When was the moment you knew you were hooked!

[WayOutWest]

Mine came at the end of a week long trip I took back about 8 yrs ago. I used to judge APBT's for the ADBA and was judging a show over in Liberty when a couple guys asked me why the big dogs didn't win in the show ring. I explained that they usually looked different from the ADBA standard and then we got to talking hog hunting. I left with a couple ph. numbers and an invite to come hunt the next winter. Well I flew down and stayed with T-dog for a week and we hunted several days and caught hogs every time we went out. But the last day I was gonna be there he said he knew a spot the held good boars now and then. The hunt started off a lil ruff as the 2 young dogs took off after a herd of cattle and Thomas had to chase em down while his lil Crystal gyp was already baying. He got back with the youngsters and turned them to the bay and we headed in. We got on the right side of the wind and the thicket was BAD. Found a hog trail going in and turned Clementine in and Thomas started crawling in on hands and knees. I was right on his tail and all I could see was the W on his pockets. About 20 ft. in he hollers "here he comes" and he jumped up and jumped in the air. I just followed suit and at that moment the dang boarhog went steamin out right under us. I was practically hanging from the locust thorns. The dogs all went thru at that point right on his heels. We caught up to the dogs within 100yds. as Clementine had him. Crystal was lunged with 2 broke ribs so Thomas hauled butt to the rig with her and I got a loop on the nose cause this sucker was big. We ran her to the vet and left her and took the pig to Rockdale to the junkyard to weigh him. He was 345 on their scale. I WAS HOOKED! To this day I haven't been on a bigger one but I have been back every year!

[YELLOWBLACKMASK]

Bout the time I was wallkin a string of foxhounds at one of my grandpaws friends house 84 or 85 ....and came upon a Yeller Black Mouth tied.  Asked ........what's that......feller said......the badest Sum Buck on the string.

HOOKED like a catfish.

At that point.....didnt matter what the quarry was. Hogs came later.

[Kid7]

Sitting on a really clear night with a full moon guy I was with didn't hav a garmin. Always loved hunting and he had explained to me that the bay dogs find it and bark at it so they take off and we are sitting there trying to be as quiet as possible and one ol yeller dog he had that sounded like a hound located then hammered down my heart jumped into my throat I was hooked immediately. Then we get to the bay and they had a big boar bayed against a loan cedar tree in the middle of a grass flat and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever to watch those dogs work

[t-dog]

My moment came when I went with some older friends. Their leopard dogs had what looked like an ol' wooly mammoth bayed in a wash out. They couldn't catch him and really weren't trying, but the second he wasn't backed up to the bank somebody was trying to yank a hole in his rear. It was good watching. We roped him and dallied off to a couple of trees and a couple folks through him. It was all those two horses wanted in dragging him to the road. We didn't weigh him but he is still one of the biggest I have ever caught. He was a barr too.

[Shotgun wg]

I guess I got hooked on running dogs as a lil kid going with my dad. It was deer dogs back then but that building excitement when they are stretched out hammering coming straight at ya. Yep that had to be it. Running dogs on hogs was at first out of necessity. Didn't take long till it was that same feeling I had as a kid. At the same time it was the joy of watching dogs do what they love to do. My wife enjoying this as well was awesome. The part that I can't put into words is when my 2yr old lil girl wakes up on Friday morning without anyone mentioning it and says to her mom. I'm going pig hunting with daddy in the morning. Talk about make u smile.


Shotgun
Arkansas

[t-dog]

Man you hit that one right shotgun. My oldest boy started tagging along when he was 4 and I'm gonna brag and say he was a trooper every time. By the time he was 5 he could tie his own little pig, the right way. By 6 or 7 I had more trouble holding him back than the catchdog. He's 14 now and as good a hand as most grown people. My nephew is 16 and the same way. My youngest is almost 4 and has made several trips to the woods. It's a mighty prideful moment when that little fella tells the dogs to get ahead  when you drop them or is out front of the wheeler calling them in the same way I do it. We had a good laugh one hunt when he told us to be quiet that he was trying to hear the dogs. A little on the bossy side but funny as all get out. These are the things that keep me doing it.

[justincorbell]

don't remember the year off hand but I ran into an acquaintance of mine that I knew ran dogs and told him I had a few places with a buncha hogs and that I hunted em like deer in a stand over a feeder and would like to run dogs.......well like any hog dogger his eyes lit up, im sure he was thinkin "hell yeah, a place with feeders runnin and he wants me to tote my dogs" lol. Anyway I told him I wanted my own pack and he said he had some pups on the ground and would trade me a pup for a hunt on one of my spots......... the rest is history lol. I went to his house that weekend and picked up 4 crossed up curr pups so I owed him 4 hunts. We made plans to go hunting the next morning, he invited another guy I knew that also owned dogs and we met close to my lease the following morning to go. I remember it like it was yesterday, I told them "your dogs, your show" im followin ya'll and with that off we went. They rotated dog pushin 2-4 at a time thru the lease, a couple hours into the hunt we turned onto a nice secluded grassy lane in the back of the lease with good dense tallow/palmetto thickets on both sides, I actually had a trap/feeder going on the lane and as we approached it the dogs started gettin "piggy" shortly after hell broke loose not 50yds into the woods from my trap and that was that, the dogs bayed a big black and white boar and they sent the cd from the buggy and off we went. When I saw that big boar fightin the dogs with a bulldog on his ear there was no doubt in my mind that I was 100% hooked. To this day I have not found anything that comes close to the rush I get when I hear those mutts start hammerin.........don't believe I ever will, and I'm fine with it lol! spent ALOT of time and money since then and I still enjoy it now as much as I did back then. I hope that i'll still be able to enjoy this 20-30years from now as much as I do today.

