Giant Hog (Gun Control)

Those videos show two of my least favorite things about hunting. The first one is the guys who have to do EXTREME stuff like pig sticking with spears or knives. Use a firearm and put the damned thing out it's misery in a respectable way. The second is lying about the size of the kill. That's not a 600-pound boar. Might top 300. But it's not anywhere close to 600.

 

If you're walking the woods and and come face to face with one, you'd be surprised how fast you can shinny a skinny pine tree that you otherwise could not/wouldn't think would support your weight.

But yes, wound one of those and piss it off and he'll cut you up if he gets half a chance.

 

I doubted the weight on that myself. Plenty big enough, but not massive. I did a quick youtube search and you get these idiots hunting them with a 9mm pistol or something. Those kids (and they were) with the hog spear will screw around and learn a grown up lesson some of these days. It's bad enough if a boar gets hold of you and cuts your legs up, but if he knocks you down and slashes your abdomen open it's a whole different ball game.

 

There's not much sense at all at shooting one of these big bastards for sport.
Shoot one with a 9 millimeter?.....No....that's just going to piss him off more.
Try and get it with a bow and arrow or a knife?......No....Same thing applies.
If you're going to shoot one of these things, you make damn sure you kill it, or it will kill you.
And smile at you while he's doing it.

 

Shooting a big Russian boar charging you is about as close to an African safari hunting experience as you'll get on this continent, short of a bear hunt. Personally, it does not do much for me, but there are the blood sport guys who like to "challenge themselves". 'Course, they have guns and the pig does not, so I don't see the challenge. A bow, you'll 95% likely be in a tree stand, and it damn sure is a challenge to be close enough and place the shot for a clean kill. Problem there is the wounded animal who gets away, perhaps to attack someone else in it's pain and rage.

Doing it with a knife? I think of that as evolution in action.

 

My best friend's dad has killed at least a half-dozen wild hogs on his land.

The Ozarks are overrun with those nasty things.

 

Texas in particular is overrun by them to the point they're considered nuisance/pest animals and essentially they can be killed BAMN any day of the year by anybody with any kind of hunting license.

Texas hog hunting is a big topic on YouTube. Check out the helicopter runs, where you smoke 'em from the air with automatic weapons. Night vision/thermal vision setups, where you set up your guns a hundred yards upwind, wait for a sounder (herd, flock, etc etc) to cluster around a feed point, then open up and ventilate dozens at a time.
The hog sounders assemble around an alpha sow, usually the biggest mature female in the group, who frequently will have two or three litters of up to a dozen spawn every year. The alpha sow usually leads the way with up to several dozen other hogs close behind.
As a result, plastering a pregnant alpha sow is the two handed slam dunk/ touchdown dance of the hog hunting world. Not only do you take out the big mamma leader of the pack, but the dozen or so bambinos on board.

 

We don't have them in my area.
I'd rather take my chances in a tree with a bow than I would on the ground with a 9 mm. That's insane. You could unload a clip into a big one, and he'd still keep coming. You might be OK with a .357 or a .44, but I wouldn't want to be close enough to guarantee a kill shot.
Get a clean shot with a bow, and let him bleed out.
If sticking one with a spear is supposed to be the measure of a man, I guess I'll just have to not measure up.

 

That’s how one from there wound up in office too. It’s been all downhill ever since.

 

That's a consistent theme of the videos: you gotta tag those fuckers good to take
them down. Either heavy ammo or a shot right through the skull, otherwise they keep on charging.

 

Yeah, I'd hate to be staring down a pair of tusks coming at me at 20 mph with 300 pounds of momentum and a ton of pissed off knowing I was relying on my M&P Shield to keep me from being gutted.

 

That's the case in Mississippi as well. I did a story on it a couple of years ago and talked to some farmers who are constantly dealing with these things. Four things they said stuck out:
1) Most of them carry rifles in their tractors while they're working the fields, just in case they get a chance to shoot one.
2) Not only do they destroy crops, they build beaver-like dams that can flood property.
3) You can't do trap and release. They'll breed too fast and become someone else's problem. They're also smart enough to figure out the traps and avoid them. You might get them once or twice, but that's it.
4) Some of the farmers surrendered their property to the hogs just to get some peace. They figured out where on the property the hogs were living and then put up electrified fences to contain them. The farmers can't work that land anymore, but at least they save the rest of it.

There was a ton of flooding in the Mississippi Delta this year that pretty much nuked the deer herd in the western part of the state. It'll be interesting (or possibly horrifying) to see if the hogs suffered the same fate, or if the lack of deer reduces competition for food and allows them to thrive even more.