Here’s a little diversion for the afternoon.
Once upon a time, there was a hog hunter we’ll call Billy. Billy lived to hunt hogs. He hunted them year-round, from the canyons of California to the Florida swamps, and all points in between. In his many years afield, he figured he knew a pretty good bit about hogs and hog hunting. He knew their habits and habitat. He knew where to find them when it was hot and sunny, and he knew where to look when the snow fell and the wind howled. He knew what they’d eat when there was plenty of food, and what they’d eat when there was nothing.
One day, Billy decided to head out and hunt a new area.
As he pulled up to the trailhead, he saw the game warden parked by the road. The local game warden is usually a good source of info, so Billy went over to ask him about the hogs. The warden explained that the hogs spent most of the day scattered around in the maze of canyons and draws, but they always made their way out of a single canyon to feed in the barley fields below. If someone were to walk down that jeep road right there, they’d probably have a pretty good shot.
Billy was excited at the news, and could hardly contain himself as he ran back to the truck, grabbed his backpack and rifle, and headed up the trail. In his mind, he considered a strategy. The fields below were easy to access, but that meant that anyone could get to them. Billy liked to get away from the crowd. In fact, he took a kind of pride in hunting the places that no one else would go. He’d outsmart the crowds and head way back into the thick stuff, well away from the temptation of the “easy pickings”.
The barley fields shone emerald green in the flats below, as Billy climbed deeper and deeper into the wilderness. The trail was steep, and in places he had to literally sling his rifle over his shoulder and crawl on hands and knees. Briars and scrub caught his clothing and tore at his skin. “This,” he thought to himself, “is the price of getting away from the crowd.”
Soon he was in the midst of dense chaparral, and pig sign abounded! He tuned his hunter senses, and began to work slowly along the trails. Fresh tracks led in every direction, and he could even see where hogs had recently vacated their beds beneath the oaks and chemise. The trunks of the trees were rubbed bare by the passage of coarse bodies, and every wet spot was marked by a wallow.
But after several hours of following trails and sign, he still had not seen a hog.
As evening fell, Billy topped a high ridge and stopped to glass. Far below, dark shapes moved into the barley fields. It would be too dark to shoot in a few minutes, and he’d never get into shooting range before then. He had to admit to himself, the hogs had evaded him. Tomorrow, though, he was sure he’d get them.
The pre-dawn darkness found Billy back on the trail. At first he was tempted to take the easy road down to the barley fields, but he wanted to be at the very highest peak when the sun rose, deep in the pigs’ sanctuary. No one else would hunt this hard or hike this far, he was certain of that. His confidence soared, even as the sweat began to run down his back and forehead.
As the earliest light filtered through the chemise, he finally reached the summit he had been working toward. After drinking half of his water and catching his breath, he found a high rock and began to glass. Nothing moved along the high hills, but as the sun began to illuminate the valley below, he could make out the outline of the hogs in the green barley. “Oh well,” he thought. “I’ll catch them when they come back up to their beds.”
The remainder of the day was spent in sweaty frustration, peeking into bedding areas and following trails with tracks that seemed to have been made only seconds before. In some places he found fresh scat, literally steaming in the chill air. But the hogs evaded him and once again darkness found him sitting far from the barley field, glassing hogs as they began to gorge themselves on the green shoots and seed heads.
Billy made his way back to the truck, still confident that his efforts would bear fruit.
The next morning provided a repeat of the previous two days, as he chased hog sign all over the hills and draws. However, as evening drew down, the quiet of the hills was shattered by the blast of a high-powered rifle from the valley below. Billy excitedly awaited the charge of fleeing hogs, but though he heard some distant crashing, he never saw a single pig.
A few minutes after dark, Billy slipped out of the woods and back to the trailhead to find a teenager struggling to heave a big boar into the back of an old pickup truck. Billy rushed over to lend a hand. When the pig was loaded, Billy and the young man sat down to share a soda.
“Nice pig,” Billy told him. “I’ve been out here for three days hoping to take one like that.”
“Thanks,” the young man said humbly. “I almost don’t feel right about it, though.”
“Why’s that,” Billy asked?
“Well, it was really too easy,” the teen replied bashfully.
Billy was incredulous. “Easy?”
“Well, yeah,” the teenager answered. “I pulled up this evening and the game warden was sitting here by the road. I asked him if there were some hogs around, and he told me they were usually right out there in the barley field. He told me I could probably walk right up the road to them, and sure enough, I walked right down the road and there they were.”
There are a couple of things I’ve learned over the past few years. One of them is that, if you are willing to ask for advice, you’d be well-served to take it. Why make it harder on yourself than it needs to be?
