for a non-hunting animal rights advocate
Part One
By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)
When the text came in from my old friend Lee, I wondered if it was a prank. “Neighbors tell me wild hogs are trying to take over my farm up there. You’re closest, could you go by and shoot them?”
Lee and I met decades ago on a hunting trip, and we used to fly-fish together. Lee is still an avid hunter and angler; I quit hunting and fishing nearly 30 years ago and have since become a vegan and animal rights advocate – and occasional activist. I have no interest in hunting, much less hog hunting, but Lee and I stay in touch. In this case, he probably saw me as the best nearby contact and possibly the best shooter available – if the years hadn’t completely eroded my skills – so why not ask, right?
My reply: “Aren’t wild hogs down in the Smokies? I never heard of them in Virginia. Maybe a neighbor had some tame ones get out of a pen?”
A scorching response: “That’s the problem with you anti-hunting liberals. Clueless. There’s a damn hog invasion all across the SE. It’s headed your way.”
Hmmmm…Lee’s expansive property, which has always been more of a holiday getaway, hunt club, and tax write-off than a working farm, is near the Virginia/North Carolina border, between South Boston, VA, and Roxboro, NC. It is less than a two-hour drive from where I live now, and about the same distance from where I lived for 15 years in North Carolina: How could this “invasion” be happening, and I never heard of it?
Another text: “On your next trip to NC, how about taking a look and see what we need to do? I can’t get up there until November, but maybe I can round up help.”
Help? To kill a few pigs?
From age 11 to 16, my “job” was helping people with farm work: plowing with a tractor, baling hay, helping families raise and slaughter their own animals for food. I shot BB guns and pellet rifles from age six, and was deemed the best shot, so it was always my role to kill an animal before slaughter. All I ever used was a very low-powered round, a .22 caliber “long rifle” rimfire cartridge; for a thousand-pound cow or a 300-pound hog, one shot between the eyes was all it ever took.
So why would I need help killing a few pigs; if I was willing to do it? “If” was surely the big question, not how.
I texted Lee: “Sure. Will look into it next trip to NC.”
His reply: “If there is a bunch of hogs there, watch your ass. They ate a woman in Texas.”
Ate a woman in Texas? Right. Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the BS, apparently.
At this stage, what I knew about domestic and wild hogs in general could be summed up in very few paragraphs.
Domestic hogs are incredibly smart, and a sow with piglets is not to be trifled with, that much I knew personally from working around them. Growing up I heard wild tales about farmers who hit the ground in a pig lot – either by tripping or perhaps having a heart attack – and never got up: The hogs ate them. I assumed it was all to scare a kid like me into being overly cautious, and it worked. I never had a major incident with a pig or a hog on a farm.
About 40 years ago, I saw my only boar in the wild, on the fringe of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I was fly-fishing for trout on a beautiful autumn afternoon when I saw something dark coming toward me. At first I assumed it was a black bear, but as it came within 50 yards I realized it was a wild boar, no doubt from the fabled line of true “Russian” wild boars that had been imported into the region from Europe some 50 years earlier by local hunt clubs. Other than being a bit more black, rather than grayish, it looked much like the cute little guy appearing in this video:
Knowing of the “Russian” boar’s surly reputation, I retreated to a nearby clearing and climbed up on a rock as the animal veered toward me.
If we can think of 600-pound Berkshire domestic hogs as analogous to huge but ponderous professional football linemen, this boar was more of a middle linebacker: not quite as big overall, but massive through the chest and shoulders and smaller in the hindquarters, an almost perfect build for power, speed, and agility. The boar trotted straight to the rock I was perched upon, reared up, and put its front feet on the rock only inches from my boots, gave me a sniff, dropped to the ground, circled the rock a couple of times, and left. It wasn’t menacing, but it definitely let me know I should probably stay where I was, and it could take me off that rock in about two seconds, if so inclined.
