Reading Crackerc's story of the bullet-proof hog that just wouldn't die inspired me to add the full story write-up to this one.
We had arrived from different parts of the country, meeting at Mr Mason's to get the green dogs some training time. It was raining like crazy, but they got some bay pen time and some woods pen time, and we all had a good time for the most part.
The next day we headed north to go hunting. There was some trashing... and we saw some hogs, but for one reason or another, never could put it together.
On the second morning of the hunt the dogs struck and bayed a small group in a patch of timber. One of the guys went to the bay less than carefully and caused it to break and he ended up having to freeze against a tree for his own safety as they broke. Once he was clear he shouted back, warning us they were on the move. I ran to the timberline and caught a few glimpses of the sow running, headed in my direction. I hunkered down in the scrub hoping she would run out parallel to the line, which she did, but severely quartering away. I'm not fond of that shot angle, but the hogs had been pretty thin so I took it. My slug found center and put a
fist-sized hole in her hind quarter, but with no exit. It didn't even seem to phase her, she made a hard turn without slowing down a lick. The dogs rallied to the shot and struck the blood trail (although a blind person could have worked it), this is where the filming started.
They followed the track to an adjacent patch of woods. The dogs got her bayed up again in the new patch. We caught up, and then one of the other guys made a second shot at the bay (this is the first shot in the video) which hit her high in the shoulder. Reeling from that shot, she rolled back and fell down the creek bank.
Amazingly, she still had a lot of fight in her. So now she was twice shot and stuck in the creek... the dogs had finally had enough of it and they piled on and caught her.
Seeing she was caught, I wanted to knife her, but oddly, one of the other guys was worried about damaging more meat (?!?!?) and wanted to take her with a brain shot. I didn't see how sticking the heart/lung was going to cause any more meat damage, but it wasn't worth arguing over. Even though she wasn't caught, I didn't want my gyp anywhere near that, so I called her back to me. Despite being so ridiculously close, none of the dogs, not even the big ridgeback who was caught on the neck/ear even flinched at the shot. They were pretty pumped up... it didn't seem to phase them at all.
I think it's a testament to power of adrenaline in a hog, and the critical importance of shot placement, that in the end, it took three shots, the first two of which were mortal wounds from a 12 gauge slug and a 25-06, but it took the final shot to the brain to stop her. The new (shortened) vid and pic are below:
