got in my stand well before daylight Sat morning and since I had seen a good bit of hog sign I brought my .22 along with the bow. We can kill hogs year round day or night with no weapon restriction is MS so bow for deer and .22 for hogs. Technically can bring any gun along with the bow but having a 7mm up the tree with you can raise to many questions....not that you cant kill a deer with .22. Anyways.....within 5 minutes of getting in my ladder I hear a lot of commotion coming up the swamp but still a good 40 minutes till daylight. Doesnt take long and I hear the grunting and squeeling of at least a dozen hogs all under me. Figured they would be long gone by the time it got light enough to shoot even though it is plenty legal to shoot them in the dark I didnt have the right stuff with me to be able to see them. To my surprise they acutually bedded down in some briars all around me right as it was getting light. Took a couple hours but one of them finally gave me a good look at its head and I was able to ear hole that one. The rest didnt really spook bad and just kinda eased off about 100 yards and went back to doin what hogs do. So I climbed down and slipped over to them and stalked up to within 15 yards. They were up in some really thick stuff and moving around a lot so didnt get to earhole anymore but one game me a good quarter away look at its forward ribs and sent a hollow point up in there. Of course being a .22 it ran like hell along with the rest of them but one that stopped in the same spot the other was so popped that one through the ribs too. Now normally I HATE to kill and waste anything but hogs are the one exception I will make. The landowner wants every hog seen killed as he is a farmer and they destroy his fields and crops so they are all to be killed without mercy. So anyways the one I earholed from the stand I was able to bring out but the other 2 that I shot through the ribs are coyote food. I did try to find them and would have brought all 3 out had I been able to but it was extremely thick where they were and there was so many of them I have no clue exactly which way the ones shot actually went and of course no blood trail with the .22. Really do not like doing it but at the same time they are an invasive species that is not "supposed" to be here and the state(along with the landowner and most other folks) want them killed without mercy. At least it made my brother happy being he just had one of his best deer hounds killed by a hog last year in that area.
There's no season on hogs in Louisiana either. Theory is that they're all from domesticated hogs that have gotten loose in the woods. This dates back to when they were not nearly so heavily populated/destructive.
we def usually eat the ones I kill and like I said I would have brought all 3 out had it been under different circumstances. It is what it is and just doing what the landowner and state wants done but still doesnt make me feel great about just killing them though do not feel all that bad about it either. Anyways.....it was a LOT of fun stalking up on them regardless and the one I earholed will eat just fine.
Things are getting awkward now. Nah cracklins are just fried pork fat....think pork rinds. Tasso is basically seasoned smoked ham but is cut from the butt rather than the ham. Lots of variations on tasso mainly in how it's seasoned. Eat it as is or cook it with.
