Cowboy up! Oklahoma hogs and Missouri Coyotes

This week the guys cover Andrew’s recent trip to the Missouri and Oklahoma. While on the trip, Andrew was able to take advantage of a night of coyote hunting with the boys from the Missouri Woods and Water podcast.  Nate, Andy, and Micah took him out and showed him a good time in the Show Me State. They spent the entire night out running around using thermal optics and calls to bring the coyotes to the table.

The majority of the show covers the Oklahoma extravaganza, where John Hudspeth from the Oklahoma Outdoors podcast, Nick Otto from the Huntavore podcast, and Dan Mathews from the Nomadic Outdoorsman podcast took a crack at some hogs. Dan struck first, but they all had some down by the end of the night.  Another late-night session with a lot of opportunities. Key take home about hogs: THEY ARE TOUGH.

Around the state some news of interest includes updates at the Delaware Wildlife shooting area, New K-9’s on the job, Walleye fishing in the state, and more.

Have a great week and enjoy the O2 if you get out into Ohio’s great Outdoors!

www.theo2podcast.com

Andrew Muntz: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? Welcome back to the oh two podcast. Paul and Andrew are here tonight. Tonight. I don't know where you're at this morning, but we're here and we're bringing you the latest up to date, the

Paul Campbell: best Damn Ohio podcast so you can get your hands on slash yours. You heard it here. That's we you heard it here.

Tur Turkey Killer Coyote Killer. Bore Killer. Ah, I guess no, no Turkeys for you. Bore Killer Coyote. Killer Andrew Munz back home from your Western swing,

Andrew Muntz: man. Yeah, it was quite the trip. And I guess we'll get into that here in a second. Part of, the main part of our show is gonna be talking about that actually the show we recorded down at camp in Oklahoma.

So I will save some of those [00:01:00] details, but we'll get into that here in a minute. Let's see. You wanna hit the sponsors real quick, Paul? Yeah, man.

Paul Campbell: Time to go wild.com. Thanks to those guys for the support of our show. Wonderful social school community platform based around hunters and anglers in this country.

Andrew time to go wild.com. Download on Apple and or Android. Find us on there. STO two search. Paul Campbell. A ton of cool pictures up right now. A ton of people talking about Turkey season, all sorts of stuff going on go wild. You've heard us talk about 'em. I'm amazed at the number of oh two podcast listeners that reach out to me.

On. Go wild. It's awesome every week. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Great. Thanks so much for doing that means means the world to us. So

Andrew Muntz: download it and then pretty soon here on Go Wild, they do have their shopping application. You'll be able to find X Vision. So another one of our partners and X Vision is the thermal night Vision optics [00:02:00] group.

Exhibition optics.com. But, and binoculars and regular stuff. Yep. They all kinds of stuff there. We'll talk more about it, but my, I just got back from that trip and use that thermal for some of the most off the wall. I don't wanna say off the wall. It sounds bad. N new to me, it was new to me.

Hunting, right? Hunting literally all night long. Literally all night long. Something that was never, I never crossed my mind before. But I did it a couple times and it was awesome. Not possible without having that, that ts 200 scope and being able to see what was out in front of you in the fields.

And so

Paul Campbell: When you were out there, what what'd you gear up in first light wise?

Andrew Muntz: Because it was warm.

Paul Campbell: Yeah. But then it would get cool when the sun goes down, I'm

Andrew Muntz: sure. So first of all, light wise I when, as in Missouri, it got cold that night, it got cold. So I started off super comfortable.

I think I had my origin hoodie on. I had my ca and then my catalyst system. By the end of the night it was [00:03:00] chilly. That was a little bit of a tough one. I probably could have layered, taken another layer with me if I was smart, but I never think that far ahead. I also had no idea I was gonna be out till four o'clock in the morning hunting.

But so that did get a little chilly. But for the, 90% of that hunt, it was completely comfortable. We were a lot of in and out of the truck. So it was. Durable and just flexes and all that kinda stuff. So to totally on board with that. That was great. Camo didn't really matter out there, Paul, but you'd be happy to hear I was wearing my Spectre

Paul Campbell: yeah, boy.

And you were also shooting an a beautiful AR 10 that you purchased where Andrew

Andrew Muntz: from? Midwest Unwork. So Cameron. Oh Cameron. And the boys helped us there. To get set up with six five Creedmore Adams arms ar 10. Man, that thing shot like a dream. I've never been a great shooter. I think I overthink things.

I know I overthink things and I tend to, I don't know, probably lose accuracy, trigger happy, whatever. [00:04:00] It's just the wave my life is. But with that gun, I was more accurate than any other gun I've shot. Shout out to Cameron and the boys for getting us lined up with that. And Midwest

Paul Campbell: Gun works.com, Ohio Outdoors.

Five, save yourself 5% off of the purchase of gun ammo. All sorts of crazy stuff on there. Parts, everything. Yes

Andrew Muntz: sir. And then I need to get, oh, what's that?

Paul Campbell: See, I need to get, I need to get an AR 10 like

Andrew Muntz: you got. Come on. We'll

Paul Campbell: talk about that. Yeah. And I needed to do it, Cameron, for listen, let's talk

Andrew Muntz: the finally, we've got half rack, half-rack.com and we appreciate those guys and all their support.

They got that, oh, what is it called? The Hunter Hanger System. Yep. Hunter Hanger

Paul Campbell: System. Just hung one gonna put mine up. I've got 'em downstairs. I'm just trying to find like the perfect spot to hang my archery equipment

Andrew Muntz: from. I hung my boat today from it. So as I was unpacking, did you, from the trip, I pulled that hunter hanger out and screwed it in the wall.

Super easy, very classy looking. [00:05:00] Lots of other great stuff from those guys and we look forward to. I'm bringing you more information from them, so very good. All right, so let's hit a couple news items real quick. Paul. We got man construction to begin at the Delaware Wildlife Area shooting range. So real quick, they are going to be updating and some of the safety baffles and target positions for their 100 yard lanes up there in Delaware.

So let's, that's a cool, that's a nice

Paul Campbell: facility. If you listen and you haven't been up there,

Andrew Muntz: check it out. It's beautiful. So it's gonna change some of the hours starting April 12th. And this is gonna last up for about 12 weeks. Let's see the new schedule for the wildlife, Delaware Wildlife Area shooting range during the construction period.

It'll be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, nine to five. The 100 yard range will remain closed. The looks like the whole range itself will be closed Monday through Thursday, and that includes all shotgun rifle and [00:06:00] pistol ranges. The archery range will remain open daily from sunrise to sunset. We've got a couple new wildlife officers, so Caitlin Perry of Athens has been assigned to Noble County.

So congratulations to Caitlin. And then we've got Officer Nick Oliver of Delaware has been assigned to Champaign County, so he'll be moving out that way. Congratulations to you. We've got Ohio State Forest bridal trails and a p v areas are reopening. April looks like the bridal trails reopened on April 1st, and the a p V areas will reopen on April 7th.

So go ahead and check those out. Make sure you. If you want more information, check out Odn R'S website. This is one Paul I think I can actually relate to pretty heavily. Lake Erie continues to have a historic run of excellent fishing. So we talked about this [00:07:00] on our show. I think we did, but basically that, or I know we wrote articles about it, right?

For go while. But the walleye

Paul Campbell: fishing. Yeah, the walleye fishing been

Andrew Muntz: phenomenal. There has been unbelievable. The purchase stable, but the walleye is on fire right now and it looks like it's gonna keep going. So this is something to take into consideration as it's what, April 3rd today we are ga getting closer to the summer days.

It was nice out today. It makes you think about it. Take a look at booking a charter. This summer. Get a couple guys, gals, whatever, go up to the lake. There's great charters up there. Find a place to a captain to take you out and enjoy a few hours out on the water. It might be better now than it's ever been for the walleye fishing.

Paul Campbell: Yeah, definitely. I can't wait to get up there and do some more walleye fishing this summer. I had a blast the two or three times that I was able to go out last year. Caught some huge small mouth. Also, so man, lake Erie is, it is a true [00:08:00] treat for Ohio outdoor

Andrew Muntz: anglers.

Absolutely. Finally we've got some impressive pups graduating from the O D N R Canine Academy. A group of dogs ready to go to work. And let's see here. Five pups endured more than 300 hours of training to meet certification standards set by the Ohio Peace Office Training Commission. We've got a little picture here.

The CLA graduating class includes Ember, a one year old Dutch Shepherd who will join OD n r Natural Resource Officer Jeremy Berger in pet patrolling state parks in northwest Ohio. Paul, I don't you, have you ever had a dog? I know you don't have a dog now, but have you ever had a dog? Yes. All right. 300 hours of training.

I can't get my dog to pay attention for 30 seconds, let alone

Paul Campbell: three hours. So that's not even the ob obedience training, that's just the, like the job training that dog has to go through.

