Double Naught Spy

I got a request from the owner of TBR that included language not appropriate for the likes of the gentle souls on this forum, but suffice it to say that he was quite upset with hogs having ruined his bowhunting over the weekend and that the hogs were stinking up the area quite a bit, which I discovered about the time I drove onto the property. There is a sounder that moves through the property, possibly two, and I saw neither one despite the long hours, but did manage to have a productive hunt.

Winds were from the feeder and toward me. Nobody had been to the feeder in at least 2 days. Both hogs found something bothersome about the area and were quite skittish.

The second part of the hunt involved taking a bobcat. It was the strangest thing. I was on the way back from photographing the downed boar, had my headlamp on, and was heading down into a large ravine when I spied two yellow eyes reflecting light from the other side of the ravine. I used my thermal spotting scope and determined it to be a bobcat. He was standing broadside to me and watching me. So I unslung my tripod triggersticks, got it set up, checked and the cat was still there. Got my rifle onto the tripod and the cat sat down! So I took my time adjusting the tripod a couple of times and the cat was not moving. The encounter lasted maybe a couple of minutes and now the cat isn't moving any more.

To see the second hog very well at the end of the video, you may need to go to full screen mode.

NEXT NIGHT

I returned the following night, arriving just after 10:00 PM and hiked up to the stand. The hogs were already at the feeder, so I used the ladder for a rest...


This was pretty cool. Mulefooted hogs are fairly rare, but there are probably more out there than we realize, but the feet are probably one of the more overlooked features on hogs, LOL. If you haven't seen a mulefooted hog before, this video provides some good images of what the feet look like.

Based on research I did into the industry a couple of years ago, mulefoots were top-of-the-line hogs, purportedly disease resistant, the mulefooted condition precluded hoof rot, and the meat was considered superior quality. Hundreds of breeders popped up around the US to meet the demand. However, it was the near explosion of the cattle industry that caused prized pork to fall out of favor.

As noted in the video, the condition can occur naturally as a mutation, but it is also a genetically recessive trait from the breed. That I have shot three off the same <80 acre property since 2011 would indicate that these are likely the result of recessive genes being expressed from a historic population rather than random mutation.

falcon

Great job.

Mule foot hogs are very rare. i've trapped one that had two mule feet.

Double Naught Spy

That is pretty cool and something I definitely haven't seen. The first two mulefoots I shot had decidedly rounder rear hooves than the front which was more triangular like this recent one had. However, this recent one had all triangular-shaped hooves.