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| With Handguns After Javelina | March 2009 | ||
| Gerhard Schroeder
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It is a fine treat to begin a new year going after javelina with
a holster gun. If you got drawn, that is.
Daniel, Mike and I had tags, for 20A again. We, or more accurately, I, chose
demanding but familiar terrain as usual, with elevations around four thousand
feet.
The weather is always a factor. Pigs don’t stay out in the rain, of which
there was plenty in the forecast. Personally I’d rather have it that way
than struggle in horrid heat. And in February anything over 85F is horrid
to me. No, for the 2009 opener every weather station promised some wet
stuff.
On opening morning we found only old sign. Several deer at least provided
some entertainment. After lunch I decided to push the issue. Up near the
crest of the mountain range things were too brushy to really hunt or sneak
along. I plowed through there anyway. Sure enough, soon I heard other
noises than me crushing through waste-high growth. Pigs!
Eventually I saw them, already on the opposite side of the next ravine,
maybe eighty steps ahead. Out came the Contender, only to have the little
desert ghosts disappear for good right before my cross hairs caught up with
them. I followed their path. But it was the familiar ‘never again’ story.
None of us found any more of the critters that day. It got worse. Daniel
came down with the flu, and Mike anticipated a rainy night and opted to
leave for home with Daniel that Friday evening. I stayed.
I absolutely love the rugged wild steep country here. It does tax your
legs and lungs to hunt there, and maybe because of that nobody else was
around.
Javelina, by the way, seem to: a) stay hidden so you’ll never see one –
okay, except during deer season; b) quit the area code in a hurry as you
stumble upon them – here a revolver or auto may come in handy to further
convince them that their plan is a good one; c) be in serious trouble as
you happen to detect one of them from a distance, and can plan and execute
your approach carefully – by far the preferred scenario, hence do bring
binoculars. And just because you don’t see them does not mean there aren’t
any.
Clouds did come that night. Saturday morning threatened with showers. I
packed a rain coat and headed out. After only a half hour I was following
fresh tracks. Such conditions inject tremendous doses of anticipation and
hope. Once it became clear what hill these tracks were leading for, I made
what turned out to be a mistake.
Dreams of heading them off led me around that hill in the opposite direction.
This did put the winds into my face. But after about two hours of carefully
maneuvering the steep and brushy hill I returned to within not even a hundred
yards of where I had abandoned those fresh tracks. Of course, that’s when one
pig showed up, stopping about twenty yards from me, but behind some bushes,
and heading for thicker vegetation.
Mistake number two… I slowly drew my 45 Auto and fired. The pig fled,
followed by a second. Neither presented another shot. My (lack of) crime
scene investigation revealed why the beast got so lucky. That 45 slug had
cut a twig some seven steps from the muzzle, and then gone anywhere except
near the critter.
Since that first javelina really wasn’t all that alarmed the better plan
would have been to wait. Rarely do these desert ghosts show up alone. The
second one may have eventually presented a better opportunity. Now they
were both outta there, in a hurry.
I did not find any others that day, despite covering a lot of brush, and not
even a sprinkle. But the clouds thickened. So I returned to the city to
let the rain do its thing.
After consulting the weather forecast daily, Daniel and I decided to invest
one more vacation day. We returned Wednesday, to find that much of the
precipitation from the previous days had come down as snow. North-facing
slopes had quite a bit left. At first light it was cold, and the ground
frozen solid. There was no new sign. We neither saw nor heard them from
several vantage points.
So our legs carried us further, down and out of the familiar country, then
up the opposing canyon side where new and plenty of side ravines promised.
Around noon I finally made an ‘announcement’: “Daniel, come over here, I’ve
found them!”
Now he could see them as well, three porkers in a small opening, a good
half mile away. We had the advantage, made our plan. The stalk was on.
As we approached to within about two hundred paces of where we had seen
them, they were gone.
Knowing that they must be around we searched with binoculars, and detected
them again, now four – no, five, near and in a dry watering tank. That
gave us two options: Keep going along the slope we were on, which kept us
above them and where we could watch them. But due to the open country, we
probably would not get to within fifty steps. Daniel was armed with a
4-inch .357 Magnum.
Therefore I suggested we drop back, and down, follow the bottom of the wash
and ambush them over the berm of the tank. The wind wasn’t in favor of that,
plus Daniel had concerns that the thicker vegetation in the wash may reveal
us through too much noise. So we inched along the slope.
We made it to only within about a hundred paces when one of the javelina
froze, obviously having detected something. We froze as well, a standoff
that lasted many uncomfortable minutes before the beast relaxed and resumed
feeding.
We called that little interlude ‘close enough’, and sat down. Due to the
distance for the anticipated shot I handed the Contender to Daniel since he
hadn’t killed big game before. Now where he was ready, all critters had
vanished from view. Oh they were still in that dry tank alright, but the
vegetation had swallowed them whole. A seemingly very long time passed.
We had earplugs in, and extra ammo placed strategically between us.
Finally one of them appeared in the open again, now on the inside of the
berm, closer to us. This would unleash several minutes of mayhem.
When the .30 Herrett boomed, the intended pig stumbled backwards down the
berm, and out of our view. The others exploded in blind panic, more than
I had anticipated.
Two seasons prior, in a similar situation, none ran quite that far after
my first shot. But this was now, and I yanked the big scoped pistol out of
Daniel’s hands. I frantically loaded a fresh 110 grain Spirepoint that
after twelve inches of travel would leave the muzzle at an unhealthy 2350
fps. I then leveled down on a fat-looking porker that had stopped on the
edge of protection-offering thick brush to sort things out.
The crosshairs bounced around annoyingly. When I squeezed, it was probably
more of a jerk, such that the bullet found what turned out to be the lower
right front leg.
My javelina charged forward, only a few steps, still in the open, back hair
fully erect. Even more excited now, I fumbled the next cartridge into the
chamber, then missed.
The pig moved a few more steps, now back on top of the berm. My next shot
hit it higher in the same leg, as it turned out. That, at least, slowed
him way down. Except that in this moment Daniel’s critter re-appeared from
the bottom of the tank. He greeted it with .357 fire, while I, now more
calm, finally put my javelina down with a low hit through both shoulders
that also went through the very front of the chest cavity.
I reloaded the TC, handed it to Daniel as all javelina had now dramatically
increased the distance from us. He fired a few times until all were safely
over the next hill.
Between his revolver and the Herrett some total of at least thirteen rounds
had severely upset the critters’ lunch break. Unfortunately, Daniel had not
touched any of them. There was no other pig down at the tank, no other blood
anywhere. So he followed the fugitives while I said my thanks, then field dressed my boar.
An hour and a half later I returned. My boar got the familiar treatment.
Soon he was hanging off the hatch on my 4Runner, cooling nicely in the forty
degree breeze. By the time Daniel returned also – he never caught up with
the pigs again – the meat was ready for the ice chest. Our slow ride back
out provided possibility of finding javelina for about five miles, but we
did not detect any.
Why that one javelina behaved as if it had been hit hard by Daniel’s first
shot remains a mystery. Still, Daniel told me on the way home that it was
a blast to go after javelina with handguns. We’ll try this again, lottery
odds willing.
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