Americana Outdoors E-Magazine - February 2020

at my mom and Wade to make sure they’re ready, and from 95-yards away the shot was made and he went down. Now, I knew what all our clients felt after a successful hunt. My heart was racing, and I was still in shock after realizing that I had my first successful hunt! After all the celebration we went down from the stand to see how I did. Once, I saw the hog I was in shock with how big he was. Loading him up took all three of us to get into the bed of the Yamaha Viking VI. With it being early in the day, we head back to camp to drop off the hog, get him prepped to take the meat, and have some lunch. Afterward, to my surprise, Wade was going to let me go after a buck! This lead us to go back and set up our own blind with a lot of brush and twigs so that we will be hidden. Now that it’s all set up, we leave for a bit to allow everything to calm down and allow the animals to be comfortable again before we go back for the hunt. Now, when it came time to go back for the actual hunt, there is never a dull moment with my mom and I. Wade had the honors of giving us a team nickname of Team Giggles which will always hold true! When it came closer to 3:30 pm we went back out for another hunt that same day. When we got into our positions it didn’t take long for the deer to come out. We saw quite a few does before we ever saw a buck. Shortly after some time passed by, Wade got my attention and told me there was a buck on our right about to cross the creek. I then had my eyes glued and waited to see what would happen. While we were out there, and as I was waiting for the buck to give me a perfect shot, in the back of my mind I was worried that one of the other deer would see us and blow our cover. Fortunately, they were all fairly calm which helped me a lot.

The hungry hog shows himself.

Celebratory photo with my hog and the new T/C Compass II

A hunt isn’t a hunt without a lot of laughs.

Shortly after the buck crossed the river, he went