“So, you’re telling me I just walk up and stab it?”, I asked once again, not really believing Josh.
“Yes.”
I sighed and gripped my knife tighter. Josh was my fraternity brother, one of the few that also
hunted. We must have both been around 20 at the time, give or take a year or two. I’ve seen C-
SPAN clips full of less shit than some conversations I’d had with my college buddies, and I
couldn’t help but feel like he was pontificating in impressive form. I rarely pay much attention to the news, but they’re spot on when it comes to Florida; outside of the Keys and North Cuba, everything else is really just America’s redneck front porch.
Hank, my new dog, crisscrossed the trail in front of us searching for a scent. He was 8 months
old, and Josh acquired him from what he described as a “gypsy camp” in the middle of a
swamp. We were training Hank, named after the great Bocephus himself, to hunt wild boar. While hunting with dogs might sound easy, we weren’t using guns or bows to make any kills that day. Scoffing at convenience and common sense, we elected to use knives. All one must ostensibly
do is “walk up and stab it.”
I thought back to how bad I’d been with Capri Suns as a kid, but ultimately shrugged it off and
resolved to give it the old college try. I’d just broken up with my girlfriend, and I’m almost certain
this wasn’t the type of “hogging” my grandfather had told me to do, but the dogs were loose, and the bars would still be there once I got back. Well, if I got back, I thought silently to myself. Sitting silently, waiting for action was the closest thing to a professional fighter’s locker room before a fight that I had experienced. In both cases, there are long periods of anxious nothingness. You don’t know when, but at some point in the near future, there will be violence and blood. Just when I started to question the drive of my new swamp gypsy pup, we heard a grunt and a growl and sprang into action.
Hound hunting isn’t like what you see in movies, at least not this type. There are catch dogs and there are bay dogs. Bay dogs sniff out pigs, and only then will you hear a peep from them. Catch dogs viciously attack the boar or sow’s ears to keep them in place. A houndsman then comes and picks up the hog’s back legs, turning it onto its side and mounting it, then using the knife to cut its throat or stab it through the heart. This is a far better description than Josh gave me, but also oversimplified; turning a hog on its side can be a gritty wrestling match, and they frequently break loose from the grip of their canine assailants.
Hindsight is 20/20, as I knew absolutely none of this when I heard Hank bark. I rushed through a
thicket of palmettos and saw Hank locked onto the ear of a sizeable wild boar about five yards
away. As I closed in on them, I was able to lock in, mount the boar, and sink my knife into it's heart. At that moment I remember thinking, "I guess Josh wasn’t so wrong." Although, he probably shouldn’t write any instruction manuals any time soon. Hot blood poured onto my hand and forearm. I remember being shocked at the temperature. The boar never squealed, instead issuing a guttural growl and lurching at me defiantly with his tusks at every opportunity. It felt like an eternity, and Hank and I were covered in blood, but we had gotten the job done.
I survived the rest of college on a steady diet of wild boar. Most Sundays, I’d watch the Dolphins
lose while marinating wild pork in some Mojo seasoning. Hank and I took down many wild boars
together, and a head or two still hang on my wall today. Josh is still terrible at explaining things,
but he has the right sentiment. In a world where everyone tries to complicate things, there’s a
certain beauty in simplicity. Sometimes, you really do just have to walk up and stab your
problems head-on.