It seems I am either making ready for my next outdoor adventure or unpacking and stowing my gear from the last outing. I imagine this is par for most folks that enjoy fishing, hunting, photographing wildlife or just about any outdoor endeavor, there’s just lots of things we need to have ready to be successful.
I thoroughly enjoy the planning stage of an upcoming hunt or fishing trip. Turkey season is approaching fast and I’ve been “playing” with all my gear. I gave Heneretta, the plastic turkey hen decoy I’ve used for decades, a fresh wash job and even sprayed her with a little WD 40 to give her that sheen that hopefully make her look more realistic to any gobbler that might see the sun glinting off her wings.
I read an article on how the native Americans hunted turkeys and learned they often used freshwater muzzle shells for turkey calls. On a recent creek fishing trip for crappie, I spied half a mussel shell that was in excellent condition, it appeared it had just been placed there on the bank by possibly a raccoon or maybe a river otter. I gave it a good wash job and allowed it to dry in the sun one afternoon then tested it with one of the hardwood strikers I use on my slate turkey calls. The sound was perfect, but I did learn that different parts of the shell produced different sounds. A bit of practice and I found the shell call works great with a better variety of sounds than my best slate call. I will still use my box call for working distant gobblers but for up close calling when the old gobbler hangs up a few yards back in the brush, my new shell call should work very well.
I’ve been preparing for the upcoming Outdoor Ron-de-Voux at the Top Rail Cowboy Church in Greenville on March 28. This is the seventh year for the event, and I’ve become pretty good at ‘getting ready’. Each year I cook a huge cobbler over the campfire for our guests and often supply some barbeque links or fajitas for folks to sample. I started preparing for this event a month or so ago. We have a fish cooking team that has been serving fish for the past several years. But the fillets go fast and we often run out a bit too early.
This year, I started fishing with several friends and stocking up on tasty blue catfish fillets. I have about eight-gallon bags full of fillets frozen now and am planning on another ‘fish procurement’ trip to Lake Tawakoni later this week with my friend Guide Tony Pennebaker. The team usually fries fish in big cast iron skillets but this year my Kaufman County friends Edgar and David Cotton offered to bring their high-volume fish cooker that will crank out a lot of fried fish in short order. My job this year is to insure we have plenty of fillets, a task several good friends and I have been enjoying accomplishing.
I try to have a big Dutch Kettle full of tasty smoked venison links on the campfire for my guest at the event each year but this year I hope to also serve some pulled pork barbeque. I keep a couple loaves of bread and some barbeque sauce handy for preparing quick fold over sandwiches.
Note I stated that I “hope” to serve pork barbeque! I must first shoot the perfect eater hog and the stage is set for that to happen. Chances for success are very high. Preparation for this wild pork barbeque actually began several months ago when my neighbor gave me a wood fired smoker on wheels, not one of the huge propane tank smokers but one about half that size. Just right to be portable but still big enough to cook a big quantity of meat. He mostly used the smoker for grilling.
I determined it needed a larger diameter smokestack to get the heat up to 250 degrees. Last month another good friend welded a much larger exhaust stack on the smoker and now it’s easy to maintain cooking temperatures.
This wild pork procurement hunt I have scheduled for tomorrow night when the temperature is supposed to drop into the thirties. I sometime collect my wild pork when the weather is warm but the upcoming chill down should be perfect for not only hunting but taking care of the meat I hope to put on the smoker.
I have a corn feeder hanging from a limb of a giant pecan on my buddy’s place and a trail camera set to monitor the hogs. For the past week, there has been a sounder of between twenty and thirty hogs hitting the corn every night, usually within an hour of darkness each evening. I’ve spotted a few younger sows (gilts) that weigh about 80 pounds, there is no better eating from the wild to my way of thinking than a fat wild sow.
I’ll be doing my hunting with my CVA Cascade VH in .223, the perfect rifle for the meat hog hunter. The rifle is topped with an ATN Thor mini 6 thermal scope which will allow me to collect my pork in total darkness and even film the video and audio through the scope for an upcoming segment of our TV show A Sportsmans Life on Carbon TV as well as YouTube. I’ll back my old GMC into a little depression about 45 yards from the feeder, settle into my favorite hunting chair in the bed of the truck and wait until the porkers arrive.
I’ve mentioned that I am a planner and my plan is to stay no later than 9:30 p.m. If they don’t show by then the cool weather is expected to stick around a couple of days and I’ll get them the next night. But my skinning knives are sharp and I plan to get it done the first evening! If all goes well, there will be plenty of pulled pork to go around at the event!
For more details on the Ron-de-Voux, visit my website at www.catfishradio.org. Hope to see you there! I promise to tell you ‘the rest of the story’ of my hog procurement hunt!
