What an invitation!!
Michael Vansant told me the hunt was going down on the Wild River Ranch near Goliad, Texas and would be one of the most high tech hunts offered in the USA. We would be using Generation 3 Night Vision Devices (NVDs) and a thermal imaging device for spotting the hogs from various hunting platforms. He said we were going to hunt for 2 days and then spend a day in Rockport fishing for Redfish and Speckled trout. I immediately started shifting my schedule to accommodate the three days we would be spending in south Texas. I was about to become a member of the Wildhoghunters.com team!
Saturday morning came early as we packed our gear in my truck at Mike’s house. Michael Vansant is one of the owners of wildhoghunters.com and he was grumbling good-naturedly about people sleeping through their alarms, which both David Dell and I had done this morning. This wasn’t Mike’s first rodeo with us and he had planned for it, factoring in a late start.
The frantic bustling to get things loaded without forgetting anything was very successful – surprisingly and we were soon headed south, ready to eliminate hogs in a very prejudicial manner!
Our personal gear consisted of three AR-15 rifles in .223 caliber, though Chris had told us he used the 6.8 SPC cartridge and we were welcome to use his guns. We had the video equipment and a fervent hope that Chris’ thermal or night vision gear was going to interface with our camera. Lots of unknowns, but we were very confident that things were going to go our way with killing south Texas hogs and getting something worthwhile on video.
Feral hogs in Texas and across the rest of the United States where they have been introduced or migrated, have made serious inroads in taking over the habitat of other resident game animals. Hogs are not only destructive they are predatory as their ability to sniff out prey rivals the olfactory abilities of many hunting dog breeds. Turkey nests and baby fawns have fallen victim to hogs where the hogs have established large populations and biologists estimate with a hog’s reproductive rate 70% of them would have to be eliminated just to keep a stagnant population. In Mike’s words, “You can’t kill enough hogs.”
A yard destroyed in North Texas by wild hogs
The trip was uneventful as Mike took the wheel and David sprawled out in the back seat to sleep. A short stop in Lexington Texas for some good old Texas Barbecue was our only major stop before we cruised into Victoria Texas and then on out to the ranch.
The 615-acre Wild River Ranch is only about 20 minutes outside Victoria in the beautiful San Antonio River bottom near Goliad, Texas. A veritable Mecca for deer and hog habitat, we were in awe as we drove the winding country road to the turn off to the ranch. The Wild River Ranch owner, Dr. Chris Lucci, personally started the Wildlife Co-Op in the county which the ranch resides and the co-op now serves 29,000 acres which creates a situation where high fences are not necessary or used. All hunts are fair chase! As we checked out the thickets of mesquite and scattered Cedar we realized it was going to be more fair for the hogs than the hunters.
When we arrived at Chris’s gate we were so pumped up we drove right past it. Mike quickly corrected and we were soon parked in front of the 3-bedroom cabin that we would be staying for the next couple nights – more or less!
Chris met us on the porch and guided us into the spacious living room of the cabin and we all admired the trophy deer and hog mounts on the wall – all of which had come from the ranch. Mike made introductions and we picked out sleeping areas, unloading our gear to our respective rooms.
Some wild rumor that I snored had leaked to the rest of the members of the wildhoghunters.com team and I found myself alone in the back bedroom. The bed was larger than the ones in the room Mike and David shared so solitude had its perks.
Chris is a slender guy with dark hair and a runner’s build. The friendly demeanor as he spoke of the ranch and his set-up made us confident we were going to be seeing some pigs tonight. His familiarity with his firearms was evident in the way he handled them and in how he was constantly aware of the muzzle position. We sit down and became better acquainted and discussed what we wanted to get accomplished. This was a hunting trip, but it was more than that.
Dr. Chris Lucci demonstrating the Night Vision Device
I had brought video and audio production gear and we intended to get as high quality a video as we could of the hunt. The big question as to whether it would interface with Chris’ thermal imaging device was about to be answered. When the BNC connector coax clicked in place on my camera and I made the proper settings, the thermal image we had hoped to see popped up on my screen!!
