Moon Phase and Pigs

The pattern for hunting pigs is that there is no pattern...

That being said here is what I have begun to conclude

1. New moon/ very little moon: pigs are more likely to be out at dusk and or dawn
2. Full moon : pigs more likely to be running all night and not be around at dusk/dawn

3. moon early in the night, hunting better at dusk
4. moon late in the night, hunting better in morning


5. Ungodly heat during the day, hunting better in morning or second half of night

6. First day that is 10-15 degrees cooler than the ungodly heat you have seen for the past week especially if it rains a little: pig-u-copia at dusk.

Making Ham

In response to a request from the pacific northwest:

Take a pig back leg (see previous post) and cut it in half at the widest point sawing through bone. This creates what I refer to as a shank portion (bottom down to the knee) , and a butt portion (up to the either the ball joint of the hip or half the pelvis depending on your pig cleaning technique).

Create a brine:
I find the easiest thing to do is buy Morton's Tender Quick. Directions call for 1 cup of it with 4 cups of water. I find that I like the effect from 1 cup of morton tender quick and half a cup of brown sugar with about 6 to 8 cups of water.

submerge your ham in the brine for at least 24 hours, but longer is better up to a point (a week).

Take ham out and let it dry, then apply smoke for 1.5 to 3 hours then either wrap it or take it to the oven and heat it to a fully cooked state (155 degrees F)

EAT!!!


or cool it to room temp, wrap it up and freeze/refridgerate

then you can pull it out, warm it to 140 F and serve with a delicious glaze

Meat Haul 08-16-2006

This was a very last minute trip that almost didn't happen because I had such a hard time finding 3 other guys who could skip work on Thursday. When I spoke with the the owner on Tuesday evening he told me that I had to go fishing on Thursday because they were catching Amberjack and Blackfin. On Wed. afternoon I finally rounded up a crew consisting of Dyer, Mitchell, Brian and me.

We left the dock around 0630 in a 30' Scarab. This is a very fast boat but maybe not the best fishing design. We fished a series of shrimp boats about 70 miles. They were anchored up and culling their catch. We found dorado and ling behind these boats. We chummed these fish close to the boat and then pitched baits to them using fairly light tackle.

Next we hit some rigs 80 miles out where the AJ's were holding. Brian caught the first and biggest fish. Then we started catching some smaller ones before we finally got back into the keepers. These fish lived up to their reputation of being tough! After catching our limit of 1/person we headed back to the shrimp boats in hopes of chumming up some blackfin. We didn't find any blackfin but we did pull 4 lings from under one of the boats. I think we hooked three and kept two.

The other boats didn't have much fish around them and it was starting to get late so we headed for the dock. We stopped at a weed patch and another shrimp boat on the way but there wasn't much happening. Here is the final catch of AJ, Ling, and Dorado. We accidentally caught a king and one big snapper.

I might not be able to shoot but I can hunt

After I put my daughter to bed last night, I grabbed Jim F. and headed to Normagee about 7:00pm. We were going down the gravel road and stopped to look at several deer with the binoculars. One young buck with long 6-8inch spikes in velvet and several does were in the front field, we came around the corner and before we even got to the spring loaded gate we were into the pigs. There were at least 15 of them in the pasture to the left and as I laid the .270 out a saw another cross the road and stop in the barditch.

I shot and something surprising happened, the pig ran away, I gave them an F-U but saw it kick up dust. Last time I had hunted with my rifle it had done the job but with unsatisfactory location and from much closer distances. I decided that I had better find a place to set out a target and shoot a few practice shots to check the center of the rifle. We drove past the house and down into the caney pasture. I intended to drive to the back of the property, do some shooting and then come back up north in time for hunting at dusk.

My plan evaporated as I saw a pig duck into the woods to the East. I drove that way slowly and saw another, quite large pig dash from the pasture. I grabbed the rifle and told Jim we were going to take a walk.

When I walked into the woods I realized there would be no tracking, the entire forest floor was covered with pig tracks going every direction. I followed a beaten trail and it crossed the corner of the woods into the pasture to the south of the big caney pasture but east of the woods and north of the main creek. I saw to the south end of the pasture about 75 yards away a swirling mass of pigs sliding into a dense clump of goat weed, I shouldered, I could only see the top 3 inches of the pig, I put the crosshairs in the middle of the animal and pulled. I was greeted with squeeling and I pumped my fist. Yes!

I took two steps toward the thrashing animal, running the bolt as I went, I looked up and saw a large pig face looking at me with concern from about 20 yards away. The gun went up and roared, the pig just disappeared into the tall weeds. I walked over and found the large sow down and out. In a matted down area right next to her were 3 piglets, smaller than footballs. I scooped them up, asked jim if he wanted a pet pig and getting a negative I thumped them on a stump like a thrashing speckled trout or a duck.

I told Jim to come stand by the big sow and I walked over to find the first victim. I collected the smaller sow and we piled them together. It was long drag to the closest place we could drive the truck and by the time we got the pork on the tailgate it was quite dark.

The smaller pig (120lbs) took the bullet quartering away, in through a tenderloin (truly sad), through the bottom of the spine and out the far side just south of the diaphragm. The big sow (200lbs) took a bullet through both lungs. Both were Sierra 140gr Jacketed hollowpoints in front of a max load of H4831.

Both bullets while fatal hit to the right and a bit low of their desired location. The seventy five yard shot was off by several inches. If we hadn’t been able to close to such a short distance I might have needed to tell a story about seeing dozens of pigs, shooting half a dozen times and not skinning anything.

My phone refuses to give up the pictures I took with it. “Multimedia Message Failure” it tells me. I intend to seek some help and hopefully show yall another tailgate full of Pork.

Cancelled again

We were supposed to go offshore Sunday but we had to cancel because of wind. The seas were too rough I am going to try to reschedule again but I don't know if I can get 3 other guys. Anybody interested?

Sargent - Saturday night

I couldn't get a hold of anybody for a last minute fishing trip to Sargent so I went by myself. When I got to the beach the tide was very low and still going out. I did a little surf fishing out of my kayak but I only caught two gafftops on a spoon. Late in the afternoon I went to the cut hoping to find trout in the outgoing tide but the cut was only knee to waist deep. I fished it for an hour and then went back to the surf and put out two surf rods. There was some weed but it wasn't bad. I casted two chunks of mullet into the second gut and started to get ready for the night. While looking for my lantern my Daiwa takes off. I hadn't heard that sweet sound in a while! My other rod starts bouncing and then slacks up while I'm working on the first fish. It turns out to be a very fat red. After a clean release I ran over to my other rod and found that there was another heavy fish on but it didn't have the same fight. It turns out this red was gut-hooked even though I was using circle hooks. I cut the leader and held it upright in the water until it was barely able to swim off. It is probably crab food but I just don't enjoy eating them very much.

The rest of the night was slow so I drank some beers and quit around midnight. At 0530 the locals started showing up at the cut. I decided to sleep a little longer before packing up and heading down there. Then I decided to make some coffee and throw lures in the cut for a while. Finally I decided to join the crowd on the sand bar at the mouth of the cut. It turns out that the everyone had been slaying big trout for about an hour before I got there. The feeding frenzy started before the sun came up and only lasted an hour. I saw some really nice stringers of trout. SHIT!!!