Arizona allows one javelina per calendar year so Alysa was eligible for another javelina the following February during the regular rifle season. She had a commitment at church on Friday night (the first day of the week long hunt) so couldn't get there until Saturday afternoon. Mom wasn't willing to drive 5 hours to bring Alysa down so she got on a bus in Phoenix and took a 5 hour long bus ride to Willcox, AZ. where I met her at 1:00 PM Saturday afternoon. We went back to the same canyon my hunting partner got his that morning but the wind had really risen and we didn't see a thing. Sunday morning we headed to a neat little 'wash flat'. This is a flat area that a fairly significant (but dry) wash runs through that has 4-500' hills on both the North and South sides. We picked a spot halfway up the hills on the South side. We got to our spot and glassed for less than an hour when I spotted a heard midway up the hills on the North side. This was around 800 yards away and it took a while before I could even describe their location to the others.
We made a quick move of the first 400 yards but moved a little slower on the last 400. The last 200 were mostly uphill but the natural rock formations gave good cover for making it to within 160 yards of the last landmark we had for the heard. When we got there none of us could find any of the animals. There was another small wash coming off the front of this hill that they could have hidden in on their way away from us or they could have moved to the other side of the hill while we were moving. We spent 15 minutes looking when I made a grunting sound and low an behold the largest boar stood up looking for what made that noise. The herd had just laid down and apparently javelina look amazingly like rocks/boulders when they lay down.
Alysa's first shot was right at 160 yards but steeply uphill and was not a one shot kill. It took out the animals right front shoulder just missing the heart and it dropped but got back up in less than 30 seconds. I told Alysa to put another in it but my hunting partner, seeing another animal presenting a good shot said no. He was trying to get me a shot on another from the same herd. It didn't turn out that way and Alysa's boar made its way around the top of the hill and out of sight.
The blood trail was significant and easy to follow around the hill but quickly disappeared once we got around the hill. I had Alysa stay at the last spot we found blood while I continued to track. Alysa sighted here boar in a small wash down at the bottom of the hill (by hill I mean 400 feet or so) along with the rest of the herd. I felt confident that she could take care of herself so I told her to go down to find her boar and finish it while I stayed up high as a spotter. She split the heard when she crossed the wash they were in driving her boar away from her and the rest of the herd towards me. I stayed and watched as the boar ran as fast as a three legged boar can run in the small wash with my daughter running as fast as an asthmatic girl can run on top of the flat that formed one of the ridges of the wash. She fell to the ground just as the boar decides to get out of the wash and head over the next hill around a hundred yards in front of her. Now Alysa knows that if this boar gets over that hill it is going to be a tracking nightmare. So, now that she is on the ground anyway, she improvises a sitting position and takes one shot at the boar now running almost directly away from her at 75 yards and puts a .270 in the left rear quarter that drops the animal like a sack of potatoes. She does as she has learned and watches the animal drop in here scope.
Here is the result of the first shot that missed the heart by less than an inch.
Here is Alysa with her latest javelina
Because the animal was looking right at us, she was aiming for another head shot. She was sitting but she was using Pat's homemade shooting sticks instead of my tripod shooting sticks. She just wasn't comfortable with his sticks and the shot was steeply uphill. Greater than 30 degrees uphill.