Island Hog Hunting

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks with fellow hog hunters about their upcoming hunt on Cumberland Island National Seashore.

Nick, Luke and David join Dan to discuss what to expect on this years hunt. David and Dan are new to the island but Luke and Nick put in the miles on this same hunt one year ago. With roughly 9,000 acres Cumberland island is home to wild horses, feral hogs, whitetail deer and rough 90 trillion armadillo. Cumberland Island was once a private island used by the Carnegie family as a recreational hunting property. Upon sale to the US government legislation was created to ensure the island would continue to offer hunting opportunities to the public. Stick around for the end of this episode and hear how close the guys were on their predictions.

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Visit huntstand.com or download wherever you download your apps. Enter discount code SN 20 at checkout for 20% off. All right guys, welcome to today's show. And I'm really excited about this show because one, we had an amazing hunt down in Georgia and this is the precursor to that hunt. We're gonna talk all about what our goals, expectations are for this hunt, and then we're also gonna recap how last year's hunt went now.

Myself and one other guy on this show, David, were not there for that hunt, but the other two are gonna fill us in, give us an idea of what to expect. The other reason I'm really excited [00:01:00] for this episode is because this is the first episode that I am editing from my new property. My wife and I just signed yesterday on 25 acres in southwest Missouri.

And I could not be more excited. I could be more excited, I could be more excited if I had a full podcast studio set up already. Unfortunately, I don't, we're renovating a trailer, fixing up a shop and we're gonna be building soon. So it may be a little while before I actually have a podcast studio up and running.

If you are one of the people on social media or that texts me and we're like, Hey, congrats man. That's awesome. Deserved. I really do appreciate all those comments. My wife and I have been on Cloud nine, and I'm sure the kids will be once they're out here riding dirt bikes. Thank you guys for all that.

Without rambling too much, I think we're gonna hop into this episode and talk all about hunting Georgia pigs on an island.

Like he was doing things that were [00:02:00] just badass. That was one of the coolest moments of my life. I was really scared, but knowing that Dan had the gun, I did have the rifle, like we would be okay.

All right guys. Welcome to you today's show and joining me on the show today. I've got three guys that are here out of what, nine of us, I think. And we're on an island in Georgia, Cumberland Island to be exact, doing a managed hog hunt. How many of you guys have been here before? I have, yeah. Me and Luke have no have.

Okay. Not me. So Dave's first time, huh? Yep. It is my first time. Same here. This is a pretty unique spot and We're just gonna be talking about everything we saw today, what we hope to have happen tomorrow, and then we will see how it all pans out and probably do a follow up episode. But before we start all that, we're gonna go around and do a brief intro of each person and then maybe tell how you started hunting here or[00:03:00] how you started hunting in general.

Hi, my name's David from Marietta, Georgia. Started hunting when I was a kid with some friends and whatnot from youth group and all that. Got drawn here from buddy Jonathan and a friend of a friend. Nice man. Luke. Yeah. I started hunting here with David last year and David invited us on this trip.

We said, man, that sounds awesome. Didn't think anything of it. And then he was like, Hey man, this hunt's coming up. Let's sign up for it. So we did. It came last year. Walk 17 miles the first day. Dang. Yeah, dude. No. 28. 28. The first day we went to the beach. The last David Gilmer. No. Yeah. David Giler?

Sorry. No, there's a, oh yeah. Not David. Gilmer not, yeah. Not this David. And it was awesome, dude. Everything we saw, the problem is we didn't see any hogs the first time. I feel like that's a pretty good or a pretty bad problem to [00:04:00] have on a hog hunt. Yeah. Yeah. It was rough. We saw everything.

Butt hogs. But it was a blast, man. Until Nick and Nick can come up later and talk about his story. I'm Nick. I am from 45 minutes north of Atlanta. Same scenario as Luke. We were friends with David Gilmer, not the David on here. , the first timer, the white. We took this trip last year.

It was only five of us last year. We went with another, with George is actually here with us. He didn't want to be on the podcast, but he's true at Kathy Jr. . I call him chick-fil-a Jr. . But he's here with us. He says, hi, folks. We had a good trip. Luke said, we hiked about seven, no, 28, not 17 miles thanks to aj.

No, no plug there. But AJ was the kind of guy that was like, no trails. Just follow the trees. Just Bushwhack. Yeah, we bush bike. This is not the place to do that at all. AJ's from Idaho, and so he didn't know what to do out here, but this dude walks a hundred miles an hour, , [00:05:00] and you had to kick butt with him.

Now, granted, we loved him. Like I love aj. Love aj. Oh he's fantastic. He was good for the group. Great. But. Follow. He doesn't get tired. Tired. The trail, bro. He doesn't get tired. No. He just goes, yeah. And you gotta keep up with him just nonstop. Yeah. Dang. So was last year, the first year that anybody from our group Correct.

Had done this hunt? Correct? Yeah. There's it's crazy, man. I have never heard about this place. And there's people from all over. In fact, some people that, that are camped right next to us, I talked to them, they're from Wisconsin. Yep, I saw that. And I'm Dang man. People come from all over to do this.

And in talking with the wildlife biologist here as well as the park ranger, hearing, hearing the story about this place, hearing what the whole goal is here it's pretty cool. It's a very unique hunt. There's not a lot of like national parks or national seashores that you're able to hunt.

And so this is a really unique opportunity. What did last year look like? What was your game plan aside from walking? 28 miles through the thickest stuff you've ever [00:06:00] seen. Did you guys go out and scout at all the day before or, yeah, that's what the 28 miles was. ? No. Oh, that was just a scout was day one.

No, we didn't scout because we got here. No, we got here. Correct. On the ferry. You were correct. You were correct. And because we got here on the ferry, excuse me we showed up just on time. We got camp set up, we were setting up our tents, setting up everything, and then by the time we did the intro, figured out where we were then we still had a set up camp.

We barely had a chance to set up. So the next morning we got out and we were like, we don't know what we're doing, so let's just walk. Let's walk. Let's find some hogs. We in trouble. We started walking around. Next thing you know, we were walking and we were walking. Then we walked through 500 yards. We were tagging too to keep up with where we were. Oh yeah. And then finally y'all were like, Nick stop leaving tags. Cuz we're at that point keep going. And that's one of the things they do here because it's, it's a big area. It's 9,000 [00:07:00] acres Yeah. That you can hunt and it's thick.

There's not a lot of trails or roads that cut through it. Palm Meadows, different hiking. I don't know if anyone's ever hiked through that, but Palm Meadows are a different hike. And they said every couple years people get lost out here. Yeah. In the evening hunt, there's no daylight in my mind.

I'm like, man, this is a pretty tough place to get lost because you walk any direction, you're either gonna hit a road or water and if you're hunting north of the area, you just hit the water and head. If you're hunting, to the east of the road, head west, and you're gonna run into it eventually.

But yeah, it's a super dense area. Lot of cool opportunities. They hunt whitetail here, and from the sound of it, the quota hunts never really fill up. So no, they're always short about five, if I had to average it. Yeah it's pretty sweet. So I'm pretty pumped. We went out and scouted today.

Oh, and Luke, you had mentioned the ferry. That's one of the other unique things about it. You take a ferry here with all of your gear, or if you have a private boat, you can bring that, you can load it up. In fact, I want to, [00:08:00] why don't we there, I wanna comment on that real quick. Yeah. So last year after we took the ferry we loaded everything on the ferry and that was just, it was crazy.

So we packed, minimalistic last year. We brought just what we thought we could carry, just what we thought we could get on there. We got over here, we started unloading. We had all of our guys with our tents and our packs, and that was it. And we thought that's what you were supposed to do. Now we showed up and everybody else is like pulling off all of these, boxes and everything.

And next thing they're pulling out like propane tanks and tables, heaters and tables. Although this is on an island, it is not a backcountry hunt. This is a bougie hunt for sure. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We have four bathroom shower house with hot water. We have butchers, not five camp stoves at our camp.

Oh, somebody, I think everybody dropped the ball on vacation this go round. Bacon egg. For real. Everybody started pulling out camp stoves and [00:09:00] I'm like, how many do we have? I'm pretty sure we have five full camp stoves set up on the table right now. We have a Blackstone, we have a Blackstone, what, two and a bottle of Blain.

