Out of State Success Unit 32

[SparkyAz]

First I want to say thank you to the members here that have answered questions, and for all the posts and pics that inspired me to make a 16hr drive to see family and hunt in AZ again. Might be a lengthy post but it was a fun time.

 

Story begins with the miserable drive from Denver. Left home about 11am on Wednesday and didn't get to camp until about 5am Thursday. We had nearly constant snow flurries/blizzard conditions from north of Albuquerque to just outside Salt River. When we got to camp many hours delayed we had about 3-4 inches of ice on the truck and nearly the entire trailer. Did a little scouting in some new spots that evening to no avail.

 

Opening morning was cool but not too crazy. Got the wife all set up to go out with my brother and hopefully fill her tag. To my surprise she had other plans. She insisted that I go out opening morning since I hadn't hunted in Az in so long and she wanted me to go out with my brother. I took the advice of some members here and went back to a spot that I had killed pigs about 12 years ago. Drove out and set up on a hill overlooking a few canyons, about 30 mins into glassing I turned and spotted one tucking behind a tree. Let my brother know that we were in business and we set up and tried to find where they were headed. Spotted 9 or so milling on the side of the ridge when to our surprise the herd broke and 2 decided they would walk a straight line to where we were. Me and the brother set up took a few ranges and waited for a good shot. We were trying to get a simultaneous shot which turned into a huge mistake as only one pig would ever present a good shot at a time. Lesson learned, take the good shot and figure out the second one. In all of our waiting the pigs decided to cut a corner and drop down into a steep sided canyon nd out of view. This is were mistake 2 came in. We left our higher position to try and get ahead of them and ended up on the same ridge as them feeding up towards us about 20 yards away. We couldn't see them but we could hear them feeding up the hill towards us, they either saw us or winded us and took off the opposite direction. My brother took a desperation shot as they were nearing the top of the hill to no avail.

 

This is where we get interesting. We decided to give them a few minutes and see if we could catch up instead of using the call. We talked about our bonehead mistakes and then headed out on the trail. We soon found where they had gone, and tracked them exactly back the route they had originally come. We got about two ridges over and glassed up our friend Rick on the next ridge. He informed us that he heard the shot and rushed into a position to try and see where they went. He assured us that nothing had come towards him and we were at a loss as to where the pigs went. We all stood there for about 10 minutes trying to figure out a game plan, yelling across the canyon to Rick and talking a lot of trash to my brother for having the first miss of the year. I happened to look down and notice their tracks looked to double back. I moved just about 30 feet down the ridge and realized that we were standing above a sizeable cave. I moved down the ridge for a better view and lo and behold there was a pig in the hole directly under our feet. We had stood there yelling and talking for 10-15 minutes with the pig directly under us. My brother moved to a decent position to get a shot at the holed pig. His first shot entered the hole and there was a lot of dust so we figured a miss. The second one was a good shot and hit the pig in the chest. The next thing I heard was "oh shoot there are two". I looked back to see both pigs charge out of the hole at break neck speed towards my brother. One turned up the ridge and ran about 5 feet in front of me where I did my best Doc Holiday and dropped it in its tracks. The wounded pig stopped about 30yds down the hill and stopped where my brother put in a clean follow up and ended its suffering. The picture of me laying down shows the distance of my shot. My feet is where I stood and the brown spot is where the pig dropped.

 

After a few days of hard hunting we still had not produced any opportunity for the wife. Tuesday morning we got up and it was very cold and windy. We went to a spot were we could see down into the washes and lower stuff figuring they would be out of the wind. Saw two go down into a nasty thicket on the river and just couldn't catch up to them in the nasty stuff. The wife had all but given up hope for her hunt as we were leaving the next morning. We headed back to camp for lunch. My wife didn't feel like walking anymore so we decided to nap and then just take a ride to some glassing spots in a last ditch effort. We went out and glassed and saw nothing, but on the way back we decided to drop into the river and see if we could find some crossing spots and maybe beat around the brush for something. About 1/2 a mile in the river and we ran into a large herd just kinda farting around. They busted and ran into the thicket, very nasty mesquite and bramble and stickers galore. The wife was chomping at the bit so we decided to go in after them. After about an hour and a half chasing them around in circles getting covered in scratches and busting them and finding them again we got presented a shot. The wife put a perfect shot on one about 30yds away through the thicket, still not sure how she did it. Perfect double lung and heart shot dropped it in its tracks. Was very proud of her tenacity to not give up on getting her chance and when she got it she made it count.

 

All in all it was an amazing hunt and we will be back next year for sure. Sorry for the long winded post and a lot of pictures but no one here in Denver even knows what a Javelina is and I wanted to share my story.

 

[SparkyAz]

Sorry don't know how to set up the pics in any order. or insert into the middle of text.

[Big Browns]

Great story. Congrats!!!!

[Eagle mountain ranch]

Very nice, sounds like a sweet trip congrats !

[Shedhunteraz]

nice jobs congrats on epic hunt

[PRDATR]

That was a great write up, congrats.

[Nitemann]

Great job and glad it worked out.

 

Rick

[Zeke-BE]

Nice job congrats

[CatfishKev]

Sweet! Love seeing the ladies out there. Welcome to the site, stick around for awhile.

[300RUM]

Sorry don't know how to set up the pics in any order. or insert into the middle of text.

Pictures in the middle of the text? I never have figured that one out and gave up trying. Nobody here has slapped me upside the head (yet) and said "hey, stupid" because of it so I wouldn't sweat that. Glad to hear you had a great hunt after that drive.