Hunting Season 2013: Day 12

The night before day 12, we had a party at my house, complete with inoshishi-nabe (boar stew), and yakiniku. We stayed up till around 3 am talking afterward. My hunting buddy, Tom, stayed over as well. Anyway, this meant the Tom, my brother, and I, ended up only hunting for a few hours in the afternoon. We took Baron and Bishome. This was Bishome's first time out in the mountains.

I decided to hunt tower mountain. We headed in, and halfway up the first ridge, 5 minutes in, Baron moved off to the right toward a spot the boar like to lay up in. I pointed downhill back the way we had climbed up, and Tom headed that direction. I headed uphill and around the boar to cut off their retreat. Unfortunately it was at that moment that Bishome decided to pull a newbie move. Baron was on the edge of the thicket that the boar were in, and he was carefully trying to pick out where the boar were. Bisho saw him, and went charging up to him full speed. This naturally alerted the boar, and they charged out the back before I could get set up to cut them off. Baron tore off after them, and left Bisho at the edge of the thicket. At that moment she realized something fun was going on, so she went in, and rustled up another boar that had been in there. She even barked at it for a while, and followed it after it ran off. She gave up very quickly. Baron on the other hand went after the first boar for around 500 meters.

My brother and I spent the next hour hunting with Baron around the top and opposite side of the mountain, and Tom moved around setting up ambushes. Unluckily the next group of boar we rustled up were just above a row of terraced fields. Baron had been wandering around for a few minutes, and I was talking on my phone. As I hung up, I heard boar around 10 meters below me, and Baron pushing them from the other side. Unfortunately the herd slipped downhill. Baron went after them, and so did we, but they did not stop again.

Since we were running out of time, we hunted our way back toward the truck, running into Tom along the way. We walked together, and at the very end it looked like Baron was picking up scent from somewhere, but we were unable to pinpoint exactly where the boar were.

Later that evening, at home, Baron suddenly pulled up lame in his right back leg. He's been pushing pretty hard when we go out, and he's lost a fair bit of weight. His leg was fine the next day, and it was possibly just cramping up, but to be safe I put him on rest for 3 weeks. I was going to be busy with work and an overseas trip anyway. It's always hard to get enough calories into Baron during the hunting season without causing his stomach to act up. He can't handle too much food, or changes in diet.

12 outings, still 7 boar.

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