“I will meet you at the little restaurant about 10 miles south of town, the building that looks like an old country store. You know the one?” I nodded as did the young couple with me. “They serve a truly outstanding chicken fried steak. Matter of fact, why don’t y’all meet me there at straight up noon? We’ll eat then go to the property. That’ll give everyone a chance to shoot their rifles before you head out for the afternoon’s hunt.” It sounded like an ideal plan.
A couple of weeks earlier I had been approached by the young couple. They live just down the street from my wife and I and had recently moved into our neighborhood. I met them shortly after they moved in.
I was working in my garage with the door up. On the walls are several mounts from Cape buffalo to kudu to roan antelope and a variety of other African and North American mounts, which I no longer have room for in our home, having downsized when we moved closer to where both my wife and I grew up.
When the pair approached, I was a bit uncertain what their response would be upon seeing the mounts. But then as they got closer, I saw smiles and turned to introduce myself. Shaking hands, I noticed both seemed to be enthralled with the mounts, and almost immediately started asking questions about where they were taken, followed by wanting to know what they tasted like.
“Both our grandparents hunted, but we both grew up in big cities so never really had a chance to hunt,” stated the wife, “and my mother in particular thought shooting animals and putting their skulls and skins on the walls was barbaric. I guess that’s why my dad decided not to hunt, even though as a youngster he had done so.”
“Not everyone was deigned to be a hunter, but even those who do not hunt, their ancestors survived because someone in their family group was a good hunter who supplied meat to immediate family and those around them. Today, people sometimes forget that life on earth exists because of, directly or indirectly, the death of another organism. Even vegans and vegetarians eat things that are or were recently alive.” I said with a smile and noticed both nodding their heads in an agreeing manner.
“With all the things going on in the world today, possible lack of food in stores, pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics being channeled into domestic stock, we have been thinking about starting fishing and hunting, and learning how to process and prepare our own foods. Living in town as we do here, there’s only so much room in our backyard for a garden, and I think the neighbors would not be pleased if we brought in a bunch of goats, some chickens and maybe a milk cow…” said the husband. Now it was my turn to smile!
“The problem is we don’t know where to start when it comes to hunting. Fishing is a bit different, as it seems pretty easy to find a place to fish around here, with the lake up north of town with public fishing, so we can teach ourselves while hopefully catching a few fish to eat seems doable. Learning about guns, scopes, ammo, and hunting with them, now that’s a different matter.”
“If you’ve got time this coming weekend, you are more than welcome to come with me out to my place. We’ll start there. I’ll bring out several rifles, some topped with Trijicon scopes and some with open sights. I’ll bring some single-shots, a couple of lever actions and some bolt actions in a variety of calibers, along with a supply of Hornady ammo for each. We’ll go through the basics of fitting a rifle to the shooter, talk about sighting open-sighted and scoped rifles, as well as matching caliber, round and load to the animal hunted. For starters we’ll shoot from a shooting bench, then also talk and practice shooting from in-the-field-positions and shooting from a rest. I’ll bring some live-sized animal targets as well, so we can talk about shot placement of putting a bullet through the vitals to bring the animal down as quickly and humanely as possible.” As I spoke I could see their smiles getting wider.
“Now here’s the kicker, what I’ll charge you for this?” I hesitated and watched those smiles trim down a bit… “You have to buy a hunting and fishing license before we head to my place. You’ll need those down the way. Plus, while we’re at the property I have a small pond where you can fish.” Their smiles returned to beaming.
“We’ve got a while before the whitetail deer season starts this fall, but wild hog hunting is always open here in Texas, and once you feel comfortable with guns, you’re welcome to borrow a couple of mine, until you get your own. Hogs are fun to hunt, often quite challenging actually, and they are great to eat!”
I sensed a bit of nervousness. “Not to worry, where I’ll send you to hunt, the landowner will help you eviscerate a hog and where and how to make cuts to get the meat home, and he might even suggest ways to prepare it. For starters, let me suggest you get a copy of a friend’s book, “Hog Hunting, Kill to Grill”. It’s written by Luke Clayton with whom I do both radio and internet video shows. You can get a copy by going to www.catfishradio.org. I’d suggest going on-line and ordering it. That way by the time we go to my place, you’ll have had a chance to read most of it. Then if you have questions I’ll do my best to answer them.”
With that, I walked to one of my freezers and pulled out a packet of breakfast sausages made with venison and pork, a package of venison hamburgers and another of whitetail backstraps ready to go on the grill or in the frying pan. I suggested if they had any questions when they got ready to prepare a meal with either of those, to contact me and I would be more than happy to provide a recipe.
Around another campfire I will tell you what we did when we got to my place, and then later how our hog hunt unfolded…
