John's Journal...

Land of the Monster Hogs - Stasney's Cook Ranch in Texas

Yes, You Can Call Hogs

Click to enlargeEditor’s Note: The Stasney’s Cook Ranch, near Albany Texas, is the land of the monster hogs. One of the reasons there are so many older, trophy-class hogs on this ranch is because unlike other ranchers, Johnny Hudman, the ranch manager, isn’t on a mission to eradicate hogs. “We kinda like to have them around,” Hudman says. This week, we’ll tell you what a Texas hog hunt for monster-sized hogs is like. In many states, like Texas, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, you can hunt feral hogs all year long almost any way you want Click to enlargeto hunt them. In some southern states, there’s no season and no bag limit on wild hogs. However, before you plan a trip to hog hunt anywhere, make sure you know that state’s season rules and regulations for hunting hogs. Hogs provide a great off-season sport for gun hunters, bowhunters, and handgun hunters. When there’s nothing else to hunt, often you’ll find hogs are available. Ken French from Lebanon, Maine, helped develop all the guns that Thompson-Center has produced. But French is more than a gun manufacturer. He’s also an avid hunter. This past March, on our hog-hunting trip to the Stasney’s Cook Ranch, Ken learned that yes, you can call hogs.

Question: Ken, tell me about calling hogs.
French: I’ve always been told that you can’t call hogs. But I decided to try my Fox Pro game call to call coyotes and bobcats. On the way down to this hunt, my wife and I stopped off at the factory, and they took us on a tour to show us how they build the Fox Pro game calls. While we were there, they took my FoClick to enlargex Pro caller and put a large number of sounds on it for me. As I was looking through the list of new sounds the company had put on my caller, I found the baby-wild-pig-in-distress sound. I also found the wild-boar-in-distress sound. So I decided on this hunt I would play with those sounds and see if we could call in a hog with it.

We found a place where there were some sows and little pigs running around. I put my Fox Pro caller on top of the truck, and I turned it on baby-pig-iClick to enlargen-distress call just to see what would happen. The longer I played that sound, the more pigs that started to come in to the area where we had our truck. We were sitting in the truck just laughing and laughing about how many feral hogs we’d called in when I said to my partner, Jim Wilson, “Let’s try this wild-boar-in-distress call, and see what happens.” I punched it in and let it play for just a few minutes. Those pigs got really aggressive. We looked up the road and about 1/4-mile away we spotted a big boar coming running straight down the road like he was going to attack the truck. Jim Wilson, an outdoor writer, got out of the truck and took the boar with his Thompson-Center rifle. When we saw that hog come charging in, it really got our adrenaline going.

To learn more about Stasney’s Cook Ranch, write P.O. Box 1826, Albany, Texas, 76430, or call (325) 762-2999, or visit www.stasneyscookranch.com.

Tomorrow: The Stasney’s Cook Ranch Has Plenty of Coyotes and Bobcats Too


Check back each day this week for more about "Land of the Monster Hogs - Stasney's Cook Ranch in Texas "

Day 1: The Russian Boar – the Big Lie
Day 2: The Two Types of Hogs at the Ranch
Day 3: More about the Stasney’s Cook Ranch Hogs
Day 4: Yes, You Can Call Hogs
Day 5: The Stasney’s Cook Ranch Has Plenty of Coyotes and Bobcats Too

 

Entry 451, Day 4