6-28-12

Today I guided Steve Orihood on a pig hunt. We headed up the hill right at legal shooting light and started searching. We had been hunting for around an hour when we reached the upper part of the ranch and the North wind was howling, so we headed back down to get out of the wind and search the lower brush country. We headed down a long finger ridge, stopping to glass as we moved along, but did not turn up any pigs so we moved to another finger ridge just South and started doing the same. We had only gone 400-500 yards when I spotted a small herd of pigs working the ridge that we had just come from, so off we went. The pigs were across the canyon and we quickly closed the gap to 180 yards. Steve got set up on the sticks and we picked out a nice dry sow for a target. Steve let his .270 rip and I watched as the bullet sailed right over the sows back. Steve quickly chambered another round and squeezed the trigger, this time the shot was good as we heard the tell-tell WHACK of the bullett followed by a squeal. The pig hunched up and headed down hill and into the brush so we elected to wait an hour before going in after her. After a long wait we made our way up the hill and found where the sow had rolled down the hill. Just as we started to follow the trail we heard brush breaking in the creek and spotted the sow still on her feet. Another quick shot by Steve and the game was over! We drug the sow out of the creek bottom and rolled the guts out of her and then headed up the hill to get the ranger. We quickly loaded the pig and got her back to the shed and skinned, quartered, and in the ice chest all before 9:30 AM. It was another great hunt and Steve ended up with some great meat for the freezer.

Casey