MORE ABOUT THE BAD, WILD HOGS
GENE BROOKS HUNTS
How It All Began
 Editor’s
Note: Gene Brooks of Dublin, Georgia, who hunts hogs
in three different states 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, whose motto is “Have Dogs, Will Travel.”
Although Brooks catches and removes any hog or group
of hogs that terrorize the landscape, he  specializes
in “killer” hogs – those that have
been hunted before by other hog hunters. These killer
hogs are so bad that they leave bulldogs, curs and hounds
lying on the ground like casualties from a bombing raid.
This week we’ll continue to look at the man, his
dogs and the hogs he hunts.
The story of how Brooks got
into hog hunting is well worth the telling. Originally
a coon hunter until the age of
18, Brooks explains that, “When you have a good
coon dog, you believe your coon dog is better than anybody
else’s. If he’s not the best coon dog you’ve
ever had, you’ll get rid of him and buy another
coon dog. My buddies and I all thought we had the best
coon dogs ever. But we knew an old man who lived down
in the swamps and hunted hogs. One day he told us about
running a hog for four hours with his dogs. I didn’t
quite believe the old man, so I questioned him again,
‘You mean to tell me with a pack of hounds you
ran a hog for four hours?’
The old swamper looked back at me, smiled and answered,
‘Oh, yes. That’s quite common. Most people
don’t know that a hog can run that long and that
far.’ I looked at the old man, narrowed my eyes
and made a brag I’d regret later. ‘My coon
hounds will run one of those hogs down in 30 minutes,’
I boasted. The man looked back at me and my buddies,
and said, ‘You boys be ready to hunt tomorrow.
Bring your dogs, and come to my house. We’ll find
out just how good your coon dogs are on these hogs.’”
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