We were going to be filming hogs at night!!!!
It was still light, but dusk was closing in as we started putting gear in the truck. Earlier Chris had gone through all his safety training before he put loaded guns in anyone’s hands.
I had the camera gear secure in the truck and the guys loaded up the guns. The truck had two long back-to-back bench seats down the middle of the flat bed that the seats kind of angled back and it was safe to put most of the gear on a seat.
We had Chris to give us some background on HELGA, the Heat Emission Light Gathering Assimilator that he jokingly named in the AR-15.com forum that seems to be a common acronym used for similar devices now. HELGA is mounted on a rifle stock blank with a trigger. The trigger is in placed to activate a laser so Chris
can “mark” the targets he can see with the thermal imager. The laser is not in place yet, but it is the next upgrade for the impressive system.
Chris Lucci demonstrating the HELGA device he uses to spot and direct the hunters using Night Vision.
The thermal imaging system Chris uses is the Nivisys Tam 14 Thermal Imaging Sight with a detection range of up to 1000 yards in open terrain. Identification range is up to 300 yards without magnification and we could see movement very easily with this device.
It was dusky and we saw numerous whitetail deer along the edge of the brush and the small clearings among the mesquite. They were watching the truck go by with the group of men in the back. We pointed them out as we scanned for hogs in the waning light.
The old truck turned down the county road and the pavement was not exactly smooth. Our driver, Bill, took us down a dirt road to the right, the evening growing dark enough I finally had to turn off my camera. We were seeing cattle and deer, but no hogs. The thermal image of the animals was interesting and I could see them on my view screen of the camera.
We had gone up and down several roads when a spotlight hit us from the far end of a road. The truck lowered the spotlight and took off.
“That explains why we aren’t seeing hogs, guys!” Even in the dark I could hear the irony in his voice. “The guys who lease this for deer are doing their deer counts.”
Deer counts on managed property is nothing new to me and I knew that these guys were either going to get in our way or vice versa. We went up one more road and then back to an area where we would not be conflicting with the deer survey.
Chris had mentioned cornfields, recently harvested and open to where we should be able to spot pigs if they were feeding. The big truck headed in that direction and I know the hog hunting team felt a little more confident.
When we got to the private roads encircling the fields, Bill got out and pulled down a blue plastic barrel at the driver’s side rear of the flatbed and we did what is normally described in Texas as “corning” the road. The barrel sprinkled corn along the private road, acting as an attractant to the hogs and putting them in a place that gave us a lot of open area to shoot.
Corning is a VERY successful tactic except tonight the pigs just weren’t moving. The night was still hot and August is not known to be the best pig hunting weather anyway. We stopped at the end of the roads and this one field that Chris knew where the hogs would enter. We stayed there in that beautiful starlit night and I got my chance to look through the night vision.
The night vision was really green, but the retical in it was not much different than a regular rifle scope. I looked down the row of brush lining the cornfield, wishing a big hog would step out in front of me, but it didn’t happen. Eventually I gave the gun back to Mike.
View of a feeder and area below it through the Night Vision scope on one of the actual weapons.
“Kick-ass isn’t it?” he said, his grin evident in the moonlight. It was clear and shadows from the moon moved eerily along the ground and side of the truck as we walked around.
I had seen night vision in magazines, but to look through a 3rd generation scope was more than just kick-ass. It was very enlightening to the technology devised for rifles in combat. “This hunt is one of the most awesome hunts I have ever been on,” I said, realizing we had yet to see a hog.
We told old hunting stories as we stood there in the clear night air, a slight breeze wafting across us, carrying our scent behind us and away from the area we expected the pigs to show.
Lots of folks assume the night vision and thermal imaging made it simple to kill a hog at night. Wild animals are wild 24/7 and wild hogs are the wiliest of creatures to hunt. The animals simply were not moving yet and it was almost midnight.
