I'll say one thing on the hunt this year, it was different. From 50 mph winds to 1 1/2 inches of rain, we got it.
The first day I decided to sit at a good location and just watch to see what came around. After about 30 minutes I noticed a javelina sneaking over the far hillside and headed straight towards me. Then a couple seconds later I saw a couple of hunters headed up the hill in the same spot where the javelina had come over at. The javelina was now down in some cat claw just below the hunters and watched them as they passed within 50 feet of him. As I watched him I saw another hunter headed up the hill from the bottom. Once again the javelina watched as this hunter also passed within 100 feet of him and then once the hunter was a ways off the javelina got up and headed back up over the hill. Now if I would have had a rifle the hunt would have been over but 200+ yards is a little bit far for my pistol. I didn’t see anything other than deer for the rest of the day.
The second day the winds came up and boy did they blow. At times it was hard to even stand up much less try to glass a hillside but we headed into some protected area where the javelina like to get out of the wind. The only problem was that with a swirling wind the javelina would scent us and be up and gone long before we got within range and all we would see would be them headed out over the far ridge. This went on for the next few days. We would spot them but then have our stalk blown by wind one way or another.
On Thursday I decided to head back into a nice protected area. The winds were quite calm in this area and I felt that I had a good chance of finding one. I was just coming down a ridge glassing every few steps when I looked directly down below me about 40 yards only to see one still in its bed, he looked huge. I pulled my Contender out and put the cross hairs on him and noticed that it looked like more than one javelina, it turned out to be three of them all huddled together. One shot and I would of quite possibly killed all three or at the very least had one dead and two wounded. So I just sat down and started to play the waiting game. After what appeared to be a hour one of them stood up as I watched through the scope. She took a step and the game was over. One well placed shot and one was down and the rest of the herd exploded out from around me. I hadn’t noticed the other 6-9 javelina around her. It was all over with except for getting her out a mile back to my wheeler.
Just after I got her down to the wheeler and skinned out the heavens opened up. It rained for the next 24 hours. We got into some good tracks but couldn’t come up with anything for my partner. We decided to stay and hunt Saturday and did jump some but with those winds nothing came of it.
Sunday was the long drive home.
