ddhlakebound

Regular out of the bag briquettes contain many chemicals not found in natural lump charcoal. I no longer use anything but wood or natural lump charcoal for cooking or food smoking. Drop a few of the kingsford briquettes into a bowl of water and wait a day......

It's gotta be worth a shot jason......If you go, I think I'd try some sort of a small chartreuse/pick your fav color combo jig, and fish in close to the banks nice and slow. People were probably catching a few on spinners and cranks, but the little jigs are where my bet is. Er........, maybe that was last week or something.

Walk in, or boat in Chief? Prefer more northern or southern, and or sac arm or sons creek arm?

There are many walk in areas on the south end of the big sac arm. Some of them get TONS of pressure, some of them not so much. Google earth is your friend, and can help you isolate an area you wish to explore. Right now, a big buck could be on any ridge, draw, edge or thicket you can find, they're moving alot. I know where a couple shooters are hanging out, but you'd have to find out where I launch and follow my boat out to get than info out of me. Everything south of the Y hwy bridge is "anydeer" tag only, no bonus tags may be used. The north end of the lake I have little experience with (north of the 215 bridge) There are still some walk in options up there, but you may have to be creative in parking to avoid really long hikes. Bout all you can do is get out there and learn, and keep trying. On the bright side, if you get away from most of the pressure, anywhere you decide to set up will be a surprise to the deer, so you'll have lots of "first sit" advantage over and over. Good luck.

Mutton?

Sorry to hear of your misfortune with the expandables. I've never tried them, but I've heard too many stories of less than optimal performance. I've never swayed from Muzzy's, and I expect full pass throughs with every well placed shot. Anything less than a pass through always seems to leave a very sparse blood trail, or none at all. To this point, Muzzy has never failed me yet, although I did fail to find one small buck due to a high hit that got no vitals. The arrow was dark and meaty, and the blood trail dried up in about 80 yards. The only real downside to fixed blades I can see is extra movement in the wind, but that's easily overcome by only shooting shorter ranges when it's overly windy. Hope things work out better for you next time, losing a hit deer is a pretty sucky feeling. We've all been there.

Hi everybody... I found this forum last night while trying to find more/better info on where to get on some hogs on public land in sw mo. Even knowing some areas they've been found in it's very difficult (for me anyway) to get on a live wild hog. I can confirm the large black boar shot on the banks of Stockton lake in the 2008 deer season. I was on the lake bank on the other side of the cove when the boat came in with the boar on it. We jumped in our trucks instantly and drove around to get a close up look. My best guesstimate of the weight was around 300 lbs. I was one of six guys who helped hang the beast, and it was huge. I've got a pic on my cell phone of the hanging boar, and a closeup of the tusks. It was shot in one of the areas listed on the MDC web page as having a pig population. I'll have to see if I can email the pic to myself to be able to post a photo here. I've hunted the banks of Stockton for years, and I've only ever seen one live (small) hog, and it vanished like a ghost in the distance at a very slight rustle. I've also found a medium sized hog skull that was apparently killed by goose hunters. The skull has a few embedded bb's, and it was found about 3/4 of a mile north of were a goose blind was located at that time. Thats my best guess about the skulls history immediately before it's demise. It seems to me that the only 2 ways of killing hogs with any consistency at all are to spend alot of time and money to get a few bait sites warmed up, or to spend alot of time and money developing a pack of bay dogs. Anybody got a less expensive/difficult way to get on the pigs?