[justincorbell]

don't remember the year off hand but I ran into an acquaintance of mine that I knew ran dogs and told him I had a few places with a buncha hogs and that I hunted em like deer in a stand over a feeder and would like to run dogs.......well like any hog dogger his eyes lit up, im sure he was thinkin "hell yeah, a place with feeders runnin and he wants me to tote my dogs" lol. Anyway I told him I wanted my own pack and he said he had some pups on the ground and would trade me a pup for a hunt on one of my spots......... the rest is history lol. I went to his house that weekend and picked up 4 crossed up curr pups so I owed him 4 hunts. We made plans to go hunting the next morning, he invited another guy I knew that also owned dogs and we met close to my lease the following morning to go. I remember it like it was yesterday, I told them "your dogs, your show" im followin ya'll and with that off we went. They rotated dog pushin 2-4 at a time thru the lease, a couple hours into the hunt we turned onto a nice secluded grassy lane in the back of the lease with good dense tallow/palmetto thickets on both sides, I actually had a trap/feeder going on the lane and as we approached it the dogs started gettin "piggy" shortly after hell broke loose not 50yds into the woods from my trap and that was that, the dogs bayed a big black and white boar and they sent the cd from the buggy and off we went. When I saw that big boar fightin the dogs with a bulldog on his ear there was no doubt in my mind that I was 100% hooked. To this day I have not found anything that comes close to the rush I get when I hear those mutts start hammerin.........don't believe I ever will, and I'm fine with it lol! spent ALOT of time and money since then and I still enjoy it now as much as I did back then. I hope that i'll still be able to enjoy this 20-30years from now as much as I do today.

O and the funny thing about that "acquaintance" I ran into............ We became huntin buddies  pretty quick and to this day he is still one of if not the first person I call to go to the woods everytime I get ready to go, he still is and has been one of my best friends for quite a few years now.........hunted with him this past saturday as a matter of fact.

[Cattracker549]

I was four years old which makes it forty-six years ago when me and my dad went hog hunting in Hardin County near Bragg rd we had one mountain curr . It wasn't long after we left the truck maybe five minutes that old Spot bayed up.We worked our way through the tall palmetto we come up on a big knoll and there at least 75 head they never even broke as the stock law had not been turned that long.Most owners still marked and worked there hogs but we still picked two Barr hogs and shot them and spot caught a bunch of pig and my dad and I cut them I knew then running deer was not my bag and to this day I never ran a deer or even owned a hound.

[bob]

I took my boat to the boat shop to be worked on , a wide center console , there was a man in the lot , he said man you could sure haul a lot of hog dogs in that boat , I came from a long line of hunters and had rabbit dogs most of my life , my family were cowboys and ran big ranches with lots of hogs on them , I walked hunted to no avail , I said oh yeh , I have some killer spots to run dogs and handed him my number , a few weeks later I got a call , I said what kinda gun do I bring , oh no , no guns , bring a big knife , WHAT  you got to be joking I said , so we meet up and I watched first hand on how this all worked , from that time till now I sold all my beagles and replaced them with BMCs and Pitts lol , and also have thousands of acres to hunt , it's a great sport , my boy is now 11 and is starting to be a hand , he will carry the torch on to the next generation 

[reatj81]

I got hooked Christmas break 1983. Stayed a few days with my uncle, and took my cur pup I got from him.   We made a little hunt one day after lunch, the dogs bayed a big boar in a bad thicket & across Yegua creek. I got hung up and didn't make it to the bay. While I was tangled up in "wait a minute vines" my pup bayed and caught a pig rite in front of me...... I get free enough to catch the pig.  That did it, had me hook line and sinker, my pup caught a pig rite in front of me.   The following day we bayed and roped a boar horseback, when we turned him loose he was a big Barr. 


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[SaltyhoggerJr]

Man you hit that one right shotgun. My oldest boy started tagging along when he was 4 and I'm gonna brag and say he was a trooper every time. By the time he was 5 he could tie his own little pig, the right way. By 6 or 7 I had more trouble holding him back than the catchdog. He's 14 now and as good a hand as most grown people. My nephew is 16 and the same way. My youngest is almost 4 and has made several trips to the woods. It's a mighty prideful moment when that little fella tells the dogs to get ahead  when you drop them or is out front of the wheeler calling them in the same way I do it. We had a good laugh one hunt when he told us to be quiet that he was trying to hear the dogs. A little on the bossy side but funny as all get out. These are the things that keep me doing it.

He's also quite the help hollerin for the dogs lol.