2017-02-19: Scouting for Wild Boar

2017-02-19: San Luis Obispo County, CA

It’s 6:00 am in the morning on a holiday weekend Sunday and Alan, Whit, Steven and myself are in the Virgin Galactic parking lot. What the crap is going on?  Why am I at work this early?  To go hunting, or rather scouting, for wild boar in the public Bureau of Land Management area near San Luis Obispo, Lake Lopez, and Lake Santa Margarita.  “But Rob, you don’t hunt?!”  I know.  But I do love catching my own food.  Enter Alan and his decades of Texan experience of tracking, hunting, and preparing any and every animal that is legal to hunt.  Add to it, two zealous Asians and we have a 4 some to embark on this trip.

So if you were like me, you probably had little to no knowledge or experience with hunting.  In California, you have to take an online course which takes 10+ hours to read thoroughly (or 2.5 if you’re Nick) and attend a 4 hour class which includes a 100 question test.  More importantly, it changes the way you see hunting.  According to the class, 5% of the US population is pro-hunting, 5% is anti-hunting, and the remaining 90% of the US doesn’t give a damn.  I had no idea, I figured everyone was kinda anti-hunting.  I was wrong.  Anyhow, for me it boils down to being able to get the highest quality (read: raised completely by Mother Nature) in the most humane manner available (read: a quick death with limited suffering from the animal).  So to accomplish this, there are RULES and then there are BEST PRACTICES.  The BEST PRACTICES is what the hunting community promotes and includes things like only targeting birds that are in flight and only firing at animals that you are sure you can hit their vital organs.  The skill equates to hitting an 8-in circle from 150 yards out.  I tried it, it’s hard. 

  

Up the 101, out of LA and the Valley and past Ventura, we finally start to get to the central coast mountains.  The torrential downpour that soaked SoCal on Friday had cleared up and left green green green everywhere.  I’ve been up the 101 many a time, and I’ve never seen it so beautiful.  Lake levels were up 20’ from just a couple months ago and the plant-life was lush.  We weren’t even up to the scouting locations and I already proclaimed the trip a success.

Since none of us have ever hunted in California, and 3 of the 4 of us have never hunted before, we had to depend on the Google to tell us where to go.  Turns out, 95% of the wild boar hunted in California is on private land.  Essentially, you pay $300 to access this land where there is a maintained and monitored population of animals to hunt.  Pay another $100 or more, you get a guide to help you locate said animals.  That’s great and all, but the point was to get wild animals, not privately raised animals.  Also, $400 bucks is a lot.  The remaining 5% of tagged wild boars are spread out across hundreds of thousands of acres on BLM and National Forrest Land.  Only a few of those acres are in SLO county, and there’s nothing that we could find south of that location. 

Armed with a map and google maps, we manage to find the road that heads right up into our most promising section of BLM land.  After a few miles of dirt road winding through the hills, we hit a road closure.  Strike 1.  

We backtrack to the main road, track along the mountain base west for a few miles and find a road that goes to our second location.  This road is surprisingly well kept, and is also quite busy for a road in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps it’s because it passes through the Boy Scouts of America wilderness camp and a church and church retreat center that definitely looked like a compound.   The road eventually starts to roll up and down and every time the road dips, a little mini river crossed the road from all the rain we’ve been having.  It’s fun to go splashy splashy through these little rivers until we hit a big one.  The jeep that we were following stops and the driver asses the depth of the crossing.  It’s waist high at its deepest.  That’s pretty deep man.  Alan has a winch, and a jeep is pretty rugged, but we’re out in the middle of nowhere.  We realize that further down these roads are a pair of spectacular waterfalls, which is where the jeep was headed. For us, that type of steep land isn’t good for hunting, so we passed on forging the river.  Too bad, it would have been pretty cool to ford a river in our covered wagon, then shoot some oxen, then watch Steven get diphtheria and die.  It could’ve been our own SoCal version of Oregon Trail.  BTW, it’s pronounced Or-e-gen unless you wanna watch Whit squirm, then its pronounced Or-e-gOn. Try it, it’s fun, I promise.

