A smoke-filled casing flies over my shoulder as I pull back the bolt and jam another round into the chamber. As I feel it click back into place I’ve already drawn a bead on the next target: the blue cap of a Clorox bottle. I pull the trigger and am already ejecting the spent round as I’m rocked back from the recoil of my friend’s 30-06. Four caps, five shots, 20 seconds, 150 yards. Not bad, but it might not be enough for the real thing.
You can’t get nervous when they’re running straight at you, when the foam on their mouth and the dirt on their face fill your vision and your own hot, panicked sweat fogs up your scope. I’m not talking terrorist rebels in Iraq. I’m talking the feral pigs that roam Southeast Texas.
Considering their violence and 400 lb. frame, Texas hogs are called “Eastern Grizzlies” for good reason. You can take a baseball bat to their chest or drop a bowling ball on their head and they won’t even blink. They’re nearly impossible to kill.
They also carry diseases, they stink and they eat everything. On any given summer night feral pigs cruise around the county from sunset until dawn, rooting up fields and gardens and infecting livestock. A single family can destroy a good 15 or 20 acres of new grass in a night; no wonder these beasts are officially in the same class as rats.
Of course, unlike rats, they are quite tasty after fattening themselves up on fresh produce, and since they’re vermin, hunting season lasts all year long.
My friends and I are not immune to the romantic image of quarter ton of pig rotating on a spit over the bonfire. We have gone creeping through the piney woods in search of swine ourselves once or twice.
Eschewing rationality in favor of firepower, our standard loudout is one semi-automatic AK-47, one 30-06, a 12 gauge shotgun with solid 1 oz. lead slugs, half a dozen flashlights and a 9 mm for the guy who draws the shortest straw.
Tensions rise with four guys carrying powerful guns in close formation. A twig breaks and four flashlights converge on a lowly squirrel, who drops his acorn in terror as he hears the safety’s click off all around him and stares into the glare of a flashlight in my left hand and the glint of a 9mm barrel in the other.
Every once in a while you run into a horse out late that night. He ruins the moment when he comes up and nuzzles, looking for treats, but the fact that you don’t have to explain to your mother how you accidentally shot him when he snuck up on you tends to be a relief.
Once a vulture jumped out of a tree not 10 feet ahead of me and scared the living daylight out of us. We all appropriately fanned out and took aim, instinctual killers, except that none of us remembered to take off the safety; if it was a pig we’d have been dead.
To tell the truth, we hardly ever see any, mostly because when we get tired of walking we drive around an off-road golf cart and make a lot of noise, and we’ve never gotten close enough to any of the ones we have found to get a shot off. We’re just too loud and obnoxious.
Unfortunately, real hunting involves a lot more sitting quietly and a lot less posturing with your guns. Our style is better suited to shooting rats in the barn after dinner and playing Halo in the afternoon. Nevertheless, it sure is fun to get the guys together and stumble through the dark, fire off a few rounds and brag about what you’re going to do when you do run into that nocturnal monster.