A three burner and a tube burner. And. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Dave. There's, appreciate that. There's, this year we have no shortage of food. Nope. No shortage of things to cook with. Everybody's got their own big tents and I was told right away that this is, it's not a high class hunt by any means, but like you can bring whatever you want.

What we didn't realize is just how much stuff everybody brought because David, what's his boat? 28 foot? Something like that. Something like that. 30 foot maybe? Yeah. We had that thing loaded down with two trips, 3000 pounds of extra gear. Hellacious. First trip. Just on the first trip. We were doing a wheelie, if it's possible for a boat to do a wheelie.

Me and Dave Jr. Were trying to subliminal weight to counteract it. Subliminal , not subliminal. Subtract the weight. Sorry, , my words got messed up there. We're trying to subtract the weight. I'm 165 pounds, so I don't count for much, [00:10:00] so Yeah. But we were trying to eat and consume as , we had six Yeti coolers in the back of the boat.

And everything underneath, which we didn't realize was not waterproof. You'd think the bottom side of a boat would be waterproof. It was not everything got wet underneath. Don't. He's trying to sell this boat. Oh, he's trying to sell. Hey, if anybody's in the market for a boat, we've got a really awesome boat for sale.

It's a great price. Years of sink, all this, 28 feet, $15,000. That's less than a thousand dollars per foot money back. I mean it's insane. Just over 500 bucks a foot. So on the boat in the ferry thing, what I want to touch on is we met a guy named Preston last year and he does this trip, I don't know what the trip's called.

We can look it up and find out to fact check me. But there's another island. There's four or five island systems right here. Okay. And there's like also ball, this one Cumberland Island and one that's something with raccoon name cuz it's got a lot of raccoons on it. Trash banded island, . No. Some shit like that.

No, but it's, it Preston just went, it went to hunt there for the primitive, with the primitive archery. And [00:11:00] before he had to go back to the Oil rig. He hunts, he main job is oil rigs, but they give you a flag for hunting all five within the year season. And you're, and you Oh, wow. Only travel by boat.

That's how they give you the flag. And so you put the flag up to signify that you're hunting. So there's like a morale to it as well. Yeah. So like those guys out there have the flag that were here when we came in. Okay. At four o'clock Sunday. They have that flag, we don't have the flag. We didn't do all five hunts, but Preston has the flag and I thought that's really cool cuz you hunt island 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and cumberland's your last one and you get this flag from the state, the national forest, whatever the whatever.

It's national seashore. Yeah. Which I thought was really cool. So that was my input from the ferry thing was the side note was like, yeah, if you have the private boat, there's an option. If you're into it to do all five and do it in the season, same year season, then you get a flag. And yeah, it's a flag, but it's I did these hunts in my opinion.

Yeah. But like Preston. Talking to Preston last year, he tries to plan [00:12:00] his work shifts because he's on Orwick, right? Yeah, he's on a, he's on a hundred days and off 120 days or something. Crazy. Yeah. Dang. So he's something crazy like that and he tries to plan them around all these hunts.

He says Ball is his favorite. Yeah. He goes, he loves coming out to Cumberland. It's beautiful. It's different. He showed up late and killed the mu hogs to Cumberland last year by himself. Showed up late loading this stuff up, like we didn't know him. Then he just happened to camp near us. Next thing you know, dude, I felt bad.

He was loading up by himself, un or unloading and like barely didn't have a fire, didn't have nothing going. Felt that. I was like, Hey man, just relax and come join us. Yeah, that was the con. That's how we met. Preston was like, Hey, that's cool dude. You're in the dark unloading. Get your tent set up.

Come join us. Come sit by the fire. Come make your food. We have a fire going. Relax. And that's how we met. Preston was that way. So what about Doug? The machine, I kinda know he's done and it's been normal to y'all, but he's the biologist. , but he is done. And now the [00:13:00] game warden stepped in, said they're switching the deer hunt.

I think that's something to do with a national force and local DNR swap and I don't know the legality there. So what's the name of the family that used to own this? Do you guys remember? It's one of the rich families. It's not the Rockefellers. It's the, maybe starts with an A, I'll have to look it up anyways.

Oh, so this, the Anheuser Bush people, isn't it? I don't know. I don't remember. They said the name and I recognized it. Now I forgot it. I probably should have figured that out before the podcast started. But they used to own this property and they would do a lot of hunts and stuff on here. And then when the government bought it, they had written it into the legislation that they had to keep hunting open to the public, which is why they continued to hunt on this island.

So they offered deer and. They offer whitetail. Oh, the Carnegie family not an A name at all. It's a Carnegie family. It's a strong a in it though. Yeah. Yeah. And so they have there's a giant mansion right here. There's wild horses on the island. They just reintroduce bobcats here. There's coyotes, there's now [00:14:00] armadillos everywhere.

There's a lot of more historical lower south. Yeah we're mid island. Okay. Those two, two docks. I think it's, I don't know the name of the two docks. I, because we're on the spot, but they're closed right now cuz of that hurricane that came through. There are dock, this plum orchard camp. It's the only docks open right now, but the lower docks have more of the ruins.

Oh, okay. Than this. This is cool. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot more ruined south. And here at Plum Orchard, The mansion. He said that they've put millions of dollars into renovating the mansion. They do tours of it. It's open to the public. Like you can boat in here, you can drive here.

They'll do tours on a, in a van and headsets and everything. And they tell you all about the history of this place, but there's wild horses here, which was pretty crazy, right? Absolutely. And honestly, the first, yesterday when we got here, it made me realize just how difficult this hunt was gonna be because we were just walking, we were dollying all of our stuff up.

They've got wagons to put all of your stuff in because like I said, we had 3000 pounds of [00:15:00] gear in the first trip and we had to bring in a couple hundred yards to camp. And so they put, they do the dollies or the wagons pulled over and I kept hearing something over in the woods and I was like, man, that's close.

And that's loud. It sounds like something big. And I'm looking and looking and all of a sudden I look and there's a horse within 40 yards of me. And I'm like, if it's that hard to pick out a horse that I can hear, Just imagine how difficult it's gonna be to shoot a pig. Yeah. So Luke said earlier that we didn't see a hog last year.

I did see a hog and to my fault I did not shoot, but I, my judgment was against me and I'm okay with the judgment I took on it cuz when I saw it and I could come down and recognize and actually pull the trigger, it was gone behind a palmetto. Yeah. Could I have shot through the Palmetto? Yes. But then there's too many what ifs that I was not okay with that.

I did not take a shot because there have been horses shot here. Oh, absolutely. And they understand clear too. They're very understanding here about accidents happen. I just didn't wanna be that person. I didn't want to, I didn't wanna risk it. How understanding, not understanding enough to where you're gonna pull the trigger [00:16:00] on a horse and be like, oops, didn't know it was a horse

I tell you this Doug told us when we were here last year, he said, dude, a dude hit a horse. And the way the horse was sitting and the way that his wife told the story, it, you could tell he didn't mean to do what he did. And he thought it was a pig cuz it was Jet Black. And he saw the hinden of it and it went through that palmetto and he shot through that palmetto and killed it.

And all I could think of was when I saw that pig was the same story and I was like, I don't wanna be those people. No, you definitely don't. And I know that they probably didn't mean to do it, but I still don't wanna be those people. Target identification, that's one of the four rule of hundred.

That's the other know your target, know what you're saying and what's beyond and what's in front. And so you have to know your target because the other thing is, I mean we're gonna all be wearing blaze orange. That's another cool thing about here is they give you, if you don't have a blaze orange vest they'll give you one provide to use.

And they've got full facilities here. They also give you ribbons to put on the trail, like where you enter the woods so that other people know. Where you're entering. Yeah. It's almost like biodegradable masonry. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. He said in a couple months it'll disappear and each hunt they give you a [00:17:00] different colored ribbon.

Yep. And so this week our ribbons are orange. So when you go in, not only does it help you know where you're going, it helps other people know that there's someone hunting in there, and the biologist and the park ranger or the game warden, they will actually come and pick up your hog after you shoot it.

