Lazy Cajuns stop the “Switch Blade” a blue boar with an extra tooth
Part of our Lazy Cajun team reformed when JHY called and invited me on a hunt north of Baton Rouge. As usual, he gives me 3 hours notice, so it did not go down well with the wife, being Memorial Day Weekend. Also from the Lazy Cajun team was Mitchell and we also met up with Willy who brought his dogs, although not a Lazy Cajun yet, he is now an honorary member if he remembers to sleep in and miss work a few times! LOL!
We went where the land manager said there was rooting. It was dark of the moon. The dogs, my Squirt Jagdterrier and JHY’s three curs from east Texas lines (around Buffalo), AJ, Delilah, and more, lit up and struck right off the rig on the road as we pulled up to the gate!! Never heard the Squirt rig strike, so danged me, lets just turn loose right here in the road I said! But cooler heads prevailed and JHY had us drive through the gate into a pasture to regroup. We cut loose into the dark of dark nights and JHY’s curs bayed a hog for several barks, it broke, bayed again, broke and then bayed up again for a third time. But on the Garmins we could tell we had dogs scattered all over the place on different things….. Eventually the hog beat us and we gathered up the dogs from a road here and a road there, and I begged the young bucks to let this old guy get some sleep and we would try my plott hounds at sun rise. So we all packed it up and headed for the camp to get 2-3 hrs shut eye. Except poor Willy, the other three of us snored so bad he got no sleep! JHY also missed his full shut-eye allocation as he layed there fuming over why that hog beat his dogs. Me, I could care less, as that hog may be smarter than me, but I get em through persistence, and never let things like strategy and skill and intelligence get in the way!! LOL!
Since Willy got zero sleep, he has a fresh pot of coffee ready for us snore monsters in the morning. But it was not enough for me to NOT turn on the Marshall collar or sync up the Garmin I put on my jagdterrier Squirt (Oooops!). I try to run both on all my dogs as they typically run out of the range of the Garmin on all my hunts. JHY is still fuming about getting beat by that hog, and wants to go back to the same location. I argue against it, but eventually give in. We pass by another spot on the way there, but the sign was not fresh enough for the curs, and even for the hounds as I kept em on leads and walked them in the sign. We load up and go in the same gate where the dogs rig barked last night and go a couple hundred yards to the end of the pasture to the tree line. The curs act “piggy” and I cut in the two plotts, Buster, a big young male from Bayou Cajun lines and Ziggy, a small fine boned female from Orval Roberts kennel. Buster stays shut mouth, but Ziggy opens at least ten times in a row right away, which is unusual for her. Talk about announcing your arrival! After 1,000 yards, Buster opens with his big old hound noise a couple times. Then they pretty much ran quiet, but the surprise is over. We move the ATV’s over to the next ridge and cut in our 3 jagdterriers, Squirt, Ruby and Lily the Terrible, in an attempt to put the stop on the running hog, a method we use often.
They kind of run in a big figure eight over a couple miles, and then according to the Garmins, they sort of all split up. JHY and I then begin to worry out load real big – what the heck them dogs doin out there?
I tell JHY, ever since I made a hunt on some islands during the Atchafalaya River flooding where you could walk on the armadillos, I have had trouble with these dogs getting back to being their good broke selves. He is thinking evil about all his dogs as well…..
Next we run after the occasional barks and the Garmin signals and finally we see the chase heading nearly back to the place where we turned in the jagdterriers. We know there is a road there so we head for it to get ahead of the hog. About the time we get there and turn off the engines we hear the bay dogs baying and what appears to be an attempt to catch the hog on their own. After a scuffle, it breaks bay and the hound barks tell us it is all fast approaching us!!!
JHY and I get out of our buggy and JHY immediately hand signals me something is moving through the brush parallel with the road. I turn and pull my scoped pistol out of its carrier in the buggy. I hear the animal directly behind me as I try to chamber a round quietly and turn on the holographic scope. I keep my back to the animal while looking down at my weapon hoping my body will muffle the noise of chambering the round and snapping the covers off the scope. Then a big blue boar then steps in to the road and trots across it to the side I am on. I raise the weapon to my eye, but the boar turns away and begins to run down the road away from us. I step forward and realize I have only seconds before a pursuing dog rushes in from behind into my sight picture and I will have to abort the shot. Multiple thoughts rush through my head in a split second; is the background clear to make a shot?; where are my spent brass going to hit (yea, I think like that from other training); whoa! It’s a beautiful hog, a “blue phase colored” hog; wow! It sure is in good shape – a shame to ruin meat with a butt/gut shot; is it a sow or a boar ? – can’t tell- who gives a d**n anyway – dang, wish I could take it alive and lastly, better not try, it will most likely get away like it did last night and we are here to kill nuisance hogs for these people, not mess around.
So in under a second I make a crazy decision, shoot the tires out! Yea, shoot it in the leg and let the dogs bring it to bay for the catch. In retrospect, thinking about it after the fact, a wounded boar, this one looked to me to be about 200 plus pounds, can wreak havoc on a dog pack. So I took the shot at 80 yards and forgot to compensate for the 3” between scope and barrel, but I do that all the time. I shot twice and hit is just above the right front hoove and the right rear hoove. I saw it flex in its stride, knew then it was hit, so I did not shoot again, but could have. The boar turned right and vanished up the hill into the brush.
The curs were there in about 3 seconds and went up the hill after it. From the sounds it went a 100 yards or more, then all of a sudden the boar crosses the road and heads down the hill, looking all kinda blue and big and totally unphased by my “flat tire” shots. Not a limp to be seen.
The hounds arrive, I cut them off from running up the hill and send them down the hill on the track and JHY’s Delilah cur leads them in to the hog. Soon we hear all the dogs about 500 yards down the hill in the brushy creek bottom at bay.
It is a strong solid bay, no catching, a bit far, maybe 400-500 yards, so we send in two veteran catch dogs in breast plate cut collars and an apprentice in a cool-cut vest, Mitchell’s new AmBull for his first wild boar in the woods. The catch is good and the youthful half of the Lazy Cajuns and the brains (JHY! LOL!) head in for the kill. I stay behind to visit with the land owner and to listen to the chaos. They tell me later that the two jagdterriers (my Ruby and JHY’s Lily the Terrible) and the catch dogs had the head and the curs n hounds the rest in a bad thicket.
We weigh the boar on the scale at the deer skinning station and it clears 250 pounds. They tell me Willy dispatched it with his knife. Later we learn this boar has been seen by the neighbor and he has it on a trail cam going up to but not into his trap (see photos). We also notice it is trying to grown another lower canine tooth (cutter) on one side, so the name “Switch Blade” is born. None of us has ever seen or heard of anything like that before.
Only the big Bayou Cajun plott Buster got a light bloodless skin cut and the jagdterrier Ruby got a poke, but not enough to stop her from hanging feet off the ground on the boar's head as we drove it up the hill on the ATV rack! Jagdterriers can really make you laugh at times. Seems like such an impossible breed for boar hunting!
On the other hand the jagdterrier Squirt, the one I forgot to activate the collars on, was still missing in action, and I knew old Switch Blade had killed him. I knew it! I lost his father same way last February. That time I had the collar on, but the receiver went bad on me mid-hunt. The primary hunter for this location got one of his best dogs killed at same spot and he could not find her for a while because the dog fell into water and the little water that covered her stopped both the radio collar and the Garmin collar from getting the signal out. Not until he lifted her from the water did the receivers get a reading. Our crew searched for Squirt all afternoon with no luck. Danged old Switch Blade only took out the best ones! For sure!
Good news came with a phone call after sundown. Squirt made it back to the camp, and right by a field full of massive bulls. Glad the little bugger did not do his trademark act on those hundred thousand dollar Brahma bulls like he does the boars, which is grab some skin you-know-where and go for a ride! Well Squirt is back and unhurt and as usual when on a big boar, minus the pads on his feet, from getting dragged after he puts the lock down on the family jewels…. Just glad to have the little black maniac back.