Chris had Bill to take us around the edge of the field, making a horseshoe back to the paved road. We were half way out when we saw some pigs. However, they were moving away from us. We watched them through the thermal, the hogs nothing more than white blips, but Mike and Dave could see them clearly enough through the night vision scopes to tell they had no long necks and their bodies were close to the ground.
The hogs were out of reach and we sat, watching them long enough to make sure they were heading away from us and not just milling around. Bill took the big truck to the main road and we headed back for the ranch.
The winding road through the ranch is surrounded on both sides by mesquite, cedar and other brush, but there are many openings along each side. Some are food plots maintained for hunting and habitat and some are just natural clearings. Chris said they do controlled burns on the ranch every few years and this part had been burned a couple years ago and the brush growth was healthy as a result.
We saw a herd of hogs along a food plot. The truck came to a halt and Mike and Dave identified a large hog standing on the upper dam of a pond. Chris quickly laid out an assault plan and Bill started backing the truck up.
We were working in total darkness and we had not turned on the truck lights for anything so far. In the darkness the back tire found a depression along the road that made a very noisy jounce as the truck rocked back and forth. We all looked at each other and decided to quickly dismount and walk to the entry road Chris had described to us.
The intent was to flank the hogs from the downwind side of the food plot, utilizing the natural cover of a row of cedars and the pond banks. We moved quickly, David and Mike in front of Chris and I as we made our way toward the last place we had seen the hogs.
Chris scanned the food plot, three nice bucks feeding along, unaware of our approach. The hogs were no where to be seen. We moved closer to the food plot and to where we could look inside the depressions that the ponds made up, hoping the pigs might have hit the water to cool off.
Catching the attention of the deer, we saw the ponds were empty. The deer started moving off and we could not help feeling disappointed.
“The hogs aren’t as forgiving on road noises as the deer,” Chris said, his tone sounding as though he more than half expected this.
“Think we made too much noise?” I asked, turning off the camera.
Chris visibly nodded, even in the darkness. “Yeah, when the truck backed into that hole that noise was just different enough it spooked them.”
Mike said, “Well, that’s how it goes. Where to next?” Mike was disappointed, but definitely not defeated.
“We have a feeder along an old roadway down in the river bottom that we can make a stalk on,” Chris replied.
David Dell hadn’t said anything up until now. “Stalking is what Mike and I do best. Let’s give it a shot.”
We all agreed and when we got back to the truck Chris gave detailed instructions to Bill. The group was silent as we rode in the darkness, the night wind in our faces. The eerie shadows of the denser forest in the river bottom seemed to encroach on both sides of us, the occasional spider web smacking across our faces a reminder that we were not the only predators lurking in the darkness.
In the light of the stars we could see a fencerow and the scarecrow legs of a tall box blind at the edge. The old roadway was actually along a cleared path approximately 40 to 50 feet across and in the deceptive view at night, appeared to be around a quarter of a mile long.
Bill killed the engine as we quickly walked past the front of the truck, stopping below the box blind. Chris aimed the thermal imager at the end of the roadway and we could see a white tent-like structure in the distance that he said was a feeder.
We stood, four predators, listening to the life in the river bottom. A tree frog sang a strange croaking song to our right and in the distance the melancholy lilt of a coyote’s yip that told us the other predators were out there too. And, in the solid blackness of the mature river bottom, we heard the sounds of hogs, squealing and grunting, feeding as they traveled to the feeder in front of us. We all took a knee and settled down to wait.
Pointing to the woods to the right of the clearing, Chris whispered, “They’re coming up through the woods there. They are heading for the feeder.”
Michael said, “We can wait. They aren’t there yet.”
Reaching back and pinching a mosquito between my forefingers that was only slight smaller than a full grown turkey, I added, “As long as the sabre-tooth mosquitoes don’t get us first.”
David Dell was brushing them from his back as well and we all sit there enduring the feast we had became for the swarm of mosquitoes that were bloating on our blood.
Chris checked in front of us with the thermal imager and we saw a doe and her fawn leaving the cover near the feeder and start walking in our direction. We were out in the open, even though it was very dark. We watched her approach for what seemed like ten minutes, our attention finally on something other than the vampire-like insects dining on our bodies.
