Creek Bends: Of sour corn, all-nighters and one lucky pig
Feral hog control effort takes some strange and winding paths
Finally, I broke down and bought a trail camera that connects to my iPhone, and at 2 a.m. Saturday that Stealth Cam reached out from Snake Creek with a little vibrating reminder.
Vvvvvt: There he was, back again, as if to let me know he’s still kicking around, tearing stuff up.
It’s been a month since a long, strange night in March brought an end to my pursuit of a big black feral pig that I call The Coal Boar.
He’s the second-largest boar that regularly visits Snake Creek and, truth be told, is one of more than a dozen of his brand of invasive species I sought to eliminate from Snake Creek. He just happened to be the one with prominent tusks, black fur with hoary brown highlights, and a build more like a wild Russian boar. Others have orange dominant coats and a rounded build like Durocs gone feral.
That, and he is just one lucky SOB. The name is a little corny, but it came to me during the first of two frigid nights spent in a treestand in late February and early March.
As I cut the hanging carcass of yet another of his less-wary companions into hams, roasts, ribs, and loins, my weary and probably slightly hypothermic brain wandered to that lucky boar—and to the outlaw Cole Younger.
History books note that Younger lived for years after he was shot numerous times in the Civil War and, especially, after he escaped a botched bank robbery at Northfield, Minnesota in 1876. Two of his pals died on the streets there.
Cole Younger and his dead partners; pig black as coal and dead companions; and so, The Coal Boar. And there you have it.
Of creeks and excavators
The hunts started as an extermination exercise for what we thought were a half-dozen feral hogs that occasionally turned up trail cameras—until a January night when a borrowed thermal scope let me watch a sounder of 13 pile off the oak ridge at 10 p.m.
As with hunting or trapping most animals, this pursuit taught me about these critters and their relationship with the property. It’s not a happy one.
When Snake Creek flows high they all but disappear from that 40 acres.
But as it drops, man, they love to hit that freshly exposed wet gravel and mud. They find easy digging, invertebrates, and exposed root and tubers, I assume.
The gut of the first hog I shot was full of watercress, which grows through the winter months in shoreline and gravel bar shallows. She was one of the cleanest animals I’ve ever butchered, by the way. She had almost no smell to her at all, other than an occasional hint of something like celery.
She was close to 200 pounds and had lived well off the bounty of Snake Creek. She’s gone, but the erosion potential she added along the creek is there to stay.
The Coal Boar demonstrated rooting power like I’d never seen.
The property is brushy, so I needed bait to bring pigs into the open, but I wanted to minimize the attraction for deer or other non-target species.
Yeast, after activation, continues to work even in cold weather and pigs love a mix of feed corn, warm water, yeast, Hawaiian Punch, and cherry Jell-O. A five-gallon bucket drilled full of holes and arranged on a chain worked as a DIY “hog feeder.”
Other hunters advised I dig a fence-post hole and put some in there, too, but river rock stopped me cold about six inches under the soil. I settled for digging a shallow trough.
During the first February snowstorm, with snow piling up on his back, Coal Boar took a little over an hour to dig a hole about 18 inches deep and about 3 feet in diameter as he cleaned up every kernel in that spot.
After the snow melted, I had a whole new appreciation for the excavation power behind a boar’s snout.
Of luck and “the hunt”
I first took aim at Ol’ Mr. Coal Boar in fading light at the end of deer archery season on Jan. 15. I was about ready to climb down, bow in hand, and here he came on a steady trot. I nocked an arrow, drew, and had my 30-yard pin on his nose waiting for a few more steps in my direction and maybe an angle other than head-on.
My trail camera even caught him in the split-second he scented me, stopped dead in his tracks, spun around, and ran like he’d be slapped on the backside. It was so fast I couldn’t believe it!
This was one wary pig.
I shot at him, twice, with a thermal scope I later learned had suddenly and inexplicably developed a need for a firmware update (see earlier column).
On another breezy “night”—at 2 a.m.—in 15-degree cold the weather app said “feels like 8,” I pulled the trigger on him again and, click!
Failure to fire; a sluggish carrier and round not properly seated in the Bushmaster AR-15 gave him a warning. The bolt was forward but the firing pin didn’t touch the primer. It’s not an uncommon malady for southerners with any number of auto-loaders in sub-freezing temps. It’s all about oil and grease viscosity.
Bait piles and thermal imagery and a mobile-app trail camera; you’d think killing a pig would be simple.
But there were technical issues and a learning curve. I didn’t really figure out just how slim were the chances of seeing a pig at dawn, dusk, or daylight hours until I reviewed hundreds of trail cam photos. Maybe one in 20 was a photo near dusk or dawn, most showed up at 10 p.m. to midnight or 2-3 a.m.