That was the limit of the hog knowledge I carried with me when I got to Lee’s place next trip back from North Carolina. I had a car issue on the way, so it was almost dark when I arrived, but even in the dim light I could tell things were amiss. Several things, actually. The pond that was usually a glimmering ¼-acre of water surrounded by golf-course quality grass, was a mudhole surrounded by a wider circle of ankle-deep mud that looked like someone had driven laps around it in a tractor. The corn and soybean deer plots – crops grown in ½-acre strips specifically to provide food for the native white-tailed deer that Lee and his buddies hunt in November – were disheveled, as if someone had driven an off-road “monster truck” through them. By flashlight I couldn’t find a single white-tail track, but I found dozens – maybe hundreds – of hoof prints with toes too rounded to be deer. Surely this couldn’t be the work of a few pigs: What on earth was going on?
I texted Lee: “It’s almost dark, but I can see your pond is a mess and your food plots are wrecked. WTF?”
Reply: “Unprintable…unprintable…those…unprintable SOBs are like 300-pound locusts. Do what you can. Let me know what you need.”
Still not sure I wanted to consider sacrificing 30 years of no-kill vegan ethic, even for a long-term friendship, I felt I should at least help by doing some research. So, like any other modern-day would-be fact finder, I started with Google and YouTube.
And what did I find? Those…unprintable…unprintable SOBs really are like 300-pound locusts! And last year in Texas a group of wild hogs really did kill and partially eat a woman – right in the front yard of her employer’s home. [“Feral Hogs Attack and Kill a Woman in Texas,” NY Times, November 26, 2019]
Part One
By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)
When the text came in from my old friend Lee, I wondered if it was a prank. “Neighbors tell me wild hogs are trying to take over my farm up there. You’re closest, could you go by and shoot them?”
Lee and I met decades ago on a hunting trip, and we used to fly-fish together. Lee is still an avid hunter and angler; I quit hunting and fishing nearly 30 years ago and have since become a vegan and animal rights advocate – and occasional activist. I have no interest in hunting, much less hog hunting, but Lee and I stay in touch. In this case, he probably saw me as the best nearby contact and possibly the best shooter available – if the years hadn’t completely eroded my skills – so why not ask, right?
My reply: “Aren’t wild hogs down in the Smokies? I never heard of them in Virginia. Maybe a neighbor had some tame ones get out of a pen?”
A scorching response: “That’s the problem with you anti-hunting liberals. Clueless. There’s a damn hog invasion all across the SE. It’s headed your way.”
Hmmmm…Lee’s expansive property, which has always been more of a holiday getaway, hunt club, and tax write-off than a working farm, is near the Virginia/North Carolina border, between South Boston, VA, and Roxboro, NC. It is less than a two-hour drive from where I live now, and about the same distance from where I lived for 15 years in North Carolina: How could this “invasion” be happening, and I never heard of it?
Help? To kill a few pigs?
From age 11 to 16, my “job” was helping people with farm work: plowing with a tractor, baling hay, helping families raise and slaughter their own animals for food. I shot BB guns and pellet rifles from age six, and was deemed the best shot, so it was always my role to kill an animal before slaughter. All I ever used was a very low-powered round, a .22 caliber “long rifle” rimfire cartridge; for a thousand-pound cow or a 300-pound hog, one shot between the eyes was all it ever took.
So why would I need help killing a few pigs; if I was willing to do it? “If” was surely the big question, not how.
I texted Lee: “Sure. Will look into it next trip to NC.”
Ate a woman in Texas? Right. Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the BS, apparently.
At this stage, what I knew about domestic and wild hogs in general could be summed up in very few paragraphs.
Domestic hogs are incredibly smart, and a sow with piglets is not to be trifled with, that much I knew personally from working around them. Growing up I heard wild tales about farmers who hit the ground in a pig lot – either by tripping or perhaps having a heart attack – and never got up: The hogs ate them. I assumed it was all to scare a kid like me into being overly cautious, and it worked. I never had a major incident with a pig or a hog on a farm.