Finally she stopped less than 30 yards from us, her fawn unaware of our existence as it fed to the doe’s right. The doe lifted her head up and down and we knew what was going to come next.
She blew.
We stood still, no one moving as she stomped her foot and blew again, the fawn frozen solid and watching mom now.
She didn’t run, but she did turn hard right and move quickly into the brush and blew some more.
“Hope that doesn’t spook the hogs,” Chris said, searching the clearing ahead of us for movement.
Mike grunted. “Hogs don’t give a damn what deer do. If she had been in the middle of them and bolted she might have scared them.”
We all moved forward about 20 yards and stopped, listening again. A hog squealed directly in front of us near the feeder. Chris was holding the imager on the feeder.
In my mind I was thinking that squeal was less than 75 yards away and directly in front of us. I was the junior member when it comes to hog hunting, but I have been in the woods all my life. I have hunted coons and opossums at night with registered hounds and a little fice dog that knew no fear. In the early morning hours I ran a trap-line during my junior high and high school years. The forest is my home and I knew those pigs should be right in front of us.
Mike pointed at some tall weeds to our left and said, “I want to go there.”
Chris warned we might spook the pigs.
Mike said, “I’m going over there.” A debater Mike is not!
He moved and we followed and we were another ten yards closer. I looked at my watch and we had been stalking towards the feeder for over an hour and ten minutes.
We heard the hogs again and a coyote less than 100 yards away behind us chimed in. Mike pointed toward some willows and repeated his statement he wanted to move there.
When no one opposed him, he led the group forward another 25 yards and we listened. We could hear the hogs and Mike and David were whispering to each other.
Mike turned to us. “I am going to kill a hog.”
Mike and David took off, Chris and I following behind, but moving much slower. The wire from his imager to my camera was less than 5 feet long so we were almost like conjoined twins as we followed the two men stalking the hogs in front of us.
A wave of scent hit my nose and I could smell the hogs at the feeder. The crunching of corn was solid and now we could see the backs of a hog occasionally in the imager. Now I could see what Mike and David saw. There was ragweed over four feet tall around the feeder and keeping us hidden from the hogs and also keeping us from being able to see the hogs.
There were several hogs under the feeder and it had not been as far as it appeared. My ears had been right on par for distance and I saw David and Mike raise the rifles. Before I could warn Chris they both fired!
Hogs exploded from the brush. Switching the camera to my left hand, I drew the .45 ACP Glock at my side and followed the pigs as they ran out of the brush as close as 5 yards from us. Twice I almost fired, but the hogs veered to the left or right of us.
Chris and I had discussed it prior to this happening and we only had the pistol between us in case one of the hogs decided to take revenge on us. In the darkness it was too dangerous to be throwing lead indiscriminately and so the resolve not to fire unless we had to kept my trigger finger in check. Chris is not kidding when he says safety is the utmost rule and we hold the same beliefs so as the hogs ran by I followed them with the pistol, but we did not fire.
When the melee was over, we walked up closer to David and Mike. They had one big boar down they double teamed with the first shot from their rifles and then David tried two more shots at a group that appeared briefly, but we found no blood trail.
The headlights of the truck appeared and we checked out the hog under the feeder. He was a big boar weighing around 200 lbs. and he was as dead as a hammer.
We didn’t get the video we wanted. We had no hogs on camera and we did not even catch the shots. We did have one big boar hog dead on the ground and that counted as I shot the congratulations and celebration part of our hunt. The tusks were nice and razor sharp. He was a real trophy.
Mike Vansant with the 187 lb boar Mike and David shot under the feeder.
Bill and David cleaning the first night's boar
The hog scent was so pungent and overpowering I stayed way back filming while the guys tied the hog to the truck and we dragged the carcass back. My mom only raised one fool and he lives in Tulsa. My brother might argue that point though!
Mike and David caped the big boar and we took his back straps, but he was too rank for anything else on him to be good to eat so we put the carcass to where Chris or Bill could dispose of it in the morning. We had removed one from the population, but there had been 10 to 14 hogs in that group. That 70% number ran through my mind as I went into the cabin and took a hot shower.
