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Old September 10, 2009, 01:59 PM   #1
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Join Date: April 25, 2008
Posts: 891
A Story of a Pig Hunt

When I lived in Georgia I lived in a little cottage down along the Oconee River Swamps.
These swamps flooded every ten years or so, so nobody could live down there.
In normal weather, it was just flat land near the river, the ground was not wet, you could walk around fine. Very heavily wooded, lots of oaks. Just loaded with turkeys, deer, and wild hogs.
We were in a 1,500 acre hunt club that was a 3 minute drive from my house!
Believe me, sometimes I ask myself, Why did I move to the mountains?

One day, I was just hanging around the house. John and Bud were down hunting in the swamp.
They came up to the house about sunset, they wanted my help tracking down a wounded hog. Of course, the first thought in my mind was "Why didn't y'all track down the hog yourselves?"
But, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, I was the right man for the job.
I got the 1911 Colt and a big flashlight, off we went.

The deal was, Bud was using my Civil War Zouave replica. He shot 150 pound hog with the .58 round ball, knocked him dead.
But, he hadn't seen the 125 pound hog behind the first pig.
He had hit that pig, hard, as the ball passed through the target pig.
But it had run/limped off into the swamp.

We left the Civil War gun at my house. There was a blood trail, but it was very thin. Only a little drop of blood, every 5 feet or so.
Bud was a great tracker as he was a bow hunter. Bud and I were in the lead, we were on our hands and knees, you couldn't spot the blood standing up.
I had the pistol and Bud had the light.
John was right behind us, he had his .35 Marlin lever action, quite a good hog rifle. John was standing up, that way, when crunch time came, he could shoot right over us. I felt pretty safe knowing that John was backing me up with that big Marlin.

By now it was completely dark. I can say, it is spooky being down in that swamp at night, going after a wounded hog, you are 3 miles from the nearest house. We tracked that pig for an hour, very slow going, not much blood.
Finally, I saw the hog! It was 25 feet away, that was as far as you could see in that swamp. Bud held the light right on the pig and I fired!
I hit the pig, he was spinning around, squealing like hell, looked like his hind legs were out of commission. I pulled the trigger again.
The damn .45 had jammed.
I yelled out "John, get to work with that Marlin!"
I yelled "John!"

Bud and I looked back, John was gone! We later learned, that a few minutes before we spotted the hog, John had snuck back to the truck, climbed in and shut the door. That was when I found out why the two of them hadn't gone for the pig by themselves.

Well, that was tense, Bud and I were looking for some trees to climb, but the pig was messed up, either from my shot, or from the big round ball, all he could do was spin around, but he was snorting like hell. Bud stayed right there and shined the light on the Colt.
I got the pistol cleared in a minute, felt like an hour, Bud lit the pig up again and shot the pig again, lights out.

You really learn a lot about a guy in a crunch. I learned that I could trust Bud with my life, and I learned to never go hog hunting with John.
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