The Cypress Creek Skinning Shed

It is hard to believe that the 6 months since the 2008 South Carolina deer hunting season ended has gone by so fast… but it has. And we are now just days away from hitting the woods again with some of our lucky guests to pursue big, velvet antlered whitetails.

Like I have reported before, we have been working right along to make sure everything is ready to go for opening day, and we are now all set. We finished up the last few food plots of peas on Pleasant Hill Plantation last week as well as checked/fixed all of the remaining stands. And I did get one trailcam moved over to our trophy property too, but I just haven’t had a chance to check it yet.

However I do have a couple of big buck sightings to report, both on our trophy land and behind our lodge. First, several hog hunters as well as all of us have been seeing several LARGE bucks and a couple of monsters in the bean fields that they planted around the lodge after they took up the sod. Second, I saw two really nice bucks and one 20 inch wide MONSTER over on Pleasant Hill while checking a stand on Wednesday… They were bedded up less than 100 yards from it! And these sightings do NOT include the over 50 deer that our hog hunters saw this past Friday night alone…. Oh, deer season is going to be GOOD!

However one  monster buck that will NOT be around this year to be hunted is the buck that our good friend Kerry Earnhardt shot last December on Pleasant Hill while he was here with a group from BassPro. Danny filmed Kerry shooting this freak of a buck on his last morning with us, and what a deer. The 8.5 year old buck had almost no teeth left and his rack had gone crazy, resembling something between a pronghorn and a caribou. Check out the video to watch the whole thing in real time! And please note that this is the FIRST installment of some of our newer videos that have NEVER been seen before on TV… so enjoy.

As for our hog hunting group this past weekend that saw so many deer, they had a great time even though the hogs were not very cooperative. Several members from the Ashe County Wildlife Club came down for a one day hunt, and the heat and lack of rain really took a toll on the hog movement. Fortunately they did manage to kill the couple of hogs they did see, including one 150 pound sow with a broken leg and another hog that the guides saw at 2pm in the afternoon while filling feeders - Henry and Bubba were able to race back to the lodge, grab Scott and get back to the feeder before the hogs moved off - now those are some hard working guides :)   Now hopefully the ACWLC will email us some pics of their kills for the site!

Again, hunting season is almost here, so stay tuned for lots of action, more videos and tons of trailcam pics!

That’s right. The South Carolina deer hunting season is just about here… 25 days and counting to be exact.

I sure hope everyone is getting excited about hitting the deer woods again, even if it is 100 degrees in the shade with giant mosquitoes joining you in the stand I know we are! We have been working hard to get everything set up and ready (Bubba and Henry the hardest to be honest), and I think we are almost there. We have just a couple of food plots left to plant and just a few stands that need some TLC, and we are ready for those fortunate hunters that will be joining us those first few days.

Now we just need to get the trailcams moved over to Pleasant Hill so we can get some great new pics of our trophy bucks our guests will be looking to harvest. We are also hoping to find some time to actually get out and sit in a stand with the video camera too so that we can get some great new footage up here of those monsters! So definitely keep checking in with us as kick into high gear for the coming August opener.

And speaking of video footage and trailcam pictures, we have some of each to keep everyone informed and entertained until our next big group of hog hunters arrives this coming weekend and provides us with some hunting stories and harvest pictures. First we have two new hog hunting videos - one is from the Dodge Everyday Sportsman and the other is from Blue Ridge Outdoors.

We also have a couple of new trailcam pictures, despite the best efforts of our hogs to rub against the tree it was tied too and spin it around so that it looked into the bush. As I have said before, some of them are just downright shy about having their picture taken. First we have a giant sow moving through the woods behind the feeder, second we have neat looking hen turkey cruising around and finally we have the leader of the trailcam revolution - Mr. Squirrel - there checking to see what needs to be done to disable the camera so that it doesn’t get any good shots of his friends the hogs

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Jeff

Ron, Clif, Tristan and Travis with the group's two-day take

Even though we didn’t get much rain last week and the weather stayed hot, our wild hogs kept moving for the lucky hunters we had in camp last week. Our group of four down from the upstate for two days started things off by killing 4 nice pigs. Clif knocked one down while Ron stacked up two more; their friend Tristan was covered up in hogs for most of their stay, but had some problems hitting the fast moving suckers. And unfortunately the one that he did kill, we didn’t find for a few days despite a huge search for it. That left their good buddy Travis the lone man out with no pigs sighted or shot at… but as I say, that is REAL hunting. And since they are already making plans to return, we have promised to tie one up for him for his next trip We also want to wish Tristan well and thank him for his service as he heads overseas to defend our great nation!

