The Great Hog Hunt

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BobB1
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Location: coastal SC

The Great Hog Hunt

Post by BobB1 » Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:36 am

My son Jeff and I had a good weekend. It all started when my wife won a raffled hog hunt. It was a spear or knife kill only hunt, no firearms allowed. She decided not to go, and gave it to us. Jeff was psyched from the start when we first learned about it, and even though the guy running the hunt would supply the spear, Jeff ordered a Cold Steel boar spear and a Cold Steel knife. The spear was pretty impressive. The blade itself was about 12in long, and it was about 18in from the tip to the barbs that we found were to keep it from going any further into the hog. The edges of the spear were razor sharp. It came with a 6ft shaft that turned out to be a little long and awkward to handle in the thick brush we had to go through.

We met the guide at about 0800 on Saturday morning. We were a little late, but he was putting the “armor” on the dogs while he was waiting for us. They had wide “cut” collars to protect their necks and heavy fabric or leather suits from the collar back to their hind quarters to give them some protection from the hog’s tusks. Their fore legs came out through two holes in the front of the suit. I went on a hunt with a friend some years ago, and we had to wrap a towel around the dog to keep his bowels in until we could get him to a vet after he caught a particularly mean old boar. The “cut suits” are a good idea.

We went back into the woods in a very hilly area. The head waters of a small river started there, and there were steep sided gullies and ravines running back from the river, with the boggy, wet, “bottoms” down along the river. The hogs come up at night to forage, and then bedded down back in the bottoms during the day. It had been raining a lot lately, so the river was high and the bottoms were flooded. We left the trucks and the four wheeler up on a ridge, and started down with the chase dogs ranging ahead. The chase dogs looked like they were mostly Blue Tick hounds, but mixed with something else because they were a little smaller. The catch dogs were Pit Bulls, and stayed on a leash until the chase dogs got on a trail.

I had brought an old pair of leather boots that I didn’t use anymore for Jeff to wear. One of the soles had started to come off one of the boots, so I had used Gorilla Glue to glue it back on. The other one felt tight, so I left it alone. About ten minutes into the woods, the back of the other sole started to come loose. No one had any duct tape to keep it from flapping, so he just kept going like it was. The dogs had run ahead into the bottoms by the river, and before we had gone a mile, they picked up a trail. They turned the catch dogs loose, and we went running down the hill, and into the thickets along the river. At one point the hill went right into the river, and we were running in the water there. The trail went across a beaver dam, and back into the thicket on the other side. When we got through the thicket, the dogs had caught the hog in the knee deep water by the edge of the river next to a little clearing. The hog was near 200lbs, and covered with a thick coat of long black hair. Jeff jumped in the water with his spear, and after they pulled the dogs back, he stabbed the hog in the ribs behind the shoulder. That spear really did the job. It went into the pig all the way to the two barbs on the shank, with the tip coming out on the far side. It died quicker than if it had been shot in the ribs. I was taking pictures, and ran out of room on the memory stick just as he was getting in the water. I missed pictures of him making the kill because I was deleting pictures to make room for more.

We got the pig up on the bank, and two of the guys went to get the four wheeler so we could use that to get the pig up the hill and back to the truck. There was no way to get the four wheeler to where we were, so we gutted it to make it easier to drag out. The game trails through the thicket were about 2-3 feet high and about 6in wide. It was hard enough to get through going in with our adrenalin going, it was twice as hard going back out with two of us dragging the hog. It was a lot easier once we got to the beaver dam because we could pull it in the water behind the dam. The hill on the other side was a different story. It was 45 to as much as a 60 degree incline on the hill, so we waited for the ATV to come and drag it up the hill for us. There was a ravine that it couldn’t get across, so it came down between the hills where the beaver dam was. He got to the beaver pond, but it was too steep on the sides to get to us. He finally got in the water, came through the pond. The water got deeper until the tires were under water and only the cowl and handle bars were visible. At one point even the exhaust was under water when he dropped into a deep spot. He managed to keep the intake out of the water and kept it running while he stood on the back and rocked it until it finally backed up to shallower water. We had to drag the hog up and over to where we could get it on the ATV, which was still in the water on the shallow end of the beaver pond.

