STAMPEDE!!!!!

Well, that’s how it looked to me as I looked through my Bushnell night vision monocular (NVM) on that almost full moon, as a very nice cool breeze blew from the southeast. There hasn’t been any rain in quite some time so there was no problem seeing objects at over 300 yards away. A far cry different from last week as we sat in the same place, but it was humid and no wind, so it was buffet time for the mosquitos, but we were still able to knock 2 hogs down.

Tonight was great and we arrived early before sundown to see how the dove were flying since next friday is opening day for dove season in the south zone. They flew. Ok now that we got that out of the way lets get to the stampede.

We got set up before dark and when I say we, I mean Carlos, (my neighbor) and his grandson Andrew. Once again Carlos had his Ar15 and I had my Remington .221 Fireball that I’ve taken several critters with. Tonight I was gonna try for another coyote and a pig. The night was very slow and we had several deer come in to the corn we had thrown around the tank.

Around 2130 hrs, Andrew noticed a big dark spot in the field moving towards us at a pretty good pace. The huge dark spot about 15 yards in diameter stopped 40 yards in front of us. When I looked through my night vision monocular I distinctly saw piggies and it looked like around 25 of them. They didn’t make a sound as they had crept up on us and started eating the corn. Andrew grabbed the Ar15 and as he looked through the scope I turned on the red spotlight. There was a “mess uh hogs” (as you country boys say) in front of us. Andrew picked one out and fired, and that “mess uh hogs” was a “runnin mess uh hogs

”.

A couple of years ago I wrote about 2 hogs I had shot with my Glock 23 during dove season. I wrote of how all the hogs took off running along the fence and then they all tried to gounder the barb wire fence at the same spot. The same thing happened here after Andrew fired. I followed them with the spotlight hoping to see one drop and they all bunched up at one spot. I”m sure you’ll remember what it looks like when you go to a really good movie that is coming out and everyone is bunched up at the door and there is only one ticket taker taking your ticket so you can get in to the movies. That’s what it looked like here. You could see hogs running and hitting the barb wire fence and bouncing back. Before I could say shoot into the herd, someone opened the doors to the movies and hogs were going under the wire everywhere. There must of been a rebel in the bunch that didn’t like conformity, because now they were everywhere along that fence.

Hogs were hitting the fence and it didn’t sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn playing Lenny it sounded like me trying to play a guitar since we could clearly hear a twang everytime a hog it and bounced off the fence. I can't play a guitar.

When we tracked that hog later we found it had made it under the fence and went another 30 yards and died along the road. But the story’s not over.

We stayed longer and it was 0330 when I looked across the field through my NVM. I could see round dark figures about 300 yards away. They were stretched out in what looked like a straight line about 20 yards long, some bigger than others and they were running towards us. It’s amazing what you can see on a full moon with that NVM. The field is filled with a weed that I’ve heard other hunters call “goat weed”, and the dove love it. This stuff is a little higher than my knee. I continued to watch them come out of the weeds and some of them were pretty tall, but I noticed the group stopped about 200 yards out. Several of the large ones had their noses in the air and I knew they were trying to get our scent, but we were safe since the wind was blowing from them to us. I got my rifle ready and looked through the nvm and after several seconds of them sniffing the air, they continued

to run towards us. Dust was flying in the air and it looked like a stampede as we waited for them. I thought I heard the song Ride of the Valkryies as more and more hogs appeared out of the dust. Teeth were grinding, saliva was flying and lips were being smacked as they ran towards the corn. (I really don’t know that for sure but it sounds good huh). The dinner bell had rung and they were hungry and once they got to the corn the mad rush had stopped and about 40 hogs were 50 yards away eating. Carlos grabbed the spotlight but I told him I wouldn’t need it since I clearly could see the hogs with the aid of the full moon. I picked an average size pig out and fired hitting it in the ribs. They all ran back from where they came from, into the goat weed and after waiting 20 minutes we tracked it and found after running about 40 yards it dropped.