Later, everyone showered we sat around the table snacking on sandwich meat and the bags of chips David brought. Let me say this right now, traveling with David Dell you don’t have to worry about starving to death. This man is a great cook and the homemade wild hog sausage links he makes are the best I have ever eaten bar none. As we relaxed before going to bed, we discussed our mistakes in filming the stalk and what we really wanted to capture on camera.
Mike and I are electronic technicians by trade and we knew we needed to extend the cable between the camera and the thermal imager to prevent us from walking on top of each other. We knew we would probably have to build a cable with the stuff we needed.
We finally went to bed and I do not remember my head hitting the pillow.
The next morning, I got up and put on an old T-shirt with the shorts I was wearing and went to the living room. Chris was up and we talked about what we would need to build a cable. Soon Mike and David were up and after a great breakfast Bill prepared, we all checked out the video from the day and night before. It was good video, but we needed a successful hunt on film.
Mike, David and I went to town and we found everything we needed. We built the cable at the dinner table and tested it. It worked perfectly!
It was time to hone our skills on the range and for myself it would be the first time shooting the 6.8 SPC. The AR-15 is a great platform for the cartridge and Chris loads his hot enough that a 200-yard shot is as simple as the 50-yard target. I smacked the hog target down range and then thumped the coyote at 150 yards plus. We showed we were handy enough with the firearms and created a new respect among ourselves for the 6.8 SPC. I think all three of us were trying to figure out how to re-budget over the next few months to add one to our personal arsenals.
We knew that the night’s hunt was going to be a long one and we had planned a huge supper. Chris normally provides meals on his hunts, but we had specifically asked him not to do so this time because one thing we like to do here at wildhoghunters.com is eat and our own David Dell is something of a wizard around the grill or skillet. David had brought a couple pounds of frog legs, five pounds of beef fajitas, 2 pounds of onions and bell peppers and enough tortillas to feed us 6 times over.
Mixing up a marinade of my own I added 2 pounds of large skewered shrimp to grill and we had a serious supper before the hunt!! Bill did an awesome job with the frog legs and David grilled the fajitas and the shrimp.
Chris had opted to put Mike and I in a blind he was sure would produce hogs and Mike told me he would run the camera and I could shoot tonight since it would be the best opportunity for both. Chris had been training Mike on how to run the thermal imager and I had been showing Mike how to run the camera. David and Chris were going to sit in the box blind where we had spooked the hogs and then later the three bucks until it was dark.
We were running behind and it was already getting dusky when we headed to the river bottom. Riding in the back of Chris’ truck, David and I loved the dense trees that looked like a monster buck or giant hog could be hiding just out of sight from us.
When we got to the blind, David and Chris helped us unload the gear and load it into the elevated box blind. They wasted not time leaving so Mike and I could get set up. I took the left hand side of the blind and Mike took the right. We situated the camera and the microphone and then Mike tested out the imager as I took a rest on the window of the blind and looked through the night scope.
A deer stepped out in what looked to be an old road. Mike had her on the thermal and soon we had six different deer feeding and walking around the general vicinity of the feeder.
Oblivious to our presence, the deer had been feeding for almost an hour.
The deer fed for almost an hour. Mike and I watched them wander about through the camera viewer with the aid of the thermal imager. In the distance we heard hogs. Mike pointed past me to my left and I nodded. They were not that far away and we heard them again, this time much closer.
There was a rustling noise to our right and Mike pointed the imager out the window. Even in the darkness of the box blind I could see him grin as he whispered, “Armadillo.”
In a few minutes the noises we heard were not armadillos and as we heard them back behind us, the feeder threw. The deer moved quickly to the area under the feeder and started eating. We could hear the hogs directly behind us and they were close. Mike moved the imager to the right and he caught 6 hogs crossing the right-of-way about 10 yards from the blind. I could hear him counting them off as he whispered and the white heat signature pigs on the camera were so distinct you could see their tails wiggling.
