Mountain Hog
by Curtis Tate
Which dogs to take? I spend most nights before a hunt going through the dogs in my head choosing which dogs to load up the next morning to head for the woods. I somewhat decided and went to sleep. Next morning I loaded up Speck, Bill, Molly-Dottie and Jesse and started out before daylight to meet up with our hunting party. That morning I met John, Randy, Shane, Michael and Eddie up by the river bridge on some public grounds we hunt. If you have ever hunted the mountains in Upstate South Carolina you know that you are in for a lot of walking; covering a lot of ground mostly uphill both directions, and at least it seems like it.
This hunt started like most. We started leading our dogs in on a trail running back into the hills following the creek. A short distance in we ran across a little bumprooting along the creek. It looked fresh and we could tell it was one lone Boar by the looks of the sign. The dogs started winding but we kept them on the leads until we got farther from the highway. Once we got back in to where the creek intersected with the main river. We decided to cut the dogs loose. Speck and Bill, along with Johns Plott gyp, Jade, went out of sight to our right, while the other dogs worked the tracks out in front of us. It was just a minute before weheard Speck open and Jade was right in with her. I heard Molly open which to me meant she was looking at the hog and Jesse struck out to go to the Bay along with the rest of the pack. We started making our way through the mountain laurel skirting the creek and picking our path up the hill side. We could tell by the roar of dogs baying that they had him stopped for sure. Michael and I ended up at the bay first. The dogs had the hog backed up against a rock face in some thick laurel. I eased in to get a look at the hog, andit looked to me that he was holding his own against a sizeable pack of dogs. He saw me coming and rushed down the hill with the dogs in tow. In the frenzy Michael broke a finger on his way in to the bay and didn’t even realize it till we had a moment to catch our breath while the dogs were fighting the hog in the river.
The boar fought them off and headed up the bank out the other side. We crossed the creek and started moving in the directions of the baying dogs. Randy and I have Astro 220’s so we confirmed the direction of the dogs. They had him stopped again about 400 yds away. John headed over the hill tracking his dogs and Randy and I headed up the creek to where the GPS was showing the dogs had the boar bayed. We moved out at a run and came back to the creek. The dogs were bayed a short distance on the other side. I hollered to Randy that I had found a good spot to cross and I kept moving, turned out it was about thigh deep but the adrenaline was pumping and the dogs were getting louder so I kept moving. When I got to the other side I hit an old logging road and found the dogs bayed in a small drainage a short distance away. All my dogs were there along with Jade and a few other dogs from the pack. I noticed that Molly-Dottie wasn’t at the bay. Just then John came over the radio and said he had her and she was cut pretty good but didn’t seem to be too serious. I knew the hog had to be rough for her to give up on it. I could see the hog’s back in the creek and the dogs were getting the best of him. They had the boar stretched out and sitting down in the creek to get the dogs off his hams. I jumped down in the creek and legged him before he cut any more of the dogs. By that time Randy got there and jumped in to take care of the Boar. John and the rest of the gang got there and helped gather up the dogs and get the hog up on the bank for some well earned breather. Even though this may seem long winded, from turn out to bay was less than 15 minutes.
The boar wasn’t the biggest one we had caught, maybe tipping the scales at around 250# and his cutters weren’t but maybe 2 1/5 inches. We checked our dogs over and found that he had worked them over pretty good cutting 5-6 of them. Jade had a deep puncture in her chest going in through an opening in her vest. Molly-Dottie had been cut seven times , three in the jaws, one behind her ear, once in her right shoulder, the worst behind her left leg in the pit area opening it up completely. None were muscular except the head wounds and none very serious just bloody. My Weatherford Ben BMC pup Soggy Bottom Bill, I had just traded for was in on his first hog his second time out. He had gotten his first battle wound; laying his lip open about 4 inches back towards his ear. I don’t know who was smiling more, our gang of happy hunters or Bill with his extended smile. We don’t get many hunts in the mountains up here that end in such a short chase and so little land covered but you won’t hear us complain. Here’s hoping for many more.
Golden Creek Catahoulas
Liberty, SC
Curtis Tate, John Finley, Randy Holcombe, Eddie Evans, Shane Quinn, Michael Queen