Chattahoochee Boar Hog. Euro Mount Photo Added

ripplerider said:

Would you and Kyle mind sharing the make and model of the lights you carry?

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Hey ripple, I'll have to look mine up also. I use the Coast brand as well, and have been fairly happy with them. Sometimes I will also carry a Petzel that has served me several years now.

Killer Kyle said:

Hey ripple, I'll have to look mine up also. I use the Coast brand as well, and have been fairly happy with them. Sometimes I will also carry a Petzel that has served me several years now.

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Coast is the best bang for the buck hands down!

I have gone through a lot of headlamps, and I have learned something in the process. I have one from Coast that was about $19.00 at Walmart. It runs 210 lumens on high. I have another from them that is 285 lumens that cost $29.99 at Walmart. (I checked them at Wally world tonight). I'm pretty sure both are running Chinese Cree bulbs, but they behave very differently. The one that is 210 lumens has either six or eight smaller bulbs. The one running 285 has one large Cree bulb. I actually get FAR greater visibility with the lower powered headlamp. It provides a floodlight effect, but the higher powered one, while having more lumens, provides an INTENSLY focused beam from the one bulb, and the beam has really "hard" edges. Effectively, I can only see what is directly in the beam and nothing else,
rather than having a good view of everything around me. It is tunnel vision. Like looking through a pipe. It all comes down to what a hunter wants or prefers out of his light. I have learned that I prefer a lamp with many bulbes as compared to a single one.
We also have to take lumen ratings with a grain of salt, specifically in regards to companies that use Cree bulbs. Cree is notorious for misadvertising the lumen ratings of their bulbs. You will often see where they advertise certain devices at (for instance) 800 lumens, an independent tester will compare the light to another brand, and a flashlight running 350-400 lumens will completely flood out a Cree "800" lumen. There are too many online tests and videos to reference here. But suffice it to say that when Cree advertises a certain lumen rating, it irregularly runs true. It is always the best practice to seek product reviews and research prior to the purchase of an illumination device. A little research goes a long, long way.

I should also commend jbogg on the recovery effort. Many people, including myself on MULTIPLE occasions have searched for animals after a potential kill for a few days. I've had a couple instances where I thought I had made a kill shot, but couldn't recover the game. This included a buck I shot on Wilson Shoals WMA. I called a friend in from out of town. It took him 2 hrs to get to me. We tracked a buck further than I care to relate. Bright bubbly blood was everywhere. This bucks trail diminished after maybe 400+ yards. I went in for two weeks looking for buzzards, the stink of dead animal. Never found the buck although he bled an immense amount. I finally found the first bear I killed two weeks after I kille it. J persisted and finally found the boar more than a week later. Many hunters today do not follow up like he did. When he shot it, he told me he thought it was a big boar. I didn't realize it was until I saw it. He really did kill a magnificent boar, and instead of giving up the search for it, he went in a week later and found it. A lot of hunters today would have just written it off as a loss. This boar was half rotten and half eaten, but we covered our noses and mouths and smeared the facial coveriengs with Bengay to mask the odor, and finished the deed. I gagged a few times in the process because of the stench.
All this said, J went above and beyond the call of duty to recover his trophy. That is more follow up than many hunters exercise today, and I respect that.

Theres no shame in letting one get away occasionally as long as you made an honest effort to find it. It pretty much happens to everyone who hunts long enough. I try to always fix in my mind exactly where an animal was standing when I shot it. I leave something at the place I shot from to mark it and go directly to where the critter was. If theres no blood, I look for cut hairs. They may be hard to find, but a bullet doesnt enter an animals body without cutting some hair. You can tell a good bit about your hit from the hair left behind. If theres a good bit laying there close together you got a solid hit. If it's sprayed past where he was standing you only grazed him. With a deer at least you can get an idea where you hit him. A slow muzzleloader bullet wont leave as much evidence as a high-velocity rifle bullet but there still should be some. I always trail from the point of impact even if I'm pretty sure he's laying dead over the next rise. It's good practice. Sometimes they'll bleed out internally and wont leave a blood trail. Then you've got to look for running tracks and pieces of bone. This is how I found my best buck. It never bled a drop but I found hair at impact and a couple of pieces of bone along the track. He ran 300 yards with his heart and lungs vaporised from a quartering away shot at 10 yards. I want to see the European mount too JBoggs!~

Thought I would share the euro mount I got back a few weeks ago. That's the first one I've ever had done. Turned out pretty good. Definitely a conversation piece.

The skull looks great! Thanks for updating with the pic!

Definitely a cool conversation piece. What do they charge for something like that?

ripplerider said:

Definitely a cool conversation piece. What do they charge for something like that?

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I paid $150 for the skull to be done on the big blonde boar I got in '15. I got it and the mount done in Dublin.

ripplerider said:

Definitely a cool conversation piece. What do they charge for something like that?

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Hey Jeff. I think I paid about $80 at Trophy Taker Taxidermy in Cornelia. Don't know that I would do another, but this was my first hog, and first public land critter so it was worth it to me.

model88_308 said:

I paid $150 for the skull to be done on the big blonde boar I got in '15. I got it and the mount done in Dublin.

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Those look awesome! Great looking buck!

model88_308 said:

I paid $150 for the skull to be done on the big blonde boar I got in '15. I got it and the mount done in Dublin.

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Showoff!! haha! Just kidding...killer mounts man!!

Bravo jbogg! Great story and I admire you honest self appraisal.