| Florida Hog Hunting at its Best | |
|
||
|
||
After lunch, we again put out the dogs and very soon they were on the trail of three smaller hogs. Phillip managed to miss one of them as it roared by, and then Tony almost stepped on another before it ran out of the bushes.
Finally, the dogs caught up with one and bayed it up in the swamp. Man, what a racket of squealing and snarling! There's nothing like the sound of a dog-hog fight echoing across the water, it'll put chills down your spine and raise your hackles for sure. It also impresses upon you the need to get over there, now.
Kenny took off running down the dirt road and into the wet briar jungle, with me and a number of others on his heels, galloping madly through the swamp to where the dogs had the boar caught in water a foot or so deep. Somewhere along the way my radio flew off my side as I sprinted after Kenny, but someone saved me by finding it and getting it back to Dad.
After Kenny and I battled our way through a head-high tangle of briars to reach the fracas and get a handle on the pig, Kenny grabbed it by the hind legs while I stuck that noisy 55-pound boar (which sure seemed bigger at the time!) with Jim's Arkansas toothpick knife.
Talk about an adrenaline rush! Wooooooooohooooooooo! There is nothing like it in the world, I can tell you that. I had taken a lot of ribbing about sticking a hog with a knife, but when it came right down to it I probably would have elbowed somebody else out of the way so I could get in there and get it done. I didn't know whether I'd be ready for it, but I can tell you right now that I am ready for more! It simply can't be explained... it is intense, dirty, hard, ugly work - and I'll take all I can get.
That's me, posing with my knifed boar and the knife that I used on it. Notice the sour look on my face - you can tell how poorly my day was going.
Photo by Jim Casselman, used by permission. Copyright 2003, all rights reserved.
While about half of the crowd (including me, of course) was running pell-mell through the swamp after that one, we heard another shot from Phillip's 30-30. Turns out, a 45-pound sow had stepped out and struck a pose on the edge of the road while they were riding over to get closer to our action. Jim's wife Terry spotted the sow and alerted Phillip, who got out, unlimbered his rifle, and killed the pig. Easy, right? Nothing to it...
Phillip Griggs with his road-killed sow. The 150-grain Remington slug was recovered against the hide on the far side of the pig, very nicely expanded.
Photo by Terry Casselman, used by permission. Copyright 2003, all rights reserved.
We didn't get much of a break before the dogs got onto another of the three little pigs - another 55-pounder which we basically swam to after the dogs had caught it in the middle of a flooded, logged-out cypress head. Watching that one swim through the deep water with the dogs swimming after it was another unique experience that I won't soon forget. I grabbed my camera and Kenny, Tony, Jared, and I waded into the deep water, which was filled with holes and submerged logs.
I planned to help out with the hog if necessary, and get some nice up-close photos of the action while I was there. I got all the way out there, 80 to 100 yards into the mess to where we found a blur of snarling, squealing dogs and pig next to a lone tree stump and a small clump of willows, only to find that the batteries in my digital camera were dead and I couldn't even get one photo out of them. Dang it!
After Kenny grabbed the pig and Tony stuck it, I helped get the pig and dogs separated and then helped one of Kenny's weary pooches, an 11-year-old bitch named Gyp, back to dry land. The poor old thing was about worn out and had a long way to swim, so I helped her out.
I had a hard enough time getting out myself, with the treacherous footing in that mostly waist-deep water, but the two of us eventually made it back to dry land. I do believe I was caught on video with a rather disgusted and exhausted look on my waterlogged face when I came out of that swamp. My holstered Sig had taken a dive along with me a time or two, but didn't seem to be any worse for wear, and the KNJ holster can take just about anything you can dish out, so I wasn't worried about it.
Tony with his swamp pig. Must have been a sibling of the boar I stuck, they both weighed in at 55 pounds. In the background, Sassy is trying to decide whether or not that's a hog.
Photo by Terry Casselman, used by permission. Copyright 2003, all rights reserved.
Page Five: A 230-pound surprise taken care of with a pistol; Nick's first knife kill