Andrew Muntz: That's insane. Yeah. [00:09:00] I couldn't even do 300 hours of the training. Oh, man. Hold on a second. I gotta figure this out.

Yeah, man. That's 12 and a half. 12, 12 and a half days of training straight. Is that what it is? That's what it comes up

Paul Campbell: to be. Yeah. Good job. Did, do they have the names of the dogs in the article?

Andrew Muntz: Just Ember. Ember.

Paul Campbell: Okay. The other four, they didn't. Okay. If I was naming a dog, there's gonna be a cop dog.

I would name it like biscuit or something like that. So that when some dude's like running through, the woods after poaching Bunch Deer. I'm like, get him

Andrew Muntz: biscuit.

John Hudspeth: Oh I just wanna,

Andrew Muntz: I

Paul Campbell: want that guy to be like, did he just say biscuit and then just

Andrew Muntz: biscuit's, mall's ass. He goes to prison. They're like, which officer got you biscuit.

Paul Campbell: Oh, biscuit. That's mean. Some bitch right there. You

Andrew Muntz: got me too, man. You got

Paul Campbell: me too. Oh God. Old biscuit cop [00:10:00] dog. If you if you're listening and you know of a cop dog named Biscuit, Or Buttercup or something like that, please let us know. Tag us in social

Andrew Muntz: media posts. Yes. Speaking of that I did wanna give one shout out to Brandon Allen, or maybe it's Alan Brandon, or maybe that's not his name at all, but he gave us a very nice review in which he learned about us.

Go wild. So shout out to you Brandon. Brandon, thanks for listening. Yep. Appreciate it. Paul, have you Yeah, man, been up to anything out, out in the great of outdoors?

Paul Campbell: You know what, no I'm leaving for Alabama Easter night, so that'll be fun going, doing a little Turkey hunting down there just for two days.

That'd be a quick turnaround and go down. Parker McDonald and I are gonna meet up. That'll be awesome. Do some Yeah, man. Do some hunting with the Woodhaven fellas. I don't know, man, I, youve just been working and recovering. I was sick as a dog for as soon as I got back I was sick.

I was miserable

Nick Otto: yeah.

Paul Campbell: But as far as I haven't done anything. I went, hiking with the family The other day we went to Lob del Reserve and Alexandria, so that was pretty neat. But yeah, man, hunting [00:11:00] wise or scouting wise? No, I haven't done anything, so I'm just ready to get back after Turkey

Andrew Muntz: hunt.

So it's tough. Life gets in the way sometimes of the fun, it does,

Paul Campbell: man. And it's like with deer season, it's such a long season. If you're a bow hunter, it starts September and runs all the way to free in February Turkey season. If you're, if you are just hunting Ohio, which I've only just started hunting other states in the last, handful of years, regularly hunting other states.

It's just a short season. It's four weeks and you wanna maximize those four weeks. Yep. Gotta get what you doing. Yeah, man. Yeah. And there were times when I was on the golf course or, I would be Turkey outta my phone. I look at my phone, there's 40 phone calls. It's just like why do I even try?

Andrew Muntz: Totally get that. Oh,

Paul Campbell: yeah. Yeah, you do. No, man, I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to ours. Dude, we're, it's April man, we are what, 19 days? Yep. From opener. Here in Ohio. Man, I couldn't, I c I can't tell you how excited am for that, so I didn't get any of the draws, so whatever.

Neither did I. Yeah, it's a couple buddies. Got [00:12:00] some. So that's cool. Hopefully if you're listening you got some man. I really hope some. Our listeners got some looking forward to it. Check out my How To Hunt Turkeys podcast. Shameless plug, if you wanna hear some really

Andrew Muntz: cool Turkey talk.

Do you wanna know who pulled a Lake lasu in Who? Our old buddy, the slayer of the Northwest.

Paul Campbell: Oh, B Hall, gage Hall. Gage Hall. Oh, gage. I got on accent for you, buddy. You just let me know where you're at. He's ready. So

Andrew Muntz: yeah, what a place. All right, so today, let me, let's just talk about this real quick. Our episode this week is coming from the Oklahoma camp and John Huk, our buddy down there, invited some of us down to do some hog hunting and you'll hear all about that.

Specifically the Oklahoma side of things. It was great. The part you don't hear about. So we were down there basically, I think I got down there Thursday. We went out scouted and basically took a look at the whole property, which is really cool. It was like [00:13:00] 1100 acre cattle ranch, working cattle ranch, which added a whole nother like level of, I don't wanna say difficulty, just different d dynamic.

Because as you're scrolling, like throughout the night you're seeing cows and calves, all these cows have just had calves. So there's smaller calves and you're trying to decide, is that like a pig? Is that a calf, is that a coyote? Look, what are we looking at here? Through, through the thermal.

But I will say the X vision optics, like there was a couple times where I had to really, if they were far off, I had to really pay attention to what I was always paying attention, but really had to stop and say couple extra seconds to, yeah what are we looking at here? But yeah, outside of that, it was that was really awesome.

But you don't hear about Saturday night because the recording, we did Saturday midday and here's what happened Saturday night. Andrew goes out to his [00:14:00] blind spot, gets dropped off, and I, as we were going out, my stomach had been like cramping a little bit and I wasn't really quite sure what it was, but it was about 80 some, 82 degrees down there.

So it was warm inside of blind. You didn't really want to have the windows too open because you don't, the pigs can smell you pretty well. But I ended up losing my lunch. I think I got food poisoned out of the side of the blind or something. Yes. All of a sudden I did not care about any scent, smell, vision, vision, anything.

I didn't care because I was sick. So my night got cut way short. I ended up going back. I had, I was gonna try to stick it out until dark and eventually I had to call John and say, Hey man, I gotta get outta. And we didn't even get off the property. And I was back on the side of the road tossing cookies.

That wasn't really a fun way to end the trip. And then trying to, get comfortable and I ended up sleeping on the floor dry heaving all night just to get up at five, 6:00 AM get going out the door [00:15:00] back, come back home, man. What a rough turnaround. That was not the highlight of the trip.

Yeah. But that night, Nick Otto from the Hunt Board Podcast, he did take a nice boar. So that was exciting for him. And then yeah, I didn't, I got to see it hanging from the tree when I left the next morning, but I didn't really get to partake in any of that fun stuff. So congratulations to Nick.

You'll hear about the rest of the Friday night, which was really, it was a lot of fun. It was a blast, and Dan Matthews came down and joined us. Oh, we ran around and, I don't know, threw some lead at some pigs and we got a few. And the whole thing was just amazing. The pigs are and I think we talk about this in the podcast, but anybody who was is from the north, or if you not experience those pigs, they are unbelievable and destructive and aggressive and everywhere and just that is out of control, man.

And there is somebody that's [00:16:00] running a ranch like this, he's at the mercy of these things and to have a few,

Paul Campbell: John's put pictures up on Instagram where there's 75 pigs

Andrew Muntz: in a feeder. When Dan Matthews had him come into his blind, the first ni or that night, and it was like a stampede of them coming out of the woods and he kept telling us, I can hear 'em in the woods.

I can hear 'em in the. And as we're sitting there in the blinds and then it was his video, like all of a sudden they just decided to descend on this feeder and it was almost frightening. Just not something that we see in Ohio. Yeah, that was interesting. But let's talk, I wanna talk about the Missouri Hunt.

So on my way down, I stop down and met up with Andy and Micah and Nate from the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast. And those guys were gracious enough to take me out for an evening of coyote hunting, which you don't really have to twist their arm because that's their thing, man. And those guys are very good at it.

They had some really great connections around, I don't know if it was the county or kind of the area for properties to go out and call dogs. [00:17:00] I had no idea what to expect. Micah let me borrow his suppressor. So that was that was cool. It was the first time I was ever really shooting a suppressed gun.

And it made a world of a difference in the whole big scheme of things. But it was Micah, Andy and Nate and I, Nate came down, he'd all the way from Chicago. He'd had a work meeting, drove like nine hours, got there right in time to go hops in the truck, away we go. And the whole thing is really we left Andy's house.

He was gracious, fed us this big steak dinner. I was almost ready to fall asleep after that because my belly was full. But we stopped at Casey's general store, which is Missouri, Illinois type thing. We got a few of 'em running around Ohio. But the we had to caffeinate up and I wasn't quite sure what to do.

But I got a big coffee because that's my thing. And I needed every ounce of it. And we went out to the first property and they told me going into it like, we're not going to. Probably see a ton of dogs, cuz they're about, [00:18:00] they're all d they're denning, they're d up because they're about to have their pups, so there's just not as much activity.

