The Champion Hog Killer of Chittlin Creek

THE CHAMPION HOG KILLER OF CHITTLIN CREEK by Charles G. Patton Most folks would think that it would require a great deal of skill and accuracy to bark a squirrel, offhanded, at a distance of, say 50 or 75 yards, and never disturb a hair on the creature, or maybe knock a coon out of the top of a hundred foot high sweet gum in the light of the moon with a stiff wind blowing without even taking rest. Good shooting, most folks would say. Real shooting. D. Boone kind of shooting. But Hell, folks on Chittlin Creek would pay about as much attention to that kind of shooting as they would to spitting off the front porch, especially Hog-Eyed Zack Scott, recognized champion hog killer in all of Chittlin Creek, from the head to the mouth, including both forks, the Stump Whupped hollow on the left hand side, and Creek Slung Branch in the right hand fork. Distance has nothing to do with good shooting, he claims. Windage and elevation? Nothing. Foolishness! The secret to good shooting is knowing exactly when to pull the trigger. That's it and nothing more. When to pull the trigger. . .that's what brings the bacon home. And according to most folks on Chittlin, Hog-Eye might of had a pretty solid point there too and might have been right in his way of calculation, considering the fact that the target he had in mind was about the size of the bottom of a 50 pound lard can and the distance hardly ever more than three feet away: namely, the forehead of a six to seven hundred pound fat hog, and the brute either penned or tied up most of the time. Windage and elevation and taking rest, they reckoned, wouldn't be too much of a factor after all, when a body really got to studying on it. Now on Chittlin Creek it was sort of customary, as it probably was on a thousand other branches and creeks in the mountains, that when it came hog killing time in the fall of the year, usually around the first or middle of November, all the neighboring men-folk would pitch in and help one another kill each other's hogs at a designated time and place. It was also customary for the owner of the hogs to provide the spirits, in ample supply, for various reasons: usually to ward off the cold November chill, loosen stiff joints, or as Hog-Eyed Zack would say, a body never knows when he's subject to be snake bit. It was understood that after the hog was killed, scraped, cut up, and salted away or hung in the smoke house to be smoked, each neighbor was expected to take home with him a goodly portion, a fresh mess, of the meat for himself and his family. It was also understood , a real Chittlin Creek tradition, that Hog-Eyed Zack Scott would do the shooting. No hog would be butchered, 104 and hadn't been for the past ten years on Chittlin, unless Hog-Eye pulled the trigger . His reputation for never missing the fatal spot or never causing one to squeal with a near miss, plus his eagerness and desire to preserve that reputation, had earned him, justly so, if it were the truth, the title of Champion Hog Killer of Chittlin Creek. Of course, if it weren't the truth, it didn't make much difference to the folks on Chittlin as long as he didn't get too briggaty about it. A few days after the first hard frost had killed the remaining November weeds and as temperatures gradually fell below freezing and held, word was passed up and down the creek on a Wednesday that Doker Connley, in the head of the Stump VVhupped fork, had two big Poland Chinas ready for the knife. Saturday morning, rain or shine, at the break of daylight. Bring your own scraping knives. Doker had everything ready when the neighboring men-folk started gathering in come Saturday morning. The fire under two big tubs of water was roaring. He had boards laid out on an old...