HUNTING WILD HOGS ON THE CHURCH RANCH

Dear Family,

One of the things John and I did was to hunt on the church ranch near Orlando. As you know, the Deseret Ranch is about 330,000 acres in the center of Florida.

You do not get to hunt there unless you are part of a hunting lease.  The Church sells about 20 of these hunting leases for huge bucks and Kaley's uncle, Randy, belongs to a groups that leases 20,000 acre section called K6.  It is loaded with game and they hunt deer, Turkey, wild hogs and coyotes.

Randy's camp has a trailer with enclosed porch and a second refrigerated box next door to age the game.  Randy has hunted there since his boyhood when his father had the lease.

We untied wild hogs as there is open season on them.  they are a nuisance  tearing up all the fields.  They are mostly nocturnal but do come out at sunset.

Last time we sat in blinds but did not see anything. This time we drove around in a truck to see if we could spot anything in the fields.  It reminded me of Zimbabwe with the lush tropical underbrush and the sand,  We spotted a huge red pig on the edge of a field 180 yards away.  John and Randy did a stalk and got into position but a herd of cows got in between and by the time then cleared, the hog was farther away and John shot low.

Randy has the eyes of an Eagle and spotted two other hogs in a field.  They went on another stalk and John smacks one pretty good, missed the running shot and they began to follow a trail but it got dark and they were without flashlights so they did not ring hone the bacon.

It was like Africa with Randy carrying the shooting stick and John skulking along at half crouch. The brush was thick and you almost needed dogs to finish the hunt.

It was a lot of fun to watch these two, I observed from the truck. Anther great Tampa experience.

Love, Dad