I was darned lucky to have a friend who would loan me his AR and thermal scope.
My only regret is that, due to firearms challenges, work demands, and 10 days with my truck in the body shop and snow on the ground, I really only got into a groove to make a population impact a couple of weeks before I had to stop hunting. Three pigs out of 16 is a small dent, but I was poised to kill more—especially Mr. Coal Boar.
But, a trapper with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Plant Health Inspection Service is working on the property now. I pulled my baits so he can do his thing. In a wooded, brushy area, trapping really is the only way to weed out the main sounder, which consists of at least 13 sows, shoats, and piglets—with more pork muffins in the oven, I’m sure.
The sounder is the root of the rooting problem.
Working the deadline
With the government trapper on the way, my hunting came down to one last night with very light north winds and lows in the upper 30s. Naturally, if I could get only one more pig, I wanted the Coal Boar.
After I killed a smaller black-bellied red boar on that 15-degree night within earshot of Ol’ Coal, I was surprised that boar came right back to the same bait the next night. After I killed that first sow down by the creek it was 10 days before any came near that bait again.
He apparently lost his worry about the smell of other dead hogs on a bait site, but stray dogs became regulars on the camera, and the Coal Boar was there at all hours, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. for three days.
With one night left and no way to predict his timing, all I could do was hit the stand and hope for an early visit. I knew that he’d be there—sometime in the next 12 hours.
My polypropylene base layer, fleece and Gortex formed a cozy cocoon and I started nodding off around 10 p.m.
I was safe. The stand is made to sit down and shoot a rifle off a surrounding rail. In fact I had two seat pads under my fanny to help me sit high enough. Plus, I had a strap on the AR-15, and I wore a climbing harness attached above my head.
I couldn’t have fallen or dropped that gun if I tried.
The night was clear, but moonless. It was incredibly dark, so I spent most of my time with my eyes closed, head tucked and ears open. I tuned out the distant road noise and barking dogs and focused on the forest.
I entertained myself by listening, pointing the rifle and only then opening my eyes to see how close I had came to pinpointing the sound. I wasn’t half bad!
My iPhone in my pocket picked up alerts from the trail camera on a tree 30 yards in front of me. Vvvvvt: Rabbit. Vvvvvt: Armadillo. Vvvvvt: Raccoon. Vvvvvt: Fox.
My ears picked up most of them before the camera, I’m happy to say. Eight white-tailed deer approached and surrounded me. I’ve hunted deer enough I recognized their approach.
The strangest sound was that of four dogs. The largest was a Great Pyrenees and the smallest a boxer-mix. They approached with a quick, light pace. I was excited to maybe see a pack of coyotes. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as one came directly to my stand.
When I caught the white glowing outline of a mutt looking up at me I felt no compunction about cracking the relative silence of those woods.
“GET! The! Hell! Outta here!”
Of substitutes and SOBs
In his book “Confessions of an SOB,” newspaperman Al Neuharth drew a distinct difference between calling someone an SOB rather than the long-form of that acronym. It is a sort of a moniker of respect in competition or friendship. One might be affectionately addressed as a tough SOB or even a dirty SOB when delivered with the right tone of voice.
The Coal Boar was, once again, a lucky SOB that final night.
The sound of steps in the dry oak leaves pulled me out of something somewhere between comfort stretching, isometric exercise, REM sleep, and full-on dreaming. Eyes closed, I pointed the scope, opened my eye, and saw a tiny white bobbing knob.
It was a pig snout. Or at least I thought it was. My depth perception was toast. A tree and dense brush obscured the view and it disappeared.
Then I saw the head. It sounded closer than it was, I later found. Confusion set in. Thermal imagery does not help with depth perception. For a second I actually thought it might be a loan piglet.
I took a minute, pulled a small bottle of water from my coat pocket for a sip, regained full consciousness, and listened to the approach.
“Yeah, I thought, that’s a full-grown pig.”
In my pocket, I felt that vvvvvt: He was on the bait.
It was not the Coal Boar. It was a smaller boar that hadn’t been to that bait site for at least a week. It was still a good-sized boar, well over 100 pounds.
And it was 3 a.m.
I pulled the trigger.
A thought persisted as I hanged and skinned and gutted that boar.
“Get back in the stand before 6 a.m. and I bet that black one comes in at dawn.”
But the forecast showed 55 degrees by 6:30 and near 70 by mid-morning.
If successful I would have two 100-plus pound pigs to dress and butcher after a tough all-nighter and I wanted to get photos of the controlled burn happening on the property starting at 10 a.m.
I decided against it, and continued butchering, packaging and packing those great cuts of pork on ice.
In my shirt pocket, my phone buzzed.
It was 6:38 a.m
Vvvvvvt: One lucky S.O.B.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.