We then had a two day break before Jeb Jr. and Sr. showed up from Virginia to try and get the younger one his first boar. And despite having only one day to do it, Jeb saw quite a few pigs and then put a great shot on his 130 pounder which dropped right in his tracks over at the Bar Pit at Boggy Creek. They took some good pictures of it, and they have promised to email us a copy, so I will get it up as soon as I do.

Clif and his pig

Next our good friend Clay from N.C. came down for two days of hog hunting with his girlfriend Cayla. And I know that they saw several hogs but couldn’t get a shot at them before they got by on their first day out. However I am still waiting for information on their second day’s sits, and hopefully they managed to watch the woods and not each other so that Clay could take home some port. And of course if he did, the pictures will be up here next week too!

Ron and his two wild hogs

So that wraps up our week’s worth of hunting, which considering how hot it is and how few hunters we have in the woods right now is pretty good. Now, since most of our food plots are in, we have another week to work on our our stands before our next big group of 12 come in. And with two weeks of no pressure on the hogs, they should put some pork on the ground while they are here too.

I also promised some new trailcam pics this week, and our new cuddeback over on our bowhunting-only tract didn’t disappoint us. We had lots of deer and hogs on it as well as a gray fox, and they all seemed to come by at all hours of the day and night. Fortunately many of the visits were during shooting hours. You can see one nice boar was at the feeder right around 6am and the start of legal shooting time while another wandered by around 7:30pm. We also had a couple of good sows with their piglets that stopped by quite frequently too - and what was neat about getting them on camera was the fact that you could see the stripped young hogs. FYI: piglets that are mostly feral are a solid, single color while those with stripes have more Eurasion hog genes in them. So obviously some good hogs over there just waiting to be stuck

So there you have it… a recap of our week of hog hunting along with some new trailcam pics. Now to get back to working on getting some more video clips up on here! See you in a few days…

Jeff

It’s Monday, and we have several hunters in the woods this morning. They came in late yesterday just in time to get in their stands, and I am still waiting for a report on how things are going since they arrived. However until I either hear from Bubba or Henry on what they have seen and/or killed or I go to work tomorrow to find out, enjoy a couple of new videos. One is from A-Way Outdoors with Greg Abbas who stalks big boars in and around a corn field when sitting in a stand doesn’t produce. Another clip is from the Dodge Everyday Sportsman, and they follow a young man as he not only kills his first hog, but his first deer too… and this is a funny clip because the young hunter and his cameraman score on a hog right by one of the many corn sheds we have scattered around our properties as well as then giving you a first-person recovery of his deer.

So enjoy these clips today, and then keep checking back for details on this week’s hog hunts. I will also have some new trailcam photos from the Bow Camp in addition to updates on how our planting is going over on Pleasant Hill Plantation.

Jeff

Outdoor Moments with Bub and Kelly was a great TV show that covered lots of hunting in the South and was even produced right here in South Carolina. Unfortunately it is no longer on the air, however we have been working on getting some of their old clips up from their many visits to Cypress Creek Hunting Lodge up on our website. And now that they are ready, check out one of the hunts where Kelly shoots a big old boar and then has to track it down in the thick brush with the help of our old guide Mike Rayano. Then follow along as they let Mike have a chance in front of the camera to try his hand at shooting a big hog - with Kelly’s gun! It’s great stuff and should provide a few laughs in addition to reminding everyone why you NEVER hunt with a gun that you haven’t personally verified is ON TARGET.

And I posted last week about how we were going to have some hunters in camp this past weekend, so I guess I better report on how they did… Well, most of the hunters saw hogs - that was the good news. The bad news was that two of them had a monster boar run by without getting a shot over on our Sandy Run tract while Tim, who was down with Doug from Clover, SC, had a pack of 30 hogs show up at his stand on Boggy Creek only to miss a giant one. Fortunately our good buddy Joe, down from NC with Rick, Gene and Randy, managed to get his crosshairs on a good sized pig and drop him. The bad news on his good kill was that his shot almost cut the hog in half, so no pictures were taken for the blog…

We have this July 4th weekend off to celebrate the founding of our great country, then we get back to business with several groups coming in starting Sunday and running through the following weekend. So if the hog movement will continue to stay decent and our new hunters can sit still as well as shoot straight, we should have some new hunting stories and kill shots for the Skinning Shed next week - so stay tuned. I will also have some new trailcam shots as well as more updates on our preparations for the opening of deer season.

I am also still working on getting many, many more of the clips from the different hunting shows converted and uploaded here. Then I will begin transferring all of the unseen video footage that Danny has taken over the last few years so that we can get it up here as well. And since I have seen some of it, all I can say is that you better keep checking back - you don’t want to miss any of it because there is some unbelievable action on those tapes - and we truly look forward to sharing it with you.

Jeff