On Sunday, April 5, I decided to get off my butt and go out and see if I could kill a javelina with my bow.

I have been hunting javelina since 1991 and been operating a guided javelina hunt service since 1998.

During that time I have witnessed many javelinas being killed with bows, but had never been that interested in trying to take one myself.

That changed this past June, when an aquaintance made me a gift of two wooden, flint tipped hunting arrows.

I got in the blind a little after 5 p.m. on Sunday and started my waiting game watching a corn line I had been keeping baited.

A little after 8 p.m., shortly before dark, I spotted a single javelina working its way up the draw toward the blind.

It reached the end of the corn line and began feeding, and made no effort to move any farther down the line.

The range was only about 30 yards, but due to my lack of experience and my equipment, and old Herter's fiberglass recurve bow in 40 pound pull and the flint tipped arrow I was wanting something between 10 and 15 yards for my first attempt.

As daylight was becoming a factor, I slipped out of the blind and started sneaking in on the animal.

At about 12 yards or so I felt like I had the best shot chance I was going to get, so I took it.

I hit the javelina a little high and a little far back, but it appeared and sounded like a good solid hit.

The animal took off, ran about 10 yards, stopped and whirled around looking in my direction.

I could see about half of the arrow shaft sticking out of its side.

It stood there for just a second or two, the spun to its right and took off thru the brush.

It was dark enough now, so that I could not really see any sign of blood on the ground, but a few yards away, found about half of the arrow shaft laying on the ground where it had snapped off as the animal went thru the brush.

It had a coating of blood on the broken end.

It was reasonably cool by that time and close enough to dark that I figured my best plan was to back out of the area and come back early the next morning and give the animal time to bleed out.

I left the broken shaft laying where I found it as a land mark, and began from that point when I got back to the kill site the next morning.

The blood trail was there, sparse but steady.

Around the back side of the clump of brush where the shaft was lying, I found the remainder of the shaft, head still attached and covered in blood, about 10 yards or so from where the arrow had been broken.

I began looking around at that point and about 15 yards or so from there I found the animal down.

It was a 50 pound (+ or-) female javelina, and my first bow kill of a game animal.