At 6am Young Bucks members Christy Deam, age 10 and myself Tracy Gendron, age 12, set out for Albany Texas. It was a very long trip, about 10 1/2 hours, but it seemed like only tow or three hours because we were so excited. We were both going on our first wild boar hunt. We arrived at our destination by 4:30pm.

We were hunting at the 56,000-acre Nail Ranch, just outside Albany. There we met our guides. My guide was Craig Winters, hunt manager of the Nail Ranch, and Christie's guide was Tim Mariner, a wild boar guide for five years.

After we had talked for a while about how we would hunt and what time we should meet, we got back in the truck and went to our lodge in Albany. We went to Dairy Queen for supper, and then went to bed. The next morning, we got up at 5:30 and got ready for our very exciting day.

We met with our guides and were on our way to two very different hunts. We both hunted all morning, seeing many sows but not very many shootable boars. We each missed a nice boar but were glad we did afterwards.

We went into town for lunch at about 11am and swapped stories about our hunts. I had learned that Christie had missed a small speckled boar while I had missed a medium-sized black boar. When we were finished eating we went back to the ranch and continued our hunt.

At about 1pm we saw the first board since lunch. It was about a half mile away, walking along the side of a hill. We got out of the truck and got down-wind of the hog, and then we watched it bed down near a small tree. We quickly walked to a large rock about 45 yards sway from the hog. We looked at it through the binoculars and could clearly see that it was a boar, and a nice one too. Craig and I snuck up to a small ridge, about 15 yards from the boar. I lined up for a shot with my .243 rifle, and fired. The boar jumped up and ran. We followed him by a clearly defined blood trail, and soon he was ready for pictures.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ranch, Christie was watching a nice boar throwing dirt 6 feet high in the air while rooting for grubs. They had been there for about 15 minutes. Earlier, her guide had see the boar about 400 hundred yards off the road. They had snuck up about 75 yards from it and were waiting for it to turn broadside. She aimed her .243 rifle and made an excellent shot. The boar was hers.

Christie arrived back at camp to find we both had been successful. Craig weighed both hogs, sizing mine up to 240 pounds and Christie's 110 pounds field dressed. The tusks on mine were 2 1/2 inches on top and 2 5/8 inches on bottom. Christie's hog had tusks of 2 3/8 inches on tip and 2 1/2 inches on bottom.

This was a really fun hunt and I would recommend it to other Young Bucks members.