I wanted to congratulate my friend David on the killing of his great gobbler this past Friday morning. It was only his third bird ever and to say that he was thrilled would probably be an understatement. And what made the giant limbhanger even more memorable is the fact that we heard him most mornings and David had even come close to killing him once before… however I will let his words tell the short story.

got a limb hanger today in South Carolina..0650am, had two others gobbling with him..Thank You Lord..
This is my 3rd bird and first in SC..
11.5 beard
1 3/8 spurs. this is my biggest bird
whew I have been chasing this one for three weeks, had a disinct triple gooble. Had him at 70 yds last weekend and a hen flew down and stole him away..

I borrowed the picture and his blurb from his post on the GON forum that the Georgia Outdoor Network magazine hosts. David is in one of their gobbler hunting team contests, and that was his entry.

I love the GON magazine, and can’t believe SC doesn’t have one like it (YET!), and the forum is one of the best local ones that I have seen. If you hunt anywhere in the South, you should really check it out. You can find lots of hunting talk, available leases, club openings, custom turkey calls, etc. Again, a great place for southern hunters to gather.

Please note that I also had a run in with a big bird, however mine didn’t turn out so well. You will have to let me finish the big project that I have to deliver today, then I will tell the WHOLE story… See you soon.

Jeff

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We got her!

The giant sow that we have been seeing all week on the trailcam was patiently waiting for Bo and I yesterday when we went to check the trap out on the Jericho tract. That is her in the picture on the last post, and she weighed in at 250 pounds. Of course that was before Bo and I took the skinning knives to her.

Bo has been having so much fun going with me to check the trap everyday, and he has been very interested in how they look, feel and SMELL when I get them out. Most importantly he has not been squimish about me shooting them. So I thought that he was ready to see how meat/food is made…

“We’re going to skin the HOG?!” he asked excitedly when we got to the skinning rack.

“Yes son, that is how we turn the hog in to meat” I replied.

“Cool!!!” he exclaimed

Then we hoisted him up, and I went to work. Bo really thought pulling her hide off was neat, but wasn’t so sure when I opened the pig up and dropped the guts out.

“That’s GROSS, dada” he said loudly as the blood poured from her neck. “You now have boogs on your hand.”

What he meant was blood, but who could blame him for thinking that; Moments earlier it had been pouring out of her nose - therefore it must be boogs.

I finished up the cleaning, and it was time to wash the carcass down. Bo enthusiastically brought me the hose and helped me spray her down so that she was ready to be hung in the cooler. We then cleaned up and hurried home for dinner.

When we got there, he ran inside to tell mama about the hog we killed, “We got a big, MEAN hog in the trap, and we made her in to meat!”

He then blurted out, “And that big, mean hog went peepee and poopoo when dada shot her. But that is what happens when you die!”.

Amy almost fell off the couch with that comment. However after I told her how the hog’s bowels completely emptied themselves out while I was getting her out of the trap, she understood. Three year olds are already fascinated with the whole bathroom process, so to see the giant hog take a 2 foot long poop along with a gallon pee really made a lasting impression… He has now told the story at least 100 times, and that only happened yesterday!

That makes 3 sows this week in the trap that will not be filling our woods with their nasty, tick-infested offspring. I am truly ready for spring and turkey season, but I hate that I have to pull the trap now that I have them really coming in… I could really do some damage to the herd if I just had a few more weeks, and how I would love to get the cool looking boar pictured above. However you can’t have any corn down during turkey season, unless you want a visit from the game wardens - and they are really strict on it.

Oh well, I did manage to get a few of the worst offenders. And I will be ready on May 2 when I can put it back out. So hog trapping will be on hold until then, but hunting those big, ugly red-headed birds should make for some interesting reading, so don’t think for one minute that you shouldn’t check back EVERYDAY. And just because we can’t actually trap them doesn’t meant that I can’t do a few more posts on hog trapping and how to best catch them. So look for those posts too.

I am now headed out to work on getting that radiator in our Corolla. We managed to get the new tires on our van, but a lack of time has thrown off my original schedule. See you tomorrow!

Jeff

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Well it has been quite the last few days… I took the weekend off to spend some extra time in the woods with the family, and it was great. While Amy and Will went to Walmart, Bo and I took my cousins 1959 Toyota Landcruiser out to the Jericho tract to check the camera and reset the trap. We also spent a good bit of time looking for “indian rocks” (we found 3 nice bird points) and following the big, monster hog tracks to see where they went. Of course they went right in to the thick cypress bay were they spend their day, and Bo thought we should go in after them…

We then came back to find that Amy had managed to get our van home from the store even though one tire had busted a steel belt. So luckily they had not gotten stranded on the side of the road, but it looks like a new set of tires will be needed ASAP… Just a few hundred dollars that we really did not want to spend on our kids anyway. LOL

Sunday, we decided that the whole family should be in on the hog trap/trailcam checking fun, so we all loaded up in to the ancient jeep for the couple of mile ride. Sure enough, we found that the trap’s corn had not been touched, but the camera’s corn had been cleaned up. That would mean just one thing - that something would be in there on Monday. So we looked around for arrowheads for an hour (found one bird point), but did not stay too long since we had already hit the Blount Place. There Amy had found a broken, but really nice spear point.