Hogs crossing to the right of our blind.
We watched them as they trotted through the grass, headed for the feeder. The deer oblivious at first threw up their heads as they hogs made their appearance and then they scattered!!
That is a constant we hear as we talk to people across Texas and Oklahoma is how they have had deer coming in and hogs arrived and the deer ran off before they got into shoot range OR they simply ran the deer off from the feeder. We had just witnessed it in real life and I could imagine my disgust if this had been deer season.
Mike had seen the shadow of a really large hog cross the right-of-way and he whispered there was a really big boar coming. I had already picked out the largest hog in the group of six,
We waited, although I have to admit I was kind of impatient about it with so many hogs in front of me. Mike whispered that he thought it was this really huge boar we had seen in some of the game cam pictures.
Twice I had the big sow and one of her piglets lined up with each other and I did not pull the trigger. After what seemed an eternity I told Mike I was shooting the big sow. We wanted a kill on video and I could kill her easily. He agreed.
Bringing the night vision crosshairs on her shoulder, I waited for a few seconds, hoping one of the pigs would move behind her, but they never did. At least they didn’t in the ten seconds or so I waited! The safety made a louder click than I expected as I settled the crosshairs on the hog. The suppressed rifle still seemed loud in the confines of the blind and the sow dropped, her legs kicking as she went down in a heap.
“Stay ready,” Mike warned, his voice low. “With the suppressor they have no idea where the shot came from and they will be back.”
Keeping the rifle in the ready position, Mike was right. One minute and twenty seconds later three of the hogs came sneaking back in. I shot the lead pig and it rolled to its side with the neck shot I made. In the thermal video you can see a hog standing there in the open, but I could not see him through the night vision very well. The thermal sees through light grass and brush where the night vision does not. When the pig ran, I saw it and snapped a shot at it, but I didn’t hit it.
A deer ran across the right-of-way in front of us as we sit there waiting and watching. Later we saw several pigs cross so far out there was no way to get a shot. After that we sit there quietly.
I asked Mike if we should go check the hogs and he said we needed to wait, but if I really wanted to go check them we could. So we waited.
When the headlights of the truck arrowed through the woods, piercing the darkness like twin spears, Mike and I devised a plan to tell them we had not even shot. We hadn’t seen anything!
Chris and David got out and walked to the back of the blind.
Eagerly, Chris asked, “What did you guy’s get?!”
Deadpan Mike says, “We didn’t even shoot.”
In the flashlight I could see Chris’ face go numb. David shook his head and said, “It really sounded like you guys shot!”
I said, “Those shots came from somewhere close, but they sounded like they were back behind us.”
Chris couldn’t believe it. “I just knew this was a sure thing!” I could hear the disappointment in his voice.
Handing Chris and David our gear, Mike and I climbed down. As we started loading our stuff in the truck, I said, “Do you guys want to pull out by the feeder. Someone left a couple dead hogs out there and it would be a shame to waste the meat.”
Chris started laughing and said “I was hoping you guys were pulling some kind of crap like that!!”
Mike said, “Dave shot two out there, but we aren’t sure the video is that good.”
Biting my lip, I decided that if Mike wanted to keep them guessing, I would go along with it.
The hogs were decent hogs and definitely good eating size. The big sow weighed around 135 and the pig weighed 65 lbs. We took pictures of Mike and I with the hogs and then several pictures of me and my hogs.
The cameraman and writer posing with his pigs. 135 lb sow and one of her offspring. The smaller hog was approximately 70 lbs. I was very happy.
On the way back Mike mentioned again that he was new at running the imager and he was not sure what he got on tape. Chris was upbeat though and he said even if it was not great video it would still be good video just because it was thermal.
We decided to set up and watch the video before we hunted any more. I had already rewound the tape back to the deer.
When Chris seen the clarity of the hogs passing the blind he whooped and said, “That is awesome!”
The video to say the least was great and Chris was very pleased as Mike grinned from the chair he was sitting in. Two kills on thermal.
