Beautiful boar hunting

[Southern]

Boar and bear season just opened in North Carolina this week, so I went out to scout a bit. There were some bear hunters high in the mountains. It was so clear, that from a 3,000 foot ridge, 900 feet above a sparkling lake, I could look north through the Smokies, completely across eastern Tennessee, to the Cumberland Range, on the border of Kentucky.

Late in the day, as I came out, I drove all the way up to Hooper's Bald at 5,290 feet, where George Moore introduced 14 German boar to America, inside a 1,500 high fenced hunting preserve. For nostalgia's sake, I must hunt there, and fish again in a river far below where the minimum smallmouth bass you can keep is 20 inches.

There has been very little breeze for weeks, so all the leaves are still on the trees, and the colors were gorgeous. Sometimes you just get lucky are stumble up on marvelous vistas.

 

[finnbear270]

Please, Please turn down that colour control knob, and turn off those smells pouring out of your post.

 

[plonker]

Boar and bear season just opened in North Carolina this week, so I went out to scout a bit. There were some bear hunters high in the mountains. It was so clear, that from a 3,000 foot ridge, 900 feet above a sparkling lake, I could look north through the Smokies, completely across eastern Tennessee, to the Cumberland Range, on the border of Kentucky.

Late in the day, as I came out, I drove all the way up to Hooper's Bald at 5,290 feet, where George Moore introduced 14 German boar to America, inside a 1,500 high fenced hunting preserve. For nostalgia's sake, I must hunt there, and fish again in a river far below where the minimum smallmouth bass you can keep is 20 inches.

There has been very little breeze for weeks, so all the leaves are still on the trees, and the colors were gorgeous. Sometimes you just get lucky are stumble up on marvelous vistas.

I am sat on my tool box having a quick cup of tea and for a few seconds I was somewhere i would much rather be.
Cheers
Dave
Ps bump back to reality!

 

[Southern]

Perhaps I shouldn't spoil my word painting with photographs.
To keep from using up my allotted storage, I may just post them one at a time and take them down.

Last week, I went one evening to the tailrace of a run-of-the-mill generating station, which was running no water due to a lack of rain for a month. The tailrace is about 90 yards wide and 40 feet deep, gin clear when calm, so I could see trout in there three and four pounds. I had a 6 wt fly rod with WF sinking line, but only large trout streamers and bass bugs. The trout wanted something smaller. About then, one of the turbines fired up, so I changed to a spinning rod and waited for shad to come through the turbine, and landlocked striped bass to show up for supper. They did, too. I lost one, but another fisherman showed up who lived nearby, and caught one about 14 lbs. I left then to explore the lake above, and caught a few bass.

In the description of scouting boar country, one place I visited was Brookfield reservoir, a narrow and deep lake in a chain of such lakes, dammed about 1929. I did some work with it not long ago, hooking up instrumentation in the lake, generators, inflows, and tailrace to a satellite, so the overflow release gates on top of the dam could be remote controlled in order to coordinate the stream flows with 37 other reservoirs, where I did the same. The trout fishing in this entire county is superb, with dozens of mountain streams at 2,000+ feet. This river is where the minimum smallmouth bass keeper is 20 inches.

Here is a photo, my toes six inches from the brink of a cliff at 4,500 feet, of a ridge 1,000 feet below. You can see how the leaves are changing with altitude. There was snow last weekend at 5,000 feet, and the trees are bare at 5,200.

 

[Ferryman]

@Southern. I visited Amicola Falls Georgia in the Fall a few years back and the view from the top was amazing the colours were burnt into my memory

 

[Southern]

Amicalola is Cherokee for "tumbling waters". It is 829 acres, with a lodge and cabins. All around there is great trout fishing.
http://gastateparks.org/AmicalolaFalls

If you really want to see waterfalls, go across the Chattooga River, where "Deliverance" was filmed, to Oconee County, South Carolina. There are over 500 waterfalls, some 400 and 500 feet. You can hike trails through Pickens County and Greenville County, and see another 200 waterfalls, including the one you can walk behind, about 100 feet up, that was used in the film, "Last of the Mohicans".

I will keep adding new photos as I hunt this area, and keep the others up as smaller ones, so I don't run out of storage.

 

[Bavarianbrit]

I believe george Moore gave the ground to his gamekeeper around 1914. I know Occonee county quite well. Coming back to US in a few weeks time from mexico but now is too late to get a deer tag I only have my bow with me.

