Early this past Friday, the 13th if you’re superstitious, Mickey Donahoo and I took off for his hunting lease, a 4, hour drive from Goldthwaite, with the objective of bagging a javelina, or collared peccary, Pecari tajaca and a feral pig.  The lease is situated 15 miles off the beaten track between Sonora and Ozona and it’s nearly 4,000 acres of rough and tumble, west Texas, including lots of rocks, is a beautiful place!  A little after 11:00 AM we arrived at this “oasis” in the desert, 2 cabins and a quite livable, old ranch house, where we stayed for the next 2 days.

Finishing the chores, filling the corn/protein feeders and resetting the feeder timers, Mickey cut them back to one second’s worth of corn and protein cubes at 7:00 AM.  After a quick lunch that we finished at 3:00 PM, we were headed out into a big flat, to a blind, feeder combination to await a hoped for javelina, when we rounded a corner and by a water trough, (like my old one, see my post “[The Water Trough], September 15, 2011”),  were 43 turkeys.  Here’s a shot of the water trough, with 10 of the big birds, they were spread out way too far for a wide angle “shot”, so I got the next one of 13 more, then they flushed, almost like a covey of quail.
    

Arrival at the blind was anticlimactic, especially looking at the crude structure pictured, it was near falling down, in fact I told Mickey, “I don’t think the blind’s floor would hold the both of us, 200 pounders!”  We took along an old tarp for a little head covering, draped it over the blind and awaited the “hoped for” javelina.  The feeder went off and during its process, out walked a javelina, a good sized one that we weighed later at 45 pounds and I shot it, possibly the shortest javelina hunt on record!  We took these pictures and a close up of the animal’s tusks.

Not 15 minutes later, out walked more javelina, big ones and little ones rooting around for the corn and protein.  We didn’t notice anything about the food being thrown by the feeder, but as we were leaving, we found a dog chow sack on a 4 wheeler suspiciously owned by the owner of the blind we used.  The picture shows 5.

The next morning, up before the sun, with the temp at 24, we bundled up and headed out in the other direction, to the top of the flat mountain for a go with the feral pigs.  My blind was the most spacious and comfortable one that I had ever used, a true pleasure, but these super digs, including the rooting around the feeder, didn’t yield a feral pig.

One for two isn’t bad anyway and the javelina’s back strap will be wonderful, grilled with bacon and jalapenos!