The Cypress Creek Skinning Shed

Andrew with his first hog

The full summer heat has arrived, and our average daily temperature is around 100 with the heat index breaking 110! However even with the oppressive weather, our hogs have continued to move pretty well for an animal with NO sweat glands and that must stay close to water to stay alive.

Now granted much of the hog’s movement is right around the last light of the day when it finally drops under 90 degrees, but as long as you can see them, you can kill them. And fortunately several of our hunters this past weekend did get to see some hogs before complete darkness set in and harvest them. We had a group of 5 hunters down from PA, and while the hogs didn’t cooperate much Friday with only Joe missing one that morning at Boggy Creek, they did see quite a few Saturday night down at the River. That allowed Andrew to shoot a great 150 pound sow, Michael to almost get one and Richard to miss several times.

Anthony and Guy with their two crossbow kills

We also had our good friends Gene and his brother Randy down from NC for their monthly one-day hunt, and they too both saw hogs (over 20 apiece) with Gene taking a nice 150 pound sow down at the River Saturday night. Then as the PA group was leaving on Sunday, Guy and his brother Anthony showed up. And over 3 days they saw quite a few hogs and took 3 home, two shot with crossbows and one with a rifle; Guy also shot a nice coyote over on Boggy Creek on a morning hunt. In addition, the two of them spent some time over at the bow camp’s fishing pond, and they each battled several good fish while landing a couple. So a huge congratulations to everyone that showed up to battle the heat and bugs and have a great hunt! And as always, we truly look forward to having everyone back on the lowcountry as soon as they can make it.

Guy with his boggy Creek coyote

Now we have just 3 in camp for a day or two, then another week-long break before our next hunters. So we will continue to work on stands, cut shooting lanes and set up feeders in preparation for deer season that starts in just 8 weeks! We hope that you will join us.

Anthony and a bowfin aka: mudfish

Anthony and his bass

Mike and his great lowcountry boar

That’s right. It’s the summer and many people are headed to the beach to spend the hot days lying on the sand. However for those true hunters that are going crazy during the dog days and really need an outdoor fix, there is nothing like hitting the woods for a well-deserved hog hunt. And like I have said before, while it might be warm here in the lowcountry with a few bugs, there is very little pressure during the summer, so the hunting can still be very good.

And sure enough, this past weekend proved it again. We had just 4 hunters at the lodge, but managed to kill two nice pigs with everyone seeing hogs and having great hunts. Mike started us off on Friday evening when he shot a monster 225 pound boar with good 2.5 inch cutters over on Boggy Creek while his hunting partner, Adam, also had opportunities for his first hog ever that same night, but chose to watch the meat hogs to see if a bigger one showed. Andruis, down from NY, rounded out the kills when he took a nice 80 pound meat hog down at Boggy that same night while on just a one day hunt.

Andruis with his 80 pound meat hog

We also had Dan and his son down, and they saw some small hogs while here but just didn’t ever get a big one to come out. But that is real hunting, and since they are already planning to come back, we will just plan to work even harder to get them on some good hogs next time. Now we have small gap in hunters, so we all are taking a break for the next 10 days or so when a big group of 11 hunters come in for the weekend of June 12th. We should really do well then since we  just had a BIG full moon this past weekend, and that usually hurts the hog hunting, so we were pleasantly surprised that we had as much movement as we did. So if we had good hunting on a full moon, we should really do well on a dark moon for the 12th. And we look forward to sharing the details of that hunt with you!