Oldest has felt left out.

You see, any time Daughter has gone hunting with me, I bagged something.

Now while Oldest has only gone out once with me, he really wanted to experience “that moment”. Yes, he understands the difference between “fishing” and “catching” and that going out doesn’t always mean you come home with something. But still you have to admit that you’ll never capture a kid’s interest in fishing, hunting, or any activity if every time you undertake the activity it doesn’t result in the ultimate “winning” end goal of that activity.

Since it’s whitetail season I would have preferred to go whitetail hunting, but I know doing that could result in more sitting and no venison. I needed something that increased my chances of bringing home something, so I called up DB Hunting Ranch. Every time I’ve been to DB I’ve had success, but I know it’s not a given… and last night was almost a bust.

The plan? DB has exotics so I thought it’d be cool to see if I could get an axis doe or even a red or fallow doe. Sure there’d be feral hogs, and pork is good too. But I’ve heard so much about how awesome axis venison is that I figured we’d give it a try. So I put down a reservation with Danny and Kelly, pack the 6.8 and Oldest into the car, and off we went.

@ DB

While I figured we’d have to sit in a stand, when we got there Danny actually said we’d try to drive and stalk a bit. Cool! We get into the truck, start to drive around and then it happens….

Danny drove the truck into a deep ditch.

Rains have dug some ugly ditches into the property and Danny was looking around so much for the deer that he just wasn’t paying attention and the front tires ended up down in a ditch. Couldn’t get the truck out, so Danny had to call his wife to bring the other truck and a tow chain. But this gave us an interesting opportunity!

We got out and stalked.

Frankly, I was happy with that. I mean, the way I see sitting in a stand over a feeder? Is that true hunting? Well, in the broad sense yes it is, but I’d say specifically it’s more “harvesting”. I see nothing wrong with it, but are you actually going around, searching for the animal, tracking it, and so on? Nope. But getting out and walking around, trying to track the animal down… that’s more akin to hunting. But again, I have no problem with either because if you like to eat this meat, there’s no other way to get it.

So we get out and walk around. Eventually we sit down in some bushes and wait. It’s about the right time for some axis to head down a road to a watering hole. In a little while we see some legs and out walk a small group of blackbuck antelope does. We keep waiting. An aoudad joins them. Then a blackbuck buck comes in. Man… he’s pretty. Lots of hogs dart in and out as well. But we wait. They’re eating the corn on the ground, eating it all up, and just won’t go away. But they’re working their way up in our direction and eventually bust us and head off. We get back to walking. (I admit, I thought about taking the buck because gosh, the meat, the horns… it’d be cool, but just too expensive).

We see 2 fallow deer does down another road. They notice something (us) but keep eating. We get a little closer, a little closer still. I kneel down and try to get a shot. I just wasn’t able to get an adequate shot. They were very close together, interweaving a lot. I just hoped for a better shot. Eventually my knees were killing me so I tried sitting down… that was too much movement for them and off they went. *sigh*  Thinking back, I had a couple times I could have taken the shot, but I didn’t for whatever reason… didn’t feel right, so I’m glad I passed.

Hogs. OK… there’s a big one. *BOOM*  We hear a squeal and Danny saw the big one jump and run off. We go look. There’s no blood. We see tracks in the dirt where the pig was, deep marks in the ground from jumping up. But no blood. We look around and eventually start to see blood, but not what you’d want to see. We search and search, nothing.

Huh.

Danny’s wife comes around and we pull the truck out of the ditch and continue to drive around. We keep seeing the blackbuck. Oddly, the whole evening no axis nor red nor sika or anything was to be seen. We did see those 2 fallow again, but only fleeting.

Did some more driving, some more walking. Sun was setting.

Eventually we turn the corner and there’s a huge pack of hogs. I don’t want to go home empty-handed so I lean out the truck window, rest the rifle on the rear view, find a hog and shoot. Again a squeal, a jump, and we go looking. This time we saw… well, not blood like you’d want to see, but actually a bit of flesh and some splatter. Huh?  We find more drops of things and start tracking but no finding.

Danny calls his wife and asks her to bring out one dog named Sadie. She’s a sniffer and she’ll find the hog.

Sadie comes out, searches around for a while and finds the hog pretty far away. We never would have found it without her. And when we find the hog, it was gut shot. We figure the other hog was gut shot too. This bothered  me, but I’ll talk about that more in a bit.

Drag the hog to the truck, and we go to look for the other hog. Sadie sniffed around for a while but nothing was to be found. Danny said she was eager to keep tracking and hunt the hog down, but chances are the hog was still alive and who knows where. Oh well. 😦

Get the hog back, cleaned and quartered. While hung up I kept examining the body structure to find a bullet entry hole. I didn’t find a definitive one. I suspect there might have been one tho, way down on the front part of the chest. For you see, the best way I can describe the hit was that I “skinned” the hog’s belly. It’s not like it hit shoulder, blew out the socket joint, hit the heart and went on through. No… it’s like the bullet was a zipper on the hog’s underbelly and just zipped the skin open and the guts fell out. Stomach was for sure pierced, and I do think a bullet went in just at the front “lowest” part of the ribcage because towards the back end of the ribs (e.g. xyphoid process area) things looked like a “blow out” which then explained how all the stomach ruptured and there was a “blow out”. This is NOT what I wanted, nor expected.

