The Hog Blog

I’ve been emailing back and forth with an occasional Hog Blog reader, Ian, as he’s begun the journey, fraught with peril, into the depths of the hog hunting addiction.  After a few frustrating attempts, he finally made it all come together.  He’s agreed to share his tale with us here.

I’ve been wanting to hunt pigs for like 10 years, and it all finally came together last week. Shot a nice sized boar right between the eyes and have more meat than I’ve ever seen in one place.

I’m not from a long line of hunters. In fact, no one in my family has EVER hunted. When I was a kid I had a Crossman 766 bb gun and was pretty obsessed with shooting robins and chickadees in my suburban Philly backyard, but after a few years of bloodshed I either lost interest (or the birds got smart). Not exactly Davey Crockett lineage. But I love being outdoors (was a former Outward Bound Instructor), camping, surfing and was an Environmental Studies major in college. After seeing some wild pigs in Henry Coe State Park 10 years ago, and learning about their natural history in the state, I decided I wanted to shoot one. I also love pork.

After buying a 30-06, enduring the most insultingly uninformative hunter safety class (10 hours on a metal chair, being read a dmv-style booklet), a few trips to Wal Mart and the shooting range I was ready. That whole phase took like a year! The most fortuitous turn of events, however, was my friend’s purchase of 170 acres west of Lake Sonoma in 2007. It’s an amazing piece of land. Full of deer, pigs and turkey. He grew up hunting birds, and being a fellow fan of swine meat was more than happy to host hunting trips (which we’ve been doing each month for the last 5 months). The 3rd member of our team is a guy hunting experience (deer, turkeys) and his presence reassures my wife because he knows what he’s doing, unlike me.

We’ve been up 5 times on strictly hunting trips (no kids, etc) and have seen pigs 4/5 times. Shots (misses) fired 3/5 times. A month ago I took a 175 yard shot that missed. I learned a couple things: 1. I should (and could) get a lot closer, and 2. don’t aim so high.

This 5th trip last week was the charm! It was 6AM after a mostly moonless night, I walked right up on this boar. He was 75 yards away and looking right at me. I thought he’d bolt, but he didn’t. He nodded his head a few times as if he were trying to figure out what we were, then started rooting around again. I lay down on my stomach, waited like 20 seconds to stop breathing so hard, and he faced me again. Just staring right at me. I didn’t wait too long — put the crosshairs on his head and fired. He dropped right down to his side, kicked for 30 seconds or so and died. I got him right under the left eye. Having the pig face me seemed to simplify it — just shoot it in the head. The combination of shooting from my belly and being somewhat rushed resulted in a nice gash on my forehead from my scope.
Didn’t have the rifle against my shoulder — duh. But being a newbie, I figured it was kinda fitting. It’ll keep me humble, and serve to remind me to slow down a little on future hunts.

We gutted him in the field and I have to say I was really surprised at how healthy, clean and interesting the whole process was. I was worried I was going to emerge from the experience a vegetarian, but it was totally the opposite. This animal was so amazingly…healthy.
His guts and blood just smelled a little like iron. Natural — that’s how I’d characterize it. Makes me wish all the meat I ate came this way. I was surprised at how tough some areas of his skin was, but after a little bit I felt like I got the hang of the gutting.

We put the pig in the Mule and took him back to the cabin where we hung him and skinned him. That took a while as none of us had skinned a pig, which is definitely harder than a deer (so I’m told). After a nice breakfast of eggs and his tenderloins, we dropped him in the cooler and headed for town/butcher.

Got about 60-70 lbs of chops/roasts/ribs, plus 2 big bags of meat for sausage. My buddy has a nice meat grinder and tons of spices so we made the sausages ourselves. They came out great!

Great job, Ian!

Related Articles:

• Hog Blog Readers’ Success In The Field
• The Quest For The Mythical Blacktail Buck
• Follow Up on SC Regulatory Changes
• Porcine Press – Tuesday Edition
• Getting My Hunting Fix Online
• Hog Blog Friends On The Hunt
• Tejon Ranch Follow-Up – The Fat Lady Sang
• Reader Questions – The Hog Blog Answers
• Grinding, grinding, grinding…
• Porcine Presss – Hog Gigging?