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Feral Peril - Hog Hunting
Am Shooting Journal ^ | 9/11/2019 | J Dickson

Posted on 09/11/2019 4:59:00 AM PDT by w1n1

Hunting wild boar has a proud tradition in Europe, but in the U.S., where they’ve been introduced or escaped from farms, Sus scrofa is non grata due to damage they cause. Here’s how to pursue them.

Hunting the wild hog is a tradition as old as man himself. In Europe the wild boar was considered a worthy opponent for heroic warriors who faced him with sword and spear. Throughout the centuries, many men were killed, as the European wild boar is a brave and savage animal that can fight unflinchingly to the death.

Often he will disdain to squeal or cry out even if mortally wounded as he fights to the bitter end. If cornered by dogs, he normally will shake them off and charge the first man on the scene. Only death will stop him. That is why boar spears have a short, thick, wood crossbar lashed to the shaft behind the massive spearhead used on them. That is to prevent the boar from running up the spear shaft to get at the man at the other end.
These boar spears are heavier-bladed and thicker-shafted than the ones used on men in wartime, as they want to inflict the maximum amount of damage and bleeding to the quarry and the shaft must not break, no matter how much the stricken boar pushes the hunter on the other end around.

If that shaft breaks, the boar is on the hunter in a heartbeat and only quick skillful use of a sword can save the hunter then. When a boar bites a man, he takes out a plug as clean as a cookie cutter in dough, and those big jaws take out a big plug. A single bite has often proved fatal over the centuries.
In past times, men sometimes wore their armor when fighting wolves, boars and bears with spear and sword –a very smart move that greatly increased their life expectancy. This tradition of hunting boars with cold steel has never died out in Germany, where boar spears are still made and used in the dark primeval forests by hunters adhering to the old heroic ideals of the hunt. This is as thrilling as dangerous game hunting gets.

WHILE THE EUROPEAN wild boar (often called the Russian wild boar in the U.S.) is the ancestor of your domestic pig, it is a much smarter, stronger and fiercer beast. It is a lean animal with razor-sharp tusks extending 3 to 6 inches that slash out quickly, propelled by the powerful shoulders and low hindquarters.
They can run as fast as a deer and they can easily weigh from 350 to 600 pounds. They often will turn on dogs intent on pursuing them, instead of running. Forty percent casualties among the dogs is common. While this seems unnecessarily cruel to the dogs, these nocturnal animals can be difficult to hunt without them.

What a herd of wild hogs can do to a farmer’s crops is a lot more cruel, as is what they may do to the farmer’s children or the farmer himself, for a wild boar with a sow and piglets is very prone to attack on sight. They rank with the old man-eating European wolf and the European brown bear (which is identical to the American grizzly bear) as Europe’s most dangerous big game animal and there is a long line of graves dating back to the Stone Age backing up that rating.
In terms of the number of people that they have killed down through the ages, they rank behind the European wolf (a much deadlier animal than his North American counterpart) and ahead of the European brown bear, which is normally not a man-eater like the European wolf is and the bears are not as mean and vicious as the wild boar.

This savage animal was imported from Germany’s Black Forest to the game preserve of Austin Corbin in New Hampshire in the 1890s. The Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee got three stocking punches. A man named Barnes imported some from the Schwarzwald around the turn of the century and two North Carolina brothers brought some breeding pairs in from Russia after World War I. An Englishman named George Moore established a hunting preserve in North Carolina and brought in his group in 1910. As any farmer could have told these folks, you can’t keep a hog in with a fence and you can’t keep a fence up in the woods with all the trees falling on it.
The hogs soon spread out into the Smoky Mountains, where they quickly earned a reputation as the most dangerous animals in the woods. They have even killed black bears that tried to prey on them. Read the rest of feral peril.


TOPICS: Hobbies; Outdoors
KEYWORDS: blogpimp; clickbait; hoghunting; readtheresthere
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1 posted on 09/11/2019 4:59:00 AM PDT by w1n1
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To: w1n1

A friend of mine has feral hogs running around on his ranch.It’s a big problem. He has hog traps scattered across the property and uses Big Red soda as bait. The high iron count in a hogs blood means blood will clot quicker. If the first shot isn’t a kill shot, all that happens is you piss the hog off.


2 posted on 09/11/2019 5:11:57 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (When you think about what the left is doing to America, think no further than Cloward-Piven)
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To: EQAndyBuzz

… that’s why automatic weapons are needed on the farm!


3 posted on 09/11/2019 5:19:34 AM PDT by Ken522
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To: EQAndyBuzz

I wonder if Warfarin mixed in the soda would help bleed them out.


