Gave 'em the shaft

The morning was uneventful, not surprising as the moon was not behaving the way I wanted it to. Aaah but the evening, nights are always the best. Something about nature’s cruel trickery which goes back to the days before man harnessed fire and found a way to put in a small glass container. Dark is final. The morning hunts are only limited by our lack of patients, and those with the patients to stay afield till evening are limited by the same. Ironic how the last half hour is almost endued to be the most productive thirty minutes of a day; the celebration of sundown. Midday will offer a few surprises to those eager enough to witness such things, but the twilight is the great wicker horn which holds the cornucopia of nature’s tasty critters. That’s when this story occurs.

Approximately 7:15 in the PM the day of the bow opener, I was hung to the side of a plantation pine in East Texas, watching a few does nip at some new growth in a fresh cut timber windrow; a gentle and occasional breeze set me to swaying side to side, comforting. Does know everything at least thirty seconds before the rest of the world becomes aware. They broke to an alert position, stomped, and bolted from the scene. Being no rookie to the art of doe-watchin, I picked up my bow and readied myself, mental check list; fundamentals of shooting and mechanical schematics, ranges, and drop charts flew through my mind like the tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz. All is well, confidence is high and that is the most important part. Then is happens, like a nature show on PBS about Ants of the Amazon, pigs everywhere, for lack of a better word, swarming. The primary direction was dictated by the larger of the two sows, but the lead was constantly changing as the little ones seemed to have more energy than bearing. The two sows had recently birthed a huge litter each, close to forty pocket-poodle sized rats cut a swath through the underbrush pausing momentarily to push their noses under piles of pine needles or the occasional Black Jack leaf to root out whatever it was that caught the attention of their snout.

Now at full draw they pass directly under me. I hate this shot, when left with nothing else, take it…but there is always something better. Experience at the hand of previous failure tells me to wait, I listen. It is always easier to heed your own advice than someone else’s.

The first time this type of shot presented itself, I was very green to the world of bow hunting, I took the shot and it worked; Hammer of Thor style. This fostered confidence and to some extent arrogance. But put your self in them shoes, you make a notoriously difficult shot, center punch the spine and drive the broad head through the center of the pump after bisecting a pair of lungs, anchoring a fat doe to the ground with your point buried in the dirt and your quarry skewered in place, fletchings sticking out, dry, like a flag raised in conquest. Makes you confident, maybe overconfident, and maybe even supercilious. But when the pendulum swings back…the next two times I tried this shot I missed, once because the arrow fell off the string, that will knock the haughtiness right out of you.

Back to the shot… so I wait. At 22yds the optimal broadside shot presented itself. The rest happens pretty fast, a better story to be told than typed. There is honestly a lot lost in translation between thought and the written word, some sort of typegeist I assume, a ghost in the keyboard if you will. Often it limits the flowery vernacular due to spelling and stifles the creativity due to brevity. However the largest threshold is dictated by the perimeter in which my thoughts, memory, and typing speed all overlap. The result is often cliff notes of the way a story should be told. But it seems I digress, back to the shot.

Pigs keep their pumps a little farther forward than deer do so it pays to wait for them to open the pocket when trying to run an arrow through one, that’s where I was, waiting for that front leg to move…there it is. I watched the fletches disappear in the blackness and commotion ensues. Chaos. I don’t remember doing it, by my recollection, I shot and was instantaneously at full draw with a fresh arrow scouring for the shot, no time had elapsed, so I tell the story as such. From my perch my options are limited; if I can’t em see I can’t shoot em. Views of the fleeing hogs were obstructed by objects both near and far and to compound it, the scurrying of forty or so rats in the mix overwhelms the senses like looking at one of those pictures in which some people claim they can see some obscure image of Gandhi on a pogo stick or Joseph Stalin eating fried chicken, whatever, they don’t work for me. But they will make you dizzy and being dizzy in a tree some twenty feet off the ground is more than not good. I concentrate on the sow not painting the forest floor and find my shot. Dang that seems like a long way. Mental math and release…archery equipment does not afford the shooter the audible impact report, yea that whump sound that gunpowder will give, so I was not positive. She was moving at a good clip and by my eye forty-five yards out and doing the opposite of getting closer. I held about three to five inches high and swung the bow to follow her for the shot, my release was silk, but you question yourself. The shot was through an opening in the trees about four yards from my position and then through a larger opening in the trees that unlucky sow was running through. Double lunger pass through. Twenty yards from the frothy-pink arrow she piled up, hard: a furrow in the dirt about ten inches long stood as testament.

Two sows in probably about fifteen seconds, upon gutting I discovered the first had a beautiful trihedral wound through the center of the pump, a tribute to patience. The runner had a similar infliction through the front lower quadrant of the lungs.

A good haul of meat as they went about 175 and 125 pounds. As for the rats, coyotes gotta eat too.