Merlynn's Pig Farm

The afternoon of our second day took us 30 miles North of Williston to a federal wildlife refuge. We took the first road that we thought would take us into the refuge and soon found ourselves in a "No Hunt Zone". The narrow road led us to a run down farmyard where we thought we could turn around. We found Merlynn and Mike in the yard putting a dozer on a 1066 IH tractor. Mike was doing the work and Merlynn was in the truck drinking Busch. When we asked if we could just turn around in the yard, Merlynn asked where we were from and what were we doing. After responding to Merlynn he said why not just stop here and shoot birds. The first bird was by the pig pen. Leo stepped out to shoot and had to run at the bird to get it fly. He unloaded his gun and the bird kept flying. That was the beginning of our poor shooting in the pig yard. We only shot one bird in the yard and listened to Merlynn cuss our poor shooting. He was a really nice guy(just a foul mouth). We hunted off down in the cattails and deep snow and filled our bird limits. We definitely shot better once we got out of the pig yard. The next morning we started the day with a good breakfast at Grandma Sharon's cafe. It was the place with the most pick ups. The weather station said it was -17 degrees. We decided to believe Blair's pick up that said it was only-9 degrees. We went back to the pig yard and continued our poor shooting in the yard. Leo wounded one that flew off into the far cat tails. We later found the bird on our way back. I missed a bird that flew out of a small little shack. You just don't expect to have a rooster fly out of the window. We all got a chance to miss birds flying out of different buildings.

The day didn't get much warmer. Blair missed a couple birds because his gun froze up. The trigger and firing pin just wouldn't work.We ended up with 4 birds that morning and some tired legs from working through the snow and cat tails. We needed to head back to the Super 8 and check out before hitting the road for home. Bandit was safe and warm in the insulated kennel inside the camper.

We wired the gate shut at Merlynn's pig farm and started to think about how we would hunt it the next time we came back.

We made it to Billings and waved at the Johnson's house as we drove towards home. We all made it back before midnight on New Years Eve.