HE HUNTS KILLERS
The War at Long Creek - Part Three
 Editor’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 weeks, we'll look at the man, his dogs
and the hogs he hunts.
" We
fought that 525-pound wild boar at Long Creek for what
seemed like 30 minutes," Brooks says. "But
I know that the true time was only a minute or two.
Since I'd had my hands cut up and bitten before when
I'd tried to grab the front leg of a wild hog, I was
being careful. But then I also realized that if we didn't
get that hog down quickly, the other three dogs would
be killed." Brooks finally got a firm hold on the
front leg of the hog and using both h ands,
he pulled up while driving with his shoulder to knock
the hog over. When the hog hit the ground, Brooks immediately
put his knee on the hog's neck to pin the hog to the
ground and prevent the hog from being able to cut him
with his tusks.
"I tried to hold that front leg as high off the
ground as I could and put as much weight on my knee
as I could to keep that boar's head down," Brooks
explains. At the same time that Brooks wrestled the
front end of the hog, Neal got a
small rope out of his pocket to tie one of the hog's
back legs. "As soon as Trip got a back foot tied,
I handed him the opposite front foot. When we tie a
hog, we tie a back foot to front foot, then another
back foot to a front foot. This way the hog can't get
up and move. Then we pull all four feet together."
After the hog was tied, Brooks and Neal started gathering
up their dogs and headed to the vet with plans to come
back and drag the hog out of the woods after they’d
taken care of their hounds.
NEXT WEEK: LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BAD WILD HOGS GENE
BROOKS HUNTS
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