Year of the Pig

By Mark J. Hainds, Mark A. Bailey and Steven Ditchkoff

Year of the Pig is a personal account of one avid hunter's pursuit of wild pigs in eleven American states. Mark Hainds tied his mission to the Chinese calendar's Year of the Pig in 2007 and journeyed through longleaf forests, cypress swamps, and wiliwili forests in search of his prey. He used a range of weapons--black-powder rifle, bow and arrow, knife, and high-powered rifle--and various methods to stalk his quarry through titi, saw palmetto, privet hedge, and blue palms.

Introduced pig populations have wreaked havoc on ecosystems the world over.  Non-native to the Western Hemisphere, pigs originally arrived in the southeast with De Soto's entrada and in the Hawaiian Archipelago on the outriggers of South Pacific islanders. In America feral hogs are considered pests and invaders because of their omnivorous diet and rooting habits that destroy both fragile native species and agricultural cropland.

Appealing to hunters and adventure readers for its sheer entertainment, Year of the Pig will also be valuable to farmers, land managers, and environmentalists for its broad information and perspective on the topic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780817385637

Book preview

PROLOGUE

To do this I must be altogether frank, or try to be, and if those who read this decide with disgust that it is written by some one who lacks their, the readers’, fineness of feeling I can only plead that this may be true.

—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Death in the Afternoon, 1932

This was not an easy undertaking. Most of those who are close to me looked upon my goal as quixotic at best. Several individuals simply didn’t see the point, while others were outright hostile, regarding this as little more than an excuse for Mark to go hunting every weekend. Some regarded me as selfish in the extreme.

A case in point: while I was still in the process of writing this book, our parish priest counseled me on the subject of spending more time with my family. I explained that I had set myself the goal of killing pigs in ten states over a one-year period, and this had required a tremendous devotion of time.

Father Den appeared quizzical. Would that be a significant accomplishment?

I kind of figured it makes me a pig-hunting hero! was my (somewhat ironic) answer.

Father, however, did not appear terribly impressed.

I grew up on a cattle, pig, and row-crop farm in Chariton County in north central Missouri. The nearest town of any size was Marceline, in neighboring Linn County. This property has been owned by the Hainds family since my great-great-great-grandfather settled the land in the early 1800s, and I was the sixth generation raised on the banks of the Mussel Fork. There are only two things in this world worth sacrificing for: children and land. And sacrificing for the latter is worthwhile only if children are there to inherit the land. Likewise, it makes sense to sacrifice for God or country only if the children of today, or the children of generations to come, benefit from the action. If God is merciful, my son, Joseph, will inherit the farm when I pass on. If God is kind, Joseph will grow to love and care for this land as much as I do.

Grandpa Joe Hainds once told me, If you drink from the Mussel Fork, you’ll always come back. So I slid down its muddy banks, scooped some water into my hands, and partook of its magical powers. Unfortunately, the Mussel had resident populations of beaver and muskrat. So I got giardiasis (aka beaver fever) and spent a week in the hospital.

But Grandpa was correct. I keep going back.

I usually drive or fly to Missouri for deer season in the fall. Sometimes I go by myself, and sometimes my wife and son come along.

And then, just before Christmas, we drive north for the holidays with presents, guns, and dogs in tow. In between family get-togethers, church services, and holiday feasts, we always do some rabbit, squirrel, and quail hunting, with a little time reserved to map out the next spring’s tree planting.

By April, it’s time again for the 920-mile (one-way) drive, with a truckload of tree seedlings and dogs. If there’s a little extra time, I might do some turkey hunting, bass fishing, and searching for morel mushrooms. To us our farm is truly heaven on earth, and everything is done with the overarching purpose of leaving the land in better shape than when we first inherited it: more trees, bigger trees, older trees. We are also interested in improved aesthetics, fewer invasive species, more native ground cover, and a lot more wildlife.

Someday, when Joseph is old enough to understand the significance of the action, we just might share a drink from the Mussel Fork—but we’ll boil the water first.