Yep. And so that's another good thing to have you mark where you are. You can text the number, they'll say, Hey, we got your text, we got your location. Or on our way to pick up the hog, there's a full walk-in freezer here where they'll hang your hog, mark it for you, and then you can clean it at the end of season so you can continue to hunt instead of having to deal with that all on the spot.

And so they've really, the management here is outstanding. It's like nothing I've seen before. The way that they it's like a first class hunt. It almost feels like you're paying to go to a hunt club. It's the way the DNR and management should be able to handle land without the public's infliction of their own damage and demise on it.

Exactly. It's an island, so it separates it. [00:18:00] So if this was managed the same way in public land, like I in no, no sea barriers without people touching it, they probably would do the same quality job for sure. But where I'm from, people destroy shit too much. Yeah. But the reality is too dude it's all a like $35 to sign up.

You just have to sign up early enough to get in and then it's 50 bucks for the ferry. Yeah, dude. And that's it. It's a cheap hunt. Yeah. But you get to hunt it like it's Yeah, get that management spot. But that goes to my reasoning of it's on an island. So you don't have the general public coming over here to party and mess things up like you would a W Mayland in your hometown.

Yeah. Now I did hear from some of the other hunters, I didn't hear it from any of the people that work here on the island, but they had mentioned that a lot of the reasons these hunts never fill up is because there are some animal rights activists, or potentially even people from pita, I'm not really sure what group it is that will go on and they will buy the licenses or buy the, like pay for the registration for the [00:19:00] hunt and fill up spots, and then they won't come and hunt just to keep other people from doing it.

I can see that. Which one? I'm like, man, that's really crappy of them. And two, I'm like, Hey, we'll take all of your money, which just shows how to put more towards this man's hunt. That sounds great. Yeah, a hundred percent. But it shows how uneducated they are, like not in this group, but I don't know how many people have hunted A W M A, but.

My first experience was rough. Yeah. All WMAs are rough. Like I, no, it was, I can speak for Georgia, north Georgia. I don't know about anyone else. Your season, and they don't request you to wear your orange, you of course should, but Right. There's a constant stand, common knowledge there.

It's bolts flying. You don't get that feeling here because it's organized. Yeah. Very. Yeah. It's very organized, professional. They left the responsibility up to you. Yeah. It's not thrown around. They leave the check-in or like you're responsible to go to the check-in. They ask all new hunters to do the orientation to find out more about the property.

They've got it broken down into zones and you can hunt any zone, but like [00:20:00] you can take a picture of the map and look what zone you're in so that if you're in zone five Yeah. You can text them and say, Hey, I'm on the west end of zone five. And then when they come to find you, yeah. It gets them closer to you walking to your zone.

It's a well-oiled machine. I agree. Somebody is without walking to your zone and accidentally. 110% accident. Just fire a rifle right next to Oh yeah. I'll tell you this. When we were hunting last year, we walked, I promise we walked more than we hunted last year, but we saw the flags and we knew better.

We were like, okay, keep going. We're gonna hike five miles away just to give them space. We don't know how far in or how far wide they went. They could have go in and cut left three miles, go in and cut right Three miles. We don't know. But we made sure, I will say after seeing the amount of deer sign here, like there's hog sign, don't get me wrong, but the amount of deer sign, the amount of trees that are rubbed up, the amount of scrapes that we saw today.

Yeah. I will for sure be coming back here to do a whitetail and ho I look forward to them changing it in October to archery. Yeah. I want to give a little shout out to [00:21:00] Caleb for that. Hey, for sure for him. He brought that up, but we wouldn't know that. No. He talked to us up about that and he was like, yeah, I wanna move it next year, close to October.

Cuz that's the end of the rut. But that's close the end of the rut. You wanna talk about that scenario? He's a nice dude. I like that guy. . Coming in here, he's doing well. Taking care of he's gonna take over Doug's spot supposedly, quote unquote. I don't wanna step on anybody's toes here.

No, never. But, Doug's been doing it for a while. What, 2020 something years? Yeah. Yes. In what? He's killed like 2,800 hogs. I don't know that. He said he kills a hundred hogs a year. He's an island management. Yeah, man. He's the island biology. He lives out here. Yeah. Full-time. Yeah. He does the studies.

He helps with a ton of this stuff around. So we see it as he's killing hogs. He's doing more than that. Oh yeah, there's a reason these hogs are here. Rich people bought the island. They wanted hunt hogs. They brought 'em over, they overbred, they couldn't keep up. Now the government owns it cuz they sold and rat on money.

Here we are today, let's enjoy it. Yeah, it'd be awesome if Caleb definitely. But I think Caleb's on the right track with it and changed that to especially their rut season. And they've realized that their rut [00:22:00] season is in October and that's when we could put people out here to thin the deer. Yeah. To make 'em healthy.

To give people the best experience possible while they're out here hunting. And that's really what they want. They want people to come out here and have success. They told us the areas to stay away from. They're like, guys in the past have gone into thickest, nastiest stuff and nobody ever kills in there because the ground cover's just too thick.

We're looking at the tents around us, big orange tents and there's one about 40, 50 yards from us. And I'm looking at it going, if there was a pig over there, I couldn't shoot it. No. Like it's that thick in certain spots. Back to the identification, the target identification thing. , you think about this many people hunting and if you're dragging a hog closer to the road so that they can come pick it up in the truck or the side by side, just imagine if you know that person chose not to wear orange and they're dragging a pig carcass and you see a pigs.

Oh, especially cuz how many times does it happen through the woods? Like cutting up. In the field and you take off clothes cuz you're working. Yeah. And you take the first thing comes off vest your orange vest. Yeah. Yep. And [00:23:00] then your jacket, then your top layer and your, and you're processing in the field.

Watch your job is a hundred to double check. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. But that's like you said, tags to the whole reason of me to not taking the shot. Like I got teased a little bit, but I have no reasons. It's fine. I'm okay with it. No, you were smart. You were smart. No, we like to give you a hard time because it's fun.

I like a hard time. Here's the deal. In a group of friends, like if you're not getting a hard time, you probably aren't welcome here. Like they don't want the, they don't want you to come back. Oh, don't call me dynamic Dave. We'll be all right. . Oh no. So that's our neighbor. Oh Lord. Oh, we already go.

We love all Dave. Here we go. So there's three Dave's folks. There's Dave Sr. That brought us on this trip. There's Dave Junior, he's on the mic and then there's Dynamic. Dave, the who we don't know, but we just know he can't see trees. , . That's been a fun part of camp. Speaking of set up camp, Or setting up camp this place so much better than last year is insane.

Okay. So I didn't know what to bring. I almost brought my water. We have a 25 [00:24:00] by 45 tent overhead. We brought a lot of shit. This tarp overhead I got in my saddle system with my sticks and climbed these trees and we hung a climbing rope all the way across. Much appreciated. By the way, this tarp is giant.

. And it's a good thing we had it because not long after we got stuff set up, we got dumped. When we didn't get soaked, we got dumped on. Luke got a little wet, the other guy not. How much water did you have in your tent? Luke . It was coming right down on my it was coming right down on my sleeping system and in the middle of the down.

Is that a had to, for these untake had to untake everything that I had down for my tent. , take everything that was in my tent, all guns, gear, everything, and just had to grab it and pull to try to get it out of the water, man, . And it, it was fabulous because did bring a a blow up mattress and deflated three times last night, had the in it and [00:25:00] listen, it was fantastic.

They decided to take the boat back today and go into town to Walmart and they were like doing a supply run. What does everybody need? So we're putting in our orders, beer, and they came back and they started unloading stuff. We didn't have, we had so much stuff to start this. Like we, I was surprised that's one the things anybody was bringing.

Like you think you got it all, you get here and you're like, oh this is I forgot shampoo, I forgot my chair cuz it got soaked. I forgot. I didn't, I did forget my chair, but I was like, oh, I set my chair out for Dave Senior cuz it was raining and he was picking me up and I was like, oh, it's soaked.

