For the past several months, I’ve been writing a great deal about fishing. I love to fish, and I love eating fish. But I also enjoy fresh pork! Summer is obviously the time of year when hunting usually takes a back seat to angling. I get that. But even during the heat of summer, I long for cooler weather and the opportunity to once again head to the woods in pursuit of adventure and meat for the freezer.
The recent ‘cool’ front early this week was all the catalyst needed to get my hunting blood stirred up. Daytime high temperatures in the mid-nineties might not usually equate to a cold front, but compared to 108 degrees, I’ll take it! I’ve been shooting my Seneca Dragon Claw II, which is basically the very popular old standard big bore airgun that’s been around for decades but with an increase in power. I’ve used the previous model successfully for several years and was anxious to hunt with the new and improved model.
Knowing that any hog in its right mind would be moving during the cooler part of the day rather than when the sun was beaming down, I made plans for a hog hunt. I mounted my AGM Global Vision Rattler thermal scope on the air rifle and sighted it in with 300 grain slugs last week in preparation for this ‘first’ hunt. There are many that do not savvy the power these air rifles generate but a 300-grain chunk of lead traveling 700 or so feet per second is a game getter at relatively close range. Texas Parks and Wildlife officials first included big bore air rifles as legal sporting arms for hunting big game a few years ago, and more and more hunters are hunting with the power of air each year.
I’m not keen on night hunting for hogs, especially when it’s close to nine o’clock before darkness falls. If I’m successful in harvesting a porker after dark, it’s a good bet that I will lose several hours of sleep. I’m an early bird, up before the sun regardless of when I go to sleep. So, I began making plans. When are the temperatures the lowest? Very early morning, just before daybreak. When will hogs be most active? Early morning! Where will I be most likely to locate them? Around water!
It became clear where I needed to hunt and what time I needed to be there. I loaded my air rifle and necessary gear to handle the meat well before daylight and made the mile long drive to my friend’s place. It was a few minutes before sunup, and I expected the hogs to be in the heavy reeds around water in the slough. I was not wrong! I parked a few hundred yards from the slough and began walking along the bank very slowly listening intently for feeding hogs. Through the years, I have heard the vast majority of wild hogs well before I actually spotted them. They make lots of noise moving through woods or while feeding. They are constantly using their snout to knock smaller hogs out of the way, and the accompanying squeals can be heard from quite a distance. That’s what I heard first: a squeal coming from down the slough. My plan was working precisely as I hoped it would, and I used cover of darkness to close the distance to the hogs. Using the thermal scope, I could easily make out the heat signature of several hogs moving along in the middle of the slough where the ground was wet and rooting easy. As daylight began to break, I could make out the reeds moving as the feeding porkers moved down the slough. I decided to move ahead, and hopefully they would continue moving that direction and eventually one would exit the reeds on my side of the slough.
I continued to watch the reeds sway and through the thermal scope. I made out the form of a smallish pig heading to the shoreline which would give me the shot I needed. A fat 45-pound pig stepped out of the reeds, and I soon had my hams and back straps in the ice cooler in the bed of my truck. Yes, I had thought ahead and had 40 pounds of ice in the cooler. I knew this could be a high percentage hunt!
I talked to one of my friends up in Canada about this ‘cool’ weather hog hunt, and when I told him the temperate later that day peaked at 94 degrees, he got a good laugh. But there in the early morning hours just at the break of day, with a slight northerly breeze, it felt almost cool!
With fresh pork in the cooler, the first game meat I had acquired since spring, I felt the need to go to work with my Smokin Tex electric smoker and cast-iron skillet. Some tasty guisado from smoked pork was my goal. Within an hour of harvesting the pig, I had the meat cleaned up nicely and some hickory chunks in my smoker. I rubbed the pork with olive oil and gave it a generous amount of dry seasoning, then into the smoker for 4 hours.
The meat was well done after the prescribed time in the smoker, and I chopped it into small pieces and then placed it in my old skillet with fresh garlic, onion, and hatch chili peppers. A can of red enchilada sauce and a little water gave it the needed moisture for an hour or so of simmering. A generous amount of fresh cilantro and the juice from a couple limes put the finished touches on my very fresh guisado. I could have added squash, carrots, celery, and potatoes and made a tasty stew, but I decided to reduce the moisture and serve the guisado on hot flour tortillas. My first ‘cold weather’ hunt of the season, now back to a few more days of summer!
Watch a video of this hunt and Luke preparing the guisado on “A Sportsman’s Life” on Carbon TV www. carbontv.com or YouTube.
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