Yet another fantastic hog dog hunt

Me and Challacombe headed out Friday night late to try to catch a few hogs. He and our friend Lance caught a really big boar last Sunday at the end of a cut milo field, so that's where we started. Nothing happening there, so we went on to a different spot a mile or so down the road & dumped the dogs again. Good thing we dumped the whole box, they struck nearly immediately and bayed this nice boar a few minutes later. This guy had some really good knives on him. Amazingly, the dogs were nearly completely untouched by those teeth. They had a couple of very small pokes, but no serious damage. He was bayed up in a very thick cane patch. If I had known what he had in his mouth, I doubt I would've charged in so hard & fast to the bay.


We loaded the dogs and went to a spot closer to the river where there used to be peanuts planted. The field is now in wheat, but the hogs are still hitting it hard. Again, the dogs struck nearly immediately and after a mile long race, they bayed about a 1/4 mile off the road in the thick stuff. We had to climb/crawl/claw our way in through some nasty brambles, but got in there to stick this little boar.

Corry and I were some whipped sumbitches & wanted to head to the house. We caught everybody but his Blazer dog, and headed to the truck. Blazer wasn't havin' none of it. He struck and bayed tight on another hog. We had walked nearly all the way back to the truck when he bayed, but turned everybody loose again & caught another small boar. It was a darn long walk there & back, but the dogs were having a great hunt & we were right in there with em!!!


The dogs handled all of these hogs rather easily, and despite the good cutters on the first boar, nobody got cut badly. We took 1st street dogs Blazer, Razor, Easy & their catchdog Johnson. I brought Pepper, Dan & Ann. The dogs all worked his butts off and did a fantastic job. Easy and Pepper are the only 2 green dogs out of everything we took, and they both did really well. It was a great night to be out hunting, and the dogs made the best of it. I got home about 3am, a whipped tired son of a gun.
Anybody who doesn't call hog hunting a sport, has never tried to do it on foot. I'm getting in shape chasing after these dogs! It's much easier in the pickup or on a 4 wheeler, but our dogs just don't seem to allow it all the time. They bay hogs up in the rough stuff, where the truck and wheeler just can't get to.

 

Pestering me to go???!!!?? Yeah, like my buddies have to "pester" me to go fishing, or my wife has to "pester" me to go to bed. Say the word, and I'm ready. I'd rather be hog hunting than sitting in front of this computer screen right now, that's for sure. Too bad the wind's rocking about 30mph. That's one of the bad points of dog hunting in SW Oklahoma..... the wind will blow too hard for hunting occasionally. But as far as anybody needing me to "pester" them to go hunting, that's no big deal to me. If I'm going, someone else can go. No biggy to me.

Yeah, we've been on some hogs that put a few dogs in the injured reserve pen as well. Matter of fact, within the last month, I've seen 2 of the best dogs that I hunt with (thank God they weren't mine) put out of commission for a while. One of them is a little catahoula runt named Rowdy who belongs to my friend Lance. Rowdy took a shot to the chest by a huge boar (Rowdy really is a runt, about 30 lbs) and he's out of commission for at least another month. My buddy Bray (Wood18 on the boc) had one of his best dogs named Ann take a shot in the side by a nasty boar we killed a few weeks ago. It collapsed her lung and broke 4 of her ribs. The vet saved her and fixed her though, and she's about ready to go again already. That's one of the bad points of hog hunting with dogs. Occasionally, you get on a really bad boar who knows a little something about fighting dogs. When it happens, you'd better be ready to take action fast because you can end up losing some dogs. On the boar that messed up Ann, I shot that hog with a 30-30 in the head and he jumped up and went to whipping dogs. I chased him down, as he was still destroying dogs, and put the knife in him. Not my brightest moment.

Anyway, I can tell you brothers without question, hog hunting behind dogs is phenomenal exercise. We do a lot of our hunting on foot, and end up walking/running a few miles each hunt. The country we hunt in is occasionally pretty rough as well. I hunt some with a friend in West Texas along the edge of the Palo Duro canyon and that is some very rough country. We went in the canyon one night chasing a hog, and it took nearly 2 hours to climb back out. The pigs did it in about 30 seconds. :angry:

 

Personally, I don't use any pits...... not that I really hate them or anything, because I know a lot of folks use them and love them. Matter of fact I don't even own a catchdog. I think I'd love to own a good American Bulldog. But with 2 young kids here at the house, and given the reputation of the pitbull breed, I seriously doubt my wife would be very excited about me keeping a pit for a catchdog.

A good friend of mine has an AB/Dogo cross that he uses for a catchdog, and that's probably the best I've personally witnessed. That dog is a catching machine. I don't think money could buy that dog.