But in Missouri, there is a thermal season or a night hunting season that went until April 1st. So they were like, let's go, it's, it might not be the best time, but our season's almost up basically. So we went out, called for, at the first property, nothing. I think we went to the second property.

Nothing. I don't remember how many properties we went to until we came upon our first dogs. Now we started hearing 'em as the night went on, they got louder and louder. And all of this is such a weird dynamic to me. A going out at dark and getting home. Dawn is way different than normal hunting, right?

So when you go out for deer, it's the other way around. Yeah. One of the other things, like Andy said he's killed almost 50 dogs this year, and one of their other buddies was over a [00:19:00] hundred. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, if there's, they've killed 150 dogs, then that's crazy. It's incredible.

There can't be that many left, right? Nope. That place was loaded and there might have been more coyotes down in Oklahoma, to be honest with you, but they're still, they were out there hauling and you'd see 'em and they were everywhere. But we, I don't know which, how long we were at it, honestly.

I thought maybe we'd be at like three or four properties for for the night. And I thought maybe we'd be done by midnight. One o'clock in the morning. Nope. We just kept going, man. Andy kept going to the next spot. He had all these permissions and, sorry Andy, I don't know if I'm supposed to tell that, say that, but.

It's what we did. And we get to this one field, we pull up, we get out of the truck, we go walking into the field. And now this whole time they're scanning. And these boys, man, they've got setups. If anybody, if your wife is listening, you might wanna turn this off real quick. [00:20:00] We're talking like $10,000 setups.

Okay. They, if you add in the gun, the tripods, the thermal, the suppressors, all this kind of stuff. Unreal. And I thought bow hunting was expensive, right? To get your bow where it need to be, not like coyote hunting. So the whole time, like you walk up to the field, I'll try to run you through what this looked like.

Nate had, I think Nate had a scanner. But then everybody else, and Micah had one too. Everybody else had their, I had my scope up and we're just kinda like looking across the field, is there anything out there right off the bat? And because it's dark, they can't see you and you can creep up along the side of the way.

So you, if you didn't see anything initially and the fields are hilly and wavy, so you gotta walk, 50 yards to scan again, walk up 50 yards, scan again. And then we got up to the one field and there was two dogs out in the middle, so we got set up or maybe there's just one [00:21:00] out there and they start hitting the calls and now they've got the call box.

I have a call box, but I don't really know what to do with it. So I was trying to pay attention to what they were using. And there's like animals in distress, there's young pup calls, there's aggressive barks and hows and all this different stuff. And they had a formula of what they were gonna run through to try to make.

Get these dogs to react. I still can't tell you what it was, but we get out to this field where you can see the dog out there. They start, I don't know, say rabbit and distress, something like that. It's not doing anything, not really doing anything. Then we see a couple other ones off in the distance.

They start hitting something more, much more aggressive. It was a real aggressive just a herd of Banes going off and something triggered those two dogs to just come running in and it was like they were out there mouthing or screwing around with each other. Next thing you know, they're coming hard and it's it what an adrenaline rush.

[00:22:00] When all of a sudden these things basically stop and look at you and just start bolting right in your direction and you're watching them fast, real fast. It's completely dark out, but when you put your eye up to that scope and you can see them coming, it's oh boy, here it comes. So these two dogs are coming, running in, and I'm gonna try to put some of these clips up on Go Wild or Instagram or something.

But these two dogs are running in and I'm watching 'em. I then, I lose 'em in one of these like little dips in the field and the whole time along, there's three of us in a line. You have to be real careful about how you're swinging and all that kind of stuff, which you're basically in constant communication with everybody around you.

I was gonna take the one on the right because I was on the far right? And these guys wanted me to get a dog. But they're coming in. Then you disappear and then all of a sudden Andy's 130 yards to the right, Andrew. Get 'em, and I swing my gun over and here's this dog just sitting there 130 yards away, right?

Like [00:23:00] basically watching. Coyote, not dog

Paul Campbell: coyote. Just so we're clear, sorry

Andrew Muntz: to the people I said song dog. Coyote. Yeah, coyote. There's a coyote sitting right there. So I scroll over to him, I'm like, oh man, he is like right there now looking through the thermal, I think that you can get range finder accessories added onto it or whatever.

I didn't ha, I don't think I had that either that, or I wasn't smart enough to figure it out. But I like, here we go, boom, down goes the dog, coyote down goes coyote, sorry. And my heart, like I was just, I was ecstatic man. That, that was incredible. But then the other thing is you still got these other two out here running around.

So then one of 'em ends up sitting down again and I think Nate let off after that one. And so through the thermal, I can see the dirt hit the ground, psh throws up. And I almost got a shot at that one. But he ended up taking up that field, I think ended up having four or five different coyotes out there.

That we threw some lead at and then decided that it [00:24:00] was time to move on. But even at that as we were walking out, there's still a pack of 'em howling off in the woods on the far field line. If we'd really wanted to, maybe we had called 'em back in, but whatever. As we went on, we had a couple other encounters, no shots.

Then there's one point rail late in the night, and I think it's probably about 2 45, 3 o'clock at this point. We're sitting at one property and we hear dogs. I don't know if directionally this is right, but Dogs of the South or coyotes of the south, coyotes of the north, basically both. They both sounded, they're about half mile away, or at least in my brain.

So we look at each other, we're like, okay, where, which direction do you wanna go North or south? So we went up the road to the next property to the north. We sat there in this swale and they were calling and calling and hitting that same aggressive thing, trying to see what we get.

I kid you not, of course this is how it works. I don't [00:25:00] know. We were, maybe we were there for a half hour. I turned, I looked at Nate and I said you're ready to call tonight. At that point I was freezing and as soon as I said that, Micah goes, there's a coyote up a hill, and I, we all look over to the right and this one had just peeked over the top and you can see his white hair.

I had the white hot on peaks over the top, then continues to come down and work his way around. He's like circling downwind to this call. He gets, eventually gets stopped. And the amount of time that you have it's incredible. If you go back and watch a video, it's like he stops. And I remember it in the moment, Nate's like, all right, here we go.

3, 2, 1, boom. And we dropped him another 150 yard shot or so, and he had multiple gunshots in him when we got up to him. But so there are a couple of us hit 'em and, yeah, smoke show, man. So we ended up with two coyotes and I don't, I don't know enough [00:26:00] about 'em, but those guys were examining kind of their teeth and stuff for age.

And they said both of these were very old males. And looking at the teeth, they're gross, man. Like they're wore down. They're all whittled down rotten. Like they, they look like they've been fighting for years. So whatever they were calling with that night, Must have been something to really get the aggressive old males out.

And it seemed to work. And especially as the night went on, sometimes at least in the deer woods, you have times of more activity and less activity. Definitely a night or as the night went on, we got more activity going. So we got back about 3 45 or something, about four o'clock, laid my head down and go to bed once we got some pictures taken.

But that was an awesome adventure, man.

Paul Campbell: What a, what an experience. I wanna do the, I wanna do the night hunting. I really do. I wanna try that out. I don't know if summer's a good time, just cause of the crops are up and there's food everywhere. I don't know. [00:27:00]

Andrew Muntz: So I'm willing to try in talking to those guys.

They said they're gonna be, there's a big lull right as they're denning and they have the pups, but there's al almost like a light switch turns on in the spring where they all of a sudden they'll be back out and they'll be more aggressive than they've ever been. They start getting real territorial of the pups and yeah, I learned a lot from just being around him.

And I've told you before, I'm a, I'm a, I gotta do something to really understand how it works, so that's exactly what I needed, was to get out and see it. And you're, freaking amazing. I'm contemplating going in my backyard tonight. Do it. Send some pictures. I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep.

Paul Campbell: Don't be shooting

Andrew Muntz: dachshunds or anything. No. I will not be doing that tonight because I need to get sleep. There you go.

Paul Campbell: Good deal, man. I can't wait to listen to the Hog Hunting podcast. And what a story from the Missouri trip, man. What a group of guys

Andrew Muntz: to hunt with.

So it was a great crew and I appreciate [00:28:00] Nate, Mike, Andy. Thank you. And yeah, if anybody else wants to hear, if you wanna hear more about coyote hunting, those guys have a library of episodes all over the place on that stuff, so Yeah. Yeah, they do. But with that good stuff, Paul, where can we find us?

Paul Campbell: Instagram is the oh two podcast.

You can find the oh two Podcast on Go Wild by May. Paul Campbell, 3 22 Paul dot Turkey season. On TikTok talk's been popping off the last couple of weeks. All those Turkey videos I've been getting, man, people are loving that. So good stuff. Leave us a review, appreciate the one we just got. Thank you so much.

Brandon. Yeah man, we love doing the show. Love reaching out when you guys reach out to us. Thank you so much for this port. Really

Andrew Muntz: means a ton to us. The oh two podcast.com. And yeah, if nothing else, Paul, we'll be back next week. We gotta do

Paul Campbell: some Turkey talking. [00:29:00] We do. If you want to hear Turkey talk just search how to hunt Turkeys.