I'm not gonna grab it. I'll grab a different one. Never grabbed a second one. Simple stuff. And I, we didn't buy a chair, obviously there was you, Dave Jr. Had extra for me, so I appreciate that. But yeah, we thought we brought enough, we still made a supply run to get more shit , but in all reality, they started unloading the boat and I see a pillow come out and then a second pillow come out, , and then a third and a fourth pillow come out.

I'm like what is going on? This? I thought my wife had a lot of throw pillows on the bed. What are these guys [00:26:00] doing? But in all reality, if you didn't have your own private boat, the ferry ain't coming back to get you today. No. You'd we've been stuck with what we had. Unless you have your own private and Joey would be sleeping on the ground.

Hey, listen, you're here. I'm totally cool with you guys doing a supply run because they brought back chocolate milk and vanilla Oreos. Gotta have the golden Oreos. Man. Look, I'm telling you, if you haven't patches. Oh man. See, I just brought a cot. Yeah, that was smart. Yeah I'll tell you what I have a single person tent.

Everyone here has a tent that's really big. I have a little like bachelor tent. One person, one thing. Nothing's going in there with me. So my stuff's out in the open. Next year I'll have a better tent because y'all have your stuff in there because like when I gotta change, I got hot last night. I'm in my underwear.

I'm gonna break it down to you. I was in my underwear, so I get out, Dave's like whispering I'm awake, Dave, you don't have to whisper. Senior . I step out and I'm in my underwear and he's oh. And I was like, what? You want me to change my tent? I ain't gonna room . Here's the thing about step out like that.

If you want to just picture what Nick looks like in his underwear, think [00:27:00] about Burt Chrysler on stage. . That is what Nick looks like that either, and I'll take it. I like Bert. He's a good guy. I like him. So we now call Nick the machine. And that's Nick. You're sig. I'm not Tom Serra. I thought I was Tom Hardy or Conor McGregor.

Should we talk about, go that way? Camel back though. McGregor? No. McGregor. Yeah. I get McGregor all the time. . No, I can see the McGregor for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So then today we went out and we scouted. Oh, that was fun. And we said, Hey, we're gonna go way back in there. We're gonna find a good spot. Some guys brought their popup blind.

Some guys brought climbing stands. We kinda split, went north and south. And yeah, Nick decided to fill his camel back up with vodka . And so he was, no, didn't . Why not? Why not? Would just, cuz it's, subject to investigation Now, scout. Now just, so now just so that everybody knows we cannot be carrying loaded firearms at all.

Can you clarify that? It was safe? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So no loaded firearms at all today because I [00:28:00] look really not in camp, not outside of camp. And so it was cranberry vodka. He was not strapped. and he was definitely drinking pretty heavily. And I'll be honest with you, when I came out I was just following a group and I was like, I've been down this road.

I don't wanna go down this road. We didn't see shit last year. And I, and but then my mindset changed because I was like, Dan Hunt's more than I do. Listen to Dan. Dan Hunt's more than I do. Listen to Dan have these signs of, yeah, but we saw signs. How many signs have we seen last year? Hell of signs. Oh, so many.

You hear, here's the thing about pig country. Drop the trail and see it. Can we draw out pig country? It doesn't matter where you go, there's gonna be sign. And yes, you can have seven different, you can have seven different trails converging on one spot. That doesn't mean the pigs are gonna be there.

And in fact, Doug today covered that. He's listen, if you go somewhere and you see where a pig has mudded up a tree, or if he might not be there for a month, he might not. He said, I have trail cameras that prove this. I go out and I see this mud on a tree and I put a trail camera up [00:29:00] and I come back and it still looks like it's fresh.

And for a month, I don't get a single pig on that trail camera, but for us it wasn't mud. We didn't see mud on trees. We've seen rubs we've seen. Correct. Technically a pig hole tracks scat, but we stretched it out. Explain the way, I guess here's the thing though. If the ourselves, even if there's, even if there's scat, even if there's tracks and they look wet, they look fresh, the amount of canopy cover here and the amount of precipitation they get, it's always gonna look fresh. Almost always gonna look fresh unless it's indirect sunlight. Yeah. We got, how much rain do you think we got last night? Quarter inch. It was a decent, oh, we got and a half. Brandon. Brandon's coming in these now if you ask someone over, here's my, it's gonna maybe be an inch and a half.

If you ask Luke, it was like three feet . So I'm gonna go with what Brandon says cuz Brandon brought a bottle of Blain's and he seems the guy a reason . But about our what do you think about our setup now? I know I love our setup cuz I feel like the hog doesn't stand a chance between where [00:30:00] Luke sat Luke's spotted.

So I'm gonna give credit to Luke. Luke, you saw a hog day one. You're already better than we were last trip. And we're not gonna divulge the location of where you saw it because we are very close to other campsites. Yeah. Yeah. So picture proven though. Picture proven, he did bring a picture back of a hog that he easily could have shot.

Let me tell you folks, this fist, if we could hook today, if this big. All right, guys. If you've been listening to the podcast, I'm sure you've heard me talk about the helicopter hog hunt that I did down in Texas. Now, I went down there with rope Texan Outfitters and Landon and Brandon, the owners put us on the animals.

We killed 150 pigs in 19 coyotes, just from the air. On top of that. We went out thermal hunting at night and got up close and personal to more hogs. I didn't have to worry about bringing guns or ammunition because all of that was provided for me, and it is to this day, the most action packed day of hunting I've ever had.

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So he found a pig shadow cell. We found a really good spot that was a clearing and it was, it's a dried swamp, basically. Yeah. Dry swamp slash clearing. And we could see farther in this area than we could see anywhere else that we'd been today. And so we got set up in there, we walked around.

There was a couple pig wallows. There's a ton of trails. There's a ton of sign that pigs have been there to, in fact, there's a, there's like grass that's probably what, three feet tall. Oh. And it's it's so tall. It's like there's palmetto beds, but they're not palmettos there though. Cattail Beto, but you could see like a hole where they had gone underneath the grass and then wallowed it out as a bedding area.

Everyone would hope we come back tomorrow saying, Hey, we all killed four hogs a piece. So we got set up in this clearing and the [00:32:00] clearings probably, I would guess that clearings probably about three to 400 yards long and maybe 150 yards wide. No, I'd agree. That's solid. Yeah. And so we've got it set up to where every other person we're gonna, we're gonna heavily hunt this area, and then we've got some other guys going on the opposite end of the island.

Little high, little low. Our scout. Yep. We're gonna go ground blind. The next person's gonna be up in a tree. The next person's gonna be in a ground blind. The next person's gonna be up in a tree. And one technique that I had mentioned using, leading up to the hog hunt was bringing my FoxPro and doing a piglet squeal.

So I contacted the island, I was like, Hey, is this legal? The person that I spoke with on the phone said, no, it's not legal. So my. Fox Pro is currently sitting in my truck at David's house six hours away. And then we got two hours from his house and I get a call back from a different person on the island to clarify.

And they said, Hey, there was some miscommunication. It actually is legal. So now we're using a couple little speakers, a JBL speaker, and shout out to jbl. Shout out to [00:33:00] jbl. And they're not a Swiss tech yet. Lantern that has a Bluetooth speaker. And we're gonna set up, because I have seen it firsthand.

Shout I got a light and a speaker. There you go. We're set. We're not getting lost and we're gonna kill pigs. So Absolutely. We're gonna set up, we're gonna, we're gonna do some piglet squeals because in my experience with pigs both hunting and farming them, would a piglet squeals, if there is a sow that has given birth in the last two months, she will come.

Aggressively to be aggressive. be aggressive. There you go. Now if only you had your shirt off on stage, doing that in front of thousands of people I wonder if that'll help in the hunt. Should I go shirtless? Like my nips are gonna be hard, but that hog's gonna look at you and go boy, come here.

So it might be like you or daddy. That's our strategy for tomorrow though, and for me to have my. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yep. Okay. Down. I didn't know you didn't, we didn't clarify until just now. So viewers, to me, it's new we're gonna set up [00:34:00] now Luke, he's gonna be a couple hundred yards away from us because he is the only one who has seen a pig so far this year.

Yeah. He's gonna be north of us. Yeah, he's gonna be north of us. And what's, which we've heard Rumors North is where to go. Yep. So we went north and I was happy with, after I figured out we were going north, cuz hearing everything we went, like I said, we hike 28 miles that first day and we were zigzagging like, where's Waldo in this field?

