This hog was not the biggest I have ever caught but hands down he was the meanest. I found his track going into a bad 2 year old cutover at the beginning of summer in 2018. I turned loose on him in that same spot 6 times throughout the summer before finally catching him. He accounted for a lot of emergency tailgate surgeries. Every time I turned loose on him I had to sew something up. He had a very simple and effective game plan. The dogs would always bay him the first time pretty quick and most of the time in the same spot in that bad thicket. He would stay bayed for just a minute or two, then pick out one of the dogs and bull rush it and then off to the races. The first time he butchered my old dog and put the other pup off on a sow and pigs. The second time started off the same way except he didn’t throw the dogs off on other hogs. Instead he swam the Tombigbee River so I called the dogs off and had to start sewing. The third, fourth, and Fifth was exactly like the first. He was a running joker after he would break bay the first time. The final time the two dogs I turned loose on him both still had staples in them from an earlier encounter with him. They bayed him quick and luckily they both got out of the way when he tried to bull rush them. He done his usual and went the same way but this time I decided as soon as I turned loose we would drive around to where he would normally cross a road and try to turn him a different direction from the thicket that he always seemed to put the dogs off on other hogs. Luckily it worked and he went into the open hardwoods and the dogs hung with him for a pretty long race. I had to work nights that night and it had gotten late in the morning so we went and turned a couple more dogs loose in a different spot because I really didnt want to let the guy that was with me go home empty handed. Shortly after turning the other dogs loose I was watching the Garmin close and it appeared that the other dogs were barely at a walking pace so I assumed they had burnt out so I quit watching the Garmin and ended up catching two sows before noticing that they were still walking the same creek bed back and forth in a 15 yard stretch. I guess they were moving just enough to where it didn’t show treed. So I drove 200 yards from them and stopped to listen. I didn’t hear anything so I drove up to about 80 yards and they started back baying. We started to them with the bulldog and when I got close enough to see them and they were walking back and forth 10-20 yards in front of a stump hole with him backed up in it. Sent the bulldog and the fight was on. He was one rank joker.
I don’t know if I couldn’t hear them down in that hole from 200 yards or if they wasn’t baying until I got close enough they heard the ranger coming but I fully understand why they stayed so far back from him. Lol. I love to catch big toothy boar hogs but I will be ok if I never get on another one as rank as that joker was.
