…was a little trecherous.
We left Rochester at 5:00 am on Thursday morning (-15 degrees) and headed down to Dyersville, IA to grab two more hunters. Northern IA got urine pounded the day before with a pretty good blizzard. We watched a train trying to push its way through a drift that was as tall as the front engine. 
We fought the roads a little bit longer but we were finally able to put the pedal to the metal and headed south. We pulled off in Okalhoma City around 8:00 that night to grab a hotel room and supper. Everyone was telling us about their big blizzard that hit them in OK. That state is not set up for at all for any type of snow or ice. Hung out with some locals at an Irish pub for way too long 
Made for a long, long drive in the morning on two hours of sleep. Well the roads just kept on getting worse and worse. I am pretty sure that from the south side of OK city all the way south of Austin TX was white knuckled. We saw 80-100 cars, trucks, semi’s everything in the ditch. No one down there has 4 wheel drive apparently.
We finally got to the ranch in Waelder, TX at 4:00 or so…(3 hours late) but none the worse for wear. Got checked in, went through an orientation and unpacked. Not much time to waste either. As soon as we put a little something in our stomach we got dressed to head out for a night hunt. That was kind of neat really, the guides put a little corn out at the blinds and it was just a waiting game. It was pitch black out, no moon to speak of and quiet too. Every now and then the coyotes would really start singing, but thats it. It was colder than it should be in south TX, down into the teens that night so we were looking at our watches quite a bit. Around 8:30 we could hear something out side the blind, CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH. We put the red light out the window and saw them. 4 litle piglets and a good size momma. Now these blinds are not really set up for pistol shooting, the windows where short in height and it was hard to get your arms outside the slots and still see your sites. I was shooting a .357 mag and certainly didn’t want to discharge that thing inside the blind, (ears would not like us at all) Kind of contorted myself to the side, tried to get a solid rest and squeezed one off. Clean miss
The next morning we did our first walk, (the ranch called this a spot and stalk) we call it a deer drive up here. 
A group of 3-4 guys would walk the outside boarders of the ranch. Which was more of a high fence ranch than I was lead to believe, but with all the coyote holes underneath and bad fencing it was more of a boundry than anything. We would just kind of still hunt our way around the outside edges and try to kick them up. They expained it was like rabbit hunting, the hogs would run out and kind of circle around like a rabbit will do. So as soon as you kicked them up, try and run up to a clearing and try to get a shot. Well about 2 hours of walking we kicked up this group of 6 hogs, (5 razor backs and a ferol boar) We were in real thick Mesquite country and it was really hard to get a clean shot. One shot was fired by our shot gun guy and we continued on, basically doing the same thing all the way around the ranch.
Around 12:30 we jumped a group again. I ran up to a clearing and kept the big boy in my scope. Lucky for me, they slowed to a walk, it looked like they wanted to turn around or something. He gave me a perfect broadside shot and I squeezed the trigger. 7MM, perfect shot in heart & front shoulder. Dropped him where he stood. We got one more on that drive and two more in the afternoon. Our truck & coolers were tagged out. 
Spent the rest of the night around the campfire with a cooler of Blue Yummies and a little Captain. Even sampled some fresh backstraps over the firepit. Great trip except for the Stupid Packer game. 
