"Condolences"

There is something peculiar about hunters which bears sharing. My wife and I are expecting the birth of our second child in a couple months. In fact, thanks to the marvels of modern medicine and the doctor’s reasoned decision to perform a Cesarean Section, we happen to know the precise date, location and time of day when the little princess will make her grand entrance into the world. We can therefore treat this glorious event like so many other lesser appointments on our calendars and, stated succinctly, plan for it and schedule around it, the way one might plan around root canals and PTO meetings.

Anyone with children knows that the birth of a little one is automatically inserted at the top of the list of meaningful events in one’s lifetime. In fact, regardless of the caliber of human being the little one grows up to become, his or her birth is crowned “The Greatest Day of My Life” by both Father and Mother without the slightest consideration of any other candidates. Should a family be blessed with more than one child, the birth date of each is simply inserted alongside the others’ in a lateral fashion to indicate its equality to the others’ much the way college football polls skip the next lower ranking number when two or more teams are tied for a particular spot in the poll.

Even those without children recognize that the birth of one of their friend’s children is a big deal. The absence of progeny does not deprive the individual of the ability to appreciate and celebrate the joyous nature of the birth of a child.

Hunters, however, are a different breed. No doubt hunters feel all the same emotions and thankfulness at the births of their children as normal people. I can attest, as I have a son and as stated am expecting a daughter. My son’s birthday was truly the greatest day of my life. I am sure my daughter’s birthday will be, too. Every one of my hunting buddies would say the same thing about their children as well. Each of them has been wildly excited for me over the impending arrival of my little girl. That is, until I announced the date of my wife’s and my appointment with her doctor during which our daughter is to be extracted and placed in our anxious arms.

She will be delivered at the centermost point of what could be considered smack dab in the middle of deer season. The moment I supply the date upon which my daughter is to be delivered, my hunting friends, contrary to everyone else I know, slide slowly into a state of moroseness and empathy, as if I’d just said, “Fellas, I’m being audited.” Their faces change and they draw in their bodies as if to get closer and less imposing during someone else’s moment of grief. Voices are hushed and refrained. Often the next audible sound after my pronouncement is the awkward clearing of a throat as if to say, “Come on, guys, someone needs to say something.” That something, more often than not, has been, “Gosh, Rog, I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do?” Which is usually followed up by a particularly observant, “Man, you’re gonna miss the whole season.”

Bear in mind I will have just announced to whom I consider my closest friends that my life is about to be blessed by a child, and their immediate instinct is to step forward and offer me a shoulder to cry on.

I understand why the hunters’ reactions have been more along the lines of tongue-in-cheek condolences than whooping congratulations. During more than one particularly myopic moment, I have wanted to lean on them and cry away. After all, my wife and I could have had a baby any time we wanted. Had I misplaced my calendar when we decided to have a baby when we did? Had I forgotten how to add to nine and project that number of months into the future in order to figure out the big day? The truth of the matter is I will in fact miss most of the season this year. And that will drive me crazy. I will be itching to get up to the camp and get in the woods. My imagination will run wild with images of the deer I will be missing out on and I will burn up the telephone lines seeking out reports and sightings.

But I will not really be disappointed at all. God willing, a man can reasonably expect to be around and healthy enough to participate in some 30 or 40 hunting seasons in his lifetime at the very least. Not every man is blessed with a child. So this season, I believe I shall savor every moment I am not there because, at the end of it all, I will be getting another miracle, a second child, and hopefully another life long hunting buddy. And that’s worth sitting this one out.



(c) Roger Guilian 2006

"Covered Up"

Hog hunting in Dixie, it can be argued, is one of the most fun outdoor sporting endeavors to be had. Conduct a hog hunt in Alabama where there is neither a closed season nor a bag limit on feral swine, and you’re in store for one heck of an enjoyable hunt.

This past January I was invited to spend a weekend hunting deer on the Tombigbee River in south central Alabama. My host’s property consisted of 3,600 acres of some of the most diverse and spectacular habitat to be found anywhere. The tract was dotted with swamps, sloughs, pastures, hardwood stands, bottoms, pine plantations, and even some hills and ridges further up from the river. The repeated assurances that the land contained not only deer but ducks, feral hogs, turkeys, and other coveted game were wholly unnecessary. That boastful fact was evident simply by looking at the topographical maps of the parcel in the camp house and taking one windshield tour of the property.

Saturday evening I drew a stand near a swamp far from the river. After two deer hunts had failed to yield a harvest, I was excited to try my luck on a whole new part of the property. I had told the group how anxious I was to see a large river swamp buck, as I had heard tales about some of the deer taken off the Tombigbee for years. More than once I was encouraged to keep my eye out for hogs, which according to my colleagues were “everywhere.”