I'm like, I promise you. Like I left water bottle. You remember Luke? I left the water bottles. Yeah. He's I'm gonna leave this right here. We're gonna come back. Yeah. Because we were gonna come right back to it. I was like, if we're coming back to the Trailhead, I'm gonna leave these water bottles here.

Cuz they kept clanging, they kept bing. And I was like, I want water to drink. Like I wanna make sure we're good. We go out in this clearing, this pine clearing off of Duck Pond Road and we ended up walking. Probably 18 miles to the beach. I'm gonna tell you what, walking on the beach in full gear, that's a, to I've never done that before.

It probably feels different. That's a weird experience, man. Like you're talking backpack oranges, you're like orange vest and a rifle. Backpack full of oranges. . I did, so I did have tangerines. We had eggs, tangerines, bull [00:35:00] eggs, Turkey wraps and tangerine for lunch, didn't we? Hey, there you go. We did.

Yeah. Nick fed us well. It was great. Yeah. That's not a good hunting meal. I can't say I have ever brought any of those things out on the hunt with me. I was thinking we're burning calories. We need to put back in positive calories. There you go. Not the bad calories. I don't know if there's a such, but it depends on if you're Democrat, like vodka.

Those are clean colors cuz it's clear . I've read it. I've heard that's how it works. And I'll tell you like we were supposed to head out and we were headed out with six of us. No, there was five of us. No, there were supposed to. Oh, there was supposed to be six. There was supposed to be six of us.

Cause he missed I was number six. No. This time. This time. Okay. Okay. So this time there was supposed to be six of us going, we were supposed to head out and then I got a phone call. Unfortunately, yeah, all business, no fun here. Can't we had it And I had a, I was to say Jack's all worked, no play.

There's no place for Jack's. I had a business call and I had to take the call and I had to get it completed. These guys are like, Luke, let's go. We're waiting on you. I was like, you guys go, I'll catch up with you. , they go and I start headed out. But I was getting worried about dropping cell signal and I'm like walking out there and I'm getting [00:36:00] worried about dropping cell signal.

And I was like, ah, God dang it. I've got to finish this song. Can we talk about that for a second? No. That's the worst thing in the world when you got on a field, like you tried to take a deuce befo before, and if you don't know what a deuce is, and you're probably listening to the wrong podcast, but like dropping a deuce, like you gotta do that prior, you have to, because if you're stuck in a field doing it, Hunts over whatever it takes.

Y'all talk about this that early, will tell you when you wake up, you talk about this that early. Listen, absolutely. When you wake up in the morning, man, you need to either have a cup of coffee or a cigarette Yeah. So that you can take a dump some form of tobacco or caffeine to push that for sure. Bird out.

And I hate to beat that vulgar about it, but that's the worst thing for me if I go on a hike with my family. Listen, can you imagine trying to dump out of a saddle? Yes. Have you seen my saddle system? That thing covers my butt completely. Man. that covers my butt completely. Oh, now I'm gonna be just hanging it.

It would be interesting though. I haven't I've taken a leak out of a tree, Sam before. I've never taken a What's strategy to that besides coffee and cigarettes? Like what if No, like seriously, what if somebody doesn't like coffee or cigarettes? What do. How do you push that [00:37:00] turd out?

Like jumping jacks need some fiber one fiber oat oatmeal raisin brand ra. Yes. So with Luke, they we're so sorry I didn't mean to ruin. We're gonna get Luke scenario. I did not walk into the woods with Luke. Yeah. So at all. So like he said, he hung and junior and Dan, we all went, set up our each other stuff and it's been a good at least, what, four to five minutes an hour setting up?

Yeah. Literally I'm, our entire hike was an hour 45 up our orange flags flagging that. Were there flagging our way out. By the way, you flagged greatly. I appreciate that. . Listen, you did, took it to heart when Doug said flag every five feet because it's dude I knew left and right. Yes. You did it left and right.

I was like, say in the middle we're good, but tar you won't from your flag. Like it was that close. No, I get lost. This is not my way. No we knew the way out. We didn't even use our on. You don't need it. Shout out to OnX. Listen, if anybody comes across that trail, they're gonna be like, there is 45 people hunting this area

Exactly. We better stay out here. Yeah. Because the purpose of the flags to let people know, Hey, someone's in this cut. Don't go in [00:38:00] this cut. But we walked in a little far with that and I followed my trail out and just flagged it because I didn't know how far you guys went in. No, you did great. I'm not, no shit.

Luke, I'm coming out of our trail and 45 minutes in, out of the blue I pop out. I was waiting on the other guys. They hiked a little further in and Luke is there. . Luke is hauling ass. . Yeah. I was literally, when I say hauling ass, he is Ron ass. Ron Force run because he has the. I've ne I've not jogged a mile and a half back to camp.

Mind, mind you, they upload, always have backpacks with gear on in case we were out later. At what point in the jog back did you have to do the penguin waddle to keep it all in? Oh, do you want to know ? So about the mile viewers want know? So again, I was walking up and I was like the gun, the belt.

This is why I need a video crew with me at all times. like the amount of stuff that we could have gotten. I'll hold a video camera. Listen man, we should have GoPro that whole boat, right? Oh, absolutely. Have a second boat driving past [00:39:00] us. Yeah. And just to see how Bo down we were. Luke coming back.

They're undermining your sweating your talent you have in your field. Gilbert. They're undermining it. They should get you this a hundred percent. Yeah. I was still sweating, but I'll sign the congress. I'll get this done. I like that. Put it in legislation for Cumberland Island. Everybody. No. Not for Cumberland Island for you.

No. Let's do that on the comment card because Doug did say if you want something on a comment card or put it on the comment card. We need to Caleb videographers for everybody. I think we need to get Caleb on our side because he's the new guy. Come up and coming and he, the way he talked, he wants to get this island a hunting island.

Yeah. Like he wants people to travel here to hunt. I like it. First thing he said was, move it to the rut. Everybody thinks no one thought of moving it to the rut. Everybody thinks game warden and they get scared. Yeah but your tag doesn't, he doesn't make money off of your fines. He makes money off of you coming to hunt.

He's a great person. Yeah. The state makes money off your fines. The gay board makes money off you coming to hunt. Let's get that clear. He is here for the people and to help them. Hundred. Okay. Lucas is patiently and I want to hear the answer to my question. Yeah, [00:40:00] I was I was 0.75 miles from the time I had to go and this what happened?

Gosh, we knew he was accurate here. No, so what happened is I had to go Apple watches. I had to go right. I had to go and I was like, all right, fine. I'm gonna go, take a deuce in the woods, no big deal. So I go over and I find a tree and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go. I start getting in my bag and.

I don't have any. You ain't gonna dooo paper. I don have any paper. I have nothing. And all we got is little leaves out here. There. You like little tiny leave. I'm like, oh, forget that. I said, all I'm, man. How about some of that Spanish ? Yeah. With all them bugs. You want chickeners in your But with all bug, like flannel too much.

I'm telling you. I know. I ought to cut a sleeve real quick. Oh shit. Sheed that flame, man. So I was like, forget it. I've seen this hog. I found where I'm gonna be, I know where it's gonna. Oh, you were a man of content. You were a man of, and I was with a prairie dog poking. The only thing, and all he didn't do was jungle dump.

Yeah. . That's i's right. But that's, you had it all, you had it in a bag. Yeah. So 1.75 miles.[00:41:00] How quick would you say you'd done that? Mile? You saying bolt's phoning and he wants, we got here in 20 minutes. Oh. To oh. I think, okay. He's not question it. He's not questioning. No, I, 20 minutes. He's not questioning 20 minutes, Tom.

I was pouring sweat and I'm very upset that you guys were still in the woods because I was like he's still not questioning it. How did I catch Luke? I don't think you know how fast the same bolt is. Yeah, it was rough, dude. It was rough. Most of the time I'll just go, but I was like, oh my God, I can't, I've never seen someone take their belt off in the middle of mid woods, mid srid in the woods.

