I was a little worried that with all the construction activities on the hunting blind that I might have scared the wildlife off for awhile but evidently that wasn't the case.
Ben and I got a late start and didn't get to the land until 7:20 pm on Friday night. I hadn't gotten the windows on the blind rigged up to stay open yet, so that took another 1/2 hour or so with us working on the outside of the blind in full view. I even drove the pickup up on the top of the hill for a little bit to unload some stuff. Finally at about 8:15 we were sitting down inside the blind with most of the windows operational after making way more noise than I thought we should have.
As soon as we sat down, I noticed a deer grazing along the fence line on the east side of my property about 500 yards away. I guess we hadn't spooked off every animal anyway! A few minutes later and there were 3 deer out in the field on the southeast corner of my property, they must have been bedding in the tall grass and weeds that are the end result of my failed attempt to grow hay last year. Around 8:30 we saw 2 more deer showed up at the East feeder. A couple small bucks - they are just starting to grow their antlers so it's somewhat difficult to tell the difference right now. Then a few minutes after that we see 2 more deer in the southeast field for a total of 7 deer.
Seeing the deer made me happy, but that's not what Ben was there for, we were hog hunting and it wasn't looking very good from that aspect. We had double checked the trail camera pictures from the last month and the large groups of sows and piglets were gone. We've been having a pretty good drought and my pond is almost dry so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it or they finally just decided there were less dangerous places to live or what but I haven't had a picture of the sows or piglets in over 3 weeks. I have had 1 medium piebald boar showing up almost daily, but he is pretty sporadic at the time that he is showing up, and rarely is he showing up before dark. Of course I have a feeder light just for that kind of occasion, but I've been meaning to repair it as 1 of the 3 lights is broken and left it at home. Sunset was at 8:45 and still no sign of a pig. I hadn't noticed many tracks when walking back to the blind from parking the truck at the trailer either.
I haven't gotten the recent trail camera pictures uploaded yet, but here is a trail camera picture of the piebald boar from a couple months ago.
The 2 nearest deer made their way to the protein feeder and spent some time there and then it started to get dark. Legal shooting light for game animals is 30 minutes after sunset, but there basically are no laws on hog hunting in Texas. You can shoot them 24/7 365 days a year with any legal weapon. Of course trespassing rules and things like that apply, but basically if they are on your property they are fair game anytime of the day or night. It's a good thing too, because at 9:15 right at the end of legal shooting light the pig that had been showing up on the trail camera pictures stepped out into the open at the North feeder. This is where the new blind really paid off already, because from the old blind you couldn't see the North feeder at all so it would have been completely dark by the time he would have gone to the East feeder and we wouldn't have had a chance at him.I told Ben to take it easy and relax, the hog wasn't going to be going anywhere for a while, as long as he could still see him in the scope things were fine. Ben was breathing really hard for a bit as this was the first big game type animal he was getting a chance to shoot at. He's hunted a few times but mainly birds. After a little bit Ben squeezed of the shot and the hog dropped on the spot. It is right at 140 yards from the new blind to the north feeder and Ben put a good shot on him. One of the reasons we were a little late getting to the land was that Ben was working on getting his rifle sighted in and it sure paid off. All of the second guessing about being late and not bringing the feeder light went out the window as we had a hog on the ground!
We waited about 15 minutes and went back to the trailer to get the truck and pick up the pork. Here's a picture of Ben with his pig.
He weighed in at 145lbs on my game scale which is about the perfect size to me for eating. Plenty of meat to justify the work of butchering it. Then the work started, he was quartered up and in the cooler on ice about an hour later. Current plans are to have Ben over tomorrow night to show him the ins and outs of butchering a pig.I was pretty pumped to give Ben his first opportunity to shoot a big game animal. He seemed pretty excited about it too!
As far as the new blind I was very happy with how it worked out. It was nice to be able to have 2 people sitting in the blind together and I think it will be fine hunting out of it by myself as well. As far as all the work we did on the camouflage paint, it doesn't appear that the animals cared that much as our successful hunt was out of it when it was still bare wood and stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Looking at trail camera pictures from last week I had some pictures of animals at the feeders the evening that I finished the blind so it doesn't appear that they really worried about it too much. The paint is necessary to keep the wood protected and the camouflage paint job makes it blend in better and look better to me if nothing else so I'm still happy with it.
I've got a months worth of trail camera pictures to work through and post so maybe I'll get that done before too long. No projects pending of any excitement that I can think of, but I do need to clean and organize the barn. Maybe I'll actually get the electricity working in it!
That's it for now. Nathan
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