Looking at these bushpigs I was wondering how people mount them?

Traditional shoulder mounts don't look like they would do justice like many other African game species.

Either a full body or . . . my taxidermist, Tru-Life has come up with a 3/4 body wallmount that looks really slick.

NitroX, you're right. That sow I shot looked like she had just stepped out of a Beauty Salon!

I can't explain why, we didn't give her a shampoo and blow dry before the trophy photos were taken, that's the way she looked when she showed up at the pile of sour corn. I don't know if Bushpigs like to wallow in the mud like warthogs and wild hogs. I've never seen one come to a waterhole and roll in the mud like the warthogs love to do. Maybe they are more fastidious by nature than other members of the porcine family?

We almost didn't recover her. I was sitting under a small farm wagon behind a makeshift blind of branches about 50 yards from the corn pile. My PH, Buks Botha of Bateleur Safaris was manning the spotlight 10 yards to my right; the space under the wagon wasn't big enough for us to sit side by side.

The first several Bushpigs come to the corn just after sunset while it was still light enough to see them. They were too small to shoot, so we just watched them feed and wander off.

More Bushpigs came down off the mountain as darkness fell. When we heard them rustling in the bushes, or munching on the sour corn, Buks would switch on the spotlight so we could look them over. If, after several seconds, he turned the light off, it meant that he didn't want me to shoot. Several times we had really huge Bushpigs near the bait, but they would disappear the instant the light came on.

Finally, about an hour after sunset, the big sow appeared at the corn. Buks hit her with the spotlight and she started to ease back into the brush. Instead of turning the light off, Buks was flashing the beam up and down quickly as she turned and started up the hill. Suddenly he stopped moving the light around and put it directly on her as she paused briefly in the brush. Interpreting this as a signal to shoot, I put the illuminated crosshair of the 3-12x50 Swarovski on what I thought was her left shoulder as she quartered away uphill and sent a 200 grain Nosler Partition on it's way from my .300 Jarrett.

I crawled out from under the wagon and reunited with Buks and his assistant PH, Julian, to compare notes before going up the mountain after the Bushpig. Buks confirmed that he had indeed intended for me to shoot, and I felt that I had put a good shot into the back edge of her shoulder.

We walked up to the corn pile and started scanning the ground with our flashlights looking for signs of a hit. We looked, and looked and looked some more; nothing! No blood, no hair, no bone chips!

I was surprised, but not too concerned, I knew what the sight picture had been when the shot went off, and I was certain that there was a dead Bushpig nearby. I've shot lots of wild hogs over the years in the coastal swamps of South Carolina where I live, and it is not unusual for a fatally hit hog to leave little or no sign. Sometimes all you can do is forget about sign and start looking around for the dead hog.

Buks and Julian, reluctantly started working their way up the mountainside through the jumble of rocks and thick thornbrush. Bushpigs are pretty nasty critters, and especially so when wounded and cornered. Neither Buks nor Julian had much enthusiasm for the task at hand, but they nevertheless performed a quick search of the immediate area. Coming back down to where I was still searching for sign near the bait pile, Buks said, "you must have missed Mark, there's no sign and we can't find the pig anywhere."

It was getting late and we had a long drive back to Buks' Lodge ahead of us. It was the last night of our 14 day hunt with Bateleur Safaris and we were scheduled to leave early in the morning for Sun City and a couple of days of R&R at the Palace of the Lost City Hotel. Buks suggested that we give up the search and head back to the Lodge, promising that he and Julian would come back and take another look tomorrow in the daylight.

"Buks, I know I didn't miss!", I said. "The crosshairs were just behind the shoulder when I shot." Buks remained skeptical; I had shot well throughout our hunt together, cleanly killing everything I shot at with no misses and no need to track wounded animals. But, everyone misses sometime...and I guess PH's all too often have clients tell them it was a "good shot," when it obviously wasn't.

As Buks and I were having this conversation, Julian, flashlight in hand, started up the mountainside once again. Energetic and outgoing, Julian is a very talented young hunter who has great promise as a PH one day. During our hunt, he had seen me make much more difficult shots than a Bushpig at 50 yards in a spotlight. My insistance that I had not missed pursuaded him to take another look.

While Buks and I watched from below, Julian's light grew steadily dimmer. As he made his way up the mountain, we would occasionally catch a glimpse of his flashlight, only to have it disappear once again amongst the rocks and brush. He continued to search, going much higher up the mountain this time. When we had lost sight of Julian's light for some time, Buks called up to him in Africaans, apparently telling him to give up and come back down. A long moment passed, and then we heard Julian yelling excitedly down to us from the darkness above. He had found my Bushpig sow, dead as the proverbial wedge, about 150 yards straight up the mountain. There was not a single drop of blood anywhere from the corn pile to where she had fallen dead.

As soon as we got her down to level ground, the post mortem began. The left shoulder that I was sure I had shot at turned out to have been the left ham! The steep angle, the cross lighting from the spotlight 10 yards to my right and the shadows cast in the brush combined to produce an optical illusion. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I had aimed at the left shoulder, but it was actually the left hindquarter! The 200 grain Partition entered the ham and quartered all the way through the abdomen and chest cavity before finally stopping just under the skin in the right side of her neck! There was no exit wound to leave a blood trail and the hair on her hindquarter absorbed what little blood escaped from the entrance wound.

It is hard to believe, but that sow managed to run 150 yards straight uphill after taking a 200 grain Partition at 3000 fps crossways through the chest from butthole to brisket! Bushpigs are tough and elusive. I'm glad that our hunt with Buks and Julian ended in such a grand fashion that night. Go to our online Photo Album to see the other trophies we took on that trip.

BTT