over and grabbed my rifle and fired off three more shots. There must’ve been 50 hogs in that sounder! We picked up my hog and went to the cleaning rack. He weighed 135lbs.
We had a great time! Unfortunately Chris did not get to kill a hog. Maybe next time. At least we got to hunt!
Tim is a great guy and a good host! If you’re ever looking for a hog hunt take a look at the 587 Ranch! You won’t regret it!
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