Going to count today as my first official woodchuck of the season. I think I might have got the one in the giant wood/burn pile. It ran into the pile after I shot and I looked for blood but didn't find any. But that was a couple weeks ago and I haven't seen the groundhog either. I'm not going to count that one though because I don't know for sure.
What I do know is that I was out for the last morning of turkey season today. Turkey sightings are way way down on my farm this year. Even in other spots on the neighbor's farm I was having trouble finding a turkey. Shot and missed a nice gobbler last Monday. Today I hunted my home farm and didn't have much hope of getting a turkey, but it was a nice morning to be out anyway. Just before 10am I look over to a big mound of dirt that is in the woods about 60 yards away and there is a groundhog going in and out of its den. Gave me something to watch. This is one area that I did not get a groundhog last year and it is right against our crop field so I decided that if opportunity knocked, I would shoot. I wasn't paying attention for a few minutes and when I looked back over my shoulder the groundhog was coming my way angling toward the field I was sitting near. The groundhog ran right up my homemade blind and sat on the edge about 8 feet away from me. On that edge of the blind is a tree and when the groundhog saw me it ran up the tree. Still only eight feet away, but in the tree, I shot it. A load of hevishot at that distance makes a big hole. Even so the groundhog made it about 15-20 yards away before dying. I actually didn't see it leave because when it fell it was outside my blind where I couldn't see it. I had to follow the blood trail to find it (it was a very prominent blood trail). I couldn't believe it went anywhere with the hole it had in it. Tough little buggers. So my 1st official whistle pig of 2013.
And a picture of the tree complete with groundhog parts embedded in the hole.