OK… I’ll admit it! I love wild hogs and hunting them! There I said it! I know…Get the rail, start heating the tar and plucking chicken feathers!
My love affair started at a time when wild hogs were not nearly as numerous as they are today. May be hard to believe but there was a time hunters were as excited shooting a long-tusked boar as a big whitetail.
I have pursued them following dogs, shot them incidental to deer hunting, baited them, spotted them from afar and stalked in close, shot them as they were driven out of thickets, and shot them from a helicopter. I have also hunted them to rid property of their kind and to procure meat. I have also hunted older boars for their tusks.
As a wildlife biologist, I fully understand the roles wild hogs can and do play. I know they can be predators of young and old wildlife and livestock; destroyers of nests; devastators of food plots and grain fields; be fierce competitors with wildlife and livestock for food, water and space; and “root” up roads and pastures, not to mention lawns. But…I love they can be hunted year around, are available to all, and are good table fare!
Years ago I hunted hogs with arrows, then I “grew up” as I often tell people who ask if I ever hunted with archery equipment. Since “growing up” I have hunted hogs primarily with firearms including muzzleloaders, shotguns, rifles, handguns and air guns. Personally, I am not a huge fan of semi-auto rifles or handguns for hunting, but certainly support the rights of others to own and use them. Nor do I use thermals or night hunt, purely a personal “thing”.
In years past, working with various firearm and ammo companies, their public relation/media and product development programs as a “gun writer” I learned wild hogs are the “perfect bullet testing medium”. Because of their abundance, variations in size, and toughness I often used wild hogs to field-test hunting bullets and loads. One of my favorite places to do so was northern Shackleford County’s Nail Ranch. Their 600-acre wheat field daily attracted huge numbers of hogs. This allowed for selecting hogs of different sizes, at various distances and shot angles. I necropsied each animal taken to determine the bullet’s terminal performance and collect spent bullets, then took care of the meat.
Old boars because of their size (incidentally most “300-pound” hogs actually weight 185 to 187-pounds on real scales), thick cartilaginous shield that covers their vitals, and tenacity they can be and should be considered dangerous, particularly when wounded or “cornered”. That is why fellow wildlife biologist/outdoor writer, J. Wayne Fears and I started referring to them as the “working man’s grizzly”, back in the 1980’s.
Several years ago on the banks of the Red River just at dark I shot a huge boar. He fell in an open field. I replenished the spent round of my .270 Win with another Hornady 130-grain SP and cautiously approached.
The old boar played “dead” until I got to within twenty steps, then, he jumped up and charged. I did stop him...his snout resting on my boot.
Another time while deer hunting the Brush Country I surprised a boar bedded on the edge of a whitebrush thicket. Rather than run for the thicket, he momentarily stared at me, then charged. I stopped him at less than five feet.
Remind later me to tell you about another cantankerous boar I encountered in the Trans Pecos….
Love ‘em or hate ‘em? Wild hogs are here to stay, might as well make the best of them!
댓글