Back in my younger years at the ripe age of 18, I had come down with a condition called I know everything. This corresponds with the fact that I was an accomplished gun and bow hunter and had decided I was an expert in the field. I now know this was a completely insane notion brought on by puberty.

I had asked a local farmer named Vern if it would be possible to hunt his property during deer season. He was very hesitant at first because he had prior experiences of hunters leaving fences down, to actually cutting fences to suit their purposes.

Just a note here, if you are ever granted permission to use someone else’s property, leave it in better shape that you found it. This will allow possible hunting on that property by the landowner in the future.

Getting back to Vern and gaining permission to hunt his property, I had asked early enough in the year that I was able to offer my service of helping harvest the crops in his field. There was haying plus the added corn crop to harvest in the fall, I had explained to Vern that this was a way for me to give back and also a way for him to get to know what kind of person I really was. I also added if in the event his still had reservation when deer season hit, he still had the option of saying no.

Vern had no sons, but the four daughters he did have more than made up for it. I had played all the sports in school and was an avid outdoorsman, so with that way of thinking I was in shape for what farm work that lay ahead. How wrong I was, these girls put me to shame by constantly out doing me in the work.

I thought I was going to die of dehydration after working all day in the hot sun handling bails of hay to actually doing the stacking of the bails in the barn. I was so glad to see the end of haying season when the last bail was harvested off his farm. He then added this is only part of my haying, we have two other farms to go.

Just to let you know just how tough this girls really were in order not to have you thinking I was a wimp. Vern was well known around the neighborhood for his raising and butchering of hogs. He had as many as 60 plus hogs on the farm at any given time plus the added 30 milking cows along with some beef cows.

On this particular day Vern wanted to butcher this 300 plus pound hog to sell to a lady that had stopped earlier in the week. Of course the hog wanted no part of this and there we were the five of us trying to get a chain around the hog’s foot, wading in pig crap a foot deep. I’m not sure if you realize just how hard it is to get a chain around a slippery wet hog’s foot in pig crap. This pig had us running in circles in the pen trying to corner it.

At this point I had given up, the pig started with trying to bite anyone that came remotely in it proximity. Vern was also getting more upset as each minute passed with the fact the five of us could not catch the pig and with that he started with stories of his younger days of doing it all by himself.

He started yelling at the middle daughter named Buffy; this of course is a nickname to protect the innocent. Buffy started yelling back at him and you could see the rage in her eyes. At that point I witness a miracle in the making because all of a sudden Buffy reached out and put that pig in a headlock and dragged it out all by her self, attaching the chain in the process.

To this day I remain close friends Buffy and consider her my bodyguard in case of any attacks from another person or pig. Just a note, she was considered to be the weaker girl of the bunch.

Corn season came and went and with that Vern decided that I was worthy enough of being able to hunt his property that year. He had a keen eye and watched closely of how I handled my gun to be sure I was a safe hunter. With being on the farm all summer and early fall I had found some time to do some preseason scouting. This property had not been hunted for better that 20 years and held a lot of promise for harvesting a nice buck.

There was plenty of sign and with that I set up two stand locations to hunt from depending on the wind directions. Opening morning found me in the stand over-looking the still standing corn crop that was left to be picked at a later date. I had watched a few doe’s cross the field but the buck I had been looking for never showed.

Deciding at around 10am to leave the stand and do some more scouting and still hunting in the sugar bush I came upon a large deer track. With my vast years of hunting and tracking it was decided this was the big bucks track.

The actual size of the track was huge, you could also see that it sank into the dirt and snow giving me a rough idea of it weight. Another fact that let me know it was a buck was the way it dragged its feet as it walked, I had read that somewhere in a whitetail book. With the track looking pretty fresh I decided to follow him hoping to get a shot.

The tracks had led right down into the cornfield that I had watched earlier that morning, thinking if I had stayed put in that stand I might have had a shot. There were a number of places he had stopped to tear up the ground and this was believed to be a scrape line. The tracks made an abrupt turn and were now headed back in the direction of Vern’s farm. I knew I was gaining on this buck because the dirt from the tracks still lay on top of the snow and were not yet froze.

I had just started up a knoll which over-looked the lower part of Vern’s pasture when I heard the snapping of branches and what I believed to be oinks. Having read about every book put out about hunting I knew what I was witnessing was a buck grunt. This came to me as pure enjoyment because I could now say I had actually witnessed vocal sounds of the dominate buck on the farm.

I sneaked up to the top of the hill ready for what ever the buck decided to do. As I peered over the hill, there digging up grass and sod was Vern’s 300 pound bore pig. I had spent all day tracking what I thought was a buck and here was a pig. I became the local hero of pig hunting and stalking, giving advice on how to silently stalk pigs.

 

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