Black Tine Outfitters- Ft. McCoy, FL
When you think of anniversary celebrations and trips, you picture romantic walks on the beach, candle-lit dinners, and dressing up. My husband and I had a different idea of an anniversary trip.
I was in the planning stages of a week-long trip to Florida, consisting of camping at different parks along the way and hiking, and ending with a deep-sea fishing trip. Meanwhile, my sweet husband was planning a secret hog hunt and a bow fishing trip in Florida (keeping the plan of camping and hiking along the way). Wild boar has always been at the top of my husbands ‘dream hunt’ list, and the top of my ‘gotta try to cook this’ list so we were counting down the minutes until our hunt!
We sighted in our rifles and started packing a week in advance; taking with us our camping gear, food for the majority of the week, and dreams of pork chops.
We ended up staying at state parks in Georgia, then getting rained out in Florida and booking a hotel for the rest of the week. The rain may have spoiled our camping idea, but it did NOT ruin our hunt! My husband chose Black Tine Outfitters in Ft. McCoy Florida not only because they had great prices, but they would also clean our boars for us and there were no size limits. One hog for one price, no matter how big. We both wanted large boars for the meat and for trophies. My husband may have had the dream of the hog hunt, but I had the dream of a European hog mount, and a sow just wasn’t going to be good enough for me.
We chose an afternoon hunt so our guide told us to be there by 4. In our excitement, we were there around 2…
Our guide spent some time telling us about the property, his future plans for it, how he got into the business, and all about Florida wildlife before he took us to our tree stand. We chose to sit together (since it was our anniversary celebration) and after about an hour, we saw our first hog scuffle out of the brush, 50 yards from our tree stand. We still had until dark so we didn’t even consider taking a shot at an 80-100 lb sow. After another hour or so, our guide came to our stand in a golf-cart, telling us to get down quick; what we didn’t realize was a huge storm had snuck up on us.
*2 more great things about our guide: he didn’t leave us to die in our stand during the storm AND while we waited it out in the barn, he killed the scorpion that decided to crawl over my shoulder.
We went back to our original tree stand for another hour or so, watching a handful of boars, but not being able to take any clear shots. So, we ended up going to a box blind in a new location and within 30 minutes saw no less than 40 different hogs, of all sizes and colors. We carefully picked out which boars we wanted and guessed their weights through our scopes. My sweet husband let me take the first shot when my choice presented an opportunity. After I shot, the rest scattered and slowly came back 20 minutes later, one by one. Travis picked out his big boar, got a clear shot right before dark and we then had 2 monsters in the mud.
Our boars weighed in right at 150 and 180 with really great tusks and filled our freezers with about 60 lbs of meat after processing. Our guide, Trenton, was phenomenal! We had a ride to and from the stands, advice on our hunt, free education on the local wildlife, someone to load and unload our boars, a butcher, and a scorpion smasher all in one! We both loved our hunt and are loving the delicious meat we brought home. As a bonus, I talked Trenton into letting me have his favorite buck head, already cleaned and bleached by the sun. Unfortunately due to an injury, we couldn’t go ocean bow fishing the next evening, but we have plans to go soon and we will be using Black Tine Outfitters again!
Part 2: A couple weeks ago we were able to go on the bow fishing trip. The original plan was to go on a Friday night; however a storm came through and we couldn’t get a single fish. Our guide was so kind and said we would go again the next night and get fish or our trip would be free. The next night came and even after a freak vehicle accident (no fault of our guide) we were able to get out on the water for a nice evening. My husband and I weren’t very good shots, but we got in some practice and with some advice some our guide, we were able to bring home a few fish.
