John's Journal...

HE HUNTS KILLERS

About the Hogs

Click to enlargeEditor’s Note: Gene Brooks of Dublin, Georgia, hunts hogs in three different states and is on call to a large number of landowners and farmers. When a bad hog or a pack of hogs starts eating and destroying crops, tearing up roads and killing dogs, then landowners and farmers call Brooks. Brooks' motto is, "Have Dogs, Will Travel." Although Brooks catches and removes any hog or group of hogs that terrorizes the landscape, he specializes in "killer" hogs. Killer hogs have been hunted before by other hog hunters and are so bad that they leave bulldogs, curs and hounds lying on the ground like casualties from a bombing raid. For the next two Click to enlargeweeks, we'll look at the man, his dogs and the hogs he hunts.

Our concept of hogs is that they are slow, slothful and not very smart, which may be a fair assumption for domestic swine. But wild hogs are definitely different. They survive because of their endurance and their abilities to fight and kill predators and dodge trouble. Some of the hogs in Georgia, as in many other states, may be direct descendClick to enlargeents of hogs brought to this county by the early European explorers to feed their troops. Remember that when the early Europeans brought hogs to America, the hogs weren't put behind fences. The phrase "root hog or die" meant that the swine either would learn to live off the land, or they would die. Many of the domestic hogs brought in by these Europeans became feral hogs, roaming free, especially in southern swamps and lands, and the Click to enlargesmartest, strongest and fastest hogs survived. If you'll notice, in an old population of feral hogs, most of the hogs are brown, brindle-colored, black or gray for a very good reason. When a litter of pigs is born, bobcats, foxes, hawks and owls, the natural predators of pigs, can spot the lighter-colored piglets and then kill and eat them. Only the darkest-color phases of hogs can hide and survive, so many of the older and bigger feral hogs are these color phases.

 

 

TOMORROW: THE WAR AT LONG CREEK, PART ONE


Check back each day this week for more about HE HUNTS KILLERS...

Day 1 - About the Killer Hunter
Day 2 - About the Hogs
Day 3 - The War at Long Creek, Part One
Day 4 - The War at Long Creek, Part Two
Day 5 - The War at Long Creek - Part Three


 

Entry 282, Day 2