The Cypress Creek Skinning Shed

Our guide Henry with a guest from last year and his big tom

Our turkey hunting season here in the South Carolina lowcountry starts up on Sunday March 15th, and we are ready to put our hunters on some big longbeards.

The birds have been gobbling off and on for the last few weeks, but with the warm weather we have had lately, they have really kicked it into gear. The big, segregated flocks of birds have finally broken up, and our hog hunters are now hearing  lots of vocal birds and seeing quite a few gobblers with hens in the food plots, around the feeders and in the freshly burned areas.

We are pretty booked up for the first couple of weeks of the South Carolina turkey hunting season. However we still have some spots later on into April, so call now if you want to get in on pursuing some of our lowcountry redheads. Please note that we will also still be offering some great hog hunts during our turkey season as well. And we do things a little bit differently than some lodges to keep our success rate up. We do this by not hunting the same areas for our hogs as we do for our turkeys. This allows us to keep corn on the ground for the hogs without breaking the no-baiting law for our turkey hunts.

As for our hog hunters, they were still putting down the pork even in the warm weather that slowed our wild hog movement last week as well as in the driving rain this past weekend. Two of the hunters in camp were teenage ladies who were looking to kill a big boar with their bows, and they both got shots at good hogs. Unfortunately we were unable to find either one due to marginal hits. We also had a group down from Maryland, and they did harvest a couple of hogs, and I am now waiting and hoping that they will send the pics on down since I was off the day they left.

We now are back into some really cold weather (it was 20 the last two mornings!), and we have 10 at the lodge this week looking to bag a big hog. Eight are from Maryland, and two are down from Pennsylvania. On Monday night they hunted Boggy Creek and Sandy Run , and several hunters saw hogs but no one took a shot. Tuesday afternoon Bubba and Henry managed to get them down to the River tract after letting the road dry out from our weekend of torrential rains, and they killed a couple of good eating size porkers. I should have the whole story and pictures in my next post. Until then, enjoy some trailcam shots of our birds from last week.

Jeff

We love helping to put our guests on a lowcountry hog during their stay with us. Unfortunately the fact is that since we only offer free-range, fair-chase hog hunting here in South Carolina, not everyone will go home with one. It is just not possible when factors outside of our control such as the weather and moon have such an important influence on our hogs’ movements. However we have found that there are 3 basic things that all of our hunters could do to GREATLY increase their odds of taking home some wild pork.

1. Don’t smoke in your stand. It doesn’t help if you smoke anytime and have that smell on your clothes (much less any other smell) when you hit the woods. However it is MUCH worse to actually smoke in the stand. We believe that smoke smell just floats all through the woods and sticks to everything. And when a hog has such a great nose, you can bet that he will pick it up pretty easily and not come in to your stand.

2. Take your first GOOD shot. It is nice when a hog comes in to feed and stands (fairly) still for an easy shot. However sometimes that hog will catch a scent he doesn’t like and run off or a big boar could be just cruising by looking for sows and not stop.  So always be ready to shoot once you see a hog, and then take the best shot you have at the very FIRST opportunity.

3. Don’t Miss. A hog can be a tough animal to hit when he is scurrying around eating, much less doing the fast trot that they do everywhere they go. So like I said in #2, take your first BEST shot. And that means standing still for most people in most conditions.

We also have had one of our trailcams out on the River tract this past week, and it caught some great hog movement so I thought I would share a few of those shots with you. It even helped one of our hunters bag his big boar when it flashed right at dark, alerting the hunter that something was there!

PS: This post is a variation of one that I wrote for my lowcountryhunting website. On the original article I cited 2 more ways to increase the chances of killing a hog here in South Carolina. However Danny, Bubba, Henry and I work hard to eliminate those for you: hunting the wrong area and putting too much pressure on a piece of property.

We are constantly scouting and moving stands to keep our hunters on top of our hogs’ changing patterns as well as leaving gaps in our booking and consistantly rotating the properties that we hunt to minimize the pressure we put on our land. I think you will agree that our success shows that we do a good job on both of those.

Jeff

Kevin and Thomas with a giant lowcountry hog

This past weekend we had the first hunters of 2009 in camp, and 3 out of the 5 killed a hog - two over on the River and one at Boggy Creek.

Just check out the giant boar that Kevin, over from Beaufort with his buddy Thomas, killed on our River tract. You don’t see many old, smart boars like that moving around unless they have too! Also, check out another South Carolinian who hunts with us all of the time, Dr. Havird from Augusta, who also shot a great hog with some good cutters over off of the River tract. That is him with the cigar in one picture, and his favorite guides Bubba and Henry in the other. And while they left before I could get their picture, our two hunters from Maryland, Garcia and Thornell, shot a 100 pounder before heading back up north over on Boggy Creek.

Dr. Havird from Augusta

Guides Bubba and Henry showing off their hard work

What is amazing is the fact that we had such good hog movement even in the warm January weather. Normally their movement shuts down if it isn’t cold enough to really push them to eat. However this just shows what the right property is capable of if it is set up correctly and the pressure is managed.

And the hog hunting should just get better and better now that we have a huge cold front coming in. Our lows are supposed to be below freezing for the next 7 days, in the teens even some nights, and only in the 50’s for our highs. So now should be an excellent time to be in the South Carolina lowcountry woods in pursuit of wild hogs, and we have a lodge full coming just in time, so stay tuned… I just wish it would have been like this for the last couple of weeks of deer season!

Jeff