It's my show on the Sportsmans Empire. That's been really good. Just really the episode this week is Alex Rutledge from from Missouri Old school, Turkey Honor. So dude's, awesome.

Andrew Muntz: Great episode. We'll get some more on here as well, but yeah man we'll talk to you soon and take care everybody appreciate you.

See, you guys

John Hudspeth: do way better on their own. Yeah, we actually, we had them down to our other property. Yeah. To check it up. We were like I was one that was years ago. Yeah. I was one of their first clients. Cause I had met them when they still worked for Grant Woods. Yeah. And so when they split off on their own, they were way cheaper than, obviously.

Yes. And Yeah, we were one of their first consultants. They're cool guys. I just like riding around with 'em. Yeah, so

Nick Otto: they are cool. Man, just like the early days of that growing deer [00:30:00] tv. That's just so cool. Yeah. Like I would tune in weekly for that. Yeah. That's just neat.

Andrew Muntz: I think we're good to go.

Luke's got some time constraints, so we'll get going here. What's up guys?

Nick Otto: I tell you what, it's a lot is going on right now. I know you were gonna say not much. Oh no. There is much.

Andrew Muntz: Yep. Going on. My body isn't shock. Yeah, I just took a shower for the first time in two days and it felt great. But man, my sleep rhythm's off and everything else, but we're down here in Oklahoma, right? So yeah, we've got Nick Otto from the hunt de war Nick. Hey everybody. And then we've got John Huk from the Oklahoma outdoorsman. What's going on folks? And Luke Hutz Smith. Howdy John's brother. If you guys have followed along at all, like we've been I've been alluding to my going to.

Oklahoma and we're doing a little hog hunting down here to help on the farm. So this is it. This is what is it? Saturday afternoon. We're gonna go out to this evening. Last night we had a wild ride. We'll talk about that in a second. But the I don't know where do we wanna start?

I [00:31:00] tell you, let's talk about, let's talk about water hunting. Yes. Pigs hogs, big ones, tanks, little ones

Nick Otto: and little ones. Humpies still,

John Hudspeth: Still had spots all still. Sometimes the little ones are the funnest ones. Yeah.

Nick Otto: This unfortunate little one. He, he took it right there in the bread basket.

Yeah. I think unintentionally. I think we were all aiming at something else and he was just, yeah. He took it right in the belly, but at the same time, he'll, real

John Hudspeth: good. Some people feel bad for the little ones and stuff, but living here with them. Like this is an extermination thing. That's what I've been telling these guys since they got here.

I was like I know it sounds bad, but like ethics are. Somewhat out of the, you stopped feeling bad for him real fast.

Andrew Muntz: Honestly, but when we got down here, when I got down here on Thursday, John and I went driving around the pasture and stuff, and so we're on like an 1100 acre the party y'all were hunting yesterday about 1100 acres cattle farm.

And it's a working ranch. And for I know central Ohio, boy, this is something I have never seen before. But the damage those pigs do on that farm is [00:32:00] unbelievable. Yeah. And it's nonstop all night long. We saw that last night, but, yeah.

John Hudspeth: So I live here and run the ranch and we were talking just before we started recording that it's nothing.

We've had times where we've had to not cut hay on, what, probably 50 to a hundred acres. Because we were just gonna tear our equipment up. Once you're running across that pasture, once your head hits the top of the tractor so many times, like you, you're done. Yeah. Turn

Andrew Muntz: it down. Huh? The That's crazy.

Yeah. They'll, they're just tearing everything up. What and what are they out there eating? Roots?

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Roots, bugs, grubs, worms. There's little scavengers. Yeah. They'll eat a little bit of everything. If you have a dead animal, like if we have a lose a calf or something, they, it's not unheard of them to for them to come eat that they're obs so they eat to eat everything.

They actually prefer stuff that's buried. So when you first plant something the guys that grow corn, we don't grow corn here. But we have had it, like we out the window, this wheat [00:33:00] pasture, we we've, we probably, we only lost about 10 acres of the wheat, but like right after they, we planted, you could see where they'll just stick their.

Their nose right in that row, and they'll just eat up. They'll just walk down there and eat every single seed outta the ground. It looks like the field has just been plowed. Yeah. They literally, they find one row and they just go down it and, the next one will find the next row. Yep. And it's crazy.

Andrew Muntz: And you were talking about where they're eating the mano cow manure, so

John Hudspeth: sometimes Yeah. Yeah. We feed our calves, grain and stuff, and of course they go out there in the pasture and poop it out and yeah. The hogs will come and dig through that and eat the grain out of the poop and, yep. Yeah.

That's incredible. And out the trough as we saw last night. Yeah. We saw last

Nick Otto: night just Yeah. Skip the poop. Go right for

John Hudspeth: the ch Yeah. Was used, we used to have crazy creep feeders that we'd feed the calves that are on the cows. And so it's basically a feeder that's got this little cage so the cows can't get in there and eat the feed.

Only the calves can. We quit doing it because all we were doing was feeding pigs. Like the pigs would just run the calves off and [00:34:00] you wanna talk about some easy hunting. They'd be in there in that little caged area. Wouldn't see you coming. You could walk up five feet from 'em, just start laying waist.

It is fun a little bit, but when you start getting the feed bill, you're like, okay, this isn't, this is not working out. So you'd go out there during the day and you'd see all the piglets underneath the feeder, like in the, like using it as shade. Yeah. And they'd just be sitting there chilling.

Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Oh gosh. The the crazy part for me is that I've always heard that pigs are taken over the south, but I didn't really understand to what degree it's this insane. And even Dan was showing us some of the videos from Texas and stuff like that. They're everywhere. And mass herds and we'll talk about Dan.

He had to leave, but the his video from last night when they were coming into his pen, it was a stampede of pigs. Not just like a couple. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: Just, yeah. It's nothing to see groups of 40 or 50, like that's not uncommon at all. Yeah. And I showed y'all some videos on my phone before we went out yesterday of, I just hold my phone in one spot and you just see a whole lot, one [00:35:00] parade, just a parade of them.

And last night with the thermal, we were, we saw them coming outta the woods and it's just like that. And then the Yeah. The video that Dan got just like that, they just following a single file line come out. Yeah. And, they're, y'all know, had some experience. They're not super easy to kill.

Absolutely not. And they're really smart. And I've got stories of just clever things that you've seen 'em do, but they're so many of them, they're not that hard to hunt. Yeah. We can put you, put 'em on, put you on 'em, like almost anytime we want, just, they're just everywhere.

So

Andrew Muntz: it was insane. I was gonna ask from a financial standpoint, like how big of a, an impact does that put on your ranch?

John Hudspeth: It's hard to calculate exactly. Some of the farmers that when they're out there, re having to replant 20 to 30, 40 acres and their seed cost is, a hundred, $150 an acre.

Like they can calculate it pretty closely. It's a little bit harder for us just because the, the grass usually still grows in that spot around that area. It's not like we're losing a ton of great, of grazing [00:36:00] when we have, 40 or 50 acres of hay that we can't cut, that's gonna be two, $300 an acre right there.

So it, there definitely is a financial impact. It's just hard to put a firm number on it. But I would say, at least a couple thousand dollars a year, and stuff like not being able to do certain things like feed those calves that are nursing with their mamas. It's hard to say how much we're losing from not being able to do that.

But it's

Nick Otto: almost like an indirect effect. Very much. Yeah. Whereas they're, yeah, they're not necessarily hurting the cattle at all, but at the same time, with hay Yeah. Where hay prices are, and you get a drought year Yeah. That 40 acres becomes valuable. Yeah. And now you can't even use it.

John Hudspeth: And little things like, not being able to run your horse wide open across the pasture because you're worried about running these hog wallers and your horse falling. It's, just stuff like that. It's just a huge inconvenience more than anything. Yeah. But there definitely is, I would say, just spitballing a couple thousand dollars a year for [00:37:00] us.

And like I said, the corn farmers are the ones that have the big problems and losing thousands of

Andrew Muntz: dollars a year. Are, do you, would you say the hogs are the biggest problem for you on the ranch?

John Hudspeth: The biggest environmental problem. Yeah. The biggest environmental problem.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Cause we saw a lot of coyotes last night too.

That was another one that, and I think you had told us that there was four of 'em had pinned down a calf or something along

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Just two days ago. Yeah. The Obama was still there fending him off and the calf is fine. I don't know how much longer the mama could have kept him away if I hadn't of just randomly been driving by and my dog was with me.

He takes off towards something and I assumed it was a coyote or something. And came around the bend of the creek and I see one running in the off one direction. Then I see another one running off another direction, and then I saw two more and I was like, oh man, good job Charlie.