Yeah, because that's wild. I was, yeah. I was taking my belt off. How hold my gear on my, I was holding my gear in my hands instead of it on my back, so I wasn't going Oh, you took the backpack off and was like, baby carry. The ancy carrier. Oh, all of it. The pop-up blonde. Really? What made you think logically that was fine?

Like I'm curious. I'm not making fun. , I tell my body what to do. Okay. My body doesn't tell me what to do. Oh really? Cuz you had ran a 0.7 mile and had the shit , but you decided to take your belt off and carry a baby sack. It sounds like curious. It sounds like having to poop is a really good [00:42:00] cardio workout.

So Luke, I went in with these guys. You don't have to ask for it. It's just weird. We beat them here and they were not very far behind. Screw body plex. Poop, not the X. Right here. We were here at least 30 minutes before them and they were right behind us. Yeah, dude, I got back and I was like, David, I'll be all right back.

I'm stripping off everything as fast as I could, running back to the back. Appreciate you. Hey man. At a duck hunt where you had waiters and you had to get back here. Oh, that would've been, yeah. Yeah. Duck hunt. Wade would've been having to u use the bathroom at all in waiters and waiters is terrible.

Now I will say I got lacrosse waiters this year. They've got a full zipper all the way down. Oh, really? Totally waterproof. I was up to my chest this year. Take my money, no water coming in, but I could if I don't cut it all the time, take a leak without it at all. Yeah. That's worth it. If you duck hunt all the time.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's a no rainer's waterproof at all. Yeah, the zipper is a hundred percent waterproof. That's awesome. I was getting stuff wet that was in my chest pockets. I was that deep in water and I never had water coming through the zipper. That's awesome. But dude, that's awesome. I won't lie that, so I [00:43:00] heard that.

That Sal coming in and I heard it coming in and I was like, man, yeah, we focused on the poop. I wanna know about the pig. And I was like, wait a second. So I'm running. So wait, you're running from the pig? No. So back then, listen, if you shoot that pig, we're gonna call it poopa pig. Yeah. Poopa pig. Yes. You know it.

Yes. But we can only look at one side of it. You know it, it's a pig's face. Look like a giant wiener. luck. Luckily I didn't have, I didn't have to poop. You're name poop. A pig. I didn't have to poop. I was about three miles. I was about three miles into my hike. And I was like, dude, this is like beautiful area.

Like I, this is where I'm gonna either sit here. Yeah. Or where I'm headed. I was headed to a certain spot and I was like, but I took the long way to get there cause I want to see everything else. And I was like, I'm gonna go to this spot, but I was like, this is beautiful. And so I'm marking it on my OnX and I'm like, boom, I'm gonna, this is beautiful.

I'm gonna come back here. Whatever. I don't heard, don't know. OnX is one of your sponsors, but they've helped out right now. They have been awesome. They have been fantastic. They phenomenal. [00:44:00] Yeah. And Phenomen, I heard it and I was like, they have the roads laid out everything. So the other problem is people don't know about the armadillos here maps.

So how did you know Luke? How did you know it wasn't armadillo? Because like, how many armadillos did we run across and like I stopped twice probably. I was like, hold on a second, Armadillo. Hold on a second. Armadillo. And I, hold on a second. Two. Hold on. Armadillo. It's not a hog.

It's not a hog. It's armadillo. And then we get out there and I'm like, hold on. It's fucking armadillo. So the like to differentiate, to tell the viewers like, cuz armadillo is not, it's in between a hog and a squirrel almost. Yep. honestly. Squirrel For your deer. Hunters. For your deer hunters. If you set in a stand and you're listening for a deer, The squirrels fucks you up, does it Not for sure.

All the time. Chipmunks. Oh man. So the squirrels here are armadillos and they can't, they're blind, by the way, just to let y'all know, comes to you, Jonathan. They're really stupid animals. Armadillos. Oh yeah. Yeah. Really stupid. . All right, so before we wrap this up, I want [00:45:00] predictions for tomorrow.

I'm going with four. Four pigs. Four pigs. Four pigs. We got a solid. Our camp. Yes, our nine people. We're getting four pigs. I'm planning on shooting three tomorrow. All right. All. I'll take one of the three. I'll take one of three. I'll take one. You take those three. I'm gonna shoot your fourth one. Okay.

So that being said, you don't take out block 40. Listen, my, you guys have your own, you guys have your own predictions, so you don't have to account for my three and his one. What? What do you think? I thought you meant as a group. Sorry. No I am saying as a group, how many as a group? Probably. So you're saying three as a group.

I'm saying three myself. Yeah, I guess I didn't say the group number. Then you're still, I'm going five for the group. Okay. Not that I don't have faith in everybody, but I just have to go into this cnce. There's five in that hole we got, honestly, I know what you're, I would push it.

I'm picking up those playing cards. Our whole group. I would push it more than five because what do you call, so the island actually keeps a group number of hunters that come in if it's delayed or whatever. So they had, for scenario, there's a [00:46:00] hurricane this year they had to delay. So they had to leave early.

So 13 hunters and they only killed a couple hogs, but they had to leave day two. But that's fair. Four reference, our numbers are pretty high if you look at the average, because last year hog hunt throughout the entire three day dunk. Don't ask me numbers, they give, I'm wrong. It's 70 something.

They only killed six hogs Total between all of, I thought it was nine. Was it nine? I thought it was nine. They give you, but remember I did tell you 80 people came off the boat and I was wrong. Yeah, that's true. You were not even close. Don't ask me numbers. You're dig into statistics. So maybe I should change my hogs.

Give you a very good math chart. Yeah, I didn't. Statistics out there. Easy. Dynamic. Dave . . How can we tell the viewers of that story? Absolutely close. Oh Lord. Yeah. We gotta tell him that. Like why he's called dynamic Dave. So hold on, hold, let's finish up. Prediction. Yeah. Predictions. What you got dude? I don't, I'll shoot one or two.

I hope I, my first year I'm gonna be real cuz I was here last year. [00:47:00] Yeah, we have two hawk. Okay, in this group I can respect that. I'm thinking four cuz we got Dan. I don't know. I'm filming Wild Card with Dan's a monster. Dan's a monster, dude. Hey listen, if it goes from helicopter.

This is an, I still have two. Listen, if this goes based off of my year so far, we're in pretty good shape. If it goes by some of my other years that I've hunted, not so much , I'm by no means a like phenomenal hunter. Somehow I figure out a way to get it done. One way or another, that's your background.

I like going into a, these are a little different than land hogs. 100%. I call these iron hogs. They're way I have, they respond to the same. No life. I have never hunted in terrain like this or cover like this. So that's pretty wild. I hunted on the ground last year in Texas and we were in Texas five days into the hunt before we killed a.

Yeah. And it was much more open than this. We saw a lot. We did see a lot. We just engaged. So the Hogan in Texas is gonna move further? No. I take that back. Not further. They migration wise to, to [00:48:00] here. This is, are you drunk? No, I'm just kidding. . So to give everybody a perspective, what did literally we do today?

We went to the beach, right? No. We went to a swamp beach. The same thing here. It's a freaking beach. It's an island. There's no water. It's not, they're sandy. What did we do today? Going down to the boat dock? We went to the boat dock. I wouldn't say a beach. We went to the boat dock. Oh, it's Sandy . It's Sandy.

I wasn't under, I don't know what you're asking me. Sorry. You can go out there and you can get your own food and Oh, the oysters you're talking about when we got oysters? Yeah. So we went out there. Hold on. We didn't have a license for that. Don't say that. That did not happen. Yeah, we didn't.

We played a knife game. We did not get oysters. We had a couple. We had what? No, we didn't shush your mouth. Whatever. You don't say that. Listen, I, before the record, I did not collect any oysters. No, you didn't. Yeah, Dan didn't touch a thing. He was, but we did play the knife game where you stand with your feet shoulder with the part and you clearly the knife, I dunno.

His feet. We played that for a long time and I don't know how to throw a knife in the sand. And the whole goal of going down the boat dock [00:49:00] was to check on David's boat. Cause listen, they did in orientation today, she got a video of that. They did tell us that a boat sank here this year.

