We had a youngster who wanted to stab a hog for his 8th birthday and his parents brought him down from Houston Saturday morning. Our hunting partner Mr. Justin showed up with his dogs and I loaded a few help dogs to start our hunt with. We turned out around 9 am and of course it started getting a little warm. During the week, it had been alot cooler. We hunted for about an hour and had a few good bays but could never get the catch dogs to them to shut those runners down. I decided to go back and get fresh dogs at the kennels which is a few minutes away. Justin had a good one bayed while we were gone but could not get to them in time. We came back with the fresh dogs. Some hogs crossed way up the sendera when I was pulling into the gate. Drove down and turned out on them. We had a good race for about 45 minutes and never stopped one. We did this for another hour. It was now lunch time (12pm) and getting even warmer. I told the young man we still had one shot left. I went back to the kennels, to get the few dogs I hadn't used yet including the ole man Repo. Our 12 year old dog that only has one speed and that is a fast walk. We drive to another place on our ranch and turn out Repo, Dodge, and Spade. Justin turns out Red and Tobey. All the dogs run down the sendera behind us except Repo. I still had a few dogs in the truck from the last group for back up. Well Repo went around the front of the truck and threw his head up and headed into the 10 foot weeds/vines. As soon as he got in there, he went to baying. I told Justin and my wife to cut everything loose and as you would expect, the dogs run back down the sendera where the other dogs had gone. All of them except for our catchdog Lucy. She ran straight to Repo who had moved about 50 yards and barked once again. We heard a hog grunt and knew that Lucy had caught it. We headed through the thick mess and it took us awhile to get there. By that time a few other dogs got there to help out. We finally got to them and Justin got up there to flip the hog. He pinned it down for the youngster to stab it and everyone was happy. The youngster was a real trooper as he came through some very thick stuff with us. It took us 7 minutes from start to finish. Ole Repo is still the man after all these years. Never doubt an old experienced dog.