About 40 years ago, I saw my only boar in the wild, on the fringe of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I was fly-fishing for trout on a beautiful autumn afternoon when I saw something dark coming toward me. At first I assumed it was a black bear, but as it came within 50 yards I realized it was a wild boar, no doubt from the fabled line of true “Russian” wild boars that had been imported into the region from Europe some 50 years earlier by local hunt clubs. Other than being a bit more black, rather than grayish, it looked much like the cute little guy appearing in this video:
Knowing of the “Russian” boar’s surly reputation, I retreated to a nearby clearing and climbed up on a rock as the animal veered toward me.
If we can think of 600-pound Berkshire domestic hogs as analogous to huge but ponderous professional football linemen, this boar was more of a middle linebacker: not quite as big overall, but massive through the chest and shoulders and smaller in the hindquarters, an almost perfect build for power, speed, and agility. The boar trotted straight to the rock I was perched upon, reared up, and put its front feet on the rock only inches from my boots, gave me a sniff, dropped to the ground, circled the rock a couple of times, and left. It wasn’t menacing, but it definitely let me know I should probably stay where I was, and it could take me off that rock in about two seconds, if so inclined.
That was the limit of the hog knowledge I carried with me when I got to Lee’s place next trip back from North Carolina. I had a car issue on the way, so it was almost dark when I arrived, but even in the dim light I could tell things were amiss. Several things, actually. The pond that was usually a glimmering ¼-acre of water surrounded by golf-course quality grass, was a mudhole surrounded by a wider circle of ankle-deep mud that looked like someone had driven laps around it in a tractor. The corn and soybean deer plots – crops grown in ½-acre strips specifically to provide food for the native white-tailed deer that Lee and his buddies hunt in November – were disheveled, as if someone had driven an off-road “monster truck” through them. By flashlight I couldn’t find a single white-tail track, but I found dozens – maybe hundreds – of hoof prints with toes too rounded to be deer. Surely this couldn’t be the work of a few pigs: What on earth was going on?
I texted Lee: “It’s almost dark, but I can see your pond is a mess and your food plots are wrecked. WTF?”
Reply: “Unprintable…unprintable…those…unprintable SOBs are like 300-pound locusts. Do what you can. Let me know what you need.”
Still not sure I wanted to consider sacrificing 30 years of no-kill vegan ethic, even for a long-term friendship, I felt I should at least help by doing some research. So, like any other modern-day would-be fact finder, I started with Google and YouTube.
And what did I find? Those…unprintable…unprintable SOBs really are like 300-pound locusts! And last year in Texas a group of wild hogs really did kill and partially eat a woman – right in the front yard of her employer’s home. [“Feral Hogs Attack and Kill a Woman in Texas,” NY Times, November 26, 2019]
So…a conundrum.
[Part Two on Monday, September 7]
[Part Two on Monday, September 7]
| Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark |
There is a difference between boars and wide pigs. In Mississippi or any place that they grow pigs, you can have wild pigs. The sow gets out and has piglets in the wild and the chain begins. They had boars in Southern Texas where I grew up. Once they start a charge they can keep running for 20 feet stone dead. That was what my neighbor who hunted them with a bow and arrow told me anyway. Fun story Paul, can't wait to see where these hogs came from.
ReplyDeleteEd, thanks for raising the question whether it’s correct to equate wild pigs and boars. And thanks, too, for saying to me in an email this morning that “There is a story in Tadpole Creek about the wild pigs in the bottom we had to pass through to get to the church in New Year's Eve,” for it is always a pleasure to be reminded of those charming stories of your youth.
DeleteI think it would be a fair use of our “Side Story” avenue for us to run that story again, down that avenue. Shall I see to it?
In the meantime, for anyone really anxious to see the story again now – and the Tadpole Creek stories generally – here’s a link to them.
