Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Big Red Hog

Noturk, MS> "Whacka-Whacka, Quack, Quack, Squawk!" I expertly worked the old box call waiting for a big gobbler to appear. "Whack, Squawk-Squawk, Quack". The weather was cold and rainy, the sky was overcast and dreary and there was not a damn turkey in the whole county. I kept working the call while I slowly froze to death and suddenly in the distance I heard a single gunshot.
Paul had brought up his friend Joey Anderson and his son Trey to hunt on the first weekend of turkey season and it was miserable. They had opted out of the turkey hunt that Saturday afternoon and Joey had slipped into the box at the base of the leevee to try for a hog. He was excited to give it a try because he had never seen a hog in the wild before. It got interesting very quick.
The hog wandered out into the grass field right before dark and even at 300 yards Joey knew that the big red killer would get him if he was not careful. He eased his shaking arms around with the rifle and aimed. He had to make a perfect shot. What if that horrible thing caught him and ate him? He aimed carefully. BLAM!
I coaxed Joey out of the stand right at dark and we searched for about 30 minutes for the big red hog. No luck. We headed in to camp.
The weather was so nasty that we neither saw or even heard turkeys this weekend, but even so, Joey and Trey were excited about the big red hog. Coming in Sunday morning from another lonely turkey hunt, the hog was standing in the field again. They raced to the camp and Trey grabbed a rifle. He headed back, met Paul on the road and they started easing toward the red varmint. They drove within 60 yards of the hog without it spooking and stopped. Then the big red hog looked up and straight at Trey. Trey felt his bones turn to slush as he looked into the red flames in the big hogs eyes.
He threw up his rifle, hastily aimed, then BLAM! The hog looked around and trotted into the deep grass. Trey wiped the sweat from his brow and wondered how he could have missed. Paul wiped his face too, in disbelief, and headed back to camp.
The big red hog is still there ready to get any Andersons that wander by and hopefully Joey and Trey will redeem themselves and get another chance. Here is a pic of the losers at turkey camp.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm.. a case of boar fever?

Ya'll really need to do something with those man-eating hogs down there, Rex. From the sounds of it, they're eating all your turkeys too!

I guess I'll start surfing Travelocity and Orbitz for a decent airline ticket to Ole Miss.

Editor said...

better hurry, before they eat up all my friends.

Anonymous said...

HAHAHA... I would most certainly like a chance to redeem myself it the shooting category. Maybe under the right conditions (like the ones mentioned in the story) I could make the shot count. I would like the thank all of yall again for having me.. It was a great weekend.. And who could have known that it would end with the MS BULLDAWGS winning the SEC Championship.. What a weekend..

GO DAWGS!!!!!

Editor said...

Trey, you are a great guest and an even better sport.
As for the bulldogs, hope they win it all!