Yeah. During archery season or little ranger aluminum. Yep. Somebody's boat. No, to bring no bumpers. Not a John boat. It ended up going under. And now if you bring your own boat, have to expect that you're going to Beaches, beach. Beaches. Yes. Beach. But I'll tell you, bring your own boat. It has to be beached.

It's every single day. So I know people areand, anti dnr, but this is why I want to plug this dnr. I like Caleb. He changed the rules today and was like, Hey, we got the docket, the ferry's not being used. During the week, it's closed public today, after today. Dock the boat. Yep, dock the boat. And if you have to side dock it.

And he said the only reason that ranger sank was because I don't know if it was a ranger, I'll take that back. It was an aluminum, some type of John boat. Yeah. Yeah. And they didn't have any bumpers in between the two boats. And the tide jumped out and he said the tide's moving a foot an hour quicker this year than it did last year.

And it [00:50:00] crushed it and sunk it. But Caleb came out here with his, he brought it to us and he Caleb took the pump and they took care of it. Yeah, Caleb took care of it. And he took and he sent the boat to the dude's to Caleb's mechanic to fix it. It didn't fully sink, but what happened is it was tied off and so it basically went underwater and then they came out with a fire pump and pumped it out.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was all Caleb, a hundred percent. I would much rather beach mine at that point in time. So who's, but I'm just saying you bring your own, you gotta be willing to beat it. No, a hundred percent. I'm not a boat owner, so I can't say anything. It is your have to. I'd rather put it on a dock.

It's saying it's not rock. It's very sandy. Who's the best wife perspective person here. I sent a video to my wife earlier of us throwing knives at each other's feet. . Why? She said, you better win what happens on Best Island's. It's gotta be Nick, why read it? What'd your wife say about me?

Told her playing a game. I didn't say Nick. I just said playing a game. Are y'all throwing knives at each other? . ? [00:51:00] No, ma'am. The, our feet, the oven and that whole scenario is, that's pretty good. I'm really glad that my wife only listened to creeps and not this fantastic Nick. So how many in our group?

How many hogs? I said four. I think four. You're sticking with four? Yeah, I'm sticking with four. Dan's gonna pull two or three. We 4 52. And what was your group number? Yeah. What was your group number? Dave Junior. Overall. Honestly with our setup, since we're set up in a horseshoe and en closing them, I'm gonna say, I really hope everybody gets, there's five in our horseshoe.

No, there's four. I hope we at least leave in our group, at least not our whole entire group. The came, I'm motel right now. If we kill a hog, I'm done with our group and I hope we get five or six because some people are shooting. You're allowed to shoot. The whole thing, what the island is you're allowed to bring an assault rifle, is what the world would call it.

Now, this isn't cnn, whatever or [00:52:00] isn't, whatever. Sorry if that's not allowed. Whatever, you can take it out. You can 100% say that you're allowed to shoot AR 15, right? Yeah. I made that mistake of packing light. You didn't bring it. I brought my sub millimeter, which is a bolt action rifle. And if I shoot a hog, I promise you right now it's, that's okay.

General Lee's on. It's not moving. Robert e Lee's happy for you, but. Listen, I think we're gonna have, we're in our group, in our area that are shooting to ar, so I say five or six. I think we're gonna have success tomorrow. I hope that, I know we, I hope the numbers are high because honestly that, honestly, that will probably be some of the best first date numbers that they've seen out.

We have the random, so that's what I got out of this whole conversation just now is okay, no one said zero. Yeah, no one said zero. We're coming outta those woods with a hog, which between nine of us we're coming outta those hog with a hog. The area that we have enclosed is, what do you say it is?

Acreage wise, give or take. I would say that area is probably about, I don't know, acreage. Acreage, 30, 25 to between five of us. 25 to 30 acres. What? So us? Yeah. [00:53:00] Yeah, between us. Okay. 25 to 30 acres. I also said there was 80 people on the boat last year, so That's true. I'm not gonna argue with you. So Luke has spread the frozen down.

I feel like that's a lot. I could definitely look on OnX. They've got an area shape deal. Yeah, we could definitely, so why don't you guys keep talking and I'm gonna look that up quick. For the sign, I, and honestly, what they told us earlier, which kind of freaked me out a little bit, was that don't chase a hog.

Like you chase a deer, don't look for deer, skat. I mean look for rubs more and look for a bedding area. Look for, that's where they go, whether it's morning or night. So I went in, I've seen, I call it a pig trough or pig hole's where they're budding around, I think up, I think Grandpa Bill calls it a Waller.

There you go. Waller. Waller. That's where they're Waller around. Okay. So I was off 17.47 acres. Yeah, I was gonna say, but Hundred acres. I felt like that was a lot. No, I didn't. 500. I said 25 to [00:54:00] 30. We are on 9,000 acres. I did have a camelback full of boxes. We're on 9,000 acres though. I apologize for questioning you.

Yeah, no. There's a group of people. So even if you made a circle out of us. No. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. That's what I'm sayings. If a hog comes through there doesn't send chance. I'm hoping. I'm hoping a group of pigs comes through. Hope comes to the center. Shoot sends us a call now. Yeah. This is my first year and honestly I was, when I walked out there, I did not, when we were walking through, I seen horse crap.

Horse crap. If that company sent you a call right now, seen helicopter. I've seen no sign. I've put that all over my social media just cause a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I seen no signs of hogs until, honestly, there's another guy in our group that's not here right now, but me and Jonathan, we were walking a little bit of ahead.

We stopped. Literally we stopped. I looked to the left and there's a yay gaping Hey, Luke. Two and a half foot hole there that you see into the brush. [00:55:00] It's getting a little chill. Yeah. Yeah. We followed. He said, I didn't even please. I said, all right, we're gonna pass it. He said, no. He said, that looks like a hog hole.

Let's go follow it. Yeah. We followed it, Jonathan. Yeah. What? How we entered that hole? Yes. Yeah. We followed. , dude, you know that's what this turned out. But this Waller does not exist on the map. It's just there. Natural. Yeah, it's not, yeah, it's not. And the thing about this Waller is you can tell it was there, but you can see all the leaves on it.

And then so my thing was like, oh, it's an old Waller and it like, walk in. Is it really an old Waller? Because it, dude, it rained, what did we say? Half inch yesterday? Quarter of an inch. How much? Yesterday? A quarter. Quarter, yeah. So yeah, you could see new tracks about how full was the puddle. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But if y'all, but there's a lot of what ifs. But you, if y'all see, this is sandy soil, so when it rains here, it disappears pretty quick. Immediate lord. Like we had a puddle right underneath our table. Oh, absolutely. We had a puddle underneath tents. Like my front, the front of my tent, oh, I'm gonna burn the 10, three inches of standing water.

And it was gone by the time we went to bed. Thank you. Oh no def to [00:56:00] wrap this thing up. Oh yeah. I'm sorry we, no, you're good. We're gonna cover dynamic Dave. On the next podcast. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that because we're closing in on 10. Those people like who's dynamic with Dave. Yeah. We're closing it on 10 o'clock.

We definitely need to upload a video of Dynamic Dave. Oh my gosh, that'd be so sweet. . I wish we I'll do it. I'm telling you'll that I wish we had a camera rolling. I'll plug that. I'll plug that. I'll do that my phone to a tree behind us just to watch him. No, I'll just stay back. Y'all go hon. I'll do it.

That's perfect. So we're gonna wrap this up. It's closing in on 10. We're getting up at five. I'm making pancakes. We're gonna have bacon and eggs and then we're gonna get out to the spot and we're gonna Uber Eats review these pancakes tomorrow too. Ooh, there you go. Hey, I'm good with, these are good pancakes, dude and DoorDash.

Not instant mix pancakes. Just powder in a bottle. You pour some water in, shake it. And you got pancake mix. Yep. I'm telling you, they hit different at camp. They hit different at camp. Oh, everything hits different at camp. Everything hits different at camp. So thanks for Ho on guys. Walk. Last little plug.

All right. Thanks for hopping on guys. Thank you. Yeah man. Thank you. Awesome. [00:57:00] And that is gonna wrap it up for today's show, man. We had an awesome hunt. I'm just gonna fill you in on how that hunt went, because a couple of us were pretty close on our guesses or our estimates or our hopes and dreams, if you will, for the hunt.