And then I see this mama cow at the bank of the creek, and she's huffing and puffing. And I was like, and she was acting weird. And [00:38:00] I get out and I look down the creek and it was probably a eight, 10 foot drop, and the calf is sitting down there, and I don't know if the coyotes chased it down there or if off this cliff basically, or if the mama pushed it down there so that she can stay up top and fend them off, but, yeah. I, again, that's another one that's hard to calculate the how many you're losing, especially, in, in the first couple weeks of a calf's life, that's when they're most likely to die of something. And when one does, it doesn't take long for the coyotes to find it.

So you can't say that every calf that's been chewed on by a coyote died because of a coyote. But there, there are some where you're like, oh yeah, that was a kill. Last year I had a calf. We were Calvin and there was a late freeze. And so I was out there early in the morning trying to find any calf that was born to keep it from freezing.

He was literally bringing them into his house. Yeah. This is actually a different freeze. That's another kind of wild story, but Yeah. It's not uncommon to bring them into the house sometimes. [00:39:00] And anyway I saw a calf that had gotten on the wrong side of the fence when they're that little it happens.

Didn't think too much of it. And I was like, oh, I'll finish checking and then I'll come get it back in. And found one that was not doing well. So I grabbed it, brought it back to the house, started taking care of it and stuff, and about two or three hours later I go to take that calf back to it's mama and the calf on the other side of the fence was dead.

And I had seen like four coyotes in that pasture that, when I was out checking and yeah, it got across the fence. Mama couldn't protect it. And, I didn't take care of it right then. That's on me. Yeah. But yeah. So did

Andrew Muntz: you just roll around with a gun, like ready to take these things out or?

John Hudspeth: I'm supposed to. I don't all the time. I've got kids that are riding around with me and so I don't wanna keep a loaded gun in the back. Most people do. And I do pretty often. Yeah. And so the majority I don't do a lot of, coyote hunting. I kill a lot of coyotes just from gun.

Yeah. The nuisance standpoint. Yeah. Out of the [00:40:00] truck window,

Andrew Muntz: man. And there's, when we were out last night, the ho and they were everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. And

John Hudspeth: I think they're cool. I like coyotes. I think they're pretty cool. Yeah. I don't mind putting up with them. I mind putting up with the hogs one.

They're meant to be here. They were always here way before we were they're part of the natural ecosystem. That's cool. There's, some self-regulating stuff there. I just think they're cool. Yeah. I, they get annoying and they definitely take some calves which is a hit to my pocket, but eh, but the pigs, that's the one that, it's a way bigger problem than the coyotes.

Yeah. Yeah. Way bigger and way more annoying. And they're not supposed to be here. This isn't their natural habitat,

Andrew Muntz: do we want to talk about last night's in endeavors? Let's do it. Let's see. Where do we start?

Nick Otto: I'm still trying to relive what it was going on. It was so long.

John Hudspeth: It was a marathon. I'll describe the setup first. This is how

Andrew Muntz: my daughter would do it, though. She would say yesterday, first thing I did is I woke up and then I [00:41:00] came downstairs. Okay. Fast forward. All right. So we had really good crappy for lunch. Okay. I'll throw that in there.

And then what, we went out about four o'clock.

Yeah,

John Hudspeth: I think so. Yeah, about four o'clock. And had all my feeders running, got them running a few weeks ago, get the pot, the pigs used to it. I have four that are inside hog pins, is basically what we call 'em down here. So they're 16 foot long panels that are 30 inches high.

So we build pins around our feeders so that way the deer can easily jump in, but hogs can't get there cuz they'll take over a feeder. So yeah, if you don't have, if you have a feeder without that, like you might as well not get haunted for deer. Yeah. So I have four with pins and then I have one, I call it my sacrificial feeder.

And I purposely leave that one, unpinned two attract the hogs to keep them away from the other feeders. But I came a few weeks ago and on the floor that were pinned, I basically opened the pins about a foot and a half, drove a T post on the ground and wired them open to where they would only be open about a foot and a half.

And that's, [00:42:00] To let the pigs in and create a bottleneck, but also to keep the cows out cuz you don't want too big of a gap. But but yeah, my thinking is, and it worked perfectly. So you open that up about a foot and a half. The hogs used to it. They find that door, you let as many of 'em come into that pen as possible and then you get one good shot and then they're gonna start scattering.

So you get one good shot and they know where that door is and that's where they're gonna head to. So it basically just creates a little funneling pinch point to where you just lay the hammer down. You just keep shooting at that door. In the army we call it the fatal funnel. Yeah. So same thing.

Gotcha. That's exactly what it was. Yep. And yeah, I knew you took two guys. Were coming pretty far in advance, and then Dan kinda last minute decided to come down, which was great. We're

Andrew Muntz: referring to Dan Matthews. Yes. Dan Matthews, the nomadic

John Hudspeth: outdoors. Yep. Yep. Dan Johnson stood us up. Yeah. So we'll throw that in.

We'll throw him. Congratulations

Andrew Muntz: to him on that next baby. Oh, yeah.

John Hudspeth: So yeah, so basically, yeah, about four o'clock the the feeders were supposed to go off at five. This was some guiding expertise here.[00:43:00] I set all these timers pre daylight savings time and so instead of five, they all went up at six, but we got that figured out, on the fly.

So anyway, yeah, we just all took a feeder and and settled in for the.

Nick Otto: It was a fine evening, I would say. And then, yeah. When your feeders went off I unfortunately didn't have any true pigs. I had three trash pandas come up. They looked like they, they've also fidget visited your Oh, yeah.

Feeders quite a bit. But that was my view of the evening. But to hear to just be sitting there and to have one of the members of our crew at that point just rip shots and have those ring out across the horizon. That was, I was thrilled. That. It was working like your plan, John just went, to a t They came in and Yeah.

Dan did a great job, man at being able to put those things down the pig that he got the big sow that he have. Shoot, 200 plus. Is that what we've

John Hudspeth: decided? I think we came up with about two 40.

Andrew Muntz: It was not like, it was not a small pig. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: I know Dan's not here to tell his own [00:44:00] story. I don't know if I feel like somebody needs to tell it.

We,

Andrew Muntz: I, when you go on a hunting trip or like what we're doing and you've got a little group text going, I think that is part of the fun Okay. Of the entire thing. Okay. So I just wanna, I wanna pull out some of the, yes. The dialogue from last night. Let's see at five o'clock, this is when it started.

So we, we got in at four. John, our guide we have expert guide service. The HUD Smith guide service told us the feeders would go off at five o'clock. So at five o'clock we're all discussing the feeder's gonna go off or the feeder's gonna go off. And John says, I thought. I thought five, but maybe I set some of 'em for five 30 and if five 30 goes by, oh, hashtag terrible guide.

Then we've got Nick, I took a two minute video waiting for the feeder to go off.

John Hudspeth: I'm literally holding my phone. Like

Nick Otto: I want to have that like cool, like where it goes off Never came.

Andrew Muntz: Five 30. Nope. Nothing. Nick says mine's broke. No feeder. And let's see. It was real windy. Yeah. And warm.

And for us northerners, that warmth was wooo.

John Hudspeth: I'll take that. Y'all picked a pretty good [00:45:00] weekend to come off. It's pretty nice

Nick Otto: those things. Yeah. They're not box blinds. They are slow cookers.

John Hudspeth: That's what those things are. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: So let's see. Then we decided that it was the whole daylight savings time.

Yep. We figured it out. Issue. Oh man. And then, I don't know, we were sitting there for a while and it was, Has anybody seen anything? And you saw a couple turkeys. Yep.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. First two turkeys I've ever seen with my own eyes on our property. So that was, yeah. Very exciting.

Andrew Muntz: And Paul Campbell's turkeys continued to haun me. Because you had said you had never, you don't see turkeys. Let's see here. Then the feeders did go off. Dan said he had asked if we'd seen anything. He said, I've seen two Turkey vultures. Make that three man, what? Oh, you were seeing lots of donkeys. Yeah. Yep.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Our, a huge ass.

A huge ass, if you will. He has three donkeys. Now are they on our side of the fence? No, they're on his side.

Andrew Muntz: But, oh, this is the line that got me when Dan says, this is so weird because the brochure said nonstop hog activity [00:46:00] as we've been sitting there for a couple hours with nothing. And John is you didn't read the fine print.

John Hudspeth: I don't know if I ever admitted this to y'all, but I was like sweating big time cuz These guys came from so far away. They're down here to my life. It was a lot. Er, nothing's working

Nick Otto: at the same time. We are feeding into all of this. As we are. You'll not Yeah. In the group text. Yes, a lot of heat is going towards John, but it was purposeful, fun heat.

