My nephew lil’ Marcus loves to tag along with me anytime I go to the woods whether it’s just to bait deer & hogs, move stands or whatever it is I need to do at the time. Recently the Dr. said that he needed to lose a little weight and be more active so I asked my sister if I could take lil’ Marcus with me to check hog traps a couple times a week. She of course said yes and so the outings began.
I started mixing bait and had the traps were already out so I had to established trap line which was a long walk. Perfect for what we were trying to accomplish. Keep him interested in the outdoors and get some good exercise. Every Wednesday and Saturday we traveled to Pageland, SC to bait and check traps. Twice the hogs got out and several times we got there and the traps were tripped or deer got in and jumped out.
At one point he said to me after we checked the last trap and they had broken out “Uncle Johnny we’re never going to catch any hogs are we?” and my heart sank. I hoped that he wouldn’t lose interest in our time together in the woods. So I over baited the areas way more than usual in hopes of pulling a big herd in and hopefully catching one or two. That was a Wednesday.
That Saturday i picked him up like usual and we headed on our hour journey to the property to check our traps. The first 2 were tripped… no hogs. So we walked all the way back to the truck to head to the other side of the property and check the last trap. I noticed his head down the whole walk back disappointed yet again. There we were headed to the guillotine trap. I prayed the whole time we crossed that huge field, “Lord please let there be hogs in this trap for my nephew… please lord bless us with some hogs so he won’t remember this unsuccessful time with me in the woods… please lord let there be pigs in the guillotine trap. I Just kept repeating myself with his hand in mine making that long walk. As we got to the edge of the field I noticed the trap door had been tripped. “Could this be it? Did we catch some?” Then i saw movement in the trap and like a I kid I hollered “We caught some buddy!!” He started yelling and ran to the trap too! We were like a bunch of 5 yr olds jumping around and hollering! As we got closer there were 5 piglets in the trap. I thought to myself, Ahhh crap, I’ve got to kill a bunch of baby pigs in front of him! He was so jacked up about catching them i didn’t wanna ruin the moment so we just watched them for a bit, took some pictures and then made the call I didn’t wanna make to my sister.
“So we caught some pigs… yeah really… well I’m gonna shoot them… yes I’m gonna shoot them…. no I can’t just let them go… I’ll make sure he doesn’t see it…. I promise… ok… bye”. You can imagine her part of the conversation!
So after I explained to him that we couldn’t keep them, I took him about 50 yards down the trail, set him behind a tree and told him I’d call for him when I was done. I dispatched them quickly and we started back to the truck.
I told Lil’ Marcus that he was uncle Johnny’s lucky charm and no one could take that smile off his face for days! Marcus still asks me to this day “when does Wednesday season start?” lol! Since then we’ve lost that little property but I’m working on another trap line as we speak so we can make some more memories together. I can’t wait.
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