The stand I drew was a wooden shooting house which sat just inside the woods overlooking a grass field roughly a half mile from where a hunter with whom I rode in would be spending his afternoon. From where I stood at the base of the ladder, I could see dozens of trails in the woods on the perimeter of the field. I climbed into the shooting house and began getting situated.

No sooner had I leaned my rifle against the corner of the box blind and removed my pack and coat did I hear something in the woods behind me. At first I did not recognize the sounds at all. They were not constant but intermittent and had a hoarse, breathy, and guttural quality to them. I strained to get a better sample of the sounds in my ears when suddenly my ears took in an unmistakable grunt and squeal that told me what I was listening to just had to be hogs.

No more than five minutes had elapsed since I fastened the catch on the shooting house door and turned my attention to getting settled in before the first pig appeared. A medium-bodied black pig stepped out of the nearest corner of the woods into the field from my right. I watched the pig root up the ground and listened to its offensive snorting and hocking for a couple minutes before I noticed pig number two. Straining to look out the opening and around the far right of the blind, I counted six pigs standing in the corner of the field tearing up the ground beneath their feet. Slowly I positioned my .270 out the window and rested it on the sill pointed in their direction.

I had a choice to make. I could let these pigs do their thing unmolested so as not to spoil my chances of seeing and possibly harvesting a nice deer, or I could take a shot at one of the six swine that were now less than 20 yards from the barrel of my rifle and give up on any real chance of taking a deer. I chose the latter.

Singling out one of the larger black sows, I widened the reticle on my eyepiece and placed the crosshairs on the hog’s left ear. I had pulled the trigger on only one other pig before and, shooting it behind the shoulder where I would shoot a deer, was never able to retrieve it despite following a blood trail half the night and into the next county. I drew in a breath, blew half of it out, and fired.

The sow went down in the same spot she had occupied moments before. The other five pigs ran circles around her and disappeared into the brush. I clicked on the safety, ejected my casing, chambered another round, and placed my rifle back in the corner. I spent about 30 seconds trying to decide whether to leave the pig where it lay or drag it behind the shooting house when, to my amazement, one of the spotted yellow hogs reentered the field and resumed feeding within mere steps of the departed sow. Moments later there were two pigs down. I had not been in the stand fifteen minutes. I could already tell that hog hunting was a lot of fun.

Thirty minutes after dispatching the second swine, the remaining four reappeared from the same corner of the woods and nonchalantly rooted and grazed around their fallen counterparts. I was stunned. Just under an hour into the hunt, I had seen six feral hogs, harvested two nice sized sows, and was confronted with more opportunities. I decided to take out another one. An enormous yellow sow had separated herself from the other three and was rooting up the field directly in front of and below me at about 25 yards. I waited for her to get completely broadside before removing her from the property. After this third shot, the remaining three ran into and over one another looking for the exit.

I felt no sense of greed or gluttony at taking three pigs in just under an hour. I hope other hunters confronted with numbers of feral hogs and numbers of chances to harvest them will not, either. Feral hogs are widely recognized as one of the most dire threats to wildlife habitat and agriculture in Alabama and the Southeast as a whole; and the problem is getting worse. They are unimaginably destructive to fields, crops, and woodlands and possess a verily insatiable appetite. Feral hogs are not above ingesting spotted fawns and turkey poults in their ravenous quests for food. Making matters worse, female feral hogs begin breeding around 6 months of age and continue breeding until death, dropping an average of three litters per year, each containing up to twelve piglets. Once a property acquires a herd of feral hogs, whether by natural infiltration or importation by humans for hunting purposes, the herd will grow at an uncontrollable rate, threatening the habitat and food sources for all other wildlife, game and non-game alike. Feral hogs are unarguably a terrific nuisance and many experts encourage hunters and landowners to remove them on sight.

One might think that after hearing four concussive salvos from a high-powered rifle and watching three pigs go down and not get up again, a hog might begin to feel some sense of danger and choose not to step out into the open any more. Were one to think that, one would be mistaken. An hour or so after dropping the large yellow sow, a young black boar that had thus far survived entered the field at about 110 yards, this time from my left. I had heard him rooting around and grunting behind the shooting house for 45 minutes and wondered if he’d show himself again. A fourth report thundered throughout the woods and across the swamp.

Dusk overtook the woods and I observed a small dot of white light bobbing towards me that signaled the other hunter’s return and the end of the hunt. Four feral hogs littered the field beneath me. Until that afternoon, I had had no idea how much fun hunting feral hogs could be. It was truly one of the most exciting hunts of my life. When we returned to the camp, my host thanked me for removing the pests from his property and joked that he’d have to have me back to help control the pig population. Boy, I sure hope he does.



(c) Roger Guilian 2006