Years ago I was taking photos at a state park in FLA which had been a very large ranch. So large it had its own runway.

There was one road that ran into the place from the state road and ended 5 miles or so at the back end of the place near a lake/canal. I spent the day walking in the swamp and cypress heads taking photos. The park was full of palmettos. Palmettos can grow so that there is just now way through them but in the park they had not grown too thick so you could walk around in the pines. But the palmettos did form a maze among the trees.
Late in the afternoon I was walking into a new area on the west side of the road in the maze formed by the palmettos. All day I had been large areas of ground that the hogs had rutted up. Rutted up a foot deep. Some very big pigs had been playing bull dozer. As I walked in about 50 yards from the road, the man on my shoulder started getting nervous. The farther I walked the more Shoulder Man got nervous. No reason why. No smells. No sights. Nothing to hear. I had been walking in the same type of woods all day. No reason to be suddenly nervous. After awhile Should Man was insisting I should get back to the road. So I did.
Back on the road it was getting towards sunset so I was standing around to see what the light would do. I had moved about 100 yards south of where I Shoulder Man had persuaded me to leave the woods. I was looking at a huge thunder head miles to the south to see if the sunset would light it up nicely. For some reason I turned around and looked north.
Crossing the road was a big black bear. Except it was not a big black bear. It was a big black pig. I swear it was at least six feet long and 3+ feet tall. It walk right out of the woods at the same spot I did.

Shoulder man was right.

Always listen to Shoulder Man. I am sure that pig was hiding in a bunch of palmetto bushes and I walked right by it twice.


The pig moved off to the east and right about that time a guy drove by in a jacked up pickup full of hunting dogs. The dogs hopped out to the truck, which was going 15-20mph, and took off after that pig. The driver was a cuss'n. If the dogs caught that pig those dogs might have been a cuss'n.
The only thing I had to fight of that pig was a very heavy solid Benbo tripod.

Somehow I don't think it would have helped much.

There were not any trees I could climb either.

Later,
Dan