Hunting for the handicapted.
As I approach my 75th birthday, I am becoming increasingly handicapted due to a balance problem, which severely limits my ability to walk through the woods and fields. I am pretty much limited to sitting in a blind on the ground. I had a craving for some wild boar sausage, so I looked for a game ranch that could cope with my limitations. I found it in the Double Boar Ranch in Shippenville, Penna. This game ranch is located about 5 miles north of Exit 60 on Interstate 80 and happens to be only a 45 min drive from my sisters house. The Ranch offers exotic game as well as native species but I was focused a meat pig that I could turn into sausage. The owner, Buster Snyder, worked with me to set up a hunt from a blind. June isn't the best time for a pig hunt but I go when I can go. Buster offered me a good price, as I wasn't looking for a trophy Boar, just a pig about 150# for sausage.
The guide helped me walk the several hundred yards to a blind on a bluff over looking a water course that was covered with pig tracks. It was a Shaddow commercial blind and very nice. The day was in the high 60S/low 70S and the pigs were not moving around. After a couple hours, the guide said he knew where the pigs were likely laying up and went to roust them out. From the blind, I had a shooting lane out front across the water course about 150 yards long and much shorter and steeper shots to my left and right. When the (5) pigs first crossed the long shooting lane I was distracted and they crossed before I could get the rifle out the shooting window. Fortunatly, as soon as they crossed the opening, they stopped in the edge of the trees and milled around. I could catch glimpses of them but had no shot. The pigs obviously wanted to go back the way they had come from, so I had my rifle aimed out at the shooting lane. As the pigs started back across the shooting lane, led by a big Russian Boar that I did NOT want, a perfect sow walked out at about 125 yards and paused long enough for me to get the cross hairs aligned and take the shot.
I was shooting the new Winchester Razorback XT 150 gr protected HP in .308 and she dropped in her tracts. I can highly recommend that loading for pigs.
The guide came and got me from the blind with a Polaris Range and then took a tractor with a front bucket and retrieved the pig.
The sow weighed 140# before gutting and skinning. At the butcher shop, I told the butcher to add pork belly because there was so little fat on the carcass (something that I have found with spring/summer pigs). I wound up with 87# of breakfast sausage, which is delicious! I plan to hunt there again!.
