4th of July Hog Doggin Action!

We were all hanging out at the house when I got a text from 704 Field Staffer, Bud Ratliff of the Backwoods Hog Hunters. He asked if we were thinking about turning the dogs loose since no one had to work on the 4th. Without hesitation Beth said “Heck yeah, let’s load em up!”, so we did. It was going to be a late night since we were just loading dogs at 11:30pm.

Just as we were getting close to meeting Bud & Anthony, I got a call saying we had a change of plans. On route to meet up with us they past another bean field that had hogs all in it! We made a quick turn and headed that way.
We past the field and turned on the next road to put the tracking collars and get our game plan together. Bud and Anthony got their dogs ready and Anthony jumped in the back of Bud’s truck. The plan was to jump off the road onto a little turn off at the edge of the field and send the dogs in as fast as we could. We did just that! We jumped back on the road and gained some speed. Just as we were approaching the turn off we barely hit the brakes and without hesitation jumped out and off the dogs went!

The hogs snatched a gear and headed to the tree line. Just before they hit the tree line the dogs already caught one! We ran like crazy to get to it and Anthony made quick work of that hog. The dogs broke loose from that hog and off they went again. Had dogs running every direction, it seemed that the hogs all scattered when the dogs caught their buddy. Daisy stayed on one hog’s tail til finally slowing down about half a mile from where we started! We all headed back to the truck to try to get closer to Daisy and the hog she had in her sights.

We drove around to the area she was in a unloaded the 4wheelers to try to get closer to her. We were still about 8-900yds away. We road down the road til we were within 200 yards of Daisy. Bud kept looking at his Garmin saying “Daisy keeps making a circle in the same spot… maybe she’s silent baying…” So we cut the rest of the dogs loose and started to make our way closer to her.

Just as we were getting within a hundred yards of Daisy the other dogs must have heard her growling at the hog or maybe the hog snorting because they all checked out! We picked up the pace and started working our way towards the action but within seconds of the other dogs checkin out, the hog started squealing! We all ran to the squeal and all the dogs had a good hold of that porker. I handed Beth my knife and she sunk it deep into the hog’s boiler room! We all caught our breath and I started to field dress that hog to make the uphill hike back to the 4wheelers a little bit easier.

It was a great night hunting with my wife, Bud and Anthony. We caught hogs and had a blast! Headed to the house about 5am, cleaned the hogs, threw them in the freezer and in the shower by 7:30am. What a way to kick off the 4th of July!