Anyone have any close-call stories to share? Theyre scary as all heck when it's happening, but sure do make for some good storytelling once your hands stop shaking long enough to hold a beer. I’m new to dogging, but I'll start with a couple of recent ones, one of them fairly hair-raising and the other more mysterious.
A few months back, I was with a friend on his uncle's property. It was a few hundred acres of mostly cattle pasture, but the back acreage went down into some nasty, thick swamp bottom where we had previously seen plenty of hog sign, including some whopper tracks. Well, this night I had gone out there with my .243 to try and take a few coyotes, but the critters had managed to outsmart us, howling at us just out of eyeshot. I think the full moon gave us away, no matter how quiet we were. Anyhow, we're giving it one more shot...creeping around the property, trying to see if we can salvage the night and at least take a small hog to put on the grill tomorrow. On our way to the swamps, we are crossing one of the cattle pastures, kinda hugging the fenceline or whatnot when my buddy sees two dark shapes about a hundred yards away, one small, one large. I look through the scope and confirm that while the small dark shape is part of an oil drum, the large one is a big ol’ hog. I swear, it looked like a VW bug that someone had covered in black hair (ok not really, but we guessed him to go 300# easy.) Well he’s so busy rooting up the pasture that I manage to creep to within 50 yards of him and try to get a shot off. At this point I should mention that when I rifle hunt for hogs, I usually bring my trusty .30-06 and use 180grain pills. With that size bullet, I’ve never had to worry about trying for neckshots…I’ve always been able to shoot them like I would a deer; hold just above the shoulder. Well, I have all the time in the world here, I’m peepin through my scope and trying to figure out if that little .243 will go through a shoulder. I decide to go for a neckshot to be safe, so I hold those crosshairs steady on his neck and fire on off. He squeals, then drops like a log, and I know I’ve hit him solid. I see his legs twitch for a few seconds, and then he’s still. I chamber another round just in case, click on the safety, and pat my back pocket to make sure my digital camera is still in there so I can get a picture of my trophy. I hear my friend quietly whisper a profanity, so I look up and see that the boar has resurrected like Lazarus and is staring right at us.
Half a second later, he is running full-steam toward us with not a tree in sight. We both high tail it to the barbed wire fence a few yards away and climb on to it. The boar crashes through the fence just inches below us like it isn’t even there. A few angry grunts and tusk pops later, he takes off toward the creek bottom and disappears. Out of obligation but against better judgment, we try to track him for a few hours, but find no sign. I’m just glad the barbed-wire fence was so sturdy. Fun times.
The Mysterious Disappearing Hog-Thing:
Same general area, different property and different night. I was hunting the Brazos bottom (if you’ve ever hunted this particular stretch, you know that it’s not really a bottom, just a bunch of sandy beach with a huge freakin’ dropoff down to the river). I was surrounded by the most hog sign I’ve ever seen. I was following one particularly large set of tracks that kind of meandered about. Now, this was perfect conditions for tracking…soft sand, almost a full moon, and what little wind there was was in my favor. Next to the river was a big pasture, and not much in the way of vegetation, save for one really out-of-place tangle of trees and brush just off the beach . As luck would have it, though the tracks didn’t lead right to it, they did disappear in the general vicinity of this tangled, thorny-looking patch about a 1/5 acre in size. Safety and common sense would dictate this to be a good time for a handgun, but me being me, I’ve been putting off getting my concealed permit for years and so never drive with or carry my sidearm on me. So, I have the .30-06 and a tiny MagLite in my hands as I’m staring at this patch of brush in the middle of God’s darkest nowhere. I’m trying to figure out if it’s even a good idea to try and go after this pig, and I hear some rustling in the brush. I’m thinking…ok, he’s definitely in there. Best to get ready if he decides to make a fight of it. So I take the rifle off my shoulder and flip the safety off. Then I wait for a while, but don’t hear anything, so I figure I’ll just leave him be and go after an easier mark. Well, this is when things get really, really weird. I start to walk away when I hear the brush rustling again, but this time it’s full-on snapping twigs and stuff like it’s running. There’s nowhere for me to run (seems to happen a lot…I need to start hunting around more trees), so I turn and shoulder the rifle…and then I hear the weirdest dang sound I’ve ever heard. I’ve heard most any kind of sound a hog/deer/raccoon/critter can make, but danged if I can tell you what I heard that night. It was like a cross between a bark from a big dog and a guttural yell. Man, I’m freaked out now, but I convince myself that it has to be a hog. After a few minutes of silence, I grow a pair and pick up a rock and throw it in there. Nothing. I have no idea where this hog/mystery critter could have gone, because I would have seen him had it ran in any direction. Behind me was the river, and in front was a moonlit pasture. I could see for a few hundred yards with no problem. At that point, I’m pretty freaked out, and even the hot can of Red Bull I drank earlier and the rifle in my hand don’t do much to make me feel safe, so I quickly walk the mile or so back to the car, looking behind me every few steps. I’ve had a couple of odd experiences out there while hunting that could be explained through some or another theory, but man, I still can’t tell you what that was. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t any hog(unless this hog somehow swallowed alive a bulldog that somehow swallowed a multi-grunt buck call).
