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Man, we're getting old!

While going through some old pictures the other day (the kind you had to wait overnight for at the photo processing place) I found this picture from an eventful hunt. On this particular night Bob shot this big black boar with his longbow and had a little trouble recovering it, so called for reinforcements. Back then, we spent almost every night chasing wounded hogs with our blood-tracking buddy, Sage. Now Sage was an excellent tracker, but she was a young persons dog, and her style of tracking was a young persons game. When you put her down on a track, nobody went to bed until the hog was killed or she got wore flat out (and that didn't happen in less than 4 or 5 hours). This night was one of those nights. We put her down on the bloodtraik, and the chase was on! She caught up to the wounded hog and they both took off to the races. Back then we didn't have the luxury of GPS and had to rely in trying to keep up with her as she bayed up the hog (on the rare occasion it stopped running). After half the night of running up and down creek banks and crawling through tangles of greenbriar, we finally closed in close enough to get a shot. Now Matt is a crack shot having to head shoot running hogs on a nightly basis, but this one kept himself hidden in brush piles which didn't give Matt a clear shot. When the first shot didn't out him down, the chase was on again, and again...until all three of the bullets were gone. We've never needed more than one, so why carry a while pocketful, right? Well, this night was different. Finally, we heard Sage bay the big boar up one more time, only this time it sounded like she was a mile away. As we moved closer we found that she had the hog bayed up in a small cave that was formed by water eroding a drainage ditch. This ditch was now about ten foot deep and four foot wide, with walls that went straight up on either side. We couldn't even shine our spotlights up under that cut to see the hog, but there was no doubt that's where he was. With no more bullets left, Matt sent me back to the house to get more. Now anyone who's ever tracked with me knows that I can't find my way out of the woods to save my life, so sending me out in search of a four-wheeler by myself isn't going to be a short task. I don't remember exactly how long it took me to locate the four-wheeler but I know it was well over an hour before I made it back with another bullet. Thankfully Sage was still holding the hog when I got back and Matt reloaded. The only problem now was getting a shot at the hog when it's only escape route was in that narrow gorge that Matt had to stand in so he could see it. He waited for Sage to step aside just long enough to get a clear shot and he pulled the trigger. Everything happened so fast then, that all we saw from above was the big boar charging directly at Matt. All of a sudden it slammed into an invisible wall and bounced backwards onto it's back and died. When I shined my light on Matt, he was splattered with blood. There was a big old tree root across that gorge buried under the leaves that stopped the charging boar in its tracks! I'm pretty sure we called it a night after that one, but fortunately had a camera to help capture a brief memory from that night. Here we are with the boar loaded up on the four-wheeler, with everybody still in one piece. What really made this picture sentimental to us now though is that Bob, Joe and the rest of the guys were just here hunting with us for their 18th year in a row. Sadly, they just lost Gene last year to a tragic accident, but he was still here in everybody's heart. I'm sorry we didn't get better pics, but here are a few of them from last weeks hunt.

Congratulations guys! It was good having y'all back down again.

You know you're doing something right when you have people who've been coming 18 years in a row. Thursday will be our 5th year in a row and Lord willing next year will be 6

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