Oh, that was

Andrew Muntz: great. Yes. I had a giant an hill in my blind. Then the trash pandas came out. What else? Johnny got up to three donkeys. Dan kept telling us he was hearing hogs in the thick cover. Yeah. And then he decided that, I'm just kidding. It's the wind.

John Hudspeth: Although you can hear 'em coming from a long ways away, like they're not quiet

Nick Otto: creatures.

I thought he was screwing with us because I didn't believe him at all. I was like, Nope, nope. You damn

John Hudspeth: it. When he said that, I think it's the wind. I asked him, I was like, I can't tell if you're serious or joking. And then he never responded. So I was like, I still don't know if you're serious or,

Andrew Muntz: and his [00:47:00] personality, you don't know that because he could be really dry sometimes.

But we got a picture of a hog on the camera, but that actually was Nick as the hog. And then Big Hams on that one. John tells me that the hogs were at my spot yesterday at about seven 50, and then I asked him if that was before or after the time change. Oh, shoot. Then Dan kept saying that the pigs were going crazy.

And then I guess basically we'll get into his shot or his story, because the next thing you know, it sounded like a war zone. Behind me. And he took it. He has a GoPro video, so I'm sure he'll post that somewhere. But those things came like of army out of those woods just pouring at him in a stampede.

That was crazy.

John Hudspeth: It was crazy. Yeah. He had, I wanna say about half the group came into the pen. It was funny. So I, I didn't have a camera on his spot, so I didn't know if they were gonna be there or not, but we'd checked it the day before, poured some corn out, extra corn out, and there was no corn on the ground.

So like we knew there had been hogs there at some point. We just didn't know day, night, whatever. But I thought it was funny, like half the [00:48:00] group, it's like they didn't know where the hole was. Like a bunch of them ran pretty much straight in. A bunch of 'em ran around the outside trying to figure out how to get in.

So he had about half the group in there. I'm gonna say eight or nine, probably made it inside and he was right on top of it. And yes. So this is, I really have this set up for bow hunting. So the feeders, I wanna say like 18 yards. So they're right there. And, but there was one big sow in there and some smaller ones, and that sow caught onto him pretty quick.

Andrew Muntz: I think she winded them

John Hudspeth: or something. I don't the wind would've been perfect though, cause that the blind was west of the feeder and it, we had a west wind.

Nick Otto: With as steady as that wind was too. Like whatever scent was that 10 feet. I, it had, it would have no chance to drop unless it was like a hundred yards away.

I don't care what scent you have, it is gone with as strong

John Hudspeth: as those winds were. Yeah. No, I know. He was in a blind. They also have pretty dang good eyesight though. Yeah. They're not blind. No. And so they can see you. So yeah, so she basically looked straight up at him and started heading for the opening.

So he was smart. He knew, that he was afraid. He was afraid she was gonna leave and all the small ones were gonna follow [00:49:00] her and so he busted her. And

Andrew Muntz: just for non hog hunters. Your instructions to us were Oh, yes. The first one. You those an, these animals are unbelievably tough.

But the the first one, you need to put it right behind her ear, right? Or his head.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. If you have if you could pick your shot Yeah. Just blow the ear. That's where you're gonna drop

Andrew Muntz: him. Yeah. And so he did, and man, he put a nice shot on that, oh, textbook. And she dropped right there, but all hell broke loose.

After that. And she was heading for that, what'd you call it? Funnel?

John Hudspeth: The fatal funnel. The

Andrew Muntz: fatal funnel. She was heading for the fatal funnel. I think if she could have gotten a few more feet, she could have really put a clot in that. Yeah. But then that's when the

John Hudspeth: fireworks started. Yeah. So he, yeah, he just started unloading, just like I thought they all started heading for that gate.

He dropped a little bitty, no little bitty, but a d a smaller piglet right in the opening. You can see on the video, all the other hogs are like jumping over trying to get out. One little one kind of didn't figure it out. He ended up getting that one also. A couple hit the tree line and stopped. He got another one.

Yeah, he [00:50:00] got another one back there. So we ended up finding four. There's a good chance he probably hit more, but we found four, which that's pretty darn good. I think you had asked me, Andrew what would I consider good, if it worked like it was supposed to in this situation, you had a bunch in there, like what would I, what I would call good as far as, numbers.

And I said three. I was like, if you get three out of a setup like this, you're probably doing pretty good. So four. I'm very happy with

Andrew Muntz: that. And the other thing, those piglets are small. Yeah. You got a 240 50 pound sow, but then you had piglets and one of those things weigh 20 pounds.

Nick Otto: They're dense. Yeah. They're no slouch, but 20, 30 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. 20, 30 pounds of I want to get outta here. And they're quick. They're, which they're very quick.

Andrew Muntz: The, I don't know if it's funny or interesting, the big ones, they don't go down easy. The littler ones tended to, we kind end up with three little pigletts we did out of the bunch last night and three.

Better sized ones, but yeah, there you think the smaller target would be harder to hit, but I

Nick Otto: think just in that mass chaos, like where he's shooting at the door, I don't think he was ne, I don't think he was nearly selecting Yeah, [00:51:00] he was just putting his bead right there on body mass. Yeah.

You

John Hudspeth: see a black blob and you just pull the

Nick Otto: trigger because every, they're moving all over the place and I'm, I know we'll get into it in the middle of the night, but, or a little bit later in the night. But our, a little ambush set up where we thought we had the advantage turned out that we didn't have any advantage at all.

And we were shooting at moving bodies, and we walked away with one and it's two Two oh to two. That's right. Two we walked away with two. But one of 'em was little. Oh, he was I'm so excited for Wilber. We've got big plans for Wilber.

John Hudspeth: He picked it up. He's Ooh, I'm gonna spatchcock this one.

It's like a chicken.

Nick Otto: It's, it'll be good, but. I tell you what, like in that moment, like you are, you're just putting your bead on bodies and Yeah. Like little wilber jumped in the way of the whole firefight and I wasn't, I don't think anybody else saw him. It was just he happened to be in the way.

Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: So Dan mowed him down. We found a four. We loaded him up, went and had grabbed dinner real quick and we came back out. Yep. So now we're in, it's dark. We're thermal hunting. We've got two thermal setups [00:52:00] and then the other two guys are doing what they can to help on that end.

But let's see. I guess my, that first pig eye shot at was, yeah.

John Hudspeth: So we saw the one at the trough and we're not sure if that's the one you shot or not. We saw that one. So we were so my thermal can clip on and off my gun, so I take it off and use it as a handheld to scan as we're driving around.

So yeah, we saw one literally eating outta one of the cattle troughs. Tried to get on it, it saw spooked off. So we went around, went through a gate into that pasture, and I think we saw a single back on the hill, and then as we were watching it, we saw some more coming out. So the, they, in their little line?

Yep.

Nick Otto: There was other parade that was coming in. Yeah. Holy Spencer. They were, there was

John Hudspeth: 15 in that one. They were probably good 400 yards away and across a decent size creek. And so as we're sitting there trying to figure out what we're gonna do, somebody scanned to the left and we see a really big bore and much closer.

And yeah, I'll

Andrew Muntz: let you, and it's hard to see the depth perception on that thermal [00:53:00] stuff. Yeah. But. Yeah, it was a big bore. Really. And you and I hopped out, right? We were trying to get you set up and we were gonna do a 3, 2, 1. I don't know what was happening.

John Hudspeth: I don't think we had his gun.

I think I was still holding it. We pulled

Nick Otto: back. Because you were set. Yeah. You were ready to go. You were still holding onto the thermal and it was like what did we do? And it's go, Andrew, go. You're set up. You're ready to go. Cause at that point I was just trying to at that point I had no thermal.

I'm looking into the dark and I'm literally going off of what people are saying.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. What they're seeing. Yeah. Having no thermal when we're doing, lights out, an only thermal can't sneak because Yeah. You're just kinda listening to the people talk about it and describing your painting.

My own image. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, like you're looking that direction, but you don't even know what you're looking at. Unfortunately, we're not big money enough to have a separate thermal

Andrew Muntz: for everybody. No. The stupid part was I should have put it on my phone and somebody could be watching. I didn't even think about that until after the fact.

But so there's big bore, I don't know how many yards we'll say. 150, 200 yards. And. When I shot three or three times I think, and you could several hear it smacked and

Nick Otto: you could hear smack. I think you put four [00:54:00] into it. But it was, shoot, you'd hear the cracky you, and then you'd just hear that th thump.

Thump every time you put a bullet in him and he just kept

John Hudspeth: on running. Yeah. And at one point, I think you had hit him, you'd hit him at least two, maybe three times. He kinda went behind a cedar tree and then popped out in an opening. And you could tell he was struggling and he literally I sat down, so I was watching him through mine.