4 posted on 09/11/2019 5:24:07 AM PDT by meatloaf
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To: w1n1

It’s difficult to catch a glimpse of a European boar in NC unless one one is hunting.


5 posted on 09/11/2019 5:25:09 AM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: EQAndyBuzz

.45-70 is my round of choice. Not a whole lot of range, but the 375 grain hard cast slug at 2300 fps I use has never not put one down within 50’ of where I hit it. Just a big red cloud behind it and that’s all she wrote. I see people hunting them with 5.56 rounds and just shake my head, I’d rather use something that’s an overkill to something that’s merely adequate myself.


6 posted on 09/11/2019 6:03:21 AM PDT by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: Abathar

Hunting these critters in Missouri is discouraged by the Missouri Department of Conservation.
The agency says shooting one just spreads the pack. It’s better to trap entire families and MDC will do it for free.


7 posted on 09/11/2019 6:06:49 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: w1n1

My dad recalled to me that his father and others connected to the family would mount up on horses, rifles carried by servants, and head out to hunt boar with dogs. They’d come back with a boar, occasionally minus a servant and some dogs. WWII put an end to that.


8 posted on 09/11/2019 6:15:36 AM PDT by IndispensableDestiny
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To: w1n1

Here in Culpeper county,Virginia, feral hogs are a problem to crops and a potential tragedy to humans, waiting to happen. I believe they can be hunted anytime, on Sundays, without license, day or night, with a night scope.


9 posted on 09/11/2019 6:22:19 AM PDT by ArtDodger
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To: IndispensableDestiny

I seldom hunt European boar with 12 ga semi-auto. Had a couple of close calls but never actually wounded. I am more a cat person and don’t have dogs.


10 posted on 09/11/2019 6:22:26 AM PDT by NorseViking
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To: w1n1

I shot one last night.


11 posted on 09/11/2019 6:27:42 AM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

Prohibited on lands owned. leased or managed ( read all US forest service/Mark Twain NF lands).

Can kill them on your own lands or on other private lands.


12 posted on 09/11/2019 6:30:33 AM PDT by Manly Warrior (US ARMY (Ret), "No Free Lunches for the Dogs of War")
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To: ArtDodger

In Georgia its open season 24/7. We are loaded with pigs.


13 posted on 09/11/2019 6:32:16 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: w1n1

There are some feral hogs in this area. In our younger days my husband and a friend of his would rope (from horseback, very tricky) the baby boars and castrate them and turn them loose. Then after they grew he would rope one or two he castrated as a baby and we would pen up at the house and feed it good feed for about 45 days and we would butcher. That was the best pork, far better than what you can just buy at the grocer.

This time of the year I always think about that because as Fall would be on the way we would have a pig or two at the house feeding it out.

We had beef, pork, and deer after deer season. I grew a huge garden every year. It was a lot of work but we sure ate good.


14 posted on 09/11/2019 6:37:09 AM PDT by Tammy8
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To: w1n1

Since today is 9/11 I will point out that muslims are alot like wild pigs except not as smart or brave.


15 posted on 09/11/2019 6:45:24 AM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (The first step in ending the war on white people is to recognize it exists.)
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To: NorseViking

I wonder how boar spears would work against Antifa goons? Available on eBay.

Just the sight of all that cold steel might give them pause.

Of course the po-po would not approve.


16 posted on 09/11/2019 6:51:32 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam.")
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To: elcid1970

Might work well but it depends on exact goons. Wouldn’t want to bring it to a gunfight.


17 posted on 09/11/2019 7:09:15 AM PDT by NorseViking
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To: IndispensableDestiny

Before they used dogs they used beaters.


18 posted on 09/11/2019 7:14:08 AM PDT by ichabod1 (He's a vindictive SOB but he's *our* vindictive SOB.)
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To: Manly Warrior
Correct.
But MDC’s admonition is offered to private landowners who are vexed with bad hogs...
19 posted on 09/11/2019 7:16:58 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: ichabod1

I wouldn’t rate big boar as more dangerous than a brown bear.
Given a chance above average boar would tear you apart true but my impression is they aren’t very smart and somehow challenged in terms of eyesight.
If a boar decides to attack you he tries to figure out where you are and then charges in a straight line. It is fast but move a couple feet aside from the line and it passes by and then stops to think out what to do next. Guess you know what to do at this point. They aren’t really as tough as well. A 12 ga slug center-mass incapacitates ever the largest ones.


20 posted on 09/11/2019 7:32:49 AM PDT by NorseViking
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