The black shapes looked out of place on the grassy slope in the Texas Hill Country. Smaller than the bushes, too dark to be deer. They had to be pigs for sure. I brought the car to a stop and snapped a few photos from the car window. A pair of llamas stood staring at me in the same field. The typical sort of random misfit animals that seem to pop up on ranches around here. A band of whitetails flicked their tails farther away.
The ranch owners who had invited me out for a few weeks had insisted that I wait until after an upcoming hunting class was over before shooting any hogs. They didn't want the noise to spook them. But there is more than one way to kill a pig.
I opened the car door. After a few steps I checked the wind and found it in my favor, blowing slightly crosswise but more or less from the pigs toward me. They were about three hundred yards out.
Mounds of bison dung dotted the field. I stepped around them and kept an eye out for the herd, which fortunately was somewhere else on the ranch right then.
The llamas took a few steps towards me and looked suspicious. A few sentinels among the whitetails looked troubled.
Two hundred yards. I turned my camera on and snapped a picture in the fading light. The pigs oinked and snorted but none had seen me. I kept walking, silently, legs apart and stepping high.
The whitetails bolted for the woods all together. The llamas continued to disapprove.
One hundred yards. I looked for the smallest of the pigs that wasn't too close to a big one. The herd numbered no more than about eight. The biggest of them looked to be about three hundred pounds. I didn't want to end up in a fight with him.
At seventy yards the first of the pigs looked right at me. It did nothing at first. Here was a man, sure. But a man who did not carry a long black stick in his hands. No gun. A man with nothing but his empty hands, and yet walking closer.
Fifty yards. The whole herd was staring at me. It was now or never.
I drew my long steel knife from the sheath on my belt and ran hard and fast for the pig I'd picked out. Blade in hand, I came straight at the herd. For a moment they stood stupidly looking at me and I thought that I might make it all the way in among them. They saw that this strange man did not carry a gun, yet it rapidly become very clear that the strange man was completely out of his mind.
The herd suddenly bolted. I ran hard and chased them across the grass while the disapproving llamas took a few steps back. Yet I fell short. With the nearest pig only a few dozen yards away the herd made it into the thick brush and melted into the shadows and out of sight.
I walked back to my idling car with the knife still in my hand.
Next time.
[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]
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