Title.

I was having problems coming up with a title for this post so I decided to just punt and skip that part!

Things have been pretty busy at work, I've been out of town the last 3 weeks, but I'll be home for a few weeks in a row now so that's good.

Our friends from Wyoming were down here the first week of February and we had a good time visiting them and Eli got spoiled quite a bit. I took Mike and Zeke down to the land last Friday, but I held true to form and didn't get them lined out on anything. If I charged for my guiding service I would probably have a few upset customers, but feral hogs just aren't very predictable and it seems that everyone only has 1 night to spend hunting them and it always turns out to be the wrong night.

Thinking back on my guiding services, I've had my brother-in-law out twice and although we saw deer both times, we didn't see a deer that I wanted them to shoot and we saw some pigs once, but not within shooting range. I've had my friend Mike down 3 times now and we've seen plenty of deer, but he is never here during deer season and we've struck out every time on pigs. My niece came down once and we also saw deer but no pigs. The only time I've had someone down to pig hunt that we actually got one was my friend Greg and his son Garrett and his friend Nathan. We had a whole slew of pigs come in that time. So when I've been guiding other hunters they've only connected 1 time out of 7 attempts. Not a very good track record. I do think that if folks were willing to spend 2 or 3 days down there their odds for success would increase dramatically though.

Speaking of which, I may have a deal lined up where I'll be trading a hog hunt for a mule deer hunt in Eastern New Mexico. I have some friends there that seem to have a pretty good track record of connecting on some nice mule deer each year and their son really wants to shoot some hogs. It's all tenative right now but it looks like they might come down in May or June to hog hunt and I may get to go mule deer hunting next fall.

Oh well, nothing too exciting on the trail cameras. I did get a couple more pictures of a bobcat though. I'm amazed at all the bobcat pictures I've been getting. Not the best picture, but you can tell this cat has some pretty good spots.

Even though I trapped 19 raccoons in 2008 I still am getting pictures of raccoons. I got 3 in one picture at the protein feeder.

This boar hog looks like he has some pretty good tusks.

Here's what we would have liked to see on the 6th but it looks like they were there a few days early. They seem to be roaming quite far right now, sometimes I'm going almost a week between pictures of this big sounder.

I think this guy will be at the top of my hit list for next year. He looks good on the left side, but his right side was all broken up this year. I'm pretty sure he is 3 1/2 this year so if he is around next year he should be big enough that he'll be the one breaking the antlers on the other deer instead of the other way around this year. He's not as predictable as the tall 8 point right now, hopefully he'll get into a good routine and stick around until hunting season.

It looks like I'll be back down there in a couple weeks to check on things and might get a chance to try to line another guy up on some pigs then. We'll see how that works out.

I think that's about it for now. Nathan