Subtracting the week for deer season, the week for spring tree planting, and two weeks for Christmas in Missouri, there are eleven remaining months when I reside in Lower Alabama (LA), in the Deep South. Here also I have favorite hunting grounds. For several years, a saltwater addiction required that I spend every other weekend in or on the Gulf of Mexico, with a rod and reel or a speargun in my hands. Then there was coon hunting. But I eventually had to start sleeping again, so I gave my hounds to a neighbor down the road.

After coon hunting, I discovered hog hunting, thus pulling a deep-seated, primordial trigger. It could be called a Lord of the Flies experience. Having hunted dozens of animal species, I can report that all of it is enjoyable. But hog hunting holds a special place in my psyche. This passion is shared by many. Vincent, a friend and pig-hunting acquaintance, told me, I never feel so alive as when I am pig hunting.

Few people realize just how ubiquitous the wild hog (Sus scrofa) is. The first ever National Conference on Wild Pigs was held in Mobile, Alabama, in 2006. Based upon sightings reported at this conference, it can be determined that almost every state in the Union either has populations of feral swine or will have them in the near future. The continental United States and most of our islands, not to mention almost every other country in the world, have established populations of feral pigs, also known as wild boar, wild pigs, feral hogs, or feral swine. Many of these populations are expanding.

Excepting city dwellers in the North who never visit the Midwest or South, virtually everyone in America lives or vacations near or in wild hog habitat. You may not have seen them. You may not have recognized the signs, sounds, or smells that identify them, but they were there, lurking in the shadows.

Have you flown into Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Tampa, or Orlando lately? If you saw citrus groves, swamps, or virtually any wooded or shrubby habitat, you were close to pigs. Have you been to Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Little Rock, or Memphis? Drive a little beyond the city limits and wild pigs won’t be far away. How about New Orleans, Houston, or Dallas? A trained eye might find hog sign inside the city limits: along streams, in industrial zones, even in city parks!

With expanding pig populations there are increasing economic and ecological effects and, of course, more opportunities for hog hunters. Hog hunters are part of the solution—and at the same time part of the problem. Hunters are part of the solution when they help control feral pig populations, limiting the damage that pigs inflict upon agricultural fields and the environment. Hunters are part of the problem when they catch and relocate feral hogs to areas that were previously pig free. Most recent expansions or introductions of feral hog populations can be attributed to hog hunters looking for more opportunities to pursue their favored game species.

In most states there is no closed season on hogs and there is no limit on how many a hunter may kill. And in general, the hunter can shoot them with any legal firearm, bow, or crossbow. Some people pursue feral hogs with a spear. Or, for an up close and personal experience, try a knife! Personally, I like hog hunting because it’s downright gritty.

And so we arrive at the reason behind this book. By January 2007, I had invested a decade in another book project: A Field Guide to the Birds, Fish, and Crabs of Pensacola Bay and Surrounding Waters. I couldn’t seem to stop adding new photos and descriptions, and I feared the book would never be completed.

In need of a finite project, I considered a book on hog hunting. I thought, I could kill a pig in every state that has established populations of wild hogs. After ten states, I’ll write it up and send it to a publisher. But without a deadline, this project could stretch out for years, too. However, around that same time it came to my attention that 2007 was the Year of the Pig in the Chinese calendar, and it all clicked. I had my goal, and I had my deadline.

Over the course of 2007, I hunted in eleven states, killing pigs with the sun high overhead, at dusk, and in the middle of the night. I hunted with big rifles, medium-sized calibers, and one of the smallest bullets ever made. Pigs were taken with a bow, a black-powder rifle, and a knife. There were hunts over bait, hunts from an airboat, and hunts with artificial light. I belly crawled into brush so thick that visibility was limited to ten feet or less and shots were taken as close as eight feet. I walked, ran, and stalked through woods, swamps, bayous, creeks, streams, rivers, mountains, volcanic rock, brush, fields, and pastures. Sometimes I hunted with friends or hunting guides and their dogs, but mostly I hunted by myself.

I witnessed differing approaches to ethics and the interaction between hunters, their prey, and the environment. There was forestry and wildlife management at its best and at its worst. Hunts took place in nearly pristine ecosystems and in tracts of land so degraded that invasive species were virtually the only survivors. On some properties the managers wanted every sow, boar, and piglet exterminated. On other landholdings, they imported pigs to increase the population.

