FIRST PIG
by Budiceale@aol.com
This is a story about my son's first pig. We hunt on a small patch of land in north central texas. Brian, my son, had killed 3 deer and a bunch of other stuff but he was dying to kill a pig. Tthere had never been pigs in our part of the country but they had showed up in the last few years. I had killed a small one ( 100 pounds) a few months earlier. anyway we got our guns and other stuff and went out to the deer stand about 3 hours before dark. We sat there for the whole 3 hours without seeing anything. then, right at dark, a doe came along so we were watching her. I had to keep telling brian that he couldn't shoot her because it wasn't deer season. Brian is a good kid and doesn't want to break any laws but he's young and about as bloodthirsty as a cannibal. he was only 10 years old at the time. A good future hunter but still needs some molding. So we were sitting there watching this doe and suddenly she turned her head around and looked behind her. I figured that we were going to see another deer come along. So i started looking in that direction and pretty soon i saw 2 pigs come running up. They came right up under our tree stand. We couldn't shoot them because of all the tree branches under us.
Now i have to tell you that brian was using a .243. With pigs this size i didn't think it would be dependable for a shoulder shot. Well, pretty soon the pigs walked out from under our stand and brian had a good view of them. The 1st one to come into view stopped facing straight away.I didn't want brian to shoot it in the butt with that .243 so i told him to wait. Then the other one walked out and stopped perfectly broadside. I whispered to brian that he should shoot him in the head. He never hesitated. He just drew down on that pig and a split second later his .243 went off. the pig never took a step but dropped right where he stood. He had shot him right behind the ear hole. We had one very dead pig. I was one very proud dad. The pig was a boar that weighed between 275 and 300 lbs. He only had about 1" teeth but we mounted them on a nice plaque along with the bullet that we took out of the offside of his head. The teeth were about 2.5" after i cut them out of the jaw bone. Brian has them on them on his wall above the picture of him and the pig. All his friends think it's "totally awesome" as kids like to say. Sorry there were no dogs involved but it was a fun hunt that i'll remember forever. It's nice when your boy does what you've taught him.
Let's keep teaching the younguns to hunt responsibly and hope there will be enough of them to keep the bunnyhuggers from taking that right away from us. You have a real good site here and i will visit it and contribute to it as often i can.