Going out to the truck, we set up in the truck and did the same routes we had done the night before around the cornfields. We saw deer aplenty, but no hogs. We were going to quit early that night because we had to be in Corpus early the next morning to go fishing.
Knocking off around 1 AM we decided that we would call an end to our hog hunting adventure on the Wild River Ranch, but fate did not work as we planned. We parked at the cabin and Mike and David had wanted to take some pictures through their night vision scopes and so they went to the range. I was unloading the video gear when I hear Chris and them talking excitedly.
I had gotten to the door of the cabin and they take off!!
Grabbing my camera I take off after them, but I was a long way behind and I knew they had obviously seen something. It dawned on me that I didn’t have the camera cable and I did not know if Chris had it so there was no reason for me to follow and perhaps spook the hogs.
I walked back to the cabin and sat in a chair on the front porch. It was dark and I knew they were somewhere down the range. Suddenly there was a shot, then three more in rapid succession.
Sitting up in the chair, I could hear them talking.
What had happened was actually pretty funny. As David and Mike were “playing” with the night vision scopes, Chris had walked up and scanned the range and at the far end were a small herd of hogs! The hogs ran to the side of the range into the woods and our small band of merry men took off to stalk and kill a hog.
Mike’s motto is he wants to shoot them at five feet!!
They had followed Chris down the range and they could hear the hogs. They were growling and snapping, but they didn’t leave. As they got closer a hog almost identical to the second one I shot stepped out 10 yards or so from David and he shot it three or four times. The rest scattered, but it was a very fit ending to a great weekend of hunting!!
David Dell and his hog he killed in the final minutes of the hunt. The other two hogs were the two that WHH Videographer David Falconer took earlier in the night.
We shot video of David’s account of the hunt and then David and I cleaned hogs while Mike and Chris went inside the cabin. As David finished up the last hog I had went inside and both Mike and Chris had showered and smelled human again. I took my shower and when I was done David finally made it inside. It was 2:40 AM and we were getting up at 5 AM to go to Rockport to fish for Reds.
Taping David's account of his final stalk of the hunt
As we sat around the dinner table snacking on the last of the fajitas and frog legs, we discussed our hunt and the video we had gotten. We had one of the best hunts I have ever experienced and more importantly we had forged a new friendship with Dr. Chris Lucci.
The Wild River Ranch experience is incredible. I have hunted low tech all my life and moving to the high end of the tech range was addicting. It was like that one incredible Christmas when you finally got that Red Ryder BB gun or new .22 rifle that all hunters remember. Chris is very knowledgeable about his weapons, his gear and how to kill hogs on his ranch and he is a very gracious host. His hog hunts are guaranteed. If you don’t get to shoot at a hog, you come back and hunt again without paying the hunting fees. If you have a group of four hunters and three of you kill 10 hogs apiece and one member of your party has the luck of a friend of mine from Illinois – ending up with no meat in the cooler -- that hunter comes back and hunts again for the hunting fee he has already paid!
You can’t get any more fair than that! All the hunts are fair chase and open fences. We don’t knock high fence hunts here at www.wildhoghunters.com, but hunting this south Texas country where you might see any of the native wildlife wandering unencumbered does add to this high tech experience!
Check out our videos of the hunt in our forums and visit Chris at www.wildriverranchtexas.com to check out his site and the hunts he has available. I can already tell you we are ready to go back!!
The hunting truck. We felt like we were on safari.
Thermal and Night vision hunting gear owned by the Wild River Ranch
Our rifles we brought along, but did not hunt with. We used the 6.8 SPC that belongs to the Wild River Ranch
Some of the trophy mounts displayed on the walls at Wild River Ranch
Kitchen chair in the cabin when we tried out the camera
David Dell watching TV middle of the day in the living room. The accommodations were great.
Great European mount of a trophy hog taken on the Wild River Ranch
The aptly named HELGA
Our video production crew shooting an Orientation video for Wild River Ranch. WildHoghunters.com shoots and creates our own videos. Consider us the next time you need a hunting video or safety clip for your website.
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