Wild Hog Weirdness
Dec 17, Monday Afternoon - A couple days ago I checked the Scrape Watch area and two scrapes were inactive and two were still being worked. So this afternoon I slipped in like the wind. I hung out a HotTrails dominant buck heated scent candle 5 yards from the blind. Once inside the blind I lit a doe in heat HotTrails candle and waited to see what happened.

At Deer-30 I heard a very loud, deep, growlish scream from the south. It sounded cat like. The growling got louder, and closer, and definitely more wild hog like. Daylight began to fade when the sounds finally made it to my immediate area. I saw movement in the narrow opening my blind is set up in, 75 yards away. A big group of small hogs, two or three dozen raced into the opening running in my direction. With mountain sized hogs behind them. They zig zagged into the brush. The squealing, screeching and deep growling got real loud. 

I blew out the doe in heat candle and clicked on the light for my sight. Then I opened the Grim Reaper blades and snapped them back so they were open, just in case a hog got so close to the blind I had to shoot through the wall.

The next thing I knew there were hogs grunting, squealing, growling and oinking in every direction. It sounded ... menacing. 

It got darker. I heard hog growls by the scrapes, probably 30 yards away, but I could not see them. 

I've had much the same thing happen before when I was in a treestand or tripod. Today I was in a ground blind. Years ago I walked up on a big group of hogs at dusk. They were in the farm road between me and my truck. I kept walking and they moved into the brush and didn't bother with me.

In my current situation it just didn't seem like it would be safe to have the hogs right at the blind, and me unable to see because of the dark. So I considered things, my choices were to stay in the blind ... or get out and go to the truck.

It was a gamble either way.

I gathered up my stuff and got out of the blind. Actually, I could see better outside the blind, not great, but better. Hogs grunted and wuffed but I could not see them in the brush.

I walked to the road, and then to my truck. The hog noises stayed in the scrape watch area. 

Another Big One...
Dec 16, Sunday - It hit 17 degrees at 5:00am. Two does were in the food plot as it got daylight. They walked into the trees to the north. A few minutes later I saw a large bodied buck with very tines in the same trees. He walked up to the  east edge of the food plot and looked the area over. 

A wide, heavy, tall tined monster stood still for a moment and switched directions, went into that neck out "doe dogging" posture went after something I couldn't see. No video this time. I wanted to shoot. This weekend John Askew saw quite a few deer. Bucks were running does uphill from his stand in the afternoon.

Dec 15 - Saturday
Frost crunched under my boot soles as I did my best to sneak out to the food plot blind. It turned out to be doe day in the plot. But to the north, by the area where the Last Barn is there was buck and doe activity. It is pretty far away, and it was hard to Nikon out all the details because of all the trees but I saw enough to make me want to hunt there this afternoon. And I did. The weather was overcast and alternated between drizzle and rain. I saw 3 does early and they bedded down for two hours. No bucks. 

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