My land ethic is not limited to our family farm in Missouri. As a research associate with Auburn University and as research coordinator for the Longleaf Alliance, I’ve devoted my professional life to restoring the longleaf ecosystem. Perhaps I’ll do my small part in leaving the Southeast with a little more longleaf forest and one or two fewer pigs than when I first set foot in Lower Alabama.

1 LONGLEAF

From southern Virginia, down through the coastal plains of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and on into Texas, longleaf ruled.

—ROGER REID, Longleaf, 2006

Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris): The longest-lived, prettiest, toughest pine tree in the southeastern United States. It produces the best sawtimber, greatest percentage of poles, best pine straw, most attractive landscapes, and more lightered wood (aka fat lighter). When tree geneticists spend their careers breeding loblolly or slash pine for better form and more disease resistance, they are attempting to replicate that which longleaf pine does naturally. To give it an anthropomorphic bent, longleaf is what the other southern pines wish they could be when they grow up.

On a Friday evening I drove two hours and forty-five minutes northeast from my home in Andalusia to Auburn, Alabama. Earlier, some friends and former coworkers (James and Stephen) had invited me along for a hog hunt they had arranged at Fort Benning, Georgia, and after a good meal and a few beers, I crashed on their couch with a smile on my face in anticipation of ringing ears and squealing pigs on the morrow.

We got up early, picking up Ben at another house in Auburn before starting the drive east. All three of these guys are forestry graduates from Auburn University who had previously worked with me on longleaf studies in south Alabama. We cruised through Columbus, Georgia, arriving at Fort Benning about one hour after departing Auburn.

At the Base Recreation Center, I secured a visitor pass and a weeklong nonresident hunting license. Because Fort Benning requires hunters to sign into open units before entering these areas, James called Range Control, signing the four of us into three areas simultaneously. At each new location, we lined up perpendicular to the long axis of the unit and pushed forward, covering acre after acre and mile after mile.

After another Benning employee (Joe Ranson) joined us, our party consisted of five hunters, each with a different caliber rifle. Ben had a Marlin .35 lever-action rifle that would have looked at home in the hands of John Wayne. This traditional gun uses a heavy, large-caliber bullet that is considered ideal for shooting through thick brush. Stephen carried a long-barreled, bolt-action .270. This modern rifle still shoots a good-sized bullet, but it is smaller in diameter, faster, and more prone to deflection. It is a good deer/pig gun in open country, where shots may be taken at longer ranges.

Joe would be hunting with a Mini-14 (.223). Since the Mini-14 does not require the shooter to work a lever or bolt between shots, its main advantages are a more rapid rate of fire and lower recoil. James was shooting a semiautomatic .22 Magnum. This was the only firearm utilizing rimfire ammunition. Most hunters consider the .22 Magnum way too small for feral pigs. However, the .22 Magnum does have advantages: virtually no recoil, rapid rate of fire, and cheap ammunition. Lastly, my firearm was a trusty ol’ Model 788, .243 Remington bolt-action rifle. This bullet was squarely in the middle of the pack, smaller than Ben’s .35 or Steven’s .270, and bigger than Joe’s .223 and James’s .22 Magnum.

The hunt started on the edge of a swamp. As we entered the woods, frost and hog tracks covered the ground. Normally, wetter is better when you’re talking about hog habitat, but the temperature had dropped into the low twenties the night before and the pigs had avoided the icy-cold mud.

James was the first to see a pig. I was on the bottom of the line, up against a swamp, while James was positioned on the opposite end, near the top of a hill. Brush kept visibility to about fifty yards, and the adjacent hunter in the line would appear and reappear as our line tracked the contour. Reaching the end of the swamp, the four of us on the bottom grouped up, waiting for James to reappear before setting off in a new direction. James emerged from the brush, joined the group, and asked, Did you see the boar? None us had seen anything remotely resembling a

Reviews for Year of the Pig

[k9road · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

... some of the pig hunting description is quite graphic and not for the faint hearted... very interesting, witty and highly entertaining if you are a hunter... wealth of knowledge and insider views of woodland/species and conservation...