Saturday We Found One Of "Those" Boars

I got a call early last week from a farmer who claimed his corn field was getting eaten up. He was literally begging us to come hunt...even offered to cook BBQ, supply the liquid refreshments and pay us for gas money. I explained that I could make no guarantees of finding any of his problem hogs, but that Saturday morning we would bring the crew out to give it a whirl.

We met Saturday morning at the only store in town and he showed us the way in and a good place to park and unload. Most of this property was corn fields, and the nearest thicket was a pretty good ways off. I decided to put old my rig dog, Doc on the front of the wheeler and ride the turn rows to see if any hogs were still in the fields before heading to the bottoms. We got to the first corner and Doc starts whimpering and stomping his front feet. I turned him out and let another cur go with him, but they went towards the woods and away from the corn. We sat and waited and about 10 minutes later I could hear them open up. We sent a couple more curs and about the same time we turned them loose, we could hear squealing. Figure it's a small hog so we take off towards the bay. We got about 100 yards from the wheelers and could hear nothing. Waited a little bit and figured I had to go back for the tracking system. While at the wheeler, I unloaded my new bulldog and one other just in case. Tracked the dogs and they were a good ways off. We made our way in the direction and soon we got in range and could hear all the dogs just preaching to a hog. At this point, we decide he's a pretty good one. We get within distance and turn the bulldogs in. A few minutes later he's caught and we got him legged and tied.

When we got to the hog, my rig dog Doc wasn't there. He's VERY loose baying, but I was still nervous not seeing him. We came out of the woods and listened and could her another bay a long ways off. After taking inventory of dogs, we realized he was by himself and then we started to realize why.

Counting the two bulldogs, we had eight dogs on the ground. Six of eight were cut from the boar we had just caught. A couple of us took leads and started getting dogs back to the wheeler while two others went to Doc and caught the other hog. Four of the six dogs we cleaned and stapled in the field, two others we took to the vet. My partners female was cut in front of her leg through all the muscle, tendons, nerves and such. The vet stitched everything back and only time will tell if she makes a full recovery.

My older yellow Brindle dog Bud was in bad shape. We worked and stitched on him for 3 1/2 hours at the clinic. He had a broken rib, a torn diaghram, a torn artery, and lots of muscle and tissue damage. The vet called me yesterday late and said Saturday night was pretty rough. She stayed with him and had to do some injections about 12:15am and again at 2:30am. Finally around 9:00 Sunday morning he got up and started moving around. I brought him home last night. He was up walking around and doing much better. This morning he seemed much better even still. He has a long road ahead, but he's come a long way already. At one point during the surgery, a second vet was even having to bag him and breath for him. Pretty scary deal, but he's a fighter!

Whew...what a week. Between Zeus and Bud, my Vet has recently started to like me a whole lot more! Sometimes those medium sized boars can sure work a pack over, and to ours he did just that! On a good note, his dog wrecking days came to a sharp end and my new second string catchdog worked like a champ. In fact, she and Doc were the only ones that walked away without a scratch.

The owner called me later Saturday afternoon to see how things went. After telling him the story, he was very upset for our dogs and also worried that we wouldn't hunt his place again. I assured him if it weren't for Fathers Day, we would've been back with a fresh pack Sunday morning!!

I'll try to post some pics later.