Once we got back to the trucks and got everything loaded, we went to a couple more spots to look for signs of activity. Not finding any, we went further up the river and turned the dogs loose again. The sole of Jeff’s boot had come completely off when he was in the water, and now, the other sole was coming off. It wasn’t long before it came off, and he was basically in a pair of moccasins. By the end of the day, even the inner soles were coming apart and he was almost in stocking feet. We went a mile or more over ridges and through gullies and swamps. We saw a lot of sign, and some big tracks down in the bottoms, but the dogs didn’t strike any fresh trails. We were starting to work our way up and out of the bottoms when the dogs took off after a pig. We ran a quarter mile following the dogs until the cornered another pig up in a gully. It was my turn, so I had been carrying the spear. I went up and stuck the pig after they pulled the dogs back out of the way. I hadn’t realized how sharp the spear actually was. It took almost no pressure to drive it all the way through the pig.

Some of the dogs were missing, and we could hear them after another pig on the other side of the ridge. One of the dog handlers came over and said he had seen one of the catch dogs go after a third pig, a very large boar. He had seen it cross the trail only a few feet away from him. It was the biggest hog we had seen all day. He was worried that the dog would be killed if it caught a boar that big by itself, so I went with him with the spear while Jeff took the knife and went with the others after the other one the dogs were chasing. The catch dogs don’t bay like the chase dogs when they are on a trail but they have GPS transmitters on their collars so they can be tracked. We had circled around so we were within a half of a mile of the trucks. We followed the dog that had been joined by one of the chase dogs. They angled over near the vehicles and went beyond them. We got one of the trucks and circled around to the road beyond them and then worked our way back towards them on foot. When we got to them, they had lost the boar in the river. We gathered the dogs and took them back to the truck. By the time we got back to the other truck, Jeff and his guys had caught up to their hog, and caught it alive. They figured we had two dead ones to cut up and eat, and you can only eat so much. If they kept it alive, they could fatten it on corn and use it to train the dogs until they butchered it. They took the four wheeler in to pick up the live one and the one I had killed. Again, it was so rough and thick that it took several tries to find a way in to where they were.There were probably more hogs where we jumped the three because there were a bunch of small ones that they saw.

It was cloudy and cold all day, but at least in the woods and down in the bottoms we were below the wind. Jeff was wet from the hips down, so I know he was cold, but he was having such a good time that he never complained. He did say the next day that he was sore from all the running and walking. We covered several miles of difficult terrain on foot, so it was quite a workout. It was an interesting experience and a lot of fun. The guys we went with were some serious hog hunters, but even they said it was a good day’s hunt.
Attachments
The one lashed to the four wheeler is alive and mad.
The one lashed to the four wheeler is alive and mad.
My son with hog and spear.
My son with hog and spear.
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Niner
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Re: The Great Hog Hunt

Post by Niner » Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:11 am

Wow. That's some adventure. Talk about a primitive hunt, that is about as basic as you can get in the weapon department. I wonder how many entered the raffle for the chance to do that? I can see why your wife declined the chance to participate. However, that has to be an experience you and your son will remember for a long time. Thanks for posting it.
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Aughnanure
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Re: The Great Hog Hunt

Post by Aughnanure » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:42 pm

I'll just add my thanks, that was some hunt and real father and son stuff; I've done a bit of 'pig sticking' on horseback many years ago, but never got really close and physical and never in that sort of country.
Self Defence is not only a Right, it is an Obligation.

Eoin.
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Krull
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Re: The Great Hog Hunt

Post by Krull » Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:00 pm

As my Asian side would say:"Mister,you clazy!!" :loco:
:pirate:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."-Lovecraft.
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joseyclosey
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Re: The Great Hog Hunt

Post by joseyclosey » Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:01 pm

Hunting like that is not allowed in the Democratic Republik of "Great" Britain, we can't even use dogs for hunting in this ******* BS country now, and as for spears, bows etc. forget it! :evil:

Rant over,

Thanks for the report/pics BobB1,

Joe
BobB1
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Posts: 157
Joined: Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:16 pm
Location: coastal SC

Re: The Great Hog Hunt

Post by BobB1 » Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:49 pm

Processed and packaged it yesterday evening. Mixed the spices and made Italian sausage this morning. Fresh pork loin for supper, meat in the freezer. Life is good.
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