Anonymous Poster
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Five...five...who\'ll give me ten?
We live on thirty acres in the middle of citrus country and are virtually overrun with wild hogs. My thirteen year old son hunts three or four times a week and usually brings home at least a couple a month, usually in the hundred pound range. We take the choice pieces of meat and cook up the rest for the dogs. Sometimes the hog never makes it to the freezer, depending on the size, we keep it in a cooler packed on ice on the back porch and manage to eat it before it ever needs to be frozen.
He got his last one last Saturday night. He walks down to the woods with his gun and sits in wait for them to cross the rows in the grove and that's when he gets them. Then he comes back to the house, gets the 3-wheeler and drags them up to the house to clean them.
One fine day not too long ago he announced he was going. Which was a good thing as we were out of fresh wild pork at the moment. I set about rearranging the freezer to accomodate the fresh meat, just in case, and off he went.
He was gone maybe an hour or so, when I heard this awful racket. Here he came packing a little dark red boar about twenty pounds, him sweating a puddle, dirty and scratched from head to toe, and the hog screaming to beat the band.
"What the heck is that? I can't cook that!"
"Well, I didn't want to shoot 'im, he's so little. I'm gonna raise him."
"How in the world.....did you catch him?!"
I've spent more than one weekend chasing and catching domestic piglets for vaccination purposes and even inside a 12' X 14' pen it was a formidable task.
"I dunno. I just did."
"Where's your gun?"
"I left it in the woods, I'll go back for it later. What can I do with this pig?"
We had plenty of crates around so it wouldn't have been any big deal for him to pen it up and feed it. What bothered me was the fact that we raise domestic hogs, and keep two full sized boars on the property and really had no use for a wild one as we wouldn't breed it anyway.
I didn't want to be bothered to drag out all the stuff to cut this little wild hog, plus I had no idea what type of diseases he might be carrying. My first instinct was to tell him to go back and turn it loose, but I finally agreed to allow him to pen the pig up in the front of the property as far away as possible from our domestic hogs, and just wait and see.
That evening we ended up with a half dozen or so boys out in the yard. My kids build a bonfire pretty regularly, winter and summer, pull one of the pickups up close by and turn on country music and just sit and stare at the flames.
Anybody, teenagers and adults alike, who drives by, ATV's by, rides horseback by, or walks by and sees it and knows us, will stop in and sit awhile. Sometimes they will stop by and if there's no fire, they will build one themselves and the light of it will draw us outside. I was going about my evening chores when I hear.....
"Five, five... I hear five...who'll give me ten..." this amidst a chorus of laughter and my daughter Jenny..."Jake...you're SUCH a dork."
I don't know when he got the idea, but he had gone from raising this pig, to auctioning it off to the highest bidder. He ended up getting fifteen bucks for it. The pig was bound at the feet and went off on the rack of a four-wheeler to an unknown future. I was glad to see the back end of it to tell the truth.
Now Jake has some major plans in the works to build a few live traps and make himself some serious pocket money. I told him as long as he keeps them penned down in the woods I'm okay with it. The extra money will keep him in gas for his three wheeler and I know I will still get all the fresh pork I can handle.
We live on thirty acres in the middle of citrus country and are virtually overrun with wild hogs. My thirteen year old son hunts three or four times a week and usually brings home at least a couple a month, usually in the hundred pound range. We take the choice pieces of meat and cook up the rest for the dogs. Sometimes the hog never makes it to the freezer, depending on the size, we keep it in a cooler packed on ice on the back porch and manage to eat it before it ever needs to be frozen.
He got his last one last Saturday night. He walks down to the woods with his gun and sits in wait for them to cross the rows in the grove and that's when he gets them. Then he comes back to the house, gets the 3-wheeler and drags them up to the house to clean them.
One fine day not too long ago he announced he was going. Which was a good thing as we were out of fresh wild pork at the moment. I set about rearranging the freezer to accomodate the fresh meat, just in case, and off he went.
He was gone maybe an hour or so, when I heard this awful racket. Here he came packing a little dark red boar about twenty pounds, him sweating a puddle, dirty and scratched from head to toe, and the hog screaming to beat the band.
"What the heck is that? I can't cook that!"
"Well, I didn't want to shoot 'im, he's so little. I'm gonna raise him."
"How in the world.....did you catch him?!"
I've spent more than one weekend chasing and catching domestic piglets for vaccination purposes and even inside a 12' X 14' pen it was a formidable task.
"I dunno. I just did."
"Where's your gun?"
"I left it in the woods, I'll go back for it later. What can I do with this pig?"
We had plenty of crates around so it wouldn't have been any big deal for him to pen it up and feed it. What bothered me was the fact that we raise domestic hogs, and keep two full sized boars on the property and really had no use for a wild one as we wouldn't breed it anyway.
I didn't want to be bothered to drag out all the stuff to cut this little wild hog, plus I had no idea what type of diseases he might be carrying. My first instinct was to tell him to go back and turn it loose, but I finally agreed to allow him to pen the pig up in the front of the property as far away as possible from our domestic hogs, and just wait and see.
That evening we ended up with a half dozen or so boys out in the yard. My kids build a bonfire pretty regularly, winter and summer, pull one of the pickups up close by and turn on country music and just sit and stare at the flames.
Anybody, teenagers and adults alike, who drives by, ATV's by, rides horseback by, or walks by and sees it and knows us, will stop in and sit awhile. Sometimes they will stop by and if there's no fire, they will build one themselves and the light of it will draw us outside. I was going about my evening chores when I hear.....
"Five, five... I hear five...who'll give me ten..." this amidst a chorus of laughter and my daughter Jenny..."Jake...you're SUCH a dork."
I don't know when he got the idea, but he had gone from raising this pig, to auctioning it off to the highest bidder. He ended up getting fifteen bucks for it. The pig was bound at the feet and went off on the rack of a four-wheeler to an unknown future. I was glad to see the back end of it to tell the truth.
Now Jake has some major plans in the works to build a few live traps and make himself some serious pocket money. I told him as long as he keeps them penned down in the woods I'm okay with it. The extra money will keep him in gas for his three wheeler and I know I will still get all the fresh pork I can handle.