Ed, yes, pigs/hogs are sort of like cats, despite hundreds or thousands of years of domestication, they seem able to survive in the wild about 30 minutes after they escape a pen. As for dealing with true European or Russian wild boars versus feral pigs, that's about like the difference between stepping into the ring against a professional boxer compared to taking on a drunk in a bar. I've seen lions, leopards, and grizzlies in the wild, but the attitude and athleticism of the one wild boar I saw in the Smokies four decades ago, is something I have never forgotten.
DeleteOMG finish this thing! It's riveting. Great job.
ReplyDeleteThe nomenclature of pig, hog, boar and so on seems to be a regional thing. The only actual distinction in farming parlance (and the futures markets) is that a pig over 180 pounds is a "hog". A boar is just a male wild hog; the female is a "sow" no matter be she domestic or wild. In Florida wild hogs are a huge problem, considered a pest and it's open season all year. They've been known to tear up grass citrus grove landing strips, 15000 square feet of brand new sod at a downtown Okeechobee bank; one local palm grove farmer lost 300 Queen palms in one night, ripped up and roots chewed off. You can see their wallows along the county roads, out on the airport property, exactly like you description of the pond. I too hunt no longer, but back in the day hogs were my prey of choice. They're ugly as sin, meaner than a bag of rattlesnakes, they're too numerous and boy they eat good.
ReplyDeleteRoger, if wild hogs are good to eat, do you know why some hunters seem to shoot as many as they can, then leave the carcasses to rot? I was in my early 20s when I quit eating commercially produced meat because of the massive amounts of chemicals in it, but for another few years I kept eating the game I killed and the fish I caught. The idea of killing an animal and leaving it to rot was--and still is--just unfathomable to me.
DeleteWhen I became a vegetarian I quit hunting and fishing, because I had no use for the meat. And frankly, both "sports" began to feel silly and unfair; in 99% of hunting, people are using powerful weapons to shoot animals that mean no harm, and most couldn't harm a hunter if they tried. I will have to say, that would be the one appeal of hunting true European wild boars, because a 500-pound animal with 12-inch tusks is definitely able to fight back. Hunting such an animal on foot, with a spear, now that might be a hunt to consider...
Last year I saw warthogs for the first time (in Tanzania). The're not large compared to a domestic hog - two hundred pounds, perhaps - but the meanest looking thing I've ever seen short of a shark. Have any of you ever dealt with one? The only action I saw was one being fought over by twenty vultures.
ReplyDeleteChuck, my experience with warthogs in Africa was--like just about everything else I encountered there--that they are huge compared to what they look like on TV or in videos. From small screen images I thought warthogs were about the size of our Southwestern U.S. peccary (javelina): 60-75 pounds or so. Turns out that female warthogs are actually about twice that on average, and males are generally 250 pounds or more.
ReplyDeleteWhen I accidentally encountered a female with young while I was running laps around a dirt landing strip I flew in and out of several times in 2002, I also learned firsthand they are shockingly fast. I prefer trail running, but that particular location wasn't safe for such, so I would run laps around the airfield while the members of the poacher patrol I was hanging out with played soccer on the dirt landing strip. On one of my laps the ugliest animal I have ever seen came sauntering out of the brush about 50 yards ahead of me, and was quickly joined by several smaller versions of herself. I stopped and stared, trying to figure out exactly what I was looking at. Realizing it was "just" a warthog I clapped my hands, thinking that would get her moving. Well it did--right at me. I thought briefly of staring her down, but my instincts took over and I ran for the center of the landing strip, right into the middle of a soccer game. Within seconds my pride--and that of the members of the elite patrol, who thought nothing of standing down lions and elephants and taking on armed poachers--was vanquished, as we ran in circles dodging each other as we fled from a pig and her piglets. It was easily my most humiliating moment in Africa.
Have you by any chance seen the video that starts out with a cheetah chasing a warthog, and ends with the warthog chasing the cheetah? Or the one where a warthog backs partway into a burrow and fights off about 2,000 pounds worth of attacking lions? A warthog's temperament apparently matches its looks, and they are just as quick to humiliate other animals as they are humans.