But we got some pork. It’s a smaller pig, but it should eat very well. I’m not going to take it to the butcher for processing… it’s not worth it. I’ll just clean the quarters myself, pack ’em up and freeze them. I might even take the shoulders and smoke them over the weekend, then shred the meat for carnitas! And one interesting effect of not blowing away the internal organs was I also have a lot of organ meat for Sasha. I’ll make her another batch of stew today (heart, lungs, kidney, liver… she loves it).

Shooting Analysis – Need help here

So the question I now have is, what the heck is up with the gun?

I’m wondering if there’s some sort of 6.8 curse over DB or something. 😉  I mean, that’s what lead me to getting that water buffalo some months back, because the 6.8 failed me. The odd thing was, taking the gun to the range a few weeks later and she was shooting dead on. Two weeks ago those 2 does I got at Storm Ranch were taken with the 6.8, and nothing has changed about the gun since then… that I know of. So why the performance I had last night?

Danny was telling me he had a similar experience. Kept missing deer with this rifle, go to the range and always was dead on, back in the field and always missing. Turned out the scope had something loose. Now is that the case here? Well, it’s a Burris Fullfield II, so it’s not the highest end scope, but it’s not el cheap-o either. It should be solid in that P.E.P.R. mount too. And I betcha if I took it to the range right now, she’d shoot perfect.

But really, before I blame the gun I want to look at myself. I was calm. While we were sitting that first time I did some calming breathing (4 seconds in, 4 second hold, 4 second exhale, 4 second pause, repeat), visualized success, smooth trigger press, follow through, all that sort of mental preparation. I had good rests. Now, on that first hog, I was shooting with the setting sun at my back, so I had some glare on the glass and it was hard for me to look at the scope, glare, reflection and so on. Could that have thrown me off? It’s possible, but I know the crosshairs were square on the shoulder of that hog. But I was also kneeling and despite using all the Jeff Cooper position techniques I could, it’s still not benchrest stable so I could have wobbled just enough. The second hog was me leaning out the truck window, resting on the rearview mirror. The rifle skidded off the mirror once and I had to reset, so maybe the rest wasn’t as stable as I thought? Or maybe because I was in an awkward position I didn’t have the best cheek weld and thus my sight line wasn’t lined up right with the trajectory? Thinking back to the 2 does 2 weeks ago, sitting in that stand I had an excellent rest and cheek weld.

I just don’t know.

Does it cast doubt on the rifle? Well, not on the rifle, but the optics I’m really wondering about. But before I wonder about them, I’m going to wonder about myself. My initial wonder is if I had sighting problems… if replacing the 6-position stock with something like a Magpul PRS (i.e. more stable, an adjustable cheek piece) might help me ensure a better and more repeatable cheek weld. Because I know I spent time shifting my head around because I’d be too far forward, not enough eye relief and so I’m looking through a tube and not at crosshairs, you know? Or maybe because I keep it at position 4 (prefer that on my fighting AR’s) I’m setting myself up for getting too close… maybe taking it all the way out to position 6 would force more distance between me and the scope so when my natural tendency to put my head “down and in” hits I’m already pushed back another couple of inches and get a better setup? Hrm.

Many things to think about.

And of course, could the scope be messed up? It’s possible. But going to try to fix me first. Of course, that also means I need to either start reloading a LOT of 6.8 plinking ammo or buy some more from Silver State Armory because I’ll need more ammo to help me diagnose this. *sigh*

But, it was awesome

The sum total of the evening was a win.

The reason I went out was to allow Oldest to experience “that moment”. And he got to experience it. While Sadie was tracking the second hog, Oldest and I were standing with Kelly and I was saying how I was taking next week off work and Oldest followed it up by saying “Yeah, and let’s come back here again!”. He was excited. 🙂

He got to see blackbuck. He got to see fallow deer. He got to see an aoudad. He got to see packs of hogs. He got to sit in the brush. He got to stalk. He got to ride. He got to follow blood trails. He got to see a tracking dog at work. He got to see hog entrails. He got to see (and smell) a hog get cleaned and quartered.

Did things go as I planned and hoped? Nope. But you just roll with it and make the best of it all, and in the end it presented for some great experiences. The only regret I have is we didn’t get ANY pictures. Ah well, there will be more times.

When we got in the car to start the drive home I asked him: “So son, what did you think?”

“That was freakin’ awesome!”

I can’t ask for more than that. 🙂