My 10 year old daughter Kaitlyn and I have been working on getting her first deer or hog for two years now and things finally aligned. She’s sat with me on numerous stands, duck hunts and dove hunts since she was 5 but only the last two years has carried a rifle. After school on Tuesday and Wednesday we did some more shooting at the range and both her and her brother were shooting the deer rifles well. Thursday after school was to be the day.
Practice makes perfect
(Kaitlyn with a NEF 243 and Casey working with a Marlin 30-30)
Thursday: Immediately after school she jumped into her hunting clothes and before we left we reviewed some game cam photos of deer and hog and discussed shot placement with the theme “aim small miss small”. She’s got it figured out.
On the two-man stand we had strong NE winds and we watched a couple of squirrels running around with not much happening but just prior to sunset we had a small boar come in and mill around. Through the binocs right at 40 yards I could see that on its left side it had some kind of stomach wound with intestines exposed hanging out the side in a 4 inch ball. By then Kaitlyn had the gun up and we whispered back and forth about shot placement and I reminded her about “aim small miss small”. With Kaitlyn waiting for a clear broadside shot I was watching through the binocs when she shot but was so startled by it I didn’t see the hit. It ran off crashing through the brush, became silent for a second, and then crashed around some more then silence.
Before we climbed down I asked Kaitlyn where she thought the shot went and she said “just behind the shoulder”. With that we climbed down and went to the area where the boar was standing. I did not see blood but did find a small amount of wet white material. Kaitlyn pointed out a tiny 2 millimeter fleck of blood which was pink and watery and I wondered if it was from the intestine wound it already had. With no other blood sign but a bit more of white material I was thinking that she may have hit further back and we were dealing with a gut shot. On hands and knees using a headlight I could only track it for 15 yards before I lost all sign which at this point was only white stomach matter. With darkness setting in we did a quick search in the woods looking for the hog but decided to leave it alone and return in the morning to look for it.
Friday morning: It was 46 degrees as I hit the trail again and spent about 45 minutes on hands and knees trying to figure out the trail leaving tissue paper at each of the signs. With a clear direction of its run I started working ahead. About 20 yards from the last sign of white material and a single hog track I found the first hint of blood and then after that the blood sign just opened up!
Blood trail
From there it was a no brainer tracking the hog as the blood trail become enormous. It seemed crazy that up to this point there was only a single 2 millimeter fleck of blood and now 60 yards away it’s just pouring out.
About 25 yards further lay Kaitlyn’s first hog piled up!
First Hog!
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
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