Yeah. He sat down like he was hurting bad, and you hit him again. And I just expected him to flop over and he just got up and kept on trucking. Oh. And yeah, by this time he is pretty far away. He had dropped down into a little. And so we jumped in the truck and drove up there, flew up there, and we spotted him basically right as he was about to head into the woods, into the fixed stuff on the neighbors.

So I can't, I think, yeah. You tried to shoot from there one or two more times, but I have no

Andrew Muntz: idea how far that was. Yeah. It wasn't cl it wasn't happening. Yeah. And what caliber were you shooting? Six five Creed more. Yeah. And that, I think my, I have 95 grain bullets might be a little bit for, [00:55:00] especially for pick that big might be a little bit light, but

John Hudspeth: That's what most people use. Or that, or, a lot of guys use the, just AR 2 43. Yeah. 2 23. Yeah. 2 23. That works if you're real close. Yeah. When you're hunting 'em over a feeder or something like that, you could really crank out a lot of rounds. Like you get lucky basically, but trying to do anything at any kind of distance, like a hundred yards, like you need a pretty, you need some lead.

Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. So he got away and I don't know, where do we go next from there?

John Hudspeth: We, so we had lost track of that group that we had saw. And so we went back around past the house and into the back pastures hoping to find that group. We didn't find them. We, we weren't paying attention to them when we started shooting, so we guess they probably went back into the woods.

We headed towards the back. Oh, coyote. You got your coyote? I got, yep. Got the coyote. We were just, I was just driving around, scanning and all of a sudden there's a coyote 40 yards from the truck.

Andrew Muntz: I think there's two of them. And that was, yeah, there was [00:56:00] two. Interesting. Because they were right in the middle of the cows.

So that's the other thing for when you're scanning the thermal and you're like looking for little white dots, but then all of a sudden there's like a lot of white dots and then you realize, oh, these are big cows and those are little calves. And don't shoot those because there's, a couple things you're not allowed to

Nick Otto: shoot out there.

It was deer and cows. Deer. Those were off limits. That were my two things. Big time. That was one rule. He had one rule. No deer, no cows. Yeah. Yes.

John Hudspeth: So we went further back towards the pasture we called the cemetery, where Luke here had been plowing the last couple days. So actually two level hog ruts mostly.

Yeah. And hogs love that fresh turn dirt. So that's why we were headed back there. And I see one lone figure. I actually thought it was a deer at first. But he turned just a little bit, realized it's a hog. And so I was like, all right, Nick, like your turn. And oh, this is funny. We so I put the thermal on the gun and I'm holding it just so I can judge distance and stuff.

And so I'm, I'd walk maybe 15 yards check still there, walk another 15 yards check still there. And so we got up to I'm gonna say [00:57:00] 80 ish yards. And there was a fence between he him and us. And so we get up pretty close to that fence. I'm checking things out and I see him turn broadside and I know he doesn't see or smell us, but just, that's just a good shot.

And I figured we were close enough. So get Nick, I have a bipod. It's got the little trigger thing so you can adjust it real easy. So I get Nick set up on. On the tripod or bipod, and I don't know if you wanna tell it or you want me to

Nick Otto: As you're doing all this at one point you did say Hey Nick, I can hear you breathing man.

Yeah. You, you can calm down. We got the, we got you. And I was just like, I've never done this before. I feel I'm like I'm getting called into the big game right now you're up kid. Get this done. So there was, I felt the pressure again, something completely new.

I'm shoot night hunting. It's just something I've never had the opportunity to do. And so it was just real exciting. So yeah, get myself back in order. We're creeping up on it. And we were coming up on the fence and I never even thought about how, like, how this was even gonna come into play, but set up on the bipod, I'm putting my, the little electronic cursor, I'm putting that [00:58:00] right on the pig and I'm doing my best to steady that in there.

I'm like drawing on my archery training settle yourself down. And I pull that trigger and I think I send off a great shot. And you hear this as my bullet connects with a 16th of an inch piece of barbed wire. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. That's just hanging there. Just so happy I didn't ask y'all. Do I need to go fix that?

I don't know. Y'all take care of that. It's top wire. I was good. Yeah.

Nick Otto: I I. I may have killed one one pig on the whole night and I did kill a barbed wire fence. Yeah. So that was what I

John Hudspeth: got. So the pig kinda looks up, it's Hey, what was that? And then takes off. Yeah.

Nick Otto: Takes off. And then, so I'm borrowing a gun from John here.

And I'm blaming the guy. I'm still Yeah. Blaming the guy. I should have paid for that Texas guy, this whole thing. Okay. Tell you what. But anyway I rip out another shot and then I go to follow up shot another one and the gut champs. Because it's not my platform I'm trying to pull on everything that's on there.

And finally John pulls it from me, re racks, puts back in my hand. And I think at this point I had dropped the Bipod, so I'm now free shooting. I think I got another shot [00:59:00] on. Andrew stepped in, he was put putting some backup on me. Really trying to get this paid to go down. And it didn't slow down.

It was just running. Even we got

Andrew Muntz: three on him. We hit, he could hear the thumps. It was hitting them. Big pig.

Nick Otto: Yeah, big pig. And I tell you what, yeah. When you hit a barb wirey or fence, like that's not a good sound to a pig. So yeah, he launches off and it I, by no means I feel like it was a low experience.

Again, it was just like absorbing knowledge, just trying to figure this stuff out. But to just be able to get on them and have the opportunity was good. But yeah, after a while it was like frustrating that man, we were still sit out at that point. I was still sitting with a goose egg.

Not to feel like I was bringing the team down, but it was like, damn. All right. Bringing the big gun. Bring it, where's our trigger man? Let's get something done.

Andrew Muntz: The should we fast forward to the ambush? Yeah. Go for it. All right. Cause at that point we just rolled around looking for stuff, and I don't know that we got anymore.

We, we tried a few,

John Hudspeth: like coyote calls, but didn't really have any

Andrew Muntz: luck. Yeah. So it was, oh yes. The night hunting, which is totally new to [01:00:00] me. I'm still, I'm, I think I like it. I'm not usually a night person, but, It was three o'clock in the morning.

John Hudspeth: Yeah, like 2 45, something like the, and around two 30 you could see everybody's momentum was dropping a little bit.

Everybody's getting a little tired. I had already cracked a Red Bull. So yeah, it was getting pretty late. We were just about ready to call it.

Andrew Muntz: And then your phone goes off. That there's hogs at the far back feeder.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Which just for listeners, so this is like a mile, almost a mile and a half from the house.

Like it's back there. I, you gotta go through seven gates, so it's not like you just run back

Andrew Muntz: there real quick. It's not an easy mile either. Yeah. Because the gates and the terrain and everything up and down. Yeah. You

John Hudspeth: gotta cross a pretty good creek. Go up a pretty steep hill. Two pretty good creeks.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Yeah. And we were driving your truck. Yep. Because it was actually quieter than the side by side. And stuff. Had the lights out as much as possible. Anyhow, we got 'em on this camera and the far back feeder. So we drove as far as we could. Then we got out, walked, crept up. We thought we were creeping.

At least

John Hudspeth: we were, and this, and I feel, but Dan even mentioned like, Hey, like we're not gonna get [01:01:00] skylin, are we? And I was like, moon's not that bright. They're in doing it. They're at the feeder. They've been there for a while. They'd already been there 15, 20 minutes. They were there, they were comfortable.

So I felt pretty good about, not being seen. The wind was perfect and everything. So we get up to where pretty close we can see 'em. Y'all both look through the thermal. And I don't have a thermal at this point. Nick has it. And so I'm, I like, I can't really see what's going on, which I think also so yeah, y'all look and y'all are both like, holy crap. Holy crap. They're leaving. They're not staying. Not yet. Not, yeah. Yeah. Y'all could just see how many there were. Oh, yeah. Y'all kept, there

Nick Otto: was so many and it just kept saying they were moving So many. Yeah. There was just this moving, like this buzz.

I don't think we had seen them actually tried to take off at that point. Yeah. But I was like, shoot, here we are. So

John Hudspeth: we weren't into my food plot yet. We were still where the grass was pretty tall. But there was one decent size tree that I wanted to get past because I didn't want y'all to start shooting and that tree get in the way.

Once we passed that tree, then we're out in the open and Yeah, I guess we got skylin to where we weren't, [01:02:00] there was stuff behind us, but we just got out in the open where they could see us and all of a sudden I hear y'all they're moving. They're moving. I was like, all right, go for it.

Andrew Muntz: Go for it.

And the pig parade back to the deep cover. Yeah. Began. Yep. And then. All hell broke looses. I tell you,

John Hudspeth: I, I was

Nick Otto: pulling that trigger as

John Hudspeth: fast as I, as fast as I could. I think I had,

Nick Otto: at that note, I knew where the lever was. So I, racked reacted when I have the one jammed up. But I ended up finishing off my magazine.