We are down in the count with 2 strikes, and even though we don’t go to jail for life if we get a third strike we would like to see some piggies!  One thing we did learn was how to spot where pigs have gone looking for their food, worms.  These pigs “root” in dirt looking for worms to eat by basically running their snouts in the dirt and turning up the dirt like a 4 legged rototiller.  We found a few patches of rooted grass so we were hopeful that the pigs were around.  Motivated, we drive around the mountain range to explore the north side of SLO County.  Success! We are able to find a location on BLM land that is legal to hunt on, and clearly is quite popular with other hunters.  We get out to do a little exploring and hike around for an hour or so.  Alan finds us 3 sets of animal tracks that go from the hills to the running water so we begin to try and follow them.  We follow them all the way to the next water crossing where they disappear, just like they do in the movies where a fugitive is trying to lose the FBI.  We crest the next hill to get a better vantage point of the surrounding area then circle back to the car.

One more spot to check out so we head out in that general direction.  Here’s the problem with these BLM and National Forrest areas.  People have gone in and bought the land in front and around these areas and have restricted public access through their property.  So essentially, they get all that land for free since no one else can access it.  Smart play on their end, pretty crappy for everyone else though.  Strike 3, yerrrrr out!  Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly do jail.  L

Since we were out in the middle of nowhere and could legally hunt/shoot in these areas, we took the time to fire a few rifles just so that we could get some practice in.  For me, it would be my first time shooting a rifle.  The closest thing to shooting a rifle was when I got to play with an air rifle at my aunt’s house when I was like 13.  I shot dirt, cans, an old aquarium, then I came up with the smartest idea I’ve ever had.  I put a plastic pvc pipe on the end of the air rifle and pointed it up about 45 degrees.  The idea is that I would divert the BB pellet in the direction the pipe was pointed.  BRILLIANT! 13 year old Rob is going places for sure.  So in my blinding brilliance, I decided that I just needed to hold the pvc at the end of the barrel with my hand.  So there I am, lining up a shot using the pvc pipe, right hand on the trigger, left hand holding both the pipe and the barrel.  I pull the trigger and I am immediately shocked and I drop everything from the surprise.  My left hand is throbbing and it starting to gush blood and a giant sphere has appeared on my ring finger.  I look at the pvc pipe and the end of it has shattered into several pieces.  I put it all together and realize that the super flimsy pvc pipe did nothing to divert the BB pellet and instead, I shot myself in the finger from point blank range.  Looking at my finger, I’m convinced that the BB is stuck in my finger, since my finger was swollen up enough to look like there’s a Skittle hiding out in there.  I am feverishly trying to squeeze a non-existent BB out of my finger which is excruciatingly painful and of course I can’t go to my mom or aunt since I was not supposed to be playing with the damn air rifle anyhow.  I forgot how it ended, but I still have a left hand ring finger and it is normal shaped, so I guess it all went fine, or I have magical self-healing powers like Wolverine.

Last top before heading home, Margie’s Diner.  I was introduced to this place back in high school when my buddy Ryan Wong was going to school at Cal Poly SLO.  It’s right at the southern most part of SLO proper so it makes for a great last meal before headed home.  More importantly it is the epitome of the classic diner.  HUGE portions, everything is comfort food, breakfast till 9:00pm, and fairly priced.  My favorite thing here is the onion rings, they are a meal on their own since each one is the size of a small planet.  There’s a Margie’s in Paso Robles also, I highly recommend either one. 

So the conclusion of this trip leaves me with two points.  First, it’s gonna take a fair amount of work to find wild boar on public land, let alone be able to shoot it in a humane manner.  Second, I really need to get going on building a rotisserie to make Lechon Cebu.  Keep an eye out for the giant Filipino potluck when that happens!!