Well John dove came down again & wanted to know if his room was all cleaned & ready for him. I swear, I might as well put up a mailbox with his name on it. He brought down a good friend of his Donald Hensley & his 12 yr. old son Damien.
We made a hunt Saturday & were going down the Bayou when we got a good strike off of the bow of the boat. We turned Jack & nine month Jed out & they both started trailing out in different directions. We heard Jed jump his hog & a couple of minutes later we heard Jack start baying. He bayed a few minutes as we were going to him & the hog broke. We had two races going & we caught up with Jed(who is 9 months old) & I threw Red Gal & Raven into his race. We caught up with Jack & I turned Amber into his race. We could hear both races & they were singing to him. Jed's race went for about a hour & the hog swam the bayou. We caught the dogs as they came to the bank & we could hear Jack & Amber coming. We turned Jed, Raven, & Red Gal into Jack's race & they were roaring. They ran here & there, back & forth & really covered a lot of ground in the next two hours. They finally started towards us & when they were a 100 or so yards from us the hog hit the bayou right to us. We pulled the boat up to him & he turned back for shore right when Red Gal got there. she locked on to his rear end & the hog was trying to get into the canes. About that time the other plots showed up & caught that big sucker. We saw how big he was & his teeth so we launched ole Ketch into the frey. We pulled the boat right to them & John jumps out to grab the hog. In my usual style trying to get there & help John I tripped over the rigging chain & did a swan dive almost on top of John, hog & dogs. All I could think of was, I was sure glad that hog was facing the other way. John yells, I have him by the tail & I say grab him by the legs. I got one back leg & a front leg & between me & John we got him flipped on his side. Anybody who has hog hunted knows how hard it is to hold a big hog that is wet & muddy. He was pretty slickers. Well Donald & his son had never seen anything like that & they were still in the boat. I was yelling at Donald to come get the bulldog off & yelling at Damien to come stick the hog. It was a blur of dogs pulling on the hog, barking, grunting & all kind of excitement going on. I will say, they jumped right in there & Damien waded in & when he threw his arm back, getting ready to stab the hog, John & I almost let go of the hog to get out of the way. He looked like Tarzan on a crocodile. Well for never being in that situation & all the excitement, that was one game kid. He got the hog stuck, Donald got the bulldog off & we started looking at the injuries. Jed had a bad shot to the flank with a lot of what I call stomach lining & fat banking out of his flank.
I knew the hunt was over & we had to get Jed to the Vet. Jack had a pretty good shot to the shoulder. We loaded the hog & dogs & headed out.
While John & Donald were cleaning the hog, I got a call from the Vet & it was not good news. Jed died on the operating table.
We never weighed the hog but he was a good 275# boar.
Damiens new buddy
We went the following Monday & got a good strike & turned Amber, Flash, & Andy's dog Dummy loose. Amber went one way & Dummy & Flash were cold trailing out in the marsh. After about 1/2 a hour they started trailing towards Amber. About that time she jumped the hog & the race was on. They ran this hog quite a ways & he swam the bayou & we pulled the dogs. The tide was out & it was tough to get around.
We headed on down to some deep water canals & got a strike. We put Red Gal, Bosco, & Andy's gyp Jet out.They had tough trailing with the sun beating down on the marsh but finally Red Gal trailed out about 3/4 of a mile & jumped the hog. We had a good race & the dogs caught her after 2 hours. We had been seeing plenty of alligators so we called it a day.
