03 November 2006, 21:41
RattlesnakerBig Hog
We killed this hog last weekend and he was as big boned and big framed as I've seen a hog in a while. If he was fat and healthy there's no telling what he would have weighed.We turned the dogs out in some brush where the hogs had been crossing into a peanut field and we walked in behind them. After about 15 minutes I heard them barking and began making my way over to them. About 4 dogs had him bayed up in a thicket of brush as I eased up to take a picture of him. Apparently he either saw or smelled me and broke out away from the dogs. I spun around and took a quick shot at him with my lever action 357 but missed. The shot spooked the dogs and they quit and came back to us.
We gathered up a few more dogs and headed after him but ended up catching several smaller hogs over the next hour or so. We had just killed one of the small hogs and we were plotting our next move when we heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance. We jumped in the truck and made our way over to him and realized that a few other dogs had joined in but they were giving him plenty of respect. I grabbed the vested up dogo and turned him out of the truck and he ran into the brush where the dogs had the hog bayed. As we were making our way through the brush the rank smell of an old boar hog was obvious and always gets my adrenalin pumping. When we got in there the dogo had him caught by himself even though he was cut pretty good where the the boar had ripped the vest off. My buddy grabbed the boar by the tail to immobilize him until we could stick him. We killed 13 hogs for the weekend but this was the biggest.
