Hide, Horn, Fish, and Fowl: Texas Hunting and Fishing Lore

THE LORE OF WILD HOG HUNTING IN WEST TEXAS

West Texas hog hunters 7978-ch02.pdf 10/6/11 8:15 AM Page 138 THE LORE OF WILD HOG HUNTING IN WEST TEXAS by Kenneth W. Davis  In many parts of West Texas on Friday and Saturday nights when there are neither football nor basketball games, chronological or psychological adolescents and others—male and female, from ages about fourteen through sixty or way beyond—delight in roaring around farm and ranch lands after dusk in high-powered all-wheel drive vehicles—mostly pickups equipped with strong spot lights. These vigorous people are armed with 30.06s and similar weapons. In a single four-wheel-drive pickup there is usually enough ammunition to quell a moderate-sized insurrection or flying saucer invasion . The presence of intrepid hunters is welcomed by owners of the land over which these Nimrods ramble frantically in search of what is considered a dangerous creature found almost everywhere in Texas: the wild hog. These hogs are a nuisance, a pestilence, threats to man and beast, and, of course, they smell bad, have ticks, and are ugly. In most species the very young are at least somewhat cute. Not so with wild hogs I have seen up close in West Texas. The wild pigs I saw were so totally ugly not even their mothers could have affection for them. The origins of wild hogs are debated in spirited folk fashion. Some hog savants believe that these now primarily nocturnal ravagers of maize, corn, and vegetable crops are descendents of domestic hogs who escaped their pens and met up with other escapees and mated, the outcome of which couplings are hogs in a great variety of sizes, shapes, and looks. Other porcine authorities argue with equal vigor that present day wild hogs are the result of the heroic amorous propensities of the peccary with domestic hogs. Still others, impressed perhaps by the long tusks on wild boars, argue that the wild hog is a distinct breed going back to the days of the mastodons that had long tusks, too. And others argue that the 139 7978-ch02.pdf 10/6/11 8:15 AM Page 139 wild hogs’ looks and personalities are the result of their industrial strength libidos that prompt them to mate compulsively with their blood kin. Wild hogs not only mate with their relatives, but they will, if hungry, eat brothers, sisters, parents, and their own children. Some in West Texas like some in East Texas kill these gross creatures and cure out the hams, grind up sections of them for sausage, and will even desecrate a food sacred to most good Texans, i.e., barbequed pork, by using meat from cannibalistic wild hogs. I enjoy a good wild hog hunt. Although an old man, I am not a bad shot with a 30.06. But just as I am loathe to eat cornbread made with flour, or to eat turnips at all—anything that draws flies when it is cooking isn’t fit for human consumption!—I will not knowingly eat wild hog meat. One has to have some standards. My experiences with wild hog hunting all took place in West and north central Texas. I have not yet been on a hog hunt in dankest East Texas. My first hunt or sort of was on the 101 section Nail Ranch near Albany, Texas, managed then by George Peacock. He took Lawrence Clayton and me to a 640-acre wheatfield the day after Thanksgiving in the late 1980s. There we saw hundreds of wild hogs of all colors, shapes, sizes, and dispositions. Many of the boars had long tusks that show the influence of their ancestors, reportedly imported from Russia to make Texas wild hogs have longer tusks and therefore be more prized as trophies by the pale skinned city folk who pay big money to roam about the countryside in high-topped hunting boots like primitive cave dwellers in search of food. The owner or manager who can lease property to deer, bird, or wild hog hunters can sometimes make more money from such fees than from sales of cattle or horses. On the cold, clear November day when I first saw a huge herd of wild hogs, we did no hunting. We were just observers, or an advance scouting party for the L. L. Bean-clad mighty hunters of these bizarre creatures about whom much lore exists. Several years after...