Hard for me to decide which was more impressive but both feats were done by my old Kate dog. First one she did was January last year one night me and 2 friends met up to make a hunt. One of them a first time ever going with dogs and other one is a good hand and had caught a few with me. Anyway I turn Kate ranger and pancake out and we road around this big ranch. They left and hunted hard but came up empty and come back. I loaded ranger and pancake and left Kate down. Was gonna head to other side of the place and cast again. I
Not sure at what point she did but Kate ended up slipping off and I never noticed. Get to this next spot I want to cast and realize Kate isn’t anywhere around. No sooner do I go to open the box doors my garmin goes off. Kate is 1.3 and hammered. We jumped in the truck and shagged ass. Closest we could get the truck was about 7-800 yards. Soon as we cut the engine off and open the doors we can hear the hogs rallying. I’ve heard that sound plenty times before but not from that far away. Nowhere near that far! The first timer thought it was the coolest thing. We grab the bulldog and head to her. Cross through this big creek bottom and come up into a hay meadow. Hit our head lamps and kate has every bit of 35 hogs bayed under one lone oak tree in this meadow. The way she worked them looked like every set of cows I’ve ever help pen. A hog would try to run off and she’d hit em in the hocks to turn em and push them back in the group all the while running big loops around the wad. We watched for a while in amazement and I turned that bulldog loose and ran was on his tail headed to them. That bulldog hit and those hogs jumped him and jumped him hard. We went to whoopin and hollerin and screaming all we could and these hogs would not break! Finally they did, Kate ran about 10 of em maybe 100 yards and bayed them against a old galvanized gate. Bulldog was in bad shape and we ended up not catching a single hog but that was certainly the most impressive thing I’d seen by one single dog up to that point.
The second time was one evening last april. Me, Lightfoot, Tim, and Dawson all met up to hunt one of my places. I think I turned out Kate and some other dog I had. Tim turned out joker and some new young gyp he had and Lightfoot put rosco and something else down idk we had a bunch of curs out lol. We casted them out and they all milled around and came back nothing really batted an eye. Kate didn’t come back. She just kinda kept walking away from us. So we just sat. At a snails pace she walked what we all all agreed had to have been a track from the morning before 8-12 ago. Had to have been 30-40 minutes of us sitting around BSing and 3 Garmins went to buzzing. Kate was .67 and bayed. She was 3 places over so getting to her took some doing. Calling neighbors getting them to unlock gates and such. Park the ranger about 300 yards from her and me and Dawson run ahead. We took some young yella gyp of Tim’s on a lead and Tim and Lightfoot were gonna grab bulldog and come meet us. We get to Kate and I’m not wanting to turn this gyp into her. She’s in a bad spot and another dog shows up to her bay she will usually try the hog and I could already smell boar standing about 20 yards away. It’s dark now and Lightfoot and Tim are taking forever. I finally say screw it. And turned that young gyp in there. Soon as she showed up they tried that hog. Heard some yelps and that young gyp came out with a blowed out shoulder. Dawson is tying her up and Tim calls me. They’re 30 yards from the bay but are directly opposite of the side we are one. I said cut them bulldogs and be on their tail. Hung the phone up, now the hog never made a sound, but I heard Kate’s bark change and told Dawson they’re caught. We head into this nasty thicket. It’s so thick we end up both crawling on top of this fallen tree being held up by a bunch of the under brush. We get close and the tree breaks and we come crashing down. Headlamps fly off and all I can hear is the fight. Grab a lamp and shine it forward and me and Dawson are in a bind. Hog ain’t 10 foot from us with a bulldog on each ear and Kate in an armpit. He’s trying to squeeze between to youpon tree and they’re fixing to push these bulldogs off him and if that happens we’re in trouble. I start hollerin at Tim and Justin letting them know we are nose to nose with this hog and someone has got to get a leg quick. Lightfoot reaches far as he could through a bunch of briars and put his hand on one and hog kicked out and made one more push forward. At the last second Tim manages to trip forward grabs A leg and sticks this hog all while falling on top of him. Ended up being a good solid boar hog with no cutters but some big whetters. We were all just in awe of the track job Kate had just put down and her holding the hog like she did. But how Tim did what he did that night we will never figure out, but if he hadn’t me or Dawson might have been a lot worse off than some scratches and bruises. And that probably stands out as the single most memorable/crazy hunt I’ve ever had.
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