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Brandon Ray
3/15/2010
The frazzled UPS driver, with that always present I’m-running-late-look-on-his-face, dropped the Hoyt box at my door on Wednesday afternoon. He barely had time to smile, then he sped away in his brown bus, grey exhaust fumes belching from the rear.
Inside the box was my new Maxxis 35. A sweet rig with a black riser and black limbs – Hoyt’s awesome “Black Out” color option. The all-black rig would blend like a bat in a cave in a dark spring turkey ground blind. But turkey season was still a month away. In three days, my friend Clint and I planned to hunt hogs. One last off-season hurrah before we focused on beards and spurs in April. I wondered if I would have time to setup my new bow for weekend pigs?
On Thursday afternoon, I skipped work early and rigged the bow with some of my favorites accessories - including a FUSE 8-inch Carbon ConneXion stabilizer. With a double nock set for my release aid and a 3/16-inch peep in the bowstring, I was ready to shoot. I headed to my local Hoyt dealer, Panhandle Archery Outfitters, in Amarillo, Texas. Shop owner and bow tune extraordinaire, Michael Howard, made sure everything was set to specs, then we stepped toward the firing line.
Set at my 28-inch draw length and pulling 62 pounds, my Maxxis flung my carbon arrows at 261 fps through the chronograph. Four arrows later it punched a perfect bullet hole through the paper rack. At 20 yards I was grouping four arrows into golfball-sized clusters with field points. It was coming together in no time. That night, by the dim light of a single bulb in my garage, I shot into the wee hours at close range, working on my form. Is there anything more exciting than a new, sweet-shooting bow?
Friday afternoon, I skipped work early again. Magazine deadlines would have to wait. It was a rare Panhandle day with light winds. I shot outdoors, this time with broadheads. Tipped with 100-grain broadheads, I set my pins rock solid at 20, 30 and 40 yards. At 40 yards, arrow clusters were no bigger than an apple. Now I was confident. Maybe even cocky. Given the shot opportunity at a rank Texas boar on my short one-day vacation, the new Maxxis was now setup to deliver! It was decided. My old bow would stay home in its case.
Hunting Hogs or Grizzlies?
March is a strange time of year in the Texas Panhandle. Somewhere between winter and spring, it’s like the land and air don’t know what season to be. Saturday at lunch started hot, 60 degrees plus, but by late afternoon dense fog moved in with light drizzle and the temperature dropped in the 40’s. It was prime time for hungry pigs to be on the move.
Clint saw the big boar first. Head down and feeding contentedly, he was all alone in a thick stand of cedars. At 200 yards we both knew he was big. His humped back, long torso and silver-tipped hair made the wild pig look more like a grizzly bear than any barnyard swine. The wind was good and Clint graciously gave me the first stalk.
Cutting the wind, I followed a cow trail at a slow and steady pace, dodging behind cedars. Arrow nocked, I kept tabs on the lone boar through my binoculars. He was so focused on food, he never lifted his head.
Moving behind a screen of mesquites and cedars, I cut the gap even more. The rangefinder read 35 yards. Knowing my Hoyt was driving tacks at that distance and knowing it was risky to push the stalk any further, I came to full draw. My 30 and 40 yard pins bracketed the crease just behind the brown boar’s massive shoulder.
Touching the release, the boar lunged at the shot. Whitetails aren’t the only ones that can jump the string! The arrow hit the big hog mid-body as he dropped and lurched forward at the noise from the bow. I could see my bright fletching on his left side and lots of arrowing protruding from the right. It was further back than intended, but still a deadly hit.
He slowly walked away behind a thick curtain of spiny locust and mesquite limbs, then stopped. I tried to thread a second arrow through the maze of thorns, but it deflected wild like a screw ball off the trunk of a thumb-sized tree. I kept the tank-sized boar in sight. He was obviously sick from the mortal arrow and he was moving very slowly. Fifty yards into his retreat, I watched him sag to the ground, bedded next to a cedar tree.
On nimble feet I closed the gap, parting the thorny branches until a small opening appeared like a tunnel to my target. I looked around me for a tree to climb if the big boar came at me. At eight steps I put an insurance arrow into the big boar to finish the game. On wobbly legs he stood to his feet, jaws popping, turning to face me. As I was fumbling for another arrow, he took two steps and tipped over.
He was the sort of big, mature old boar that serious hog hunters dream of. I was lucky to catch him up and feeding in daylight hours and I knew it. Still luckier to have a friend like Clint that shares his hunting ground.
The big boar’s bottom tusks were scissor sharp - each one about three inches long. We never did put him on scales, but he was jumbo-sized.
The next day, sorting through my digital pictures from the hog hunt on my lap top, my two-year-old daughter, Emma, peaked over my shoulder to see what I was doing. “That’s a big bear, Daddy,” she said in her scariest voice. “He’s got big teeth!” Emma was grinning, showing her teeth as she said this.
She was right. To anyone else, he was a big pig. But to Emma and me, he’s proof that grizzlies still live in Texas!