Manx Hunt on Snowmageddon Eve

#0047

This was an interesting week. Eric, who lives in Maryland, was due to fly in to hunt at Manx Farm near Corsicana on Saturday. The weather forecast was bleak. And, the weather, as our Saturday hunt ended, turned very bad. This was in February of 2021 when our area received a very cold snap including temps below zero in the DFW area. Very unusual.

To begin, I drove to Houston to collect grandson Jared, aged nine. He was to tag along during our day hunt. Son Ben was working in the north Texas area and would drive himself. Eric would drive himself from the airport.

It’s fun to live in the Information Age. It was already cold that Friday afternoon. It was gloomy and looked cold. I used my smart phone to tap into the interwebs and found an audio version of Jack London’s short story To Build a Fire. If you are familiar with the story, you will agree that it is a wonderful story to read on a cold day. If you don’t know the story, find it and read it. (I recommend the website www.Gutenberg.org to download it at no cost.) I was glad to introduce young Jared to such a great story.

Richard, owner of Manx, had asked that we arrive about 0900 since the pigs would not be moving in the cold weather. As it turned out, the high for the day was about 30F, a very nice temp for hiking and stalking.

In that we only had three hunters, we agreed to all go with one guide only, James.

Eric was to get the first hog so he and James began their stalk. We were following a creek bed. Ben, Jared, and I followed at a distance. Within 5 or 10 minutes, James saw a hog bedded down. They eased along and got within 20 or 30 yards. Tripod up, rifle up, bang, hog didn’t move. A great shot with the 338 Win Mag.

Ben was next. We continued up the creek bed. We could see hogs out in front of them as James tried to find Ben a good meat hog.

Ben’s was a long stalk. Along the way, we saw lots of hogs. Many were bedded down, some were feeding, some were bundled together in groups of ten or so sleeping the day away. Some were looking poorly. Ben took a hog with his grandpa’s 30-30 that was bedded down. The two hogs “bedded” with it were already dead. Richard told us that there is a high mortality rate during winter. They will get in a big pile to stay warm. The hogs on top freeze to death, the hogs at ground level are crushed, and only the hogs in the middle of the sandwich survive. They probably suffered terribly during Snowmageddon.

I was next. James and I left the creek bed and moved to an open area with tall, dead weeds and a few trees. We got close to several grazing pigs, but passed on them since they were small, not big enough to be a good meat hog.

We returned toward the creek bed to head in the opposite direction. We saw a pretty good hog feeding, tripod up, rifle ready. The hog began to run, and I took the shot. He went down, we began moving, he got up and ran, shakily, into the field above. James was running, and I was trying to keep up. James must be part blood hound. He spied the hog soon still alive and moving. We kept moving to keep sight of him. Sticks up, rifle up, bang, hog down.

We were moving in the direction of the house. It was nearly lunch time. James had called Richard for a pick up of dead hogs and hunters. We put the hog in the side-by-side and we squeezed in. We had just begun driving when James saw another hog bedded down. We stopped and Eric took him, a very nice hog with great cutters.

Lunch was elk chili. Excellent.

During the morning, Jared had asked to shoot a hog. Words that made this grandpa smile.

At the gun store, I had found a “youth” stock that would fit my Remington 700 chambered in 243. A youth stock has a shorter “pull,” the distance from the butt to the trigger. With this type of stock, a young shooter can better hold the rifle without having to stretch out his arm. It was time to see if Jared could shoot the thing. Behind the cabin at Manx, there are several targets, one is a gong about 18 inches in diameter set up at a hundred yards. We got things propped up to mimic him shooting off of the tripod. He connected four out of five times. Grandpa kept smiling.

James drove us west after lunch. We were stalking through a more wooded area. In short order we saw a few hogs grazing, good meat hogs. James, Jared, and Ben proceeded forward slowly so as not to spook the hogs. After multiple moves, up came the tripod and the rifle. Grandpa was holding his breath. Jared aimed and fired. The hog dropped never to move again. Grandpa started breathing and smiling.

James and Jared went ahead to see the hog. In just a minute, James was signaling me to come forward. Another good hog was still grazing within easy rifle range. Tripod up, rifle up, bang, hog down.

With that the hunt was over. James drove us through the pasture where we saw more pigs and other animals.

After a warm goodbye to Richard and James, Ben and Jared left for home. I drove Eric back to my house where he loaded his rental car and returned to Houston. With the weather forecast looking bleak, everyone needed to get to wherever they might be going.

This short narrative is a poor attempt to capture the thrill of the hunt at Manx. All the pieces fall into place there. The ranch has a mix of fields planted with crops like winter wheat, cattle, gullies, open pastures, and wooded hillsides. Game is plentiful: beyond hogs there are whitetail deer, elk, fallow deer, blackbuck, axis deer, and aoudad sheep. Richard is a great host, and the guides are superb. And, we always see plenty of hogs to shoot.

There are many reasons to hunt feral hogs. Chief among them is the thrill of the hunt and comradeship among like minded friends and family.

Porcus Hogrelius
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