We then headed back to the house where we spent the rest of the afternoon letting the kids ride around the yard in the used Jeep that my mom bought them at a garage sale. They absolutely love cruising around the yard in it, and they don’t seem to even care that it is HOT BARBIE PINK! (That just goes to show that boys aversion to that color is learned) But I think we are going to pick up a couple of cans of spray paint for a custom camo paint job this week… Then they will think it is REALLY COOL.

Monday then rolled around, and I knew one would be in the trap, so Bo and I ran out their yesterday afternoon, and sure enough there was a 100 pound sow napping in the cage. My Rugar .45 made that nap permanent, and Bo and I loaded her up in the trunk of my toyota corolla since the landcruiser was out of gas. We then ran her back to the house for a quick cleaning.

If you are keeping track, that is two sows now out of the herd! When they eat A LOT of corn at $6 a bushel, every one taken out helps. And by killing the sows, it really means that you are taking out a bunch of potential hogs later on. So while I love trapping/killing any hog, catching the sows actually does more good than taking a boar out.

I have also included a couple of new trailcam shots in this post. Nothing too crazy, just a shot of one of the bigger sows that I am hoping to catch, some hungry birds caught mid-flight, and two coons displaying dominance/submission over who gets the corn… you just never know what will turn up on that thing!

I am now headed out to get some tires on our van, then I have to put a radiator in my Toyota. And if I have time, I will check the trap again. So you see I have a busy day ahead of me, but I should be back tomorrow with another update on our trapping program… I just have one more week before I have to pull the corn up due to the turkey season laws, so I am trying hard to get a few more before then… Who needs Pork?

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Amy said that the kids needed to get out of the house for a while yesterday, so what better way to create some family fun than to go and check the hog trap on the Jericho tract. I doubted that anything would be in there for at least a few more days, but low and behold there was a 140 pound sow waiting when we arrived.

This was the perfect opportunity for the boys to see a big, mean hog - ALIVE! And they thought it was the coolest thing ever. I then dispatched the hog so that they could see its big teeth, gnarly feet and coarse coat up close. Bo also wanted to shoot it with HIS gun too.

We then spent some time looking for arrowheads until the rain came. After that it was time to head home for dinner… But of course that was difficult since Bo could not eat for talking about the big, mean hog!

Unfortunately it is pouring down rain today, so we are just hanging out inside. Hope everyone has a great weekend! And don’t forget to check back for a couple of new posts I am working on…

Jeff

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Since I needed to check the camera and trap on the Jericho tract, we loaded up the whole family and went out for a hike today as well. We managed to find several nice pieces of pottery along with one great bird point arrowhead.

As for the trap, it was sprung but there was nothing in it. Damn hogs will get their noses under the door if you give them long enough… Luckily the camera told the story of what had been there. Looks like two packs of hogs, some deer and a bunch of raccoons.

I reset the hog trap, but now I am going to have to get a coon trap too! At $6 a bushel of corn, I definitely will not be feeding these suckers for long. And check out the midday movement during the full moon - That deer is out at almost dead noon.

And I also learned something about Trophy Rock, the mineral lick. Don’t let it sit in water! It rained so much this past weekend that it puddled up in front of the camera, and the water just ate my brand new rock away. I will not do that again…

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While not a monster, this is the first buck to be captured on camera on the newest 900 acres that I will be managing. My cousin owns the property just down the road from the Cubbedge Hill’s Blount Place tract, and he has enlisted my services to take care of the hunting on it.

It is a  beautiful chunk of woods, to be referred to as the Jericho tract, consisting of a variety of stages of pine growth as well as quite a few cypress bays. It is also loaded with deer, turkey and hogs!

I put out the camera the other day, but no corn. I figured that I would come back with it, but at least the camera was ready to go. However when I took some corn out yesterday, I found that this buck had wandered by, stopping just long enough for a quick portrait. He was probably heading towards the hog trap up the road (got to get rid of some of them) that did have corn around it, and he will be a nice 2.5 year old once his new set of antlers come in this fall…

I am still working with Cubbedge Hill, and we are currently setting up this year’s program too. However I have had so many hunters contact me about leases and memberships that it only made since to add other properties as well. And as someone who just eats, sleeps and lives big bucks (and big gobblers and huge hogs), I am truly looking forward to having even MORE access to so many acres of prime Lowcountry hunting. It will not only allow me to continue helping deserving hunters find unbelievable spots to spend their time in the woods, but provide lots of trailcam photos, hunting reports and harvest stories for this site and other publications.

If you are interested in joining either of these programs, please contact me at jeff @ jeffhuntphotography.com.

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