It was it was a wild hunt for sure. We put in a lot of work, a lot of. And a lot of pigs were killed. And so all together, throughout the entire camp, I think we ended with 24 pigs. That's not just our group, that's everybody who came out to hunt for this portion, this three day hunt on the island. Now that's significantly up from the year before.

I think the final estimates from the year before were nine total, and this seems to be one of the best years that they've had or one of the best hunts that they've had in recent years. And I don't know why. Maybe it's because me and my guys were there killing pigs. No, just kidding. I [00:58:00] think there's a lot of things that play into it.

Wildlife biologist on the land or on the island hadn't been really hitting it hard this year. Normally he gets out there and traps and hunts and tries to help thin out that population, but he hadn't done that a whole lot this year at all. And so I think that probably added to the pig numbers, the sightings.

And there's a lot of guys who are coming back year after year, so they're figuring out where to find these pigs. They're sweet spots. In fact, by the end of the hunt, we found one of those spots a lot of guys hadn't even seen a pig for a couple days. Actually I'm gonna start with the very beginning.

This is gonna be a long outro, but you're just gonna have to bear with me. Day one, We go out, I climb up a tree with my saddle system. We had really figured out this spot that we wanted to be in and we loaded it pretty heavily. I was like, we've got good visibility. It's one of the most open spots on the island that we had found at this point.

And so a bunch of us go out there. I climb up my tree. I'm in [00:59:00] between three people basically. And. I didn't realize this, but everybody left. All the guys that I went out there hunting with had either climbed outta their trees or outta their blinds and had gone back to camp, and I'm sitting there not realizing that at all.

I look over and I see this big black boar coming through. These probably like eight foot tall pines now. I don't have a shot at all. I'm trying to follow it with my rifle, trying to stay on it. Andy's like disappearing the trajectory that he was headed. I did not think I would get a shot. I thought he'd get cleaned through, never to be seen again.

But he actually angled towards me, and when he did, I was like, all right, this is actually gonna happen. He popped out in an opening. I shot, he took off running. I shot again, and he dropped. When I went over to him, he was not dead. And so I tried to, finish him off quickly so he didn't have to lay their suffering.

And he came after me. And so[01:00:00] it got sideways in a hurry. He came after me. I had to shoot multiple more times. I think when it was all said and done. I had shot twice when he dropped seven shots later, as he's charging me as he. Like laying there, breathing, still trying to put him out of his misery.

It was seven shots later that he finally expired. Now that's not how it went the whole trip, but that's how it went for that pig. So day one is done. I come back with a pig. I think he, we figured with without field dressing enemy was probably around 200 pounds. Then the next day we go out and one of the other guys in the group, Jonathan, he has success.

He shoots two pigs. So we're all excited. We're like, okay, it's happening. We've already killed more pigs than last year. This is awesome. And . Meanwhile, as Jonathan is having this success, Nick and I decided to go [01:01:00] out to this new area. He had never been, I had definitely never been, and it was a long hike.

We saw this clearing on a map. We wanted to walk through the clearing, see if there were any pigs out there. Long story short, we end up knee-deep in a swamp getting tore up by Sawgrass and Palm Meadows and Reeds and, it was a nightmare. We both came back soaking wet, all tore up brand new pants that I had on.

They look like I had worn them for years. And it's just price you pay chasing after pigs on an island, day three sh shows up and I'm getting pumped. I kept telling the guys like, dude, I'm going to kill another pig day two. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't very, I wasn't very optimistic, I guess I went out there knowing that we were gonna put a lot of miles on going to a spot that we hadn't been and that was gonna potentially bring up some issues for us.

Day three though, there were a couple guys who had shot opportunities, never fully connected with a pig, or at least never found [01:02:00] blood or anything. These pigs, they have so much fat from eating acorns that the blood disappears quickly and. Even with high caliber rounds, sometimes you just don't get a solid blood trail.

Now they say to try to shoot 'em in the head so that they, drop and you're not having to chase them through any thick stuff so that you don't lose them so that they don't charge you whatever. Sometimes that's not an option. So two of the guys, Joey and Luke they had multiple encounters with pigs throughout the week, and so they're like, dude, you guys gotta come sit over here with us.

So we get over there and it's mature pine trees and a six inch bed of pine needles all over the place. We get to that spot. In the morning, Nick and I are sitting together. His back is to the tree, my back's to the tree. And then he's dude, I'm tired. I need to go to sleep. And I was like, okay. So he lays down, starts snoring, like loud, snoring, not quiet, snoring at all.

And I'm giggling like a little kid in church and I can't help myself cuz he's just [01:03:00] like sawing logs right behind. Meanwhile, we've got deer coming in. We've got horses coming in, and I'm glassing this small buck that was walking like say from my three, no, not my three o'clock, my 11 o'clock to my one o'clock, and I'm glassing it.

And all of a sudden I catch movement 20 yards from me outta the corner of my eye and here's this big board right on top of us. And so I like turn with my rifle. It knows something's up. So it takes off. I'm like tapping Nick saying, dude pig. And I wanted him to get a shot. I realized that he's still coming too from his nap.

And so I pull up the rifle shoot again. I had a perfect like broadside shot at 60, maybe 80 yards on the first one. The second shot was running and it ran into the palmettos. We end up going over there recovering it. Another great boar. I think that one would've probably come in around 1 90, 1 95.

And , the guys, sorry, I don't mean to laugh. The guys all come and they're like, Hey, who [01:04:00] shot it? Who shot it? And I was like, I didn't. They're like, are you serious? What happened? And so all day long I was showing people the videos of Nick snoring laying down right behind me. That leads into us going back to camp.

We're getting. For an evening hunt. At this point, I'm like, man, should I even go out? And then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go out and kill another pig. And everyone's dude, you better not like we need to kill a pig. It's like you've had opportunities, it just hasn't worked out. So we get back out to the same spot and this time me and my buddy David are sitting together.

Then we've got Joey and another guy, David sitting in a different spot. And then I'm trying to think where everybody. Was We had one guy, a climber, maybe it was just the five of us out there. I think that's right. I think we had five guys out there. Anyways, we're sitting there. All of a sudden I see pigs. I tell David like [01:05:00] tactical army rolls to my left, get set up in the prone position.

We're like, ready to take out these pigs. They're running towards, they're running like straight towards Joey and the other David, and I'm like, dude, if you get an opportunity at 'em, shoot. They got behind some trees. They stopped at this point. They couldn't have been 50 yards from the other guys.

They were about a hundred yards from us. And they turn around and start running back and David's Hey, they're coming back. They're coming back. And I'm thinking they're coming towards us. No, they're. Straight left to right on us and we end up shooting. I pulled the trigger twice. He pulls the trigger once I dump a big sow and we walk up and I'm like, dude, this is insane.

Sure enough, the guys come over, dude who shot ? David's damned. And they're like, are you kidding me, man? You called it out the other night on the podcast. Three pigs. You ended up with three pigs. I was like, man, we've got an hour and a [01:06:00] half left. Let's go sit back down. And sure enough, when we did, there were more pigs that came in.

Both Joey and the other David got shots at them. We never found any sign that they had hit them. Not sure what happened. At one point, apparently one of the pigs was like five yards behind David and Joey was yelling through the woods. It's so quiet in these woods. I'm telling you, we had three wild horses walk up at one point 40 yards, and I never heard them.

They were that quiet. And anyways, this pig snuck up behind David. Joey was yelling at him like, dude, you're one o'clock. You're one o'clock. Which I don't really, I wonder if he was like, also snoozing. Cuz I don't know how you don't see something at your one o'clock. Maybe he meant six o'clock or five o'clock.

But anyways, we ended up getting five pigs for the week as a group. I killed three super pumped, brought a ton of meat back home. I'm gonna have a European mount done on one of the skulls that wasn't completely destroyed. And [01:07:00] yeah that's the wrap up. That's the story on the pig hunt. I know that was long winded but I had to fill you in.

Didn't know if we'd get to do it a follow up episode, but I still might try to make that happen with a couple of the guys cuz they are a ton of fun to talk to you. But until next time guys, always choose adventure and God bless.

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