 

[Southern]

You should be able to get a SC big game license. There are no tags required, and I think the limit is five bucks up in Oconee's hunt unit.

I used to live in Pendleton, and was a member of the Keowee Bowmen, a group of traditional archers. Later, compound bows were allowed. There were some great hunters in that group, like Ole Norm and Monty Browning.

Yes, George Moore gave the hunting lodge and at least the 1,500 fenced acres to his gamekeeper. The Russian brown bears climbed out of the high fence, and the boar eventually dug out and tore through the fence, stocking that part of America with German wild swine.

I saw one of the Russian bears, in a full standing mount, at a lodge about 20 miles ( by winding road ) from Hooper's Bald.

I have photos of the lodge and historical markers, which I can post.

 

[takbok]

Thanks for the beautiful descriptions and photos! Would love to visit these areas.

 

[Southern]

Here is a view from a trail in NC, at 3,200 feet, at 4:00 PM, looking southwest to the mountains of north Georgia, at the North Carolina - Tennessee juncture.
The grass below is pretty well mowed by the deer, but treacherous to walk down because the slop is about 60 degrees, and under the trees is covered with small acorns.

I will probably downsize this image later, to free up some room for myself.

 

[Southern]

I added an update, on a new thread, "Forest fires and bears", but accidentally posted it in Rifles and Calibres, instead of Open Topics. Some of this area I photographed is ablaze right now.

Well, here is video, taken from about 100 yards in front of my cabin, up the road, closer to the fire.

http://wncn.com/2016/11/08/evacuatio...ouble-in-size/

 

[coburn71]

just stunning

 

[liongeorge]

Hi Southern , lovely pictures. Hope the fires are under control. I have a very good friend who lives in NC near Bryson City. It,s beautiful around there and I very much enjoyed the fishing and ww rafting etc in the area when we visitted, though I have a couple of questions.
Am I right in thinking all the woodland is very much of one age range and limmitted species? It also seemed very dense and almost inpenitrable. How do you go about hunting these steep thick areas? If I were to plan another trip over what is the best way/who are the best contacts to try and fit some hunting in.

All the best George

 

[Southern]

Thanks for the concern, but it is not going well. The fires are all advancing. There is no wind, just about 4 mph most of the time, so the fire will advance into that, up a slope, and the slopes are heavily wooded and too steep to climb, much less work a fire.

I think Bryson City is okay, the fire beaten down. That fire started about Nov 4.

Last week, when the fire department called me, there were two fires, connected to each other. They call it the Party Rock Fire, because that is where it started. It was 60 acres there last Monday, and 300 by the time I got to my place, 344 that night, 677 on Wednesday, 957 Thursday, 1922 acres Friday, 3,457 by this Monday, now over 3,800 acres.

Here is a recent upate on the North Carolina fires. There is a big fire still going at Table Rock, SC, and really big fires in north Georgia, a bunch in Tennessee. 15,000 acres burned in northern Alabama last week.

The top photo on this article is the fire coming down to a marina, and a small village of 109 people to the left, just off camera. The larger part of this fire is on the other side of the mountain, where I was last week.

http://wlos.com/news/local/updates-on-all-major-wildfires-in-wnc-evacuations-closures-containment

 

[liongeorge]

My friend at Bryson City is a paramedic and has been supporting the fire crews who have travelled in from all over and from as far as Alaska. He has been mainly in the Ashville area. Hope things calm down soon for you guys.

 

[Gunner]

Hi Southern,


The scale of that fire is mind boggling and must be very upsetting for all involved. Seeing such beautiful trees going up in smoke is awful. Are forest fires a regular occurrence there and how long does it typically take for the forest to regenerate?


Hope it's got under control soon.


Regards,


Gunner

 

[Southern]

These are hardwood forests, which take about 50 years to mature between logging, and about 150 years to mature to full size. Much of this was logged of huge poplar trees at the turn of the century. Other parts were too steep until the 1970s, with the invention of new logging equipment, it became to log some of the rest. I need to post some photos of current trees and old photos of the virgin forest in the 1890s. The same is true of the big pine forests of Georgia and South Carolina, where loblolly pine and oak trees grow to 250 feet and more if not burned down or toppled by a hurricane.

 

[luckyjames]

Amazing !