Below is an e-mail recieved from a CICC Outdoor Adventures Customer. It tells a pretty good story and paints a pretty picture about what we offer and the quality of our services in which we pride our business on! I am always so pleased to read letters like this and wanted to share it with all of our blog followers. Thanks P-Dubb and Two Bucks for being the awesome guides and guys that you are!
Regina
Casey, good morning! It’s the morning after our hunt and I think I owe it to you and your future customers to tell you that my son Beau and I had one of the best hunt experiences we have ever had hunting with Outdoor Adventures. I am an avid hunter and have passed this time honored tradition on to my son Beau who is now 14. Beau began hunting at age 6, walking the pheasant fields with my dog and me while armed his trusty Crossman .176 BB gun and now at the age of 14 has become one of the best duck, goose and pheasant hunters I have ever shot with.
In 2009, after proving to me that he could be patient and he had a clear understanding of pursuing game (countless “zeroes” hunting turkey and pigs on public land) it was time for him to begin fulfilling his passion of hunting big game. In November of 2009 Beau shot his first Whitetail in Montana and in December 2009 harvested his first Mule Deer on Tejon Ranch in the CDA Junior Deer Hunt. Beau was ready to hunt hogs.
We met Jake at the Sportsman’s International Expo and immediately gave him the name, Big Dipper. If you know Jake, you know this has nothing to do with the stars, wind and the sky… We liked him. He seemed no nonsense and at the same time to be a likeable guy who was knowledgeable and who would get you on the hogs. I have never hired a guide before in all my years of hunting so I didn’t know what to expect to be honest but Beau liked him and I had a good feeling about this hunt before I called you to book it. We talked to every other outfitter at the show who hunted hogs in California and hands down, Jake was our man when it was all said and done.
We started out right around 6:30 with Jake and Smith (did his mom really name him Smith?), loaded up in the Ranger and went on a tour of some of the most beautiful country in California. Within an hour and a half we spotted a lone Boar and Jake decided to move us to a better vantage point to pursue. We moved to the other side of the ravine and glassed for a short time before seeing 6 pigs running across the ridge and down into the tree line. Within 5 minutes we spotted the boar moving up the hill to the same location as the other 6 and we decided to pursue (after the silence was broken by a loud gobble from the hill behind us).
Smith went down the ravine to help push, Beau and Jake went up the creek and I went around the ridge to cut them off. After a bit of hiking (and a lot of hard breathing) through the a beautiful valley, we found a lot of pig sign but the pigs had out-smarted us and would live to see another day. Another thing; that Smith (Two Bucks) is a big drink of water and he gets up and down the hills as well as anyone I’ve seen. We scouted the ranch until 1:00 through hill tops, valleys and creeks. We spotted the remains of two plane crashes that had occurred years ago on the ranch and saw lots of animal sign from every species God put in Northern California, including 4 deer making their way up a canyon, it was amazing!
We headed back to the trucks and enjoyed some tri-tip barbecue and some great conversation before heading out again. At 2:00 we headed for what Jake was referring to as the back side where he was preparing to bust some brush and get the hogs moving as the sun was now out from behind the clouds and the pigs were bedded down. Earlier in the day I let the team know that although I no longer “dipped” that if we didn’t have a hog down by the afternoon, I was going to have to take a ceremonial “good luck dip” to be sure we got a hog, I was willing to sacrifice for the good of the hunt (yeah right). So, before heading into the bush, I did as I promised and took the dip, now the pigs were in trouble. As we walked along the edge of the brush, we spooked a sleeping hog that shot up and ran down the hill; the hogs were in here and there was more than one, a lot more.
Jake set his plan into motion, positioned Beau and I for a shot and went to work hiking to the bottom of the hill and working the brush. Within 10 minutes there was more grunting and squealing than we had ever heard coming out of the bushes and here they came. First bore to step out got a beautiful brass necklace as Beau put a shot in his neck/shoulder at 25 yards and then the fun started; pigs shot out of those bushes from every direction including directly at us which we were ready for and got out of their way. A minimum of 30 pigs burst out of the bushes and we were in absolute awe, it was pig pandemonium! It was a once in a lifetime experience and I was lucky enough to catch it on film. Beau harvested his hog at 4:30 in the afternoon.
We cleaned and drug Beau’s pig out (after I removed the ceremonial good luck dip from my lip), skinned and quartered him, packed him in ice and hit the road for home. We hit the road at 7:00 PM which meant we had spent the past 12 or so hours with Jake and Smith and it could have gone any way having four people who had never met hunting in the outdoors together. In our minds, it went great! We would not have done anything differently, Jake and Smith (the Big Dipper and Two Bucks) are really great guys, skilled hunters/trackers and all around guides. Beau and I hope that we lived up to your expectations as clients as well, we didn’t come to your ranch expecting not to have to work for our harvest both before and after Beau put him on his side.
Beau and I wanted to extend a sincere thank you to the Outdoor Adventures team for showing us a great time, an unforgettable experience and of course a great hunt. Here are a couple of photos from the hunt, I will edit the video and post it on YouTube in the next couple of weeks as well. You can also put any or all of this on your website, we would be honored to serve as a testimonial.
-Mark Rogers
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