With, I think a pig that I was still tracking, like he was going off. He actually, he was going with the group and then I think he got hit by somebody, maybe me, maybe Andrew. But anyway, turn him around. So he's going

Andrew Muntz: the other way. For the re it was you and me that killed these pigs.

Absolutely. It was not Dan Matthews.

John Hudspeth: No. No. Okay. No. Dan tried. So I had my big flashlight and I'd given Dan my AR with a red dot, so it's not thermal. But the plan was once, once you guys started shooting, I was gonna turn the light. And just so you guys know, I don't know if y'all knew this or not when we heard they started running, Dan's yelling at me, turn the light on, turn the light on.

And I did not. I was like, no let the thermal guys start because I didn't [01:03:00] want 'em to spook even worse. So thank you for that handicap. So I let, I appreciate that. Yeah. I'll let you guys start shooting and then I hit the light.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. And so then they all start the max mass exodus. We start throwing lead at 'em.

You found Wilbur pretty quick. Little pig, just a little guy. But then we could hear crashing. It's still in the brush. And hindsight, this might be one of the dumbest things I've ever done in my

John Hudspeth: life.

Nick Otto: I could almost equate it to like John's setup, where there's the feeder and there's the pen around it, and there's a little doorway and a bunch of pigs go in there that are just like, they're not, they're just thinking about the corn.

They're not thinking about the danger and the smart ones. Stay back and they're like, I'm not buying this. So when a pig crashes through a fence and into this just, wall hell hole Yes. Wall of thorns and things that wanna stick you two, he yeah. Two people go through that to go find an injured pig that

Andrew Muntz: we have no idea how big this is.

Nick Otto: No idea. You have zero [01:04:00] information. You are totally blind.

Andrew Muntz: There were some b

John Hudspeth: brutes in that pretty much crawling on their hands and knees, right? Yeah. And like they can be dangerous. Oh yeah. Oh

Nick Otto: yeah. Meanwhile, the two smart ones stayed outside of that fence. And then I'm not buying this, I'm

Andrew Muntz: not heading in there.

But, so Dan and I go in and it is thick and like you're trying I don't even know how to explain. It was just dense and we are seeing intestines hanging on branches and stuff. We're like, okay, somebody back here is hurting. And I don't know, like we just kept pushing and it opened up.

I use that term really loosely cuz it wasn't open, but enough for you could at least stand up straight. And then I think I was about five yards ahead of Dan and he goes, don't happen, move. And I'm like, okay. He's it's right next to me. It's looking at me. And it's, there's a pig that's laying five feet from him just sitting there looking at him wheezing and all of a sudden he's shit, my gun's jammed.

And I give that dude a ton of credit because I have no, I can't see the pig. But he [01:05:00] sitting there re racking his gun, trying to get the jam out, makes it happen, puts the beat on it, she pulls the trigger, it takes off running. It probably went like 15, 20. Up into the right towards you guys. And I think Dan actually had you guys move down a little bit.

Yeah. And be ready. So we could,

John Hudspeth: Y'all were probably within 30 yards of us. Yeah. But we could barely see each other's even lights so thin. Even barely see, even see our

Andrew Muntz: headlights the thermals worthless. I'm sitting there thinking, oh, we'll be able to pick up the heat. No, there it was so dense, the vegetation and without leaves or anything.

The cedars, they had their foliage, but it was still, it was incredible. So Dan shoots this. It takes off going towards you guys again. We're basically, you can't move in there. When that

Nick Otto: pig takes off, John and I are just waiting for you guys to come back out and you had gone to get, or someone said, Hey, go get the thermal.

So I run back, grabbed the thermal, and I'm heading back. You guys are directing us around. Crack goes off, there goes the shot and the pig comes at. We have flashlights. John pulls his [01:06:00] pistol cuz we think this thing's coming out. I have a thermal in my hoodie pouch. I'm holding a flashlight.

I don't have a firearm. Boom. I got my knife, I got the gut hook and I'm like, I'm, this is what I got. I'm gonna do my best. So I was gonna take the low road and John was gonna take the high road in case this thing was coming, but, and it ended up that John hands me the flashlight. So now I'm the flashlight guy with a knife and all, I just basically relied on John at this point, at this pig comes back out.

We need all the Glock that he had at that point. And we still

Andrew Muntz: don't know how big it is. Like it wasn't, Dan looked at it, he did get a, a little bit of look at it. He goes, I don't think it's that as big. He's I think it's about 70 pounds. Which I think is probably pretty accurate to what it ended up being.

Yeah. But still at that point, we're not sure. It moves closer to you guys. You can hear it kick in. We don't wanna push in on it too hard. So I think then we had you guys,

John Hudspeth: you're like, so we finally were able to see it after because y'all started trying to push it out and he came to the edge and I finally saw it and climbed through the fence and was [01:07:00] finally able to dispatch it, which that pistol of John's we all have the stories of the pig that just won't go down.

John has an amazing skill for being able to kill pigs, like in just the weirdest circumstances. And I've seen him, I was riding along and there's just a dead pig. We were working cows early in the morning and there's a dead, I heard some weird shots and there's a dead pig along the little path and stuff and.

I was like, what the heck happened? He's oh, I saw pig. I pulled out. He has this concealed carry nine mill and he just sticks it out the window and shoots it and kills two pigs. And you're like, drive by. Shoot. I was like, I thought they were supposed to be hard to kill. He's I don't know man.

Yeah it's a weird, I wish I was a good at killing deers. I was hogs. Yeah. I just have some kind of weird skill. So

Andrew Muntz: at this point though, that pig had been hit once on the parade out. One Stan shot it in the face trying to end it right there. It gets to you. You put either two or

John Hudspeth: three. I ended up putting two in it, I think.

Two,

Andrew Muntz: so that I [01:08:00] know. I think we ended up either four or five shots that took to K to kill that pig. Yeah. It's a 70 pounder. It wasn't even a 400 pounder like that is a tough freaking animal. And your shots were point blank basically. Yeah. It was insane. That solidified to me like how tough these animals were.

Of course, my wife was giving me hell this morning. What do you mean you shot it four times and didn't die? I'm like look, you don't understand. And for us who never deal with 'em, like you don't, until we were butchering 'em, then I was like, oh, this is why. Oh yeah.

Nick Otto: I am sitting on a number. I was putting my blades onto some steel trying to bring that blade back up, but a couple of 'em are just dull than dull.

Now getting through that hair and hide is detrimental to any steel that you're putting onto it. Whatever hardness you're throwing on, if you've got super hard blade, doesn't matter. It's going to roll that thing over. Man, just cutting them things up was hard. Yeah. And then what I was hoping to is trying to get rid of the hair.

For a number of reasons. We were, we started out by torching 'em, which is gonna be a great story for later. [01:09:00] But shoot, getting the tip of your blade to go through that hide and then be able to just like to slide it up even to open up and gut 'em out is a lot of work. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. That's no joke. Luke, thanks.

Appreciate Yeah, thank you guys. The we, we will wrap up here too because we're gonna get ready to go back out. So that was the first big night and what we ended up back here about 5:00 AM Yeah, I think so

John Hudspeth: about, so I think the. That camera went off about 2 45 or so. We got back there, probably a little left three.

And then, yeah, after the tracking and beating the brush and everything like that. Yeah,

Andrew Muntz: we got back here then. And then Dan wanted to go looking at that first field again. Oh, that's right.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Yes. I think all of us were definitely ready to crawl into bed and Dan's just this is the best night of my life.

Andrew Muntz: He's better than sex.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. He's I need one more. He's I need one more something. Whatever it is, I need one more something. So yeah, he convinced us to make one more and of course there was one out there and yeah, same trough was earlier. Probably a different pig, but same trough.

Yeah, we seen it. And he didn't get a shot, right?

Andrew Muntz: Not initially, but eventually he [01:10:00] did.

John Hudspeth: Got out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He was just about to shoot when it was, I think it had his front feet up in the trough. And he was just about to shoot and it got down and took off. And yeah, we chased it a little bit, but not much.

I yeah, I wasn't about to open that gate again and thank goodness. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Nick was very quiet on the drive home. Oh my goodness.

Nick Otto: I think I dozed off a couple times. It's only seven miles for us to get back. And I remember somebody making a comment like, man, Nick, you're real quiet.

Yes. Yes I

Andrew Muntz: am. Yeah. Funny. We'll go out and give it hell again tonight and see what we come up with. But good job, gentlemen. John, thank you. Appreciate you so much. For sure. Nick. All your culinary, everything, and I'm just long here for the ride. Hey,

Nick Otto: The coolers of Phil, we put, we got those pigs put on ice.

It's gonna be it's gonna be good to eat. So

all

Andrew Muntz: we'll talk to.

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