Been on a dry spell lately. The man that mentored me is gone for a little while and so I was put in charge of running all of the land that we hunt. Well I don’t have any finished dogs, I’ve got some well started dogs that will do the job, but they still need more woods time. He’s hunted that land for 6 days a week for years since he makes his living by training and selling dogs. These pigs are smart, one small noise and they’re gone. They will head straight to the river or to the thickest stuff they can find, and they’ll run until they’re caught or until they die. They just simply don’t bay up.
Well lately I’ve been losing them, or having young dogs trash and run all the pigs out of the area. Saturday night I decided I was catching a pig come hell or high water. I normally take two of my buddies catch dogs every time I go. I run rough dogs and we use 3-4 RCD when we hunt. All of the catch dogs will hang in a race, depending on the distance, and some will also find their own pigs.
Saturday I decided to take his lead strike dog. She doesn’t get hunted too much anymore, but she’s a damn good little 30lb mountain cur named Lil daddy didn't marry mommy. An ADHD freak lol. Well I drop dogs around 10:30pm and head to a little path that makes a loop to the river. My Scooter pup sounded off and I thought they might have already struck. Turns out it was a deer. So when the trash broke dogs came back I burned him pretty good until he came back. Then pushed to the river and ran down the bank. Had a little race happen there but the pig shook them.
I was started to get a little discouraged at this point, thinking it was gonna end like the past few hunts. Well I came with the intention of going deep, and had until about 4:30, so I figured i might as well go push in to the nasty stuff. Went through a couple acres of briars and waist deep water for about an hour. On the backside there was a creek with high ground on the other side. Knowing that everything was flooded, I thought the pigs might be up on that high ground. Got to the bank and the dogs started winding in that direction. I found an easy spot to cross and got up on that high ground and just sat down against a tree and let the dogs do their thing. Looked at the Garmin after a few minutes and lil daddy didn't marry mommy was out 200yds cutting circles, she opened up and started rolling out pretty good. When she made it to 300yds our RCD Shooter caught up to her and was with her step for step. None of the other dogs stuck with them, probably because they were tired and had been pushed pretty hard by that time.
Lil daddy didn't marry mommy and Shooter got to 700yds and I told my friend Zach that there was a road we could take that would come up close to them instead of going through the thickets. By the time we get out and going towards them, they show caught at 960yds. When we were 200yds out the rest of the dogs heard Lil daddy didn't marry mommy barking and ran to them and caught with Shooter. Well after 30 minutes of crawling through briars on hands and knees we make it to them.
They’ve got this pig caught in some nasty stuff. They’re in knee deep black swamp mud and water, with complete walls of briars around everywhere. There was a tree that fell over and they caught him in the water, underneath the ball of roots. Probably about 200lbs, little boar. Didn’t squeal but one time, not even when we stuck him. Well Shooter was laying down 5ft away just looking at everything calmly when we got there. I knew something must be wrong because that dog doesn’t just let go. I’ve never seen him come off a pig and he’s been cut down pretty bad probably 15-20 times.
Get back to the truck, load the dogs up, then take an hour to drag the pig out. It was a little over an hour to my buddies house to take his dogs back. We get there and Shooter and his other RCD Fat So Fat look dead. They’re both laying down in the box, barely breathing, and ice cold to the touch. I climbed in and drug them out. Me and Zach wrapped them in our jackets and started rubbing them down trying to warm them up for about 30 minutes before I finally got my buddy to wake up and come outside so we could get them in the house. After about an hour, Fat So Fat was up and walking. We didn’t think Shooter was going to make it. He was completely unresponsive from about 6:30am until 4:30pm. Opened his eye lid and touched his eye and he had no reaction at all. Wrapped him with [Iwarm towels and put a heating pad on his chest and just prayed. He finally opened his eyes at 4:30pm and after a while started moving around.
I wouldn’t have thought that severe hypothermia like that could have happened with it only being 47 degrees at the coldest that night. But we were in water a lot and Shooter did have that pig caught by himself for 30 minutes in the water. Once he woke up my buddy looked him over good and he had some pokes, so I know that pig put up a good fight underneath that root ball. I’m sure him being wore out made the hypothermia worse. Crazy thing, just glad both dogs ended up living